A/N: Sorry for the wait. Enjoy, and thanks for all your support.

Lose Yourself

By JadeRabbyt

V

Danny felt light. He should be scared; he should be terrified; he should be thinking about everything he would never do again. All the people he would never see again, Sam and Tucker and Jazz and his parents. He should be worried; he should be terrified.

But he wasn't. Danny rocketed into the sky, his material body recondensing as he rose through the smoking heavens.

Whenever Danny thought of his parents, his friends, his school, all he could see were memories, thousands of recorded films that played and played again behind his eyes. He drifted up in the sky, far above the people and the smoldering buildings with only murderers for company, but he also walked in Casper's halls, ate cereal at the Fenton table.

Memories of crystal clarity arose in vibrant life, more real than ever before. The understanding shine on his mother's ruby lipstick when she smiled at another one of Dad's mess-ups; the way Jazz's eyes flashed when she found some crazy new psychological idea to ponder and his dad... Danny smiled. Dad was a library of stumblings, explosions, and brightly grinning enthusiasm.

School, Sam, and Tucker all seemed at once closer and more distant. Family memories were etched in concrete; those of his friends were written on the wind: more alive and less solid, vivid and evanescent. Tucker rushing forward time after time with that thermos, the thick hum as he spun off the cap and the quick white flash as its magnetism captured and contained the ghost of the day. He and Tucker in the movie arcade, bundled tense and alert as they gripped their plastic handguns and clicked harmless triggers at harmless enemies while Sam leaned against the coin-dispenser, the light from their virtual explosions rippling softly across her black top as she rolled her eyes and wondered aloud when they'd be done.

Through a shield of spotless glass Danny watched the memories. They were his, and nothing anybody could do to him would change that.

High in a chill-stricken sky, Danny watched Sam shouting advice to him over the clamor of an unfolding ghost battle, her expression fierce with concern and eagerness for action, her body running and then twitching away, its motions subconsciously synchronized with Danny's own as he dodged and struck out at the ghost. At school now, Sam stopped him in the hallway to describe her latest cause, pressing a couple of anti-frog dissection buttons into his palm, a warmth on his hand as her fingers dallied too long, and the hot blush they shared in subsequence.

Danny shook his head, shaking the memories away. The planes were coming and he needed to focus, but somehow his eyes were tearing up. He could leave his parents and his school and even Tucker, but Sam was his only If Only, and he couldn't let her memory go.

So Danny kept her. He grasped his last memory of her down in the sewers, promising with her heart's words that she'd be there when he fell. He kept her tears and her smile, her disheveled hair and her earnest, desperate eyes, her willingness to care enough about him that she'd let the city burn before watching him die. Danny let himself slide into the fantasy that she really would be there for him when he was finished being there for everybody else, and that, through some miracle of will or love, she would be able to save him.

The planes were coming. Their angry, tinny clamor reached him from a distance as they sped toward him.

Danny felt the energy gathering and the ethereal sting in his hands and head and heart as the vibrant power flowed. The planes tore toward him, their metal shining under the clouded Sun and their terrific engines roaring louder in the atmosphere. Below him the town smoked; Danny could almost hear the fireman's sirens.

He could almost hear the people talking, hear the TVs babbling and the dogs barking and the kids at school laughing.

The power surged into his hands. It rushed into his palms to form a charge, a small, shining green ball of ectoplasm that took its form and grew from wispy rivulets streaming from his fingertips. The sphere floated between his hands with the heaviness of lead and the vibrancy of a thunderbolt. Danny flexed his hands, molding the power.

Star-shaped flashes erupted from the jets' wings as a noise like sandpaper on gravel nipped at his ears. The planes were shooting at him again, but Danny hardly noticed it. He watched the crafts move as they weaved and dodged, iron hawks after an errant blackbird. They thought they had him, but they were wrong. Danny wound up his arms, lugging the charge to his side before thrusting it forward, opening his hands and letting the blast tear forth.

The power whirled through the air, spiraling out from Danny and widening into a funnel of raw power that split the azure heavens. The sky sparked lightning and the air stank of ozone; the piercing light sliced the city with geometric shadows. People clapped terrified hands to splitting ears and hid their faces from the ethereal heat, neither effect damaging, both effects terrifying.

The funnel dwindled and vanished over the horizon, the sun returned its soft white shine, and there was a little dusty smudge where one of the planes used to be.

The surviving plane peeled off and began a spastic series of twisting evasions. Danny shook off encroaching fatigue and dashed after it.

The plane jolted up and down and side to side as it made its desperate way across the sky. Danny matched it move for move, turn for turn. Keeping up was no trouble anymore; the trick would be to find a good shot. He didn't have much power left, but he had enough, maybe even enough to make it back to Sam. Danny curved his body in accordance with the plane's movements, altering his momentum to keep right on it; he tried to accelerate and found that he couldn't. It took too much energy. He'd have to take the shot from where he was.

Danny pursed his lips in the wind and pulled another charge, forcing more power through his arms and waiting for the plane to relax its twisting defenses.

The jet jerked up once, curved back down, and flew level in the sky, straight as an arrow. Danny threw the charge forward, igniting the air electrically once more. The charge hurtled forward, widened with the same terrible force as before…

And missed. The plane jerked up, the power just missing the bottom of its fuselage. Fighting the sinking feeling in his stomach, Danny raced up after it, chasing the jet up above the cloudcover and high above the smoke, above the cold aroma of wood and into thin, scentless atmosphere. The plane flew up, and Danny chased after it, gathering another charge for one more shot. The Sun's piercing glare shot through his eyes; the space above glimmered depthless sapphire. Danny kept the next charge between his palms, carefully avoiding the question of how much power he had left.

He lined up the shot and sent the beam flying up, but the plane must have seen it coming. It looped and dropped away, sinking into a shaky descent as the beam curled past it into space. Unbalanced by its sudden plunge, the plane spun tail-over-wing before catching itself, regaining control, and continuing down into thicker atmosphere. Danny pointed himself earthward and let himself fall, allowing gravity do the bulk of the work. He waited for the plane to act, for the ailerons to tilt and the plane to level out or shoot up, ready to speed after it the moment it stopped descending. He frowned as the plane continued on its downward course.

They couldn't, Danny thought. It wouldn't…

But it was. The plane dove toward the ground, wings screaming against the air, and the city lay thick beneath it.

Danny kicked his energy to life, a rush of hot wind sweeping aside his bangs as the green fire around him ignited in a hot burst of panic, a shock of pain striking through his mind. Brushing off the lightheadedness Danny shoved his fists forward and dove down after the plane. The city was a long way down—he could do this, he still had time. One good blast would do it, but he'd have to aim well. If he missed, the city would catch it.

The smoke flew up in his eyes. Danny rubbed them clear and squinted, awaiting the internal sting that signaled the charge's accumulation, but a second passed and he didn't feel anything. Danny flexed his fists and tried again, but he couldn't do it. Not enough power left.

As Danny started to feel his first real panic, another memory floated to the surface of his consciousness. Ready to dismiss it out-of-hand, Danny let it stay when he realized what it was. A long-ago race against some random bully, a time when, technically and physically, he really shouldn't have been able to win then, either.

Danny glanced ahead at the plane and gritted his teeth. He bunched his feet under him and dove down, plunging earthward, feeling the fire dwindling and his mind fading. The memory flitted away, but its effect remained in force. Focus was difficult; concentration impossible. Everything left went into speed. Danny dropped one hand to his side—less friction that way—and stretched out the other, palm open, reaching for the plane.

The plane loomed ahead, it and Danny all but motionless in space. Danny inched forward as the wind crashed by his ears and across his face, the ground rushing up to meet them, the streets growing wider and the buildings getting larger, small imprinted squares shining white and turning to windows as thread-thin lines became penciled traffic medians.

So close. Danny could see the people in the street and the plating on the jet with equal clarity. Its engines belched scalding steam and smoke in his face, the heat sending the air into chaos and threatening to throw him off the trail. Danny stretched out his hand. Just a foot or two more…

Danny thought of Sam.

He reached out his hand, stretching himself into infinity and oblivion to grasp the hot metal in his fingers. The emerald fire around him shrank to a flicker and returned an instant later as a tremendous conflagration that raced up the plane, melted the metal and swallowing the craft in a thick explosion of crunching fiberglass and erupting fuel cells.

Sam…

Danny felt a blast of heat and light as his world imploded and his mind fell to tatters about him, but then he felt nothing at all.

The blacktop flew away under Sam's pounding feet, Tucker left behind long ago through the flurries of people and turns of the streets. She had seen Danny fall, seen him drop like a stone from the sky as bolts of green, residual from the explosion, had wreathed him, sparking and flashing, dissipating, and slowly fading away as he had fallen down among the buildings.

Sam's fists flew at her side as she pushed herself forward, poisonous thoughts striking like vipers whenever she lost track of her purpose. Danny may already be dead. He might hate you for being reluctant, for trying to keep him back. He might think you're a loose tramp for trying to stop him from doing something that has helped so many.

The buildings passed her in blurs of brick and glass, the doubts needling but not weakening, worrying but not shaking her from her promise to be there. She paid no mind to those few who tried to stop her, people who saw a desperate girl with soiled clothes running through the streets. One or two called for her to stop, to offer help, to ask what might be wrong, but Sam didn't stop. She heard them like a buzzing in her ears as she raced after Danny.

She couldn't stop for doubts, couldn't stop for anything. She couldn't consider the 'what if' or 'what next' scenarios flitting through her mind. Tears pricked at her eyes and her thick boots slammed against the road. If she stopped, she would never be able to start forward again; she would never fulfill her promise.

Sam turned a corner and reached a wide street, a cream-colored apartment building squatted next to her on the corner while, on its roof, a flashy billboard perversely advertised another embarrassment of consumerism. They looked familiar. Sam placed them after a minute. She had noticed them a short distance from where Danny had fallen.

Her feet moved forward of their own accord, padding up the road as the rest of her trailed along behind. She caught the urgency like a sudden cold and began jogging faster up the street, looking for signs of she-didn't-know-what. People chatted in clusters on the sidewalks, making quick, excited motions with their hands, imitating the paths of the planes. Their heads bobbed up every so often to gape at the sky before returning to their conversations.

Idiots.

Sam glared at them before turning to look ahead. Activity burbled farther up the street: more people, these arguing and shoving at one another. They swarmed around a gray apartment building, piles of useless belongings lying scattered about the road. As she watched, more people emerged with loads of possessions, and looking closely, Sam saw that the building was split with hairline cracks near the roof and lower floors.

She rushed up its rude concrete steps and pushed the door open, shoving some poor slob aside in the process and scattering his precious junk across the floor. He yelled at her, and Sam mumbled an apology before stumbling down the apartment hallway, past a staircase, eyes darting frantically through the apartment.

It was dark. A dusky light glowed from the hallway's low ceiling up ahead, and Sam stepped forward, moving beneath it for a better look. The light was coming through a hole torn in the ceiling. Sam's mouth parted as she craned her head, trying to see into it.

Her foot slipped. Sam gasped, arms pinwheeling; she managed to fall back against the wall instead of forward into the gaping hole in the floor. The hole in the ceiling, she saw, continued down to bite into walls on either side of the hallway, plaster and wood and insulation all shredded like cloth at its edges as the hole continued down into the basement, forming a vertical tunnel through the building which passed through the roof and every floor to reach down to the concrete foundation below. Splintered boards from the torn-through floors hung over the hole; dust and specks of carpet and wood drifted down continuously, creating a fog in the silver light from the sky above. Live wires hung down from higher levels, their thick black forms jerking and twisting at intervals while broken plumbing dripped fat drops or poured steady streams of water down into the basement.

Sam couldn't tear her eyes away. The shattered boards, the broken pipes and the sparking wires—something had broken through all that. She swayed and jerked herself back from it, holding with juvenile tenacity to the fact that she had a promise to fulfill. She sank to the floor and glanced again at the hole in the hallway, its ragged mouth gaping at the sky. On her hands and knees, Sam crawled toward it, lips trembling, and peered in.

Green. She could see green. Chunks of concrete, more pipes and wires and boards, some wet earth, the whole mess scattered helter-skelter about the basement and covered in a misty green glow. She squinted into the darkness, seeing something white under the rubble… Maybe the white sleeve of a shirt?

No, Sam mouthed. Her breath had gone. She took it back and said it again, louder. He couldn't be dead. Heroes were not buried alive under piles of apartment debris.

Sam shoved to her feet, wobbling as her knees threatened to buckle. She had to get down there. Stairs. Where were the stairs.

She whirled back up the hallway and into the narrow staircase, clattering down the metal steps and bursting into the basement, dank and dark save for the mingled green and white light coming from the hole.

Sam hurried forward and began tearing off the garbage, moving not thinking, her hands splitting with small cuts as she hauled away what scrap she could. Gradually, the white sleeve grew an arm, a chest, a neck, a face. Dirt and damp spattered Sam's clothes, the cold pricked her arms and legs as groundwater sank in. She stopped, her breathing quick and erratic, realizing there was no more to be thrown away.

Danny lay motionless before her. He was in the same old blue jeans and white t-shirt he had worn every day since they'd met, when Sam had heard, for the first time, something other than judgment from the mouth of a peer. Now his body glimmered with the transparency of a dirty window. His eyes, once a vivacious blue, were closed with preternatural stillness. A haze of green static surrounded him, dissipating, as she watched, into the light of the sky above. Unbled, unbruised, and unhurt, Danny's entire body lay still, legs sprawled as the rubble allowed, arms fallen slack at his sides. His expression was toneless, soft cheeks and parted lips frozen of any past or present emotion.

Sam's shoulders began to shake. She brought her hands up to her chest and let them drop down again, knuckles scraping on concrete. It couldn't be… She was here now, and it was impossible that she should be too late. "I'm here, Danny." She bit her lip and touched his shoulder. Her hand met only slight resistance as it passed through him. Sam recalled her trembling hand, resting it against her thigh. "I'm here, just like I said I would be."

Whether she couldn't grasp it or she wouldn't gasp it, Sam didn't know, but the sobs shook her and she cried up at the sky, a feeling like fire in her chest, an ache like a wound in her head.

Her voice was broken. "I would have died for you." She glared up at the too-bright sky. "I would have died for him…"

Her heart broke down in her chest. Sam rocked back on her heels, stumbling against the rubble behind her, supporting herself on limp arms as she cried, and cried, and cried. Danny was dead. He had always been there for her, supporting and accepting and encouraging. Now, Danny was dead. He had saved her from a dozen different ghosts and had come to love her over time. Danny was dead. He'd saved the town and everybody in it, not only this time, but time and time again, going out there and proving his belief that there were things worth saving… But Danny was dead. Danny was dead. Danny was dead.

Frustration and anger and hopelessness, shattered heart and stolen breath. She felt a pang of nauseousness and a shaking weakness in her muscles; her mind reeled at light speed. She could catch her breath, she couldn't hold her exploding heart. It wasn't possible; it just couldn't be possible, but wherever she looked—

Danny was dead, his hopeful tanned face broken, transformed to a passionless void.

She shook her head, tears streaming from her eyes. She leaned forward on her knees and took his body in her arms. She cradled his head on her shoulder, rocking on her heels, breath still racing from her. One phrase passed her lips, broken by a sob, confessed in despair.

"I love you."

A short sting struck her, and something impossible happened. Sam dropped him and scrambled away. She was losing her mind. She'd gone completely insane, and she was obviously in severe shock. Either that, or she had felt warm breath against her neck.

Danny sputtered as she dropped him, coughing twice. Sam swept her hands to her mouth, scrambling to her feet. Danny's nose wrinkled as he coughed, lying on his side and looking slightly less transparent. He sat up on his elbows and shook his head, dust from the building showering from his raven hair. Every bit of him was alive again, not a trace of the ethereal stillness remaining. Sam backed away, not taking her eyes off him.

Danny blinked away confusion, starting at the darkness and the sharp debris surrounding him. He squinted up at the light sky before glancing out into the darkness, bright eyes widening as they landed squarely on Sam, who hoped he wouldn't notice that she was scared out of her wits. He stared at her for a minute, blue eyes shining, captivating her own.

A soft smile broke out on his face. His eyes shifted over her features, returning to her face, one eyebrow rising slightly. "Sam?"

She gulped and nodded.

The smile transformed into an ear-to-ear grin. "I knew it!" He struggled to stand up. "I knew you'd—Ah!" He groaned and slipped back into the debris, muddy puddles sloshing under him as he fell. That was enough proof of life for Sam. If she was crazy, so be it, but she couldn't stand away any longer. She clambered back over the debris and kneeled beside him.

Danny wasn't dead, but he didn't exactly look healthy. His shallow breathing and delirious eyes renewed Sam's fears. Whatever had been ignited in him was fading fast. Her hands flitted unconsciously at her sides, searching for something to help him, anything to keep him in this reality…

Sam stopped. Danny's eyes, fading though they were, had fixed themselves once again in her own. He gathered his breath and spoke, the softness of his voice approaching a whisper. "Sam, your eyes… They're violet."

She fell to her knees next to him. "They've always been that way…" Fear seized her once more. Was he losing his memory now?

Danny shook his head. "No. They're glowing… violet."

Sam paused, her frantic motions stilled. That shouldn't be possible for any number of reasons. She wasn't a ghost, and she didn't have any powers. The green haze still held around them, the residue of Danny's efforts. That shouldn't happen either. Plasma should dissipate quickly, unless he hadn't been using plasma. Unless he had been using something else, something that Sam herself might very well possess. She looked down at Danny, watching him teeter on the knife's edge of life and death. "I told you I was going to be there for you, Danny." He stared up at her, confused, almost gone. She leaned close over him, a wet tear dropping from her eye to his cheek. "And here I am." Sam closed the distance and kissed him on the lips, willing whatever power she had in her, to him.

Danny's body flexed straight under her; he shuddered slightly and his limbs flexed straight. Sam held onto him, something strange and exhilarating draining away from her to him, weakening her each moment. She was happy for the chance, the wonderful fact that she hadn't been too late after all. Sam had said that she'd die for him, and she'd meant it. God as her witness, she'd meant it.

The power drained and drained, and just when she thought she was going away, losing herself to that place that had nearly claimed Danny, she felt his lips, once weak and still, pressing back against hers. The power drain changed. Sam felt something inside her turn inside-out, pain to joy, loss to gain, and the drain on her life became a fountain of it. Danny took Sam in his arms and kissed her back hard.

They sat up together, Danny's living blue eyes filled with victory and love. "I knew you'd be here."

Sam smiled, nothing left in her but happiness.

Sam caught him in a hug, her head on his shoulder, letting her distress melt in the comfort of Danny's living arms. She sighed as he held her, his hands touching just below her shoulder blades, the slight shudder in his chest and tight embrace of his arms telling Sam that he was every bit as grateful as she.

The light of the sky played through the dust to blanket their shoulders with a warm haze while the dampness of the earth squooshed at their feet.Outside, a soft wind blew and a quiet murmur of voices made itself heard against the dripping water and soft groans of the damaged apartment. People, safe if not satisfied, scuffed their feet on the tar as they paced the street. Animals barked or mrowed for attention, but never at length; people found reassurance on the crowns of their pets. Boxes scraped out of the way as the low, windy hums of gas cars approached and receded, and cushions sighed now and then as evicted apartment-dwellers employed them as chairs on the hard sidewalk.

Every sound of the world's restored normalcy crept though the basement window. The clatter slinked along the floor and through the muck, making its way to the ears of its two saviors, instilling both with comfort and contentment.

A call reached them. "Danny?"

"Is that Tucker?" Danny tilted his head towards the noise.

Sam kissed his cheek before letting Danny go to the window. "Sounds like it."

"It is Tucker!" Danny laughed, jumping over piles of debris to reach the stairs. Sam hesitated, hurried after him and touched his arm. Danny stopped and looked back at her, the dim light playing on the dampness of his clothes, glimmering on his muddy jeans. "What is it?"

Sam licked her lips. "Danny… before we go up, I want you to know—" She paused, faltering. How to express an emotion that defies definition? Sam stammered for a moment before cracking an apologetic smile. "I'm really glad you're back."

Danny looked up at her, returning her smile in full. "Sam." He clasped her hands in his own, sincerity in their warmth and gentle pressure. Danny shook his head, eyes speaking volumes that words never could. "I'm glad, too." Sam squeezed him in one more hug, feeling, for the first time in a short eternity, that everything was going to be alright.

From outside, Tucker called.

"Come on." Danny tugged her into the stairwell after him. "Let's go see Tucker!" The two of them clattered up the metal stairs and burst, smiling, into the sunlight.