When In Doubt

Summary: Danny laments over life with a razor blade in his hand. DxS One Shot. Songfic for When in Doubt by Thousand Foot Krutch.

Rating: PG-13

Disclaimer: I do not own Danny Phantom. Butch Hartman does. I do not own 'When in Doubt'. Thousand Foot Krutch does.

Author's Note: Could you guys really read the lyrics?

Dedication: This one's going out by request to The Good Girl, who asked for a sad DxS that wasn't too dramatic. If it's too dramatic let me know. Yay, this one's angst, right up my alley. In my mind the best thing I've written yet.

The fourteen-year-old sat on his bed twirling the little trapezoidal razor blade back and forth. He couldn't believe he'd been this stupid. Did normal people have this much trouble falling in love or was it just him? It probably was. God he had to be abnormal in every sense of the word. Today he had did something he had been dying to do for a long time.

He had a heart to heart with Sam. It had been a long time coming and he had totally messed it up. He had spilled out his heart and she had got scared and in a total moment of blind confusion had ran away. He couldn't blame her if he had been in her shoes he would have done the same thing. The key to being a couple is being friends first. But once you become friends it gets even harder to tell them what you're felling. After all, best friends don't fall in love.

And she'd never figured it out? He found that hard to believe. He wasn't that good at hiding things and Sam was never that dense. Tuck, maybe. Him, definitely. Sam, never. He sighed and stared at the ceiling watching the shadows shift as the sun sank further into the west. It was unbelievable. The things he was sure she knew, she had no clue about.

Danny watched twirling the razor bale from his index down to his ring finger. The three fingers covered with little nicks and blood leaked silently from them. That was alright it didn't hurt, at least the fact that he was bleeding meant he was alive. But at the moment he wasn't sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing. All he knew was he needed a way out.

We sat upon your bed,
You said the things you said
And I could not believe that you seem so naive
We exchanged our poetry,
You seem to think a lot like me
I'll guess I'll just assume that we could talk about most anything

And he had found it. Here was his way out. He stared at the tiny, cold, unforgiving piece of metal. It didn't' bother him. Danny was getting used to being unforgiven. It was becoming a daily occurrence in his life. There were consequences that had to be lived with. And he wasn't sure that these were ones he could live with. He had just killed the best friendship a person could have. It was solely and completely his fault.

Danny drew it across his wrist in a strange diagonal. He sat there, detached, as he watch the thin white line turn a deep red and widen. He drew it across in a perpendicular line watching it make sort of a grotesque bloody cross. The line became thicker and longer as the blood bubbles lost the fight against gravity and the sticky substance trickled slowly towards his elbow.

Part of him whispered at him, that this wasn't death. This was just a wake up call. He knew it wasn't that deep but it was there. And somehow he knew it would always be there. This was a scar that he was going to have to bear for a long time. Stuff like this didn't go away, and there are some wounds that time can never heal.

Then I asked have you ever felt abandoned?
Felt so lost that you were stranded,
Just like all the walls are closing in
And you were left inside
Have you ever felt like your days were numbered?
Stuck under a tree in thunder
Seems to be no way out!
But there is one when in doubt

Danny woke up he still felt shaky, the loss of blood screaming to him. He rolled over onto his side. And tried to take deep breathes. His eyes burned from a sort of exhaustion that refused to go away. He looked down at the scabs on his arm, the dried blood all over him. It seemed so appropriate somehow. He was tainted forever.

It fit though. In a strange twisted way it made sense. He was stupid enough to not think about this happening. Whenever he had imagined telling Sam what he felt she had just sort of cried and fell into his arms and they'd lived happily ever after. He really needed to get over himself.

I mean what did he have to offer her anyway. He was a freak. He wasn't smart, or cute, or funny. He just was there. And somehow he had thought that would be enough. How could he be this pathetic? It was only a matter of time before he gave in. He knew that. He was living on borrowed time.

Ready for another day
Slowly watch ya waste away,
Havin' fun, bein' cool
Like we did in high school,
Elementary romance feelin' nervous at the dance,
Crack a smile, hold it down,
Whatever the circumstance,
Sex, Drugs, Hadda be cool,
All the things we learned in school,
Typical teenage machines,
Anyone tell me what this means?
I could learn, I could try,
Never really had an alibi
Wish I did, that's no lie
Everybody's asking

Danny kicked closed his bedroom door. Life was tiring sometimes. At school today, Sam had on a perfect little mask. All smiling and happy, like nothing had happened. But it had. Even if he was the only person that realized it. If she wanted to lie to herself, that was fine. He wasn't going to stop her. But he refused to lie to himself.

He had given Sam his heart and she had thrown it on the ground and walked away. She had never ever hurt him before. All he kept thinking was 'Why.' Why did He mean nothing to her when she meant the world to him? Why did it half to turn out this way? Why did he even care anymore? Why bother? Why Try? Why Care? Why not?

Why?
When you feel like you can't fly
You gotta know I got the answer for ya baby,
Drives ya crazy, it's not over
There's so much more to life then this
Why?
When you feel like you can't cry
You gotta know I got the answer for ya baby,
Drives ya crazy it's not over
There's so much more to life then this

Dear Sam,

I'm sorry I never meant anything to you. I guess that was entirely my fault for convincing myself I did. I remember ever since we were little, we always swore we could tell each other anything. I guess that was a lie too. I live in a world of lies. It's my safety net. Except now it's gone.

You shattered it. But it's still not your fault it's mine. I wish you could no how hard this is for me. It really shouldn't be. I mean after this I'll be gone so what does it matter what you think of me. I've cried over this. Yeah, I guess that I am a loser after all. But you know what, Sam? I'm at the point where I can't cry any more.

I've lived in my head so long I'm not sure where that blurred line between reality and fantasy is anymore. But it doesn't matter. As long as you know, you're the one who has to live with it. I hope you do a much better job of living with it than I did.

Forever,

Danny Fenton.

Things seem so hallucinary,
In the corners of my mind they scare me,
I know ya never meant to desert me,
Just like ya never really meant to hurt me

Danny had never really been good at doing things with his left hand, so he had to admit that cut was a lot more shaky than the vein he had cut with his right. But it was mostly along the vein anyway. It would work. He wondered it he should slit next to his throat too. That would be harder for them to cover up for the funeral. He didn't need to cause anymore work for anyone than he was worth.

It was really kind of strange to think so surreally about death. But of course there is a difference between death and dying. People were only dying if they were attached to life. Something that he found he no longer was. What was the point of being attached to something that held nothing for you? As everything started to go fuzzy, he wondered how many other people had figured that out.

Then I ask have you ever felt abandoned?
Felt so lost that you were stranded,
Just like all the walls are closing in
And you were left inside
Have you ever felt like your days were numbered?
Stuck under a tree in thunder
Seems to be no way out
But there is one when in doubt

Sam clutched the letter; she had read it so many times she should have it memorized by now. But she didn't want too. She wanted to remember none of it. For it to be some huge lie that someone would apologize for. And the strange thing was that she did love him. If he had given her another couple days she would have been able to tell him. And he would be here with her instead of lying on some mortician's worktable. It wasn't fair. It was all her fault. She had been selfish. She thought she couldn't handle it yet. She needed more time. And Danny couldn't live with that. In typical ironic fashion, she didn't want to live without Danny. He thought she could live without him. He had said so in the note. It was unbelievable how dense he could be sometimes. And this time not telling him the truth had cost them both any chance at happiness they had in their lives.

And you ask
Why?
When you feel like you can't fly
You gotta know I got the answer for ya baby,
Drives ya crazy, it's not over
There's so much more to life then this
Why?
When you feel like you cant cry
You gotta know I got the answer for ya baby,
Drives ya crazy it's not over
There's so much more to life then this

Sam stepped lightly into Danny's room. They were back from the funeral and most of Danny's close friends and family were at the house for a lunch and sharing stories. Sam had asked Maddie if she could come up here. The older women regarded her for a moment than nodded, telling her to take as much time as she needed. It wasn't time she needed, though. It was her best friend back.

She fell down on to the floor next to the bed where they had found him. There was instantly a stab of pain agianst her shin and she rolled back so she was on her feet. Lying there, half buried in the carpet, was a razor blade. The method of death the police hadn't been able to find. She dropped it lightly into the palm of her right hand. She stared at it almost in a trance. The dried blood along the sharp edge the only remnant of her best friend.

Sam choked back a sob and shifted the deadly object so that she held it between her thumb and her index finger. Sam reached over and rolled the sleeve of her black dress back to her elbow. She brought the razor over to the top of her vein as tears started to well up in her eyes. "I'm sorry, Danny," she breathed to no one as she applied pressure to the little blade and it dug into her skin.

So much more to life than this…