He felt very proud of himself as he stomped through the hall. That evil demon woman was finished; she wouldn't be killing anyone else.

Diego…

He stopped short and looked around. That voice sounded so close, like it was right in his head. Then he saw her trudging up the stairs he had just left, still dragging her chains.

No one leaves me, she whispered into his mind.

He cried out in alarm and staggered away. It was one thing to know a person was a witch; it was something else entirely to actually witness that kind of power. It removed all traces of lingering doubt. He crossed himself and wished he had thought to bring his Bible with him, although he had the sinking suspicion that his more-or-less Catholic upbringing would be little use against such a creature of evil.

"No one leaves me," she repeated aloud. Her voice was a mix of anger and hurt; her eyes would have made water turn to ice. She reached out, and for just a second he was confused. Then survival instincts took over, and he threw himself out of the line of fire.

He ran into a door at random, cursing as he realized it was the dining room. There was nowhere to hide, but if he could reach the kitchen door, he thought he might be able to escape. Another gunshot split the air and a point of fire appeared on the edge of one ear. He didn't need to reach up to know that she had grazed it. She was toying with him.

"Amante…"

His mind grasped the voice as though it was a life line. It didn't matter that it belonged to his worst enemy; it was a way out.

"Why would you leave me alone?" Meryll asked, almost playfully.

He backed slowly towards the table, mentally cursing himself for ever disregarding the superstitious theories that she had powers. How else could she have single-handedly tipped that bus over onto that inmate? Even if she was strong enough to move it, she couldn't have hurled all t he way across the yard to reach him. "It-it was a game!" he stammered hopefully. "I wasn't really going anywhere! I…I…I was j-just playing! Playing with you!"

She smiled brightly, and for a moment, he thought she believed him. Then he was flying backward into the table hard enough to break it in half. "Liar!" she yelled, both in his ears and in his mind. "You said you'd never leave me! You promised!"

"Meryll…" he tried to say. "Lover, I-"

"You're just like everyone else!" she interrupted. "Well, I know you won't leave me. I know because I'll make sure of it…make sure…you keep your promise…"

She sat on his stomach and caressed the side of his face, then pressed the Cobra's barrel into the middle of his forehead…

"Amante, despierte!"

"So…that's why you kill…" Danny muttered vaguely, forcing his eyes open. He gazed around through a bleary sleep-fog. "You think you can make them stay with you. But it doesn't really work, does it?"

The sound of gunfire sent him scrambling to his feet. He spared a moment to note that he was in a basement somewhere while he dashed up the rickety wooden steps and found himself in a painfully familiar hall. Suddenly, a door crashed open ahead, and he froze.

He could still see it in his mind as it played out before him. Diego crawled through the doorway on his stomach, pulling himself along with one arm. The other one had been shot. He turned his head slightly to look at Danny, and a pale foot stomped down, blocking his view.

Silver leaned over and whispered something. Although the boy couldn't hear her words, he knew what she said. "I can't kill you." She stepped over him and started to walk down the wall.

Diego continued to stare at the cellar door, but he didn't actually see Danny. He was nothing but a memory of what happened all those years ago. After a moment, he managed to pull himself to his feet and fumbled with his gun. His previous reluctance to shoot her had been due to the simple fact that she was a better shot. He had abused for so long that some part of him insisted that there was no way he would be able to kill her first. He had decided to chain her in the basement because he knew her…preferences. She wouldn't suspect what really he had in mind.

Maybe he had misunderstood what she meant, or maybe it was that she had shot him in the arm after threatening to shoot him in the head. He wasn't actually thinking when he fired, Danny was astonished to find that it was the exact same sense of helplessness he had felt when he shot her in the back with Mongoose. Was it possible…

The report was deafening in the close hall, but Silver wasn't distracted with pain and rage as she had been when Danny reenacted this scene. The bullet hit an invisible wall a few inches out of the barrel. "Te odio," Diego whispered. The boy didn't need his inner translation to tell him what that meant. Even if Silver hadn't already mentioned it, the man's tone crossed all language boundaries.

The bullet turned in the air and shot back toward its owner. Danny cried out and went to his knees as though the pain was his own. Some silver liquid dripped to the floor nearby, and he slowly looked upward into the barrel of his tormentor's gun. "What about you, amante?" she asked. "Will you promise to never leave me?"

It was the real Silver here in the Malice's dream world with him. He was about to ask how she got there, then his brain caught up with what was happening. Pleading wouldn't help; even promising probably wouldn't help. After all, Diego had broken his promise. But he couldn't just sit there whimpering; he had to do something, get through to her somehow.

Suddenly, the lights went out. "Big sister, why did you push me?" asked the plaintive voice of the little boy.

"Toby?" she muttered. Danny took the opportunity took quietly run around her. He couldn't see anything, but he knew it was a straight hall. He trailed his hand along the wall until it encountered empty air, then dashed into the foyer. He remembered the front door being directly across the room. As he ran across, the lights came back, and he saw that he would not be getting out that way. There was too much furniture piled in front of it. It hadn't been that way he first went through, but this wasn't the real world. He dashed upstairs instead.

Silver shrieked in fear. He could hear her trying to get away from something, probably the Malice, but that didn't matter to him. All that mattered was getting away himself. He ran down the upstairs hallway until he reached the trapdoor that opened onto the attic. The giant box he remembered had been replaced by a ladder. What he was going to do once he got there, he didn't know.

He paused with one foot on the ladder, debating. This really was just like a horror movie. And just as the first person to die always did, he was about go upstairs where he would be trapped with the villain. Then Silver was running down the hall behind him, yelling for him to get up there.

They stopped in the middle of room, as much to catch their breath as because they had nowhere left to go. "Can it get up here?" Danny panted.

She opened her mouth, but the answer was rendered needless by the fog that crept up to join them. She seemed to wilt as she shook her head. "Diego, why?"

"Hello!" Danny exclaimed. "You threw him into a table and shot him twice! What do expect him to do? Love you forever?"

Silver closed her eyes sadly, and he realized that, yes, that was exactly what she had expected. Then her eyes snapped open to glare with that cold rage. "Together…forever…" she whispered in a terrifyingly menacing voice.

Danny jumped back as she tried to grab him, and continued backing away as she advanced. The Malice gathered slowly behind her, but she was too intent on her quarry to properly notice. "You're mine!" she said through clenched teeth. "Maybe I don't know what love is, but I know what I want. You'll be mine, and we'll be together forever with Diego and Toby and-"

"Over my living body!" yelled a voice mere moments before something black and white shot out of the fog and slammed into Silver. Phantom grabbed a handful of chains to keep her from falling into Danny, then used them to swing her around into the waiting arms of her husband.

Her scream was almost inhuman, and it didn't stop quickly. Both boys cringed and turned away; not even the ruthless ghost wanted to see what happened. It was a long time before the screams faded and longer still before they turned back to see the aftermath.

There was nothing left. Having finally gotten its revenge, the Malice faded away, and the dream world along with it.

Danny opened blue eyes to stare into bright green ones. "Living body?" he croaked. His voice didn't seem to want to work any more than the rest of him.

Phantom shrugged and helped him sit up. "Well, I'm already a ghost. What was I suppose to say?" They stared at each other for a few more minutes, then burst out into laughter. And if it was a little hysterical on the human boy's part, well, he deserved the chance to go a little crazy. Just for a minute.

"How did you get there?" he asked.

The ghost shrugged. "Killjoy helped. It's kind of confusing, so why don't you just wait until we're together again, and you can remember it?" He lifted the Fenton Thermos by its strap and held it in front his counterpart's face. "Not much chance to use it, huh?"

"I kept forgetting I had it. And…I didn't really want to use it on you."

Phantom shrugged again, but the spark of gratitude in his eyes completely ruined his attempt at uncaring. He floated into the air and lifted Danny off the floor. "Come on; let's go home."

A/N: I'll confess. I had a really good reason for having that there. Basically, Danny was to going to catch Silver (still overshadowing Phantom), and she was going to go completely nuts, use her telepathy to get free, and just lay into poor Danny. Then, while she was distracted trying to kill him, the Malice was going to get her. I like this better.