For a picture of Alesha: www .deviantart .com /deviation /13830583/ (without spaces)

For a picture of Miller: www .deviantart .com /deviation /14920146/ (without spaces)

For a more realistic picture of both: www .deviantart .com /deviation /14744164/ (without spaces)

Danny," his mother said softly to him from the long couch where his father and she were sitting side by side, looking down and away from him. "We need to know why you thought we would ever kick you out." Danny sighed, not really knowing how to respond.

"You said so," he finally replied softly.

"Neither of us remember," His mother's clear, blue (almost purple) eyes met his.

"I know," Danny nodded, "Or I wouldn't have come back."

"We'll try and figure out what really happened later," Maddie continued after several moments of silence.

"It was probably ghosts," Jack muttered under his breath. His wife shot him a dangerous glance before turning back to her son.

"Well, you were going to tell us something, right?" She leaned towards him, resting her elbows on her knees. "Some sort of secret?" Danny shot Jazz a glance, but his sister just shrugged. She was the only person in the room who knew that in an accident with some equipment his parents had been working on almost a year earlier, he'd been drastically changed. He still remembered the bright green light, and the feeling of his body being scrambled, like someone had stuck an electric beater inside him and turned it on full blast. The next thing he knew, he woke up lying next to the equipment, a very different person from when he had stepped into the lab earlier that day. The first differences he realized, had been that his raven-black hair had turned stark white, and his eyes glowed a neon green. He later came to realize that his parent's experiments with ectoplasmic energy had turned him into a half ghost. He wasn't sure if that made him undead, or the walking dead or what, but he could now phase through objects, shoot energy blasts from his hands, fly and turn invisible, among other things.

He'd always just assumed that it was a good idea to keep this knowledge secret from his family, but everything had caught up with him. When he finally decided to try and tell his parents, they'd literally kicked him out onto the streets (although he later found that they had been...controlled at the time). With no where to go, and even his friends turning him out, he'd fled to New York, and later to the only other refuge he knew of...his arch enemy, Vlad Master's mansion. There he'd discovered that all of the previous events had been set up and orchestrated by this man, who also happened to be half-ghost.

Danny closed his eyes and sighed at the thoughts now running through his head.

"Look," he looked up at his parents. "It took me a while to get to a point where I could tell you the first time. I need some time to think about everything before I can really discuss it." He shook his head and stood up, leaving the comfort of his favorite, old brown armchair. "I'm sorry," he looked down and shoved his hands in his pockets, and headed for the stairs while the rest of his family watched his retreating back as he left the room.

xoxoxox

"You're risking a bit coming here as often as you do, aren't you?" Alesha looked up at the now familiar voice and silently cursed herself. She'd been too careless, yet again.

"What do you want, Miller?" She sighed and stood slowly from her kneeling position. The room had long since been cleared of the rubble that had once been the office furniture, before the explosion... She shook the thought from her head before she could finish it, and looked up at the teen-aged boy now floating above her. "You aren't going to tell on me, are you?"

"Why should I?" he asked with a shrug. "You're not hurting anyone, and you haven't been exactly forbidden from the premises..." He floated down and landed in front of her while she regarded him coldly. "Actually, I think it's rather sweet, and it shows how much you loved your brother." Alesha closed her eyes, willing away the imagined images of her brother's obliteration. Ghosts could die, and her brother had indeed done just that. She didn't know the exact details, and she wasn't sure she wanted to. All she knew was that she hadn't been there for him, and she needed to be here. He had been here last, and she wasn't ready to let him go.

"Could you just go away?" she asked, suddenly weary. He regarded her for a few moments through his long, brown hair before nodding.

"Before I do, though," he commented as he neared the door leading to the hall, "may I ask you a personal, and perhaps difficult question."

"I don't care," she sighed, and sank back to the ground.

"Did you tell your...friend," he almost sneered the word at her, but she didn't react so he continued, "that you were sent to–"

"Overshadow his parents and ruin his life?" she finished with a tone of bitterness lacing her words. "Yes." He remained silent for a few seconds, before nodding.

"That makes sense then," he turned to walk out of the room via the doorway, despite the fact that he never opened the door.

"What do you mean?" Her voice stopped him, and he smiled triumphantly before turning to meet her with a completely strait face.

"It was just what he said before he...left," Miller shrugged his scrawny shoulders, causing the old t-shirt hanging from them to shift to an even more un-flattering position.

"What did he say?" she asked, floating closer to him, not even bothering to stand up.

"He said that you losing your brother was a fair trade for his ruined life. You are now welcome at his home, seeing as that event made your...situations even." They stood in the large, empty room staring at each other for several moments, with the only movement between either of them being her blinking, rapidly. Finally her face contorted into a dangerous mask of anger and distrust, and she advanced on him.

"I want you to know that I don't listen to creepy liars, such as yourself." She turned her back on him, heading for the outside wall, despite the fact that she would be in the open once she was no longer in the house. Surprisingly, she found that she no longer cared...she only wanted to get away. "Danny would never say anything like that," she whispered, half to herself half to him. With that, she launched through the wall, leaving Miller with a sly, almost demonic smile on his face.