Chapter Five

Mid-afternoon shifts at the Nasty Burger were the worst.

Val went in right after school. After reciting an obnoxious cliche about leaning and cleaning during the slow afternoon hours, her manager assigned her to clean the grease filters in the hood over the grill. The job was disgusting, getting her up to her elbows in oil as she sprayed everything down out back, and she spent her entire shift stinking of burgers and everything that earned the Nasty Burger its name. How any of her classmates could continue to eat there was beyond her.

She was furious by the time she left and decided to try to calm down by walking through the park on her way home, hoping she might stumble across a ghost that she could take out some of her aggression on, and while she was delighted when her watch alerted her to the presence of a nearby ghost, she was much less thrilled to find her ex-boyfriend sitting there, quietly chatting with Ember while holding a guitar.

Val was reaching for her blaster when the ghost grabbed the instrument and vanished, and instead of looking relieved, Danny glared at her, his gaze intense enough that Valerie swore the temperature around them dropped by a few degrees. She scowled right back, undeterred by Danny's stormy expression.

"I thought you said you'd quit that?" she said as she tucked her blaster away. She caught him once before chatting with some nerdy looking ghost named Pointdexter at school, and after giving him a long explanation about how incredibly stupid he was being, she thought he genuinely took her warning to heart and stopped trying to hang out with ghosts. She probably should have known better. "Hanging out with ghosts?"

"As long as they're willing to play nice, too, I'm more than happy to talk to them still. I never told you I wouldn't, Val," He sighed, looking away from her, and sure enough, she couldn't actually remember him agreeing to stay away from the ghosts, just that he understood why she was warning him against doing it. "Are you going to give me another lecture about it?"

"I should, but I'm not your girlfriend anymore. I'll leave the lectures to your parents or Jazz," she said, although she considered giving him an earful about it anyway since they were still friends. If Danny wasn't willing to stop after Tucker was hurt, though, it seemed unlikely that anything would convince him that the ghosts weren't friendly enough for casual chit chats and whatever the heck was going on between him and Ember now. "Mind if I sit?"

"Nope. Ember's not going to come back." He scooted over to the far edge of the bench as she sat down beside him and put her bag in her lap. Danny leaned his head back, no doubt trying to make out the stars that were just starting to emerge. A small part of her always wanted to bring him up on her hoverboard back when they were dating, knowing they could get to a point where Amity's light pollution was minimized, where the view of the night sky was genuinely spectacular, but that would have meant revealing her secret to Danny. Something which she wasn't willing to do, especially not after learning how much he cared about ghosts and how he treated them as people rather than the life-destroying, dangerous creatures most of them were. She couldn't bear it if he hated her for hunting them. Valerie knew his relationship with his parents was strained because of their profession, the conversations at the few family dinners and game nights she attended by far more stilted and awkward despite his parents' best efforts to remain understanding of Danny's flawed perspective. That kind of distance between him and his family was hard but manageable - between the two of them, she wasn't so sure that even their friendship could survive him knowing the truth about her and what she did.

"What were you two doing, anyway?" she asked, her tone a little more snappish than she intended, but Danny didn't react.

"She's teaching me how to play guitar."

"You want to learn to play guitar?" Val said. Of all the responses she expected, this wasn't it, but she was honestly relieved he wasn't trying to date Ember. Still, Danny never seemed terribly engaged in their music classes at school in all the years she knew him. "Are you back to trying to impress Paulina? Because she doesn't usually go for guitarists. Or is it Sam?"

"Ugh, neither," he groaned, rolling his eyes before holding out his left palm. Val could barely make out the scar tissue from his accident freshman year. The two of them weren't friends back then, but she knew he was hurt badly enough that he missed about a month or so of school. "I was hoping it would help my hand a little. It's still kind of stiff."

"Didn't your parents sign you up for physical therapy after, y'know?" she said, gesturing vaguely. Danny rarely answered questions about the actual accident itself - to this day, she still didn't know all the details despite dating him and staying friends.

"Yeah, but it didn't do much. I stopped going after a couple of months."

"You know that process can take a lot more than a couple of months, right? I busted my knee in a karate competition when I was twelve and it took almost a year before it was even close to back to normal," said Val. The injury cost her the chance to go to their state championship, and she was furious. Her Daddy barely managed to stop her from competing again before her injury fully healed, but looking back she knew he was right to make her take a year off. "But I guess learning guitar doesn't seem like a terrible option if your doctor says he's cool with it. It might be better to learn from a living human, though."

Danny glared as he crossed his arms over his chest. The air grew chillier as a cool breeze blew through, and she wrapped her own arms around herself, trying to ignore it. "Not if this will help Ember stop attacking Amity Park. Besides, regular, living humans want you to be able to adhere to a regular schedule, and you of all people ought to know how bad I am at showing up when and where I'm supposed to be."

Val wanted to push it, but they spent more than enough hours arguing over the ghost thing while dating, so she let it drop. She silently applauded herself for learning to control her temper a little better over the past year, though it still held a pretty tight grip most days. "Yeah, well, it was part of what made dating you nice. Every other boy I've gone out with since then hasn't been half as patient about me needing to bail last minute because of work."

"At least you have good excuses for it," he said. His expression softened then as he shifted and put his hands back into the pockets of his hoodie. "Did your dad get that promotion finally? I noticed you've been at the Nasty Burger less."

"Don't know yet. They've been dragging it out for months, but I hope it still happens. I'd love to never clean out another grease trap or hood again," said Valerie as she let her legs swing slowly back and forth. "Plus it'd be nice to get my grades back up this year. I still want to try and get into a good school if I can, and we don't have the connections through my Dad that we used to." Mr. Masters offered to put in a good word for her and to provide a scholarship, knowing how much she dedicated herself to her ghost hunting, but she still wanted to feel like she deserved it, too.

Danny sighed, running a hand through his hair. "I should probably be trying to do the same thing."

"You still want to be an astronaut?"

"Yeah, but there's no way it'll happen now. Not with my grades and heart problems and stuff." He tried to say it as if it wasn't a big deal, but she saw his lip tremble and heard the faint tremor in his voice, and reaching over she squeezed his hand gently, trying to offer some small comfort. "If I failed to become an astronaut because I couldn't cut it, that would be different, but this . . . it sucks, Val."

She understood. It was one thing to try and fail, but quite another to have the choice taken away all together. "Maybe there's something else you can do that's space-related."

"Maybe, but it's not really the same thing," he said as he pulled his hand back and tucked it back in his pocket. "But it's–it's fine. I'll figure something else out. Maybe I'll try to be a rock star - my chances of being a successful guitarist are probably about the same odds as being an astronaut ever were."

"You don't have to switch one impossible goal for another, you know. You could–I don't know, be an accountant or something," she offered, and he rolled his eyes. "Or work in a lab like your parents."

She knew the instant the words were out of her mouth that it was the wrong thing to say, and she wished she could take it back. His eyes looked hollow as he swallowed and bit his lip. Danny hated what his parents did, the way they treated and dehumanized the ghosts, but he did have a knack for understanding complicated physics and math that few people did, which meant he could probably be a decent engineer like his Dad. Still, having talent in something didn't mean that you had to be happy about it. "I'd rather not," he said eventually as Val rubbed her arms, that bite in the air back again, and she glanced at her watch. No ghosts, at least. Just a normal, chilly March night.

Well, while they were on the topic of subjects that were probably off-limits, she might as well ask the question that had been bothering her for a few days. "Hey, I've been meaning to ask - everything okay with you and Sam and Tucker? They seemed kind of twitchy during school the last couple of days and I noticed y'all stopped eating lunch together." She could tell the trio had some kind of falling out, but didn't understand why, and Danny slumped forward and tucked his knees to his chest, letting his chin rest there.

"For months they've been asking me why I grew kind of distant and started isolating myself after my accident freshman year," he said. "I haven't been willing to talk about it, not with anyone, but the other day I told them a little bit and they, uh, kind of freaked out real bad. I don't really know what they're thinking at this point, but I'm pretty sure they want nothing to do with me."

"Which is why you never told them in the first place, huh?" said Val, and he gave a half-nod as he buried his face in his knees. She moved closer and put a hand gently on his shoulder. "Sam and Tucker are good friends, Danny. They'll come around. I doubt there's anything so weird that you could tell them that would make them bail on you forever."

"You'd be surprised," he muttered, refusing to look up.

"You wanna talk to me about it?"

Danny barked out a harsh laugh, and she jerked her hand away in surprise. Of all the reactions she expected, laughter wasn't on the list, and she glowered at him. "Val, no offense, but if they took it this badly, then I don't think there's any way that you would handle it better. I know you're more, um, willing to live and let live, so to speak, but this is different. It goes way beyond me trying to chat up ghosts when I know your preference would be for me to put an ecto blaster in their face."

"Oh, come on. What could it possibly be that's so bad? It's not like you're dead or . . . wait, you're not like, dying of cancer or something, are you?" She felt a chill clutch at her, remembering her mom in the hospital those last six months. Danny hadn't shown any signs, but in the early stages of treatment, it wasn't always obvious. Her mom hadn't lost her hair for the first two years, the doctors not wanting to pursue what they originally considered an overly aggressive treatment plan. She wished they had. Maybe her mom would still be here, then.

"I'm not dying of cancer or anything like that," he said, and she felt the knot in her chest relax a bit. "Or if I am, nobody told me. But I really don't want to talk about it. Kind of like you never want to talk about whatever your second job is. Some stuff should just stay a secret, I guess. Is that okay with you?"

If there was anyone in the world that would understand what he meant, then it was Valerie. She spent the last year operating as the Red Huntress, fighting ghosts and protecting Amity Park from the same specters that Danny was all too willing to defend. Nobody except her private benefactor Mr. Masters knew. Nobody else could know. "Yeah, I think I get it. But you know if you ever want to talk about it, I am here, okay? And I know you don't think so, but I can handle more than you think."

"I don't doubt it." Suddenly an intense shiver ran through him and he coughed, his breath fogging for a moment in the chilly air. Rubbing his arms, he jumped to his feet as he uneasily looked around the park. "Sorry, Val, I think I gotta go. I'm not feeling great."

"You want an escort home? I do have one of your parents' blasters with me in case it's a ghost, and I've never met a mugger I was afraid of," she said, patting her bag, and he shook his head just as her watch vibrated and alerted her to the presence of a nearby ghost.

"No, but thanks. I'll see you at school." Internally, she felt a bit of relief that he didn't want to walk home together. If there was a ghost nearby, the best way she could protect him was by donning her suit and taking it out before he even noticed, since no doubt he would try to talk to the stupid thing instead of letting her shoot it and stuff it in a thermos.

"Sure. And, um, Danny? You can eat lunch with me and Star, if you want," she offered. Although she figured they would probably make up at some point, she knew that for now he still must feel raw after being abandoned by his closest friends. It ached in a way that few people understood. "She won't mind as long as she doesn't think we're going to date again."

He blinked, clearly surprised by the offer, and for the first time in what felt like months, he gave her a genuine smile as he waved. "That sounds great, Val. Thanks."

And then he was gone, and after glancing around the park to make sure no one else was around, she activated her suit with a mere thought. The newer suit was still a bit freaky even after nearly six months of use, but there was no denying that it was convenient, and slapping her feet together to summon her hoverboard, she leaped into the air to find the ghost.

Valerie surveyed the park carefully from the air as she followed the signal, and just as she was getting close a second alert popped up. Great. Phantom. How the hell did he get here so fast?

Gritting her teeth, she covered the last bit of distance just in time to see a brilliant flash of green light through the trees as Phantom fired an ecto blast. A pained howl pierced the air, and Valerie came to a stop and hovered over the giant ghost wolf while Phantom walked into the clearing, thermos in hand, his movements impossibly silent despite his heavy boots and hazmat suit. Clicking the button on the side of the thermos, Phantom sucked the ghost wolf up with ease and then looked at her, his eyes glowing the usual toxic green. How Sam found any comfort in the ghost the other day at school, she could never understand, her own gut twisting as he watched her.

Valerie whipped out her blaster and fired a shot at Phantom, who lazily put up a shield. "I thought we had a truce?" he asked, static crackling.

"After your little disappearing act the other day? Maybe if you explain yourself, I'll reconsider," she said.

"I already explained it, and besides, there's a human close by," he said as she powered up her blaster for another shot. "Daniel Fenton, I think? He could get hurt if we fight."

"As if you care," she snapped, but the whine of her blaster faded out as she let her weapon drop to her side. She doubted Danny was anywhere near them, but she would play along for now. "You're just using him as a shield."

"If you say so," he said with a shrug as he turned away from her, and Valerie's fingers clenched her blaster tightly. With a mere thought and a slight twitch of her legs, she maneuvered her jet sled in front of the ghost, stopping him in his tracks.

Phantom stopped, his radio crackling. His green eyes were the only thing visible behind his tinted face shield. Not for the first time she wished she could see who he was underneath the hood of his Hazmat suit. "It's not fair, you know," she said suddenly, surprising herself.

"What?"

"You know who I am - why don't I get to know who you are?"

This time, he did seem surprised, the static crackling loudly over his radio as he spoke. "Wait, seriously? That's why you're stopping me now? Not to interrogate me about last week again even though I've already told you that I didn't want to run into the Fentons?"

"That's a lame excuse, ghost. You have a truce with them–"

"-I have a truce with you and you still tried to shoot me a minute ago!" he interrupted, the temperature around them dropping fast. "Somehow, that's always how these truces end, even though I'm supposed to be the manipulative, evil one in this equation."

Valerie bristled at the accusation. "You broke the truce when you started acting all freaky!"

"I acted all freaky because I didn't want to get shot by the Fentons in case they also decided that some minor action of mine was enough to put a gun in my face again, too," he snapped, and she could see frost appearing on the grass around him. Cryokinesis? Since when did Phantom have that power? She pulled out her blaster, aiming it at him once more, but she resisted the urge to put her finger on the trigger.

"I thought you said you didn't want a fight," she said, gesturing with her blaster at the growing ring of frost and ice. She hated fighting ghosts with elemental abilities - they were one of the few things that could get past a lot of the protection provided by her suit.

He glanced down, only seeming to just notice the ice. "I–you're right. I don't want a fight. But you did try to shoot me first, and you're still the one pointing a gun."

"You're the one turning the park into a Winter Wonderland!" she argued. "Stop that and I'll lower my blaster."

"I'm trying." The static on his radio fizzled loudly, but little by little the ice and frost retreated, the temperature slowly rising as he eased back on his attack. "Sorry."

"As if you mean it," she muttered, but she put her blaster away as the last of the ice disappeared.

"Right, of course. Can't be out here expressing remorse, not when I'm nothing more than another monster to be put down, right?" he said. "This is why it doesn't matter."

"What?"

"You and everyone else constantly want to know what's under this suit, as if that should matter even half as much as everything I've done," said Phantom. "As if knowing who I was before I died is the most important thing, somehow, even though you and the Fentons and everyone just constantly talk about how ghosts are nothing more than a lousy imprint of the person whose consciousness spawned them at the moment of their death and are completely detached from the person they were when they were alive."

"It's still important, Phantom. You can't expect people to trust you if they don't know anything about you," said Val.

"People know a lot about me," he said. "The things that they know just aren't the things they want to know."

"So you won't even tell me?"

"Isn't that obvious? You're the last person I'd tell, Valerie, given who your employer is."

Valerie scowled under her helmet. Attacking her character was one thing, but Mr. Masters? "There's nothing wrong with–"

"-you yourself have told me multiple times just how much he would love to cut me open if given the opportunity," interrupted Phantom. Again. She hated when he did that. "And besides, any person who would take advantage of a teenager's rage and frustration the way he's taken advantage of you? Making you put yourself at intense risk for his benefit? That's not a guy who deserves anyone's trust, and you should really think twice about the jobs he's making you do."

Valerie felt hot, her jaw clenched as her hands shook slightly, but remembering Danny nearby she forced down the urge to shoot the stupid ghost in his stupid face shield. "How dare you," she hissed through gritted teeth, "act as if you know anything about me or my employer. I am not being used."

Phantom stared at her silently for a moment, and then she heard a crackle of static, almost as if he was letting out a long sigh. "You're right. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have assumed," he said, and she wished she could see his face to give her a better idea if he was being sincere or not. It sounded sincere, but even as the thought crossed her mind she knew it was ridiculous. He was a ghost. He would lie or say whatever thing he needed to get his way, his apologies functionally worthless.

And yet, more and more she was finding that explanation didn't sit with her as well as it used to, and the reason was almost entirely because of Phantom. Because despite her attacking him and threatening him tonight, he still didn't retaliate beyond making a little frost appear on the ground, showing a level of restraint she couldn't help but envy.

"Well, I've made a lot of assumptions about you, too," said Valerie after a moment, her anger slowly fading, "but I'm not convinced that I'm wrong about those yet."

"But you're considering it?" She shrugged. Was she considering it? Even she wasn't sure at this point, but the way he was with Sam the other day, his concern about Danny, the fact that he did genuinely seem to be trying to help even if he was often screwing up more than he fixed . . . it could all be an elaborate trick, of course. But she spent over a year now waiting for the other shoe to drop, and so far nothing had happened despite her constant vigilance. "What would it take to convince you that I'm not trying to hurt anyone? That I just want to help?"

"It's hard to trust someone that you don't know anything about. You can say actions speak louder than words or whatever, but at the end of the day, if I don't know where you came from, I can't have any idea what's driving you." Letting out a long, slow breath as she tried to maintain control over her anger, she let her helmet retract, her hair cascading down her back. "You know what drives me and why I hunt ghosts."

"Because they ruined your life, right?" He ought to know. It was that awful ghost dog, Cujo, running rampant that Phantom failed to keep under control that cost her father his job. And it wasn't just her life that was ruined by the ghosts, either. Dozens of other people like her existed in Amity Park, innocents whose lives were destroyed by the otherworldly creatures like Phantom that came through the portal without pausing to consider the harm they caused to those that still lived.

"So what makes you hunt them? Tell me that much, at least," she said. No one knew his motivation or his obsession - even a small clue towards it would go a long way. She and the Fentons used to think he was obsessed with fighting and that the other ghosts provided a convenient outlet, but more and more that explanation didn't sit quite right. Not when she saw him do things like save kids from getting crushed by a collapsing building when there was no ghost in sight, rare though that circumstance might be.

"Are you going to tell your boss?"

Valerie scowled, that hot rage bubbling up again, but she forced it down. "I told you, I'm not being used. I'm no one's puppet. And if you don't want me to tell him, then I won't."

She thought he wouldn't answer her, then, or that if he did he would give some worthless answer about it being the right thing to do. "At first, I started doing it because I didn't think anyone else could. The Fentons had never seen ghosts like the ones that came through the portal–they were used to the shades that could barely sustain a physical form. Ghosts with the level of physical presence that we have now, like me? It's not something they were prepared for."

"That doesn't really answer the question."

"No, it doesn't," he said. "By ghostly standards, I'm a relatively new ghost. I can still remember what it was like to be human. And I don't feel jealousy or even have the kind of lack of understanding that some of the older ghosts have for how easily the living can be harmed. I just . . . this?" He held up a faintly glowing, gloved hand. "This isn't the same as humanity. It's not the same as being alive. And being alive was incredible, and I don't want . . . I just want people to be able to experience it. I don't want their lives cut short because of the others that are like me, I guess. There are a bunch of things I never got to do or have because I died. A whole lot of dreams I had to give up. I don't want anyone else to go through what I did. To lose that chance."

"That's all well and good, ghost, but if the Fentons are right, at some point you won't remember that anymore. Like every other ghost, you'll give into your obsession eventually."

"This is my obsession," he said.

"Protection?"

"Not exactly, or at least, not in the way you're probably thinking. It's more like . . . like protecting dreams, kind of? Like a desire to see people get to experience the things I couldn't? I can't really put a word to it. I guess protection's part of it, but it's not exactly right. And ghosts aren't as beholden to their obsessions as you might think," said Phantom. "It's more complicated than that. We're more complicated than that."

Secretly Valerie doubted that, but she said nothing as she stuck out a hand. She did not break her promises lightly, no matter how much Phantom accused her of doing so. "I'm still not sure I trust you, Phantom, but I'm willing to give you a chance again. Don't make me regret it."

The ghost stared at her, its green eyes fixated on the hand in front of him. "Another truce?" He seemed unimpressed. "Will you at least promise to give me a warning before you change your mind and start shooting again?"

"Might only be a few seconds, but I can do that," she said, and he shook her hand, the icy chill of his own blunted by her own suit.

A/N: Thanks to the folks who have left reviews, favorited, and followed!