Back with another chapter! I hope y'all are in the mood for some angst. :) Cross posted on Ao3 and Tumblr
Shit, shit, shit. Of course this would happen; a ghost attack two days in a row. Danny's luck was continually getting worse. Maybe someone cursed him. He should ask Sam about that.
She'd probably know.
The soft soles of his sneakers smacked against the linoleum floor as he ran. The halls were deserted, thank God. The likelihood of the alarm being pulled was reduced by at least a little bit.
First thing's first: he had to get the thermos from his locker. He transformed as he ran, the cold passing over him. He felt lighter, leaning forward into flight and zipping through the halls. He put on the brakes as he reached his locker, pushing an intangible hand through the metal to retrieve the thermos.
Energy buzzed through him, filling his ears with its dull roar. It was like adrenaline, pulsing through him, ectoplasm bursting to life to supply his core with power.
It was a familiar feeling—a sensation that used to leave him shaky and weak in the knees but now, he felt it sharpen his mind—power roiling underneath his skin, begging to be released.
Which ghost was crashing the party this time?
"I am the Box Ghost!" Echoed down the hall from around the corner.
Danny's shoulders slumped, and his head lolled back. Seriously? The Box Ghost? He heaved a sigh. Whatever; at least it'd be over quick.
Hopefully.
He flew down the hall and rounded the corner, coming face to face with the self proclaimed "Ruler of Boxes" and "all Square Shaped Containers".
"Why not make this easier on both of us and just surrender for once?"
"I will not do that! Never will the might of the Box Ghost quiver before a simple teenager!" He shook his fist like he was in some cheesy play.
Danny had to focus on not crushing the thermos in his hand like an empty soda can. At this point he had to wonder if the Box Ghost just did this because he was board. Ha, get it? Like cardboard? Bored?
...Nah, that needed more work. He was running out of puns for Boxy at this point. It'd been two years for fuck's sakes.
"Fine. The hard way then. Let's at least move to a more appropriate arena." Danny sprang to action. He flipped forward, bringing his heel down on top of Boxy's head. The force of the kick slammed the ghost straight down through the floor with a cry of surprise. Luckily he'd gone intangible so there wasn't a gaping hole in the floor of the hallway.
Danny wasn't some weak fourteen year old anymore, and if the Box Ghost thought he was going to hold back, he was grossly mistaken. He was having a shitty day, and ghost fights were always the perfect way to blow off steam.
Danny went intangible and followed Boxy down through the floor and into the basement of the school.
The Box Ghost was lying dazed in a small crater of broken concrete as Danny bared down on him. He somersaulted, aiming to slam feet first in the center of his foe. The Box Ghost yelped and went intangible just in time to avoid getting smashed further into the cement foundation. It shook the ground and sent cracks spider webbing several feet from the point of impact.
Boxy rolled away, and Danny had to dislodge his foot from the ground, floating above the rubble. He clipped the thermos to his waist, and pushed energy into the palm of his hand. An ecto-blast hissed and illuminated the dark underbelly of the school in green. The ecto-blast felt like a caged animal in his hand, a nocked arrow quivering against its string in anticipation of being shot.
The Box Ghost scrambled into a floating position himself, and flung an arm in front of him.
"Fear the wrath of… A—Ama… The Amazon?" Following his gesture, a wave of glowing Amazon boxes flew towards Danny. He kept a firm hold on the wild energy, focusing it to a single point and letting it go as a laser rather than a single blast. The beam sliced through the boxes like butter. Danny went intangible as the remnants of the boxes and their contents scattered past and through him, carried on by the inertia.
Whoever took care of the school supply budget probably wouldn't be too happy about that. Whoops.
The Box Ghost grunted with effort and sent more levitating boxes hurling at Danny.
Danny lifted his hand, palm flat. Instead of forcing the energy outward like a projectile he guided it to take shape in the air. A shield spread out in front of him, a wide, flat disk of swirling caustic green. The boxes slammed up against it with no hope of weakening its integrity. Danny rolled his eyes.
He was getting detention for this?
Boxy moved again, trying to come in from the right side with more boxes.
Danny abandoned the shield, dropping to the ground and ducking. The side swipe of cardboard whipped above his head but left him untouched. He shot into the air, rocketing towards his most annoying enemy.
Boxy tried to reel back, get out of range, but Danny was too fast. He caught the side of the other ghost's face in a right hook. The power behind it sent the ghost sailing to the left and into a giant fuse box on the wall. It had already been dim in the basement, but the damage to the electrical box plunged them into total darkness. And with it probably the whole school.
Dammit.
The only light came from the cold glow of their bodies. Danny watched the Box Ghost peel himself off the wall. He glared at Danny with fire in his eyes and with a scream he flung himself back into the fight.
It was like fighting a human. Seriously; Dash hit harder. And Valerie harder than that. Then again, with her suit Danny didn't think it really counted, calling her power equal to a human's.
Danny dodged blow after blow, slipping past the ghosts wide swings and clumsy blasts. He was hardly breaking a sweat. He'd fought the Box Ghost since he was fourteen, at this point he could do it in his sleep.
Boxy let out a frustrated cry and tackled Danny, gloved hands gripping him by the shoulders with a vice like grip. The two of them tumbled backwards, flipping end over end in the air a few times. Anger flared in the pit of Danny's stomach.
"Get the hell off me!" Danny tensed his lower body, coiling up and then snapping like a taut rubber band. He kicked the Box Ghost with a force that would have shattered ribs if ghosts had any. He followed it up with a blast that caught Boxy in the shoulder and sent him spinning away.
"I will not be defeated again by you, Phantom. I'll have your respect and then all of Amity Park's." Boxy sent box after box hurdling at Danny.
It felt like some sort of mini-game, blasting the glowing boxes out of the dark air one after the other. They exploded in flashes of green, cardboard pieces littering the ground, smouldering with red embers.
"Why don't you pick fights with someone more on your level." Boxy was floating closer to the ground, unsteady, and Danny could tell he was spent. He floated down towards him, clenching his hand into a fist and extinguished the burning ecto-energy.
"I'm not in the mood for this anymore. You're pissing me off." The temperature of the air plunged, and his words fogged from his mouth. "Go back to the Ghost Zone, Box. Before I make you." His words were rigid with the threat. He loomed over the Box Ghost, the blue glow of ice building in his hand.
The other ghost held his gaze at first, before it faltered and flashed with fear. Boxy knew he was no match for him, he could see it in the Box Ghost's eyes. As delusional as he was, or pretended to be, he knew.
The Box Ghost turned and fled, holding his wounded shoulder as he shot through the ceiling.
The threat was gone. The space fell silent, but Danny remained rigid, his arms stiff at his sides. His breath clouded the air in front of him in short shallow puffs. The blackness of the room vibrated like white noise around him.
He still felt like a coiled spring, a trap ready to slam shut. He had to go back, he knew he did. Face the screeching music that was his fucked up life.
Was this really it for him? To get detention, to fail classes, to always be in danger? To be pushed around, called a loser by people who barely even fucking knew him? Risking his life for people who didn't give a shit? People that spit in his face the next day? Was he destined to be alone? To never be enough? To be something he couldn't change? Something his parents would never fucking love?
Emotion swelled in his throat, constricting his breathing. He was shaking but not from the cold. He couldn't hold it in anymore. He screamed and fired a blast of ice with everything he had at the nearest wall.
The impact rattled the room and felt like it shattered the air itself. There was the harsh sound of creaking metal at different points all across the room.
He dropped to the ground, his hands coming up to fist in his hair, chest heaving. He stared at nothing, listened to nothing. If time stopped he wouldn't have known it. All he knew was that his chest ached and his head was pounding.
He still had energy. So much sometimes he felt like there was an ocean inside him, sloshing and raging. When he first got his powers, he had gotten worn out in ghost form so easily.
But the numbers and his parents' ghost equipment didn't lie. The more he fought, the more he grew, the stronger he got.
He hated it. What if one day he woke up to find he'd destroyed everyone and everything he ever cared about? Even after everything he'd done, everything Clockwork had done, was Dan still his future?
The sound of the basement door creaking open made Danny freeze. Reality snapped back into place as the rays of a flashlight caught him in its beam. He must have looked like a deer in the headlights, wide eyes snapping up to the person coming down the stairs.
"P—Phantom? That you?" Danny knew that voice. It was Rob, Casper's custodian. He was probably here to check the breaker box. He was a sweet old guy who sang to his dead wife when he thought no one was in the halls. She followed him around, a meek and quiet spirit, hardly visible and with no obsession other than standing next to the love of her life.
Danny winced, glancing around at the sorry state of the place. This wasn't the first disaster he'd left for the poor guy to try and clean up and it wouldn't be the last. He never seemed to hold a grudge though. Especially after the time Danny stopped Bertrand from eating him alive.
Danny held a hand up to shield his eyes from the flashlight. "Yeah. Sorry," he croaked. He floated back up into the air a few feet.
"What— what the devil happened in here, sonny?" He moved the flashlight from the huge crater in the floor, to the cardboard strewn ground, and the huge pile of ice on the opposite wall. But it didn't stop there; Danny watched as Rob's flashlight illuminated pipes all over the room covered in a thick layer of frost, some of which looked like they'd burst at the seams, the water that gushed out having frozen. They looked like some sort of cave feature or icicles formed in freezing rain.
"Ghost," was all Danny could muster.
Rob frowned and wrapped his arms around himself, shivering. "An' why's everything frozen? Feels damn near twenty below in here."
Danny smiled weakly at that. It probably was.
He didn't answer, just drifted up through the ceiling, his tail following after him in a gentle streak.
The halls were dark, but not empty. He turned invisible as he emerged and glanced at a clock. It was around the time sixth period let out. He'd been down there longer than he thought.
He sighed, making a girl start and look around.
He bobbed towards the chem room, hoping to snag his stuff without Mrs. Merriweather seeing one Danny Fenton, who was probably in a heap of trouble. He poked his head into the classroom. It was mostly cleared out, a few stragglers still cleaning up their lab equipment. The class wasn't as dark as the halls were, the huge windows letting in daylight.
Mrs. Merriweather was sitting at her desk, organizing papers with a pinched look on her face. He stuck close to the wall as he slunk towards his seat, third table from the front. His stuff was still exactly the way he'd left it.
He reached for his book, turning it invisible as soon as his fingers brushed its surface. Danny tucked it into the corner of his arm, and went for his binder next. He lifted it, strangling back a swear as it sent his pencil rolling off the table. He lunged for it, but missed. It clattered and bounced against the hard floor. He cringed as everyone in the room stopped what they were doing to look.
Nice one. He'd been like this for how long now and he couldn't even manage to pick up three things unnoticed? Idiot.
Mrs. Merriweather stood up from her desk and walked over, brows furrowed behind her coke-bottle glasses. He made himself intangible, floating backwards and holding his breath. Merriweather stooped down to pick up the pencil, examining it, and then looking down at the now empty table. He pleaded silently that she would just shrug and think nothing of it like a shitty video game character AI.
The other students had already gone back to their own business, eager to get out of class. Merriweather lingered, a hand going out to touch the place his stuff had been piled.
Shit.
She looked up and around the room, her eyes sliding harmlessly over his invisible form, none the wiser. She glanced towards the door and then back to the pencil in her hand. She snorted, clenching the pencil in her fist and went back to her desk, her heels clicking on the floor.
He let out the breath he'd been holding, wiping away cold sweat from his forehead. That was way too close. He really needed to get his shit together.
Danny glided towards the white board, sinking through the wall into the next classroom. He kept going straight, headed for the nearest bathroom. At this point he knew exactly where every bathroom and supply closet was in the school from any direction and through any wall. He probably knew more about the inner workings of the place than the people who'd built it.
The restroom was pitch black, no outside windows or skylight to let light seep in. He floated near the ceiling, listening for any sign that someone else was still in there. There was only the distant clamour from outside.
Satisfied the coast was clear, he touched down softly in a stall, and let the warmth of his human side surge inside him. He closed his eyes against the blinding light of his transformation. Slowly the sensations of being human came back to him, the heaviness of gravity pulling on his limbs. The general ache of having a physical form.
He swayed on his feet, slumping against the stall wall for support as tiredness hit him like a train. It was all catching up to him: the exhaustion, the hunger, the sharp pain pushing at the back of his eyes. He should have eaten more at lunch
His ghost half didn't suffer much from lack of sleep or food. He had his core and the surplus of ectoplasm and didn't have to feel how heavy and shaky his body was. How fragile. How weak.
Danny stayed like that for a few seconds, mentally preparing himself to leave, for people to see him.
When he'd built up the nerve, he walked out. Like always, he went to his locker. Sam and Tuck were waiting there for him.
"Box Ghost?" Sam asked, amusement coloring her voice. But when she looked at him closer, her face fell. Worry was a familiar look on her. "Are you okay, Danny? What happened?"
"Yeah, you look like shit dude."
"Gee, thanks." Danny stood in front of his locker and dropped his forehead against its cool metal surface with a thunk. He hadn't been ready to come out after all. Weirdly, he wished he was back down in the basement, where it was cold and quiet and he wasn't under anyone's scrutiny.
"It was just the Box Ghost though, right? He's all the scanner picked up. Well, other than you, obviously," Tucker said.
Danny didn't answer right away. Instead he closed his eyes, focusing only on the place where his head pressed against his locker. He took a deep breath. Tried to get his mind to stop whirling. He just had to push through it like he always did.
A hand on his shoulder, rubbing up and down slowly, reassuringly. He turned his head and opened an eye to see Sam looking at him. Her eyes were troubled and a frown tugged at the corners of her bold purple lips.
"It's fine guys. Promise. Just Boxy. We played the game, I kicked his ass, he went home with his tail tucked between his legs." He shrugged and leaned away from his locker. He started spinning the padlock. Sam removed her hand.
"You shoulda seen Valerie, dude. Mr. Brown wouldn't let her leave class, she looked like she was gonna blow a fuse," Tucker said.
"Speaking of fuses, did the power outage have anything to do with the fight?" Sam asked.
Danny put the thermos on his shelf and forced a laugh. "Yeah, uh… Kinda punched Boxy into the breaker box. Like, really really hard. The thing is probably so fucked."
"Dude, nice! Hopefully they'll release us early because of—"
"There you are, Fenton."
It wasn't Dash, but Danny still stiffened. He turned to see Wesley Weston storming up to them. Even in the dim emergency lights, he'd know that stupid redhead anywhere.
"What the fuck, dude? Where the hell were you?"
Danny grimaced. Great, just what he needed. Another person on his case. "Uh, the bathroom?" Playing dumb was the easiest, most effective option. Sam and Tucker turned towards Wesley, a barrier of sorts between them.
"For like twenty minutes? Yeah, right, like I'd believe that." He glanced at Sam and Tuck, before his gaze landed back on Danny, eyes like flint. "I'm onto you," Wesley spat. For a second those words made his heart skip. "You ditched class just so you didn't have to do the stupid lab, didn't you?"
Oh thank God.
Danny said nothing, looking off to the side before looking back at Wesley. He was going for nervous, sheepish even, as if he'd been caught. It seemed to work. Wesley growled in frustration.
"Unbelievable. What's even the fucking point of skipping? Not like you can use the shit anyway, I'm the one that has to do everything." Wesley adjusted his grip on his books to rub his temples. "Listen, okay? I'm not thrilled to be stuck as your lab partner either. But unlike you, I'm not an asshole and I wouldn't just fuck off and leave you high and dry. So don't do it to me, got it? Great." Before any of them could say anything, Wesley Weston turned and walked off.
They all stared after him.
"Holy shit, what the hell's his problem?" Sam asked.
"No clue, but that dude's definitely got some major issues, man," Tucker said.
Danny shook his head. He didn't have the energy to deal with this. "Come on, let's get to class. I wanna go home."
They ended up getting released forty minutes early. The breaker box was beyond simple repair, which meant the whole building was without power until tomorrow at least. There was also the burst pipes. Danny told himself he shouldn't feel guilty, but he did anyway.
He got home and made his way up to his room, dropping his bag to the floor by his desk with a thud. He stood in the middle of the room, staring at his bag. His head was static. Without thinking, he pulled out his desk chair and rifled in his bag, pulling out whatever the fuck homework he grabbed first.
Ugh.
Algebra.
Whatever.
All he needed to do was put the pencil to the page. Just that. The first thing. Write his goddamn name. He knew that one, right? His eyes skipped down the page to the first question. The black text stood out boldly from the bleach white computer paper it was printed on. The numbers and letters swam in front of his eyes as he tried to make heads or tails of what the hell it wanted him to do. The longer he looked the harder it was to keep his mind on homework.
He wondered if the Box Ghost had listened and gone home. He hoped so, he had enough to worry about with the new ghost he'd failed to track down yesterday. With any luck she'd gone back too. It reminded him that he still had to empty that big cat ghost from the thermos back into the Ghost Zone. It wasn't anywhere near full capacity, but it was risky to carry around a ghost or keep one in his locker for extended periods. His eyes fell to the gleaming metal cylinder poking out from his bag. He would do it now, but his parents were down in the lab, probably working on their newest paper on the ghost threat level. He really didn't want to have to face the fifth degree for where, how and why he'd caught a ghost.
He stared back down at his homework. The same question stared back, taunting him. He scribbled down the equation, hoping it'd click if it was in his own handwriting. He gazed at the mix of rigid and heavy left-slanted variables of the expression in his writing. He still had no clue what to do next. That was fucking pointless.
He groaned in frustration, resting his elbows on his desk and holding his head in his hands.
Why did math have to be so fucking hard?
Ugh, fuck it. He'd just cheat off Sam's homework tomorrow.
Like always.
He leaned back in his chair, hanging his head back to look up at the glow-in-the-dark star stickers stuck to his ceiling. A smile worked it's way to his face as he looked at them. The memory of the first stars to decorate his ceiling came to mind.
He was six and his Dad helped put them up. His parents knew how much he loved space, and even if it wasn't ghosts, they wanted to nurture his love for science. His Dad had hoisted him up on his shoulders, giant hands around Danny's ankles to keep him steady as he slapped the stars up with reckless abandon. He remembered bouncing around on his bed in anticipation of turning the lights off to see them glow.
He fell asleep under the stars for the first time that night.
These weren't the same stars. The original ones lost their glow after the years, pale green outlines that stopped sticking and fell down one by one in the middle of the night.
For his fourteenth birthday, Jazz bought him another pack. He hadn't put them up right away, lost under a pile of gifts, and forgotten in the bustle of summer fun and then starting high school a few months later.
Then he had his accident. Everything was different then. If he didn't have time to put them up before, he definitely didn't after he took on the role of Protector of Amity Park.
It wasn't until Danny was laid up in bed after defeating Pariah Dark, and Jazz took it upon herself to tidy up his room that she found them stuffed into one of his desk drawers. She hid them from him and excused herself to do some studying.
A few days later she returned, excited as could be with a gift in her hands. She dropped it onto his lap, and dismissed him when he tried to object to deserving a gift. He tore the wrapping paper off an clearly recycled shoe box. Upon lifting the lid he saw the bright glowing green stars. The light wasn't that of cheap glow in the dark plastic. It was radiant and bright, it almost looked like… He looked up at her, confused and delighted.
Jazz jumped at the chance to explain. She told him how she'd recruited the help of Sam and Tucker and a bit of their parents' technology to fabricate new glow-in-the-dark stars. Special ones, made especially to activate in the presence of ecto-energy. She excitedly reported that because they were powered by the nearest source of ectoplasmic energy, aka him, they would always glow, never fade.
Jazz would totally lie when asked and claim that he had started to cry, but what did she know? He was just squinting because they were bright. Crying? Not him.
Danny had been going crazy with nothing to do. He grinned, and tried to push himself up, wincing from the pain and dizzy from the effort. Jazz had put a hand on his shoulder and told him to tell her where to put them, and she would do it.
A few minutes later Jazz was standing on his desk chair, holding a star between her fingers, moving a few inches left to where he pointed.
He had his constellation map unfolded on his lap. She was placing the final star of Leo. With the help of his sister and under his direction, his ceiling and walls became a map of the stars. They only had room for his favorites though, Virgo was by his closet, Orion above his bed, Ursa Major by his door and Aries next to Leo adjacent to his desk. Jazz snagged three from the box and said it was about time Sam, Tucker and her had a fool-proof way to tell if he was sneaking into their rooms. Bed-ridden as he was at the time, there was little he could do but let it go. It would be harder to prank his friends sure, but it made him feel better. His friends had a "ghost sense" of their own in the form of a little star stuck to the wall in their rooms.
The memory felt warm in his chest as he stared up at the faintly glowing stars. He spun his chair in circles, stopping only when he felt dizzy. The stars glowed far brighter when he was Phantom or he used his powers, but all it took was a little practice and he learned how to brighten and dim them however much he wanted.
The buzzing of his phone inside his pocket pulled him from his thoughts. At first, he thought it was just a message in the groupchat—Tucker sharing a meme or something. But it kept going; a call, then. Danny reached into his pocket and pulled it out. The screen was lit up with an in-coming call from "Know-it-All". Danny smiled. Think of the Devil and she shall appear. He accepted the call, putting it up to his ear.
"Sup, Harvard."
"Danny!" Her voice was warm and full of life. She sounded happy. "I wanted to call and see how my baby brother was doing."
Danny snorted. "Oh you know, same ol', same ol'." He got up and closed his bedroom door. The line was quiet for a second.
"You sound tired, Danny. Have you been sleeping? Before I left, we had a talk specifically about the detriments to health caused by a lack of sleep."
Danny plopped back into his desk chair and gave it a spin. "Jeez, Jazz. Chill out, I know."
"Knowing and doing are two different things, Danny."
He couldn't fault her for caring. It was nice. In an annoying sister way. Still, discomfort prickled over his skin whenever people worried about him. He was fine.
"What about you? All settled into the big college life?"
Her voice went up an octave, her words tumbling out in a rush. "Oh, God, Danny. It's everything I hoped for and more! The library is huge and there's so much information and so many clubs! Believe it or not, there's actually a ghost and paranormal science club."
"Did you join it?"
"You kidding? You're talking to the new vice president, mister."
Danny chuckled. "Coulda guessed. How's your roommate? She hasn't tried to kill you yet, has she?" Danny pushed on the floor to continue the chair's turning.
"Why, pray tell, dear brother, would she want to kill me?"
"I don't know, prolly 'cause you're like the most annoying person ever." Over the past two years Jazz and him had really "grown and moved past the hurt feelings". That's how she phrased it, anyway.
"Meeean! Come on, I'm not that bad."
"Okay, agree to disagree. Have you psychoanalyzed her yet?"
"Danny!" She chided. "I can't believe you!" She was silent for a second. "Of course I have. Abandonment issues and most likely an anxiety disorder."
Danny's laugh came easy this time. Same old Jazz. He hoped she never changed.
"Damn, sounds serious, have you recommended that she get help yet?"
Jazz giggled. "I do have some tact, you know. I'm going to wait until we've known each other at least a month for that."
"Totally, don't wanna scare her off too soon."
"Exactly!"
The line dipped down into a staticky silence. Jazz cleared her throat.
"What about you? Any new friends added to your trio to take my place?"
"Psh, now you really do sound crazy."
"Danny I mean it! Having a support network is really important, and don't get me wrong Sam and Tucker are great, but they can only do so much."
"Like anyone in that place would ever be seen with me in broad daylight unless they have to."
Jazz sighed. It was her "disappointed"/"you have to grow up someday" sigh.
Danny pushed a hand through his hair. "Listen, if it makes you feel any better I have made a new mortal enemy. So I'm feeling pretty good about that, a lot of potential there."
"Danny, why on earth would that make me feel better?"
"I dunno, because I'm gaining life experience? Well, half-life experience. Heh."
"I just don't know what to do with you." Danny could hear the smile in her voice. "So, how'd you make this new enemy?"
Danny groaned. He dropped his leg and caught the ground with his foot, the residual momentum of the chair tugging at him in protest. He stood and took the two steps to his bed. Danny let himself fall onto the mattress. His sheets smelled like fabric softener, and a mix of warm smells that he could only describe as "sleep".
"We're lab partners in chemistry. He's some jock B-lister guy and he hates me."
"Why do you say that?"
"Oh, I don't know, could be the fact that he marched up and called me an asshole right to my face today, or that from day one he saw how everyone else treated me and decided to jump on the bandwagon."
Jazz made a small sympathetic sound. "Oh, Danny, I'm sorry."
Danny pressed his face into his pillow, squeezing his eyes shut. The last thing he wanted was pity. Especially from Jazz. He was fine. Really, this was no different to any other year.
"It's fine," he mumbled, lifting his head from his pillow. "It's not like I suddenly care what people think. Guy's just a dick."
Before Jazz answered, the sound of someone talking to her filtered through. Danny couldn't quite make out what was being said.
"No, it's fine. I'll walk with you," Jazz said, her voice muffled. Her voice returned: "My roommate just got back, I've gotta go, but we're not done talking about this, alright?"
They absolutely were.
"Yeah, Jazz. Have fun going wherever you're going."
"We're walking down to get dinner. Which, speaking of! Make sure to eat dinner, okay? I love you."
"Ew."
"Danny."
"Uuuughhh. Okay, fine, I… I love you too."
She laughed, the line beeped, and then she was gone. It left an empty space in the room, in the house. Danny was no stranger to cold, it was part of him. But the past month had been a different kind of numbing ice. The sight of her door left sitting ajar at the end of the hall, knowing there was nothing but a dark lifeless room concealed within. It was an echo, a ghost in it's own right. An unyielding wall and even he had no way through. He thought he'd be glad to get her out of his hair. He didn't expect the jagged and torn space she'd left behind.
Danny wasn't used to missing anyone but himself.
He pushed out a breath, and rubbed the heels of his palms into his eyelids. He didn't want to think about it.
Danny left his phone on his bed, and went down to see what Mom was making for dinner.
Danny stared up at the ceiling. The ecto-stars, as Sam called them, shed a constant soft green from their places in a sea of black above him. Ghosts loved three AM, for whatever reason it was always the time they liked to attack. Then again, there wasn't really a sense of time in the Ghost Zone, so it made sense that attacks happened at any time.
But tonight was quiet. There had been no chill up his spine, no ghost sense to pull him from the emptiness of sleep. So he was just staring, trying his best to not think about what happened at school. If Sam and Tucker would have been around maybe he wouldn't have lost it like that... Or maybe he would have and he'd have had to deal with the worry saturating their expressions, the fear on the edges of their words. Fear that they couldn't help him, couldn't save him. They would have made him come home, called Jazz and told her about what happened.
His sister doubling as his therapist was a conflict of interest, but he didn't dare tell her he felt that way. She was just trying to help, to be useful. They all were.
Tossing and turning, fighting his covers, flipping his pillow around to the cool side—nothing helped. He checked the time. 3:29.
Great.
Frustration ate away at him as the minutes pressed on, unforgiving and slow. It was torture, listening to his own sluggish heart beat. He was sweating, the back of his pajama shirt stuck to his damp skin. His room didn't feel as cold as it normally did.
He laid there until he felt like punching something. That's when he flung his covers aside with a growl. He forced himself up and trudged over to his door, leaving his room. He closed his door behind him, figuring he'd just phase back in whenever he'd decided to give sleeping another shot.
He meandered to the bathroom, rubbing a hand over his face. The door creaked gently as he pushed it open. He didn't flip on the light. The ambient brightness from the night light down the hall was more than enough. Another perk to being half-ghost: extraordinary night vision.
The water hissed as he turned it on and he cupped his hands underneath the cold stream. He splashed the water into his face, the sensation jarring him from his frustration and demanding his full attention. The water overflowed from his hands and ran in trails down the backs of his hands, following the downward slope of his forearms and dripping off his elbows.
He looked up at his reflection in the mirror. Rivulets of water dripped off his eyebrows and ran down over his flushed cheeks like tears. His hair stuck out at odd angles—a mess from not bothering to dry it before he went to bed. He raked his fingers through it, trying to get it to sit normally and not hang in his eyes. His bangs stuck to his forehead and against his temples, whether it was slick with water or sweat at this point he didn't know.
He leaned forward against the sink, examining the dark bags underneath his eyes. He looked about how he felt.
Shitty. Real shitty.
He yanked a fluffy hand towel down from the hook and pressed it to his face, dabbing off the water. He dried his hands next, then started to wipe his forearms. He dragged the towel over the skin of his right arm and moved to do the same to his left before he froze mid-way. His eyes were fixed to the usually covered skin of his forearm.
He could see them, he realized belatedly.
The wandering forked scars that snaked up his arm.
He set the towel down slowly and reached over to run his fingertips over them, entranced. The raised, ugly skin detailed the exact path the electricity had taken as it tore through his body. A single second in time tattooed permanently on his skin. The scars were lighter— a bit less visible in his human form as opposed to when he was Phantom. But still there nonetheless.
His breath stuck in his throat. The air was sticky. His stomach clenched and a wave of dizziness crashed through him. The room spun at the edges of his peripheral vision and he felt like he was being shoved through the Fenton Ghost Catcher. Like he was overshadowing himself, and as he pulled away he was forgetting what it was to occupy a body.
A pervasive numbness took up the space he'd previously been a part of. There was a soft pillowy comfort in the disconnect. He blinked down owlishly at his arm, like it wasn't his and he didn't recognize it. His hand moved and he traced the scar, up and down, faintly aware of the memories banging at the back of his consciousness like someone trapped under ice. It was muffled and distorted, the sound of someone screaming and a dryness in his throat.
Seeing them— the scars— It… It…
A deafening crack filled his head and his vision with white. The pain seared through him, consuming every nerve in its path. His heart seized in his chest, held hostage to the electricity overriding the signals of his brain. It was tearing him apart—It was hurting him—killing him, killing him, killing him.
Danny stumbled back, his back slamming into the wall and snapping him back into the present moment. His chest was heaving, his throat tight. His hands trembled and his eyes darted down. He half expected to see the cold steel of the lab's floor underneath his feet and feel Sam's hands slip through his vaporous form.
His heart beat so hard it hurt. With every pound it felt like needles were being pushed through his skin from the inside out. It ached, raw and unable to ignore. Zings of faint electricity zipped up his arm and across his chest.
Danny's knees shook and he slid down the wall. He choked back something that felt like a sob and he kicked the bathroom door closed before pulling his knees up to his chest.
Fuck, fuck, fuck!
Why the fuck did he do that? He knew better than to look, to linger on anything that—
Fuck.
He felt hot, like he was burning up on the inside. Shaking, he tried to reach for his core, to offer a path for the energy to flow. He wanted it to be cold, it had to be cold. The cold felt nice, the cold was safe. Cold didn't burn or thrash, it was slow and steady and everything the electricity wasn't.
He tried to coax the cold forward, convince the space around him to change with nothing more than his own will. It hurt, it felt like dragging himself through broken glass trying to get the phantom pains to fade into cool relief.
He huddled against the wall, twisting his fingers into the fabric of his sweatpants. His eyes stung and the breath in his throat stuttered painfully on every inhale.
The worst part of it was he had no one to blame but himself.
People at school assumed his switch to hoodies and long sleeve shirts was because Sam had finally gotten to him and turned him goth. The truth was: he hid his scars the way any other kid did.
He waited until the pain felt dull and distant and the air felt sharp. He tipped his head back, tired eyes roaming across the bathroom before landing on the frosted over mirror.
Two breakdowns in one day, huh? Not his personal record by any means, but it had been several months since he'd had one... So. That had to count for something, right?
Slowly, carefully, he started to reign back the cold in the room. When he stopped shaking, he pulled himself to his feet, a hand against the wall for support in case his knees buckled. He didn't wanna be in the bathroom anymore, it felt too small and confined. Danny had figured out one too many times in the Fenton thermos had a tendency to cause claustrophobia.
He opened the door and shuffled out into the hall, the cuffs of his sweatpants whispering across the carpet. His thoughts carried him past his room. Maybe a snack would help, or going for a quick flight around town.
He was debating it, when another idea murmured from the back of his mind. He started down the stairs, floating over a few of the steps that he knew creaked. The house was silent, his parents asleep. He walked through the dark living room, then the kitchen, bare feet padding over the cold tile.
He found himself at the top of the stairs, staring down into the dark basement. It was funny, basements were supposed to be scary. It was like his parents heard that and had to one up everyone else. "Oh, you have a basement where the light flickers and rusty nails poke up from the floorboards? Creepy! We have a portal to the literal dimension of the dead and ghosts crawl out about every twelve hours!" Hollywood would have a field day with their family if they heard about Amity Park.
Danny walked down the stairs, the metal cool and familiar. The lab was dark, the control terminal against the wall the only light.
The portal was closed.
He stood in the center of the lab, looking at the imposing octagonal outline in the dark. Even after so long, it still inspired wonder in some deep part of him. It made him feel like a kid.
He walked up to the control terminal, pressing his thumb into the biometric security pad. With a whirr the security system accepted his input and with a heavy mechanical sound the portal doors slid open.
Green light flooded into the lab, bathing every surface in its shifting toxicity. Danny took a few steps back, taking in the portal and its marbled surface. He looked at it like he was indulging, doing something he shouldn't.
The spike of ecto-energy in the room was almost palpable. He could feel it buzzing against his skin, floating in the air like static electricity.
Carefully, Danny lowered himself to the floor and sat down. He sat and basked in the light of the portal, the hum, the lurching and swirling.
Visiting a gravesite was a sacred thing, it was someone's place of eternal rest.
But ghosts proved that not everyone was at rest. Danny certainly wasn't, but that was pretty evident, he was still technically living after all.
Whenever he felt… disconnected like earlier, he liked to come down and visit the portal. It helped remind him exactly who he was. What he was.
It was like a tether, a point of reference. It was grounding for Danny; as much a reminder he was alive as he was dead.
The portal killed him... but it also brought him back.
The Phantom part of him saved his life. He wondered if that's why his obsession was what it was; saving others because he wouldn't wish the experience of death on anyone. It was both his obsession and his responsibility. He was the reason the portal worked, and he'd be damned if anyone else paid with their life for his mistake.
Sam still blamed herself. How could she not? He could see it in her eyes when she looked at him, the guilt squirming in their depths.
But he didn't blame her, and he figured as long as it stayed that way, eventually Sam would forgive herself.
If anything, he blamed himself for being curious, for being the son of the Fentons, for every time someone got hurt on his watch.
Danny watched the mirage of the portal, finding shapes in the swirls like a child looking at clouds.
He did it until his eyelids grew heavy, and he felt the tension in his shoulders slowly bleeding away.
Too lazy to walk, he floated up through the ceiling and into his bedroom. The stars brightened at his proximity, before dimming again when he stopped using his powers. He crawled back into bed and shut his eyes. Sleep came to him gently, pulling him down, and down and down...