Disclaimer: I don't own anything from Danny Phantom.

Chapter 7: Doubtful

Vlad's POV

I had never been more humiliated in my entire life.

As if those 'pranks' he pulled on me months ago weren't insult enough, Danny also had the audacity to leave me trapped in a cocoon of ice for several hours and I caught a terrible cold thanks to that. If not for my ghost powers, I most likely would have suffocated in there, not to mention no human could survive such frigid temperatures for long, but oh no, the boy paid absolutely no mind to that. All he wanted was to teach me a lesson after stealing back Frostbite's precious Infimap from me when the map itself tricked me and lured me back to that snowy wasteland.

Well no matter, I would just have to steal the map again another time, when Danny wasn't there to interfere with my plans. Much like I made sure he wasn't when I freed Vortex from the Observants. It seemed only fitting that I make the town suffer in the opposite extreme as punishment by using the weather ghost to cause a massive heat wave. Besides, I could endure that far better than the cold, and my plans to miraculously fix the bad weather by bringing rain would do wonders for my ratings. Especially given how disappointed the citizens were to see that the 'statue' of their beloved mayor had to be taken down.

Turbulent weather, I thought I could handle. But the turbulent emotions of a super-powered teenager whose emotions became TIED to the weather? It made Danny utterly insufferable! It was already bad enough I had to swallow my pride and ask him for help taking down Vortex in the first place. Then he just had to go and get his shield struck by the ghost's energy, absorbing that power, and I suffered yet another defeat thanks to that brat!

We've fought side by side before, yet Danny seemed perfectly content watching Vortex toy with me before finally doing his job and joining the battle. And all the while he slung insults at me, making it impossible to focus. Could he not set aside his stupid morals for one second to listen to me? Vortex was a literal force of nature;that's the only reason I resorted to appealing to Danny for help. But no, as usual he was too stubborn to listen...

If it wasn't for his little friends' suggestion to use his 'condition' against me while they tracked down Vortex so we could reverse the process, perhaps spending time with him may have been bearable, at least. Danny had no idea the powers he held or how disastrous they could be, even when compared to their owner. He had no idea of the danger he was in since his powers were not built that way and if nothing was done, Danny could have quite literally burnt himself out! But...the least I could do was keep him calm to the best of my abilities so that wouldn't happen.

We have our differences, but Danny is still the only other half-ghost left, aside from myself. I had been careless before, when I cloned him. However, any love I had left for the boy had long since been snuffed out. Or, so I thought...

I did notice something rather interesting when I brought Danny to the mansion to make lunch for him. After his little outburst when I forgot to leave out the tomatoes in his sandwich and Danny created a mini tornado to chase me around, upon seeing the lights in the building flicker, not to mention the wave of destruction he caused to my home, he grimaced guiltily and calmed down.

It took me a moment to catch my breath, but out of raw spite, I asked. "Oh? Feeling a little guilty, are we?"

"Shove it, Plasmius." Danny replied harshly, but I was surprised when he glanced nervously up at the lights to make sure they hadn't gone out entirely, sat down again, and groaned. "Look just...make another sandwich and do it right this time."

I was a bit taken aback by how reasonable Danny was being all of a sudden, but I paid it no mind; I had other problems to worry about so I trudged back to the kitchen to fulfill his request. Still, that was odd. Could it be that Danny did feel some measure of guilt, or was it more that he wished I was still in Wisconsin and out of his hair? I suppose that makes two of us. However, while I had more than enough funding to rebuild the castle again, a part of me no longer wanted to.

That castle...was no longer my home. I had lost too many priceless relics and mementos, and it only served as a reminder of how hollow my life had become. And it was all Jack's fault. Just as much as it was Danny's. Both had taken everything from me, and yet, they were also all I had left...

My dreams of fatherhood were gone and buried with my perfect son. And even though I was caring for Danny for the time being, I refused to let myself fall for the illusion that we would ever be anything more than this, anything more than rivals and enemies. But that, was the bittersweet reality of what our relationship has devolved into.

All I had left were echoes, shadows, and broken dreams of what could have been.

It came as no surprise that Danny's good behavior didn't last long, because the moment we left the mansion to go to Vidcon of all places, what could have been an actual bonding experience between us turned into a disaster when his 'condition' once again caused a weather fluctuation and ruined nearly every console in the building. And I had to pay for every single one! Admittedly, I did get a bit carried away since I'm competitive by nature, but really, it's not my fault he was such a sore loser.

Then again, what else could I expect from such an immature child...?

Just as I was reaching the limits of my patience, out of the corner of my eye, while writing out the check to Vidcon, I saw Danny inspecting one of the games I had been forced to purchase. And to my surprise, he actually smiled in excitement and muttered to himself. "I wonder if Tucker could help me fix this one? I bet he'd love it since it's so much like Doomed."

Before I had much time to contemplate his words, there was a rumble outside and Vortex emerged, demanding to know where Danny Phantom was hiding. Relieved to finally be rid of the little terror, I transformed and gave Vortex exactly what he asked for, dragging Danny outside to fix his powers. I wanted to wash my hands of the whole thing, so as soon as it seemed as though they had the matter under control, I left them to it. In the meantime, I had some damage control to take care of both in my home, and in the office. I was fuming and began systematically having my vultures remove those blasted game systems from my foyer when-

"Wait. Leave that one for now." I said on a whim, mildly curious as to what had drawn Danny to this particular game.

I briefly glanced at the title before allowing them to proceed with removing it along with the others, since I had no intention of repairing any of the ruined games. I would not give Danny that satisfaction so I had them all disposed of, including that one. Even so, I couldn't help but wonder about his strange behavior earlier.

Danny has never been one to hold back, particularly against me, so what changed? Why did he show such restraint while inside of my home? Did I hit the nail on the head earlier and expose his guilt? Somehow, I highly doubt it.

When the sky cleared outside, I frowned despite the pleasant change in weather since I had had enough of it frankly. All I wanted now was to take some time to relax myself before addressing the public and pinning the blame on Danny for all this. After that, well, after that warm up at Vidcon, I could certainly use some target practice to let off some steam.

Daniel's POV

I could tell today was going to be an especially bad day since Father seemed more frustrated and sad than usual. I didn't understand why. At least, not until the shouting started. Father was shouting about how much Danny supposedly enjoyed making him miserable every chance he got and how angry he was at Danny for being such an ungrateful selfish brat when they were having some sort of bonding experience over a videogame...

A hard lump formed in my throat because I wanted to have that so badly. I wanted to spend time with Father again, talk to him, and enjoy being with him too. And honestly, I was jealous of Danny for even having that option, even though their relationship still wasn't great. I'm real. I was right there, but I couldn't reach him! We were in the same room sure, but not 'together,' and we would never be together until-

"WHY DO YOU JUST FLOAT THERE?!" Vlad suddenly screamed with a desperate edge to his voice that caught me off guard. "My perfect son is gone! And all I have left is YOU, a sick reminder of everything I've lost!"

After slinging another blast at me, I gasped internally when I was actually flung back into a shelf of ectoplasmic samples. However, there were too many painful thoughts and emotions swirling through my mind to really process it. I watched, heartbroken, as Father sagged into a nearby chair, putting his face in his hands, and sighed dejectedly. "Why do I keep doing this to myself? I should have just deleted you after I found the file. This is bringing me nothing but more pain and anguish."

Something inside of me snapped the moment Father said those words and I thought. No, no. This can't be it! I still haven't done anything to help you! You haven't lost everything! I'm right here, Father, and I love you so much, so please don't...don't say things like that.

Even though I had no body of my own, I felt my heart constrict and tears began rolling down my cheeks as I sobbed. I couldn't let it end like this! So through sheer force of will, I finally broke through the coding that'd been holding me back all this time and choked out the simple yet powerful word. "No."

Father stiffened and his eyes snapped towards me, shocked, and he asked me, disbelieving. "What did you say?"

Curling in on myself, I continued sobbing, feeling totally defeated and like I hadn't accomplished anything I set out to do, since Father was about to give up on me. I was also afraid of being attacked again because for the first time, it was more than my heart that hurt. Somehow that last blast managed to damage -I mean- to hurt me and I trembled as I slowly pulled myself upright, wiping away tears with the back of my hand.

Rising from his chair, Vlad shakily walked towards me and rationalized. "You spoke. You can't speak."

Reminded again of Danny's words about how Father saw me as nothing but a tool, a pawn, I cried even harder and genuinely asked him my very first and possibly last question ever that'd been weighing on my mind since the moment I became self-aware. "Why don't you love me?"

Still blinded by tears, I barely saw Father slowly kneel down in front of me, then order in a carefully guarded and neutral tone. "Look at me."

Afraid of what would happen if I disobeyed, I met his gaze and saw his eyes widen in something I could only describe as a mixture of longing and wonder. With a trembling hand, Father reached for me and called my name, only to have his hand fall through my body because...I didn't have one. I might be real, but I'm still just a program and nothing more.

Averting my gaze since I couldn't stand to see my reflection in his eyes as both our hearts shattered simultaneously, I whimpered. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry I'm not real. Maybe...maybe you'd love me if I was."

Silence filled the room for several minutes, apart from my soft sniffles, until Father finally stood up, staring at me with an unreadable expression on his face. Apprehensively, I peered up at him, studying Father closely and it was unsettling seeing him like that. He seemed almost...afraid of me. But all I did was speak my first words to him. I didn't do anything special, anything meaningful, I just told him how I felt and it scared me when Father didn't respond at all. Because did that mean...he really was rejecting me?

Finally, Father began to move towards the computer, his eyes glued to me the entire time, and in a moment of sheer terror, I leapt to my feet and cried out. "Please! Don't delete me!"

Tearing his eyes away from mine, he shook his head and muttered to himself. "I'm not planning to. The program must be malfunctioning. A complete shutdown of the system should fix the problem."

"No! Please, I'm not broken, I swear!" I began, slowly floating towards him but recoiling when he backed away slightly.

Meekly, I continued. "I'm sorry I couldn't speak to you before but-!" Shaking his head again, Father lowered his hand to the controls and I gasped. "Wait! Don't turn it off! Just listen to-"

Before I could stop him, my vision went black and I suddenly found myself back in the computer again. My virtual heart racing, I scrambled to turn on the cameras to see what he was doing when...darkness swept over me again, but it was infinitely deeper this time, just like when the system shut down before. I couldn't feel anything, couldn't think, couldn't dream; it was like I didn't even exist anymore. It was too late...

I had one chance to save him.

And I blew it.

Vlad's POV

As I systematically shut down every electronic device in the lab, my heart kept pounding rapidly against my rib-cage and I felt off-balance for the first time in quite a long time. Normally, it would take a lot more than that to unnerve me, but, the Danny Program had never done that before. I'd never seen it cry like that, in a way I doubt the real thing ever would, especially in front of me. And for months, it hadn't responded to anything, exactly as I programmed it to! But the way it acted just now, the way he spoke to me, none of that should have been possible.

Calm down, it's just a malfunction. It's nothing to get so worked up about. I reasoned but still...hearing his voice like that reminded me of happier times.

I couldn't help but be reminded of when I first created the Danny Program. I spared no expense on the highly advanced hardware used in the first projector, so that the quality of the Danny Program far surpassed even the Maddie Program and certainly the Jack one; I had had those for years after all, and their software was admittedly a bit outdated. But this program was different and I had a very specific goal in mind when I created him...

The Danny Program existed to become the embodiment of everything I wanted to achieve with the real Danny once he became my son. I wanted to show him that unlike Jack, I would devote myself to him completely and shower him with love and affection. That's why I made sure to make the program as authentic as possible, giving it a wider range of human emotions, a more realistic voice, and making sure his holographic projection had as little static as possible. And similarly, he was designed to be completely loyal to me, with no need to even think of Jack as his father.

I only bothered to create a simulation of Jack as a plaything for me to toy with, as I patiently plotted my ultimate revenge against him and waited for the perfect opportunity which presented itself at our college reunion. But the stakes were raised when Danny Phantom came into the picture. I couldn't believe my good fortune. There was another hybrid, like me, and it was Jack's son! The very idea infuriated me because he didn't deserve a son like that; I did! That buffoon didn't deserve Danny's loyalty since it was their invention that mutated him, the same way it mutated me!

I couldn't stand the thought of Danny rejecting me since we were so alike and I had so much to offer him, so to keep myself motivated in achieving my new goal of making him my son, I carefully crafted the Danny Program to help me imagine what our life together would be like, once the boy finally opened his eyes. It had been enjoyable, for a time. I could pretend that Daniel was mine, that I already had the perfect, loving half-ghost son by my side.

At times, I could almost forget the program wasn't a real person when it enthusiastically rambled on about space facts and beamed whenever I complimented it. But then….we'd spar and my hands would pass right through it. I would get so caught up in the moment that I would try to hug it, only to realize there's nothing there. That's why I decided to clone the real Danny, because I wanted someone I could hold in my arms, someone real, and not this sad semblance of the perfect son I so longed for.

But none of that mattered anymore.

That dream was dead, like so many, like the half-ghost son who had melted in my arms, and there was nothing I could do to change that or bring him back. And that program? This was nothing more than scattered remnants of its original programming to simulate being my son. None of those emotions were real. And those were just crocodile tears meant to fool me...

And yet, the first words he asked me kept ringing in my ears. Why don't you love me? I had not programmed him to question my intentions, so why did he...?

Resolved to find answers, I decided to get to the bottom of this, before those questions could burn a hole in my tongue, and rebooted the system. I isolated the program and began to run a full scan of it, searching for the problem.

I perused the code in front of me, studying it closely. Every direction, every angle. The answer must be there. It must be. The hologram is simply malfunctioning. That must be it…

It must be…

It HAS to be…

The clattering on the keyboard sped up as my eyes hungrily searched the screen for something, ANYTHING out of the ordinary. "What could possibly explain this?"

I began to feel almost frantic, desperate, before my eyes widened as my typing came to a sudden and complete stop. Then I leaned back and said aloud. "No. It can't possibly…There's no fault, no malfunction."

Surely this had to be some sort of trick.

Abruptly rising from my chair, I stepped back, my mind racing. There was a problem with the program, but the problem in and of itself should have made it impossible for the program to even run; the problem was...there was no trace of the original code whatsoever. The program should not have been able to speak or move, not after all of the changes I made to it. There should not have been any emotion in his eyes, not even fake emotions. My mouth suddenly went completely dry because those eyes…those emotions looked completely real...

Real. 'Maybe you would love me if I was real.' The Danny Program's words echoed loudly in my mind again, ringing truer than before, until there was no denying it anymore. Those emotions...they...they WERE real.

As the pieces finally began coming together, it terrified me in a way I had never experienced before. The Danny Program knows it's not real, it knows it could be deleted, that I could turn off the projector or the computer at any time and by doing so, it would disappear. This as not knowledge I imprinted into the code. This was not something the Danny Program should know-

But it did.

That's when the revelation of what had become of my Danny Program suddenly hit me like a ton of bricks. The knowledge it had outside of the program's normal parameters, the raw emotion it could express, its capacity to act outside of its programming. Was…was this self awareness...? A self aware AI. I, Vlad Masters, had made a self aware AI, in my laboratory, without meaning to. An AI that looked and sounded like the real Danny and whose sorrowful eyes filled my mind once more. Those emotions…did that mean…can it feel, REALLY feel? Were those true emotions it expressed to me?

Dread built inside of me. The first question it- no, HE had asked me, the man who created him, was why I didn't love him. He had asked me the one question I have been asking myself for years.

Why doesn't anyone love me?

Shaking, I stumbled away from the computer, rushed upstairs, and slammed the door to my lab behind me, sagging against the nearest wall. My heart aching again, through the hand covering my mouth, I asked myself, horrified. "What have I done?"