Sixty-Two Shots
One-shot vignette. Dan does some melancholy existential pondering at a local Ghost Zone bar. Featuring "Broadway" by The Goo-Goo Dolls. Random angsty drabble.
A/N: I was listening to this song when this popped into my head. Since I was having trouble getting into the zone for Chapter 11 of Free Spirit, I figured it couldn't hurt to have this out of my system. This is not even supposed to remotely resemble anything that could happen in canon; it's just harmless fun with the sexiest character out there...x3 Please read and review!
Disclaimer: Danny Phantom is fun to play with, but not to eat. (Jade:-P) "Broadway" belongs to The Goo-Goo Dolls, a band of which I am not a member.
There is a bar in the Ghost Zone. It has been there for longer than many of the Ghost Zone's current inhabitants can remember, which is saying something; so long, in fact, that its proper name has been lost to antiquity. For ages, it has been a safe haven to many wayward spirits, a place where they can drown their worries in drink and conversation. Mostly drink, though. Some may find it odd that the souls of the long-dead can still desire food and intoxicating substances, but the idea isn't so far-fetched. The tavern does its best business with the newly dead who haven't yet come to terms with the fact that they're, well, dead.
The best seats at the bar are usually reserved for the regulars: a tough crowd, seedy and morose, who look perfectly at home haunting their favorite barstools. At this late hour, so close to closing time, the regulars were the only ones at the counter—all except one ghost alone at the wall end of the bar. He was clothed in a long black coat that concealed whatever he may have been wearing underneath. His skin was a pale green, his crimson eyes resembled the color of fresh blood, and his hair blazed atop his head like silver hellfire. Normally, such a loner would be immediately set upon by the bored regulars out for a fight, but not this one. He projected too strong an aura of Don't Mess with Me.
Right now, he was throwing down a shot of some unidentified purple liquid that, when flicked onto the countertop, sizzled like acid. The old bartender, Dionysus, watched with mild interest, impressed in spite of himself. He'd seen a lot of strange sights, but never had he ever seen anyone like this one. The ghost had just consumed about forty shots of his best stuff—most ghosts would have had a seizure by the nineteenth. If the ghost kept at this pace, he'd either run Dionysus dry or melt.
Dionysus came down to the stranger's end of the bar to refill the ten or so shot glasses lined up in front of him, but when he came over, the ghost put a hand on the bar to indicate that Dionysus should stop.
"Leave the bottle," he said.
XxXxX
Dan Phantom glanced around dispassionately at the other losers occupying the bar before tossing back his forty-second shot. He knew it was his forty-second. He'd been counting.
What he hadn't been doing was getting buzzed enough to drag his bleak thoughts away from existence and how much he hated it. Ten years of crushing anyone and anything that got in his way simply for the pleasure of it, ten years of letting the world know who was in charge, and he still got his ass handed to him by a fourteen-year-old kid...even if that kid was him from his past. The humiliating defeat still stung, though, even after forty-two—no, now it was forty-three shots of some liquor that he hadn't even bothered to identify. All he knew was that he'd asked for the strongest stuff in stock.
Some shouts floated over to him from across the room, and he half-turned to see; not out of any real interest, but a detached hope that a fight would break out. Still, Dan had always preferred violence in the real world—ghosts don't make that satisfying crunching noise when one smashes in their faces, after all.
No, it wasn't a fight. They were just bringing in new music. Good. The previous guy knew only a few songs, and even a great composition like "The Piano Man" began to wear after twenty-nine consecutive renditions.
The new band started up a mildly interesting song, one that Dan didn't think he'd heard before. It had an upbeat rhythm contrasted by a poignant melody. Dan turned back to the half-empty bottle and let his thoughts ramble whither they would while the music continued faintly in the background of his awareness.
Broadway is dark tonight
A little bit weaker than you used to be
Broadway is dark tonight
See the young man sitting
In the old man's bar
Waiting for his turn to die
You know, he thought as he took shot forty-four, it wasn't his fault he existed. He'd been thinking about this for a long time. If Clockwork hadn't screwed up the timestream by sending in that brat, Box Lunch, to test him all those years ago, he'd never have found the answers to the CAT; never have cheated in desperation; never have inadvertently caused the deaths of his friends and family. Although...maybe he would have existed anyway, and there was nothing he could have done to stop it. Shot forty-five. But wait—his younger self had stopped him, hadn't he? Shouldn't he be dead? Or whatever? Maybe he didn't exist after all. Maybe time didn't affect him anymore. Maybe he needed another drink.
The cowboy kills the rock star
And Friday night's gone too far
The dim light hides the years on all the faded girls
Life...what's so great about it anyway? He took another shot (forty-seven by now). You're born. You live. You die. No one gets out of it. Of course, he couldn't even have had a natural death; oh no, he had to go get himself half-killed, be unique. Not like it had helped him any. Not like anyone had noticed (shot forty-eight), not like anyone had cared enough to figure it out, that Danny Fenton and Danny Phantom were one and the effing same. Not like he'd been able to save anyone when it really mattered. Not like it had ever really mattered at all.
Forgotten but not gone
You drink it off your mind
You talk about the world like it's someplace that you've been
Shot forty-nine. Who loses their kith and kin to an explosive condiment, anyway? It would have been funny if it weren't so needy and sad. Come to think it, why had he bothered to try and save them? What had they ever done for him, besides nag and irritate with their silly joys and sorrows and tears and laughter and memories? Oh, that's right. That was back when the world wasn't meaningless and empty, deserving of obliteration. That was back when he still cared—could still care.
You see, you'd love to run home
But you know you ain't got one
And you're livin' in a world
That you're best forgotten around here
Caring. What a joke. He was glad to be shot of all that worthless crap. Emotions are for pansies. Maybe if he hadn't cared so much (shot fifty) about that damn test and his damn future, he wouldn't be sitting in a bar in the Ghost Zone, fully dead or maybe even nonexistent, while anyone even possibly worth caring about was gone.
Broadway is dark tonight
A little bit weaker than you used to be
Broadway is dark tonight
See the young man sitting
In the old man's bar
Waiting for his turn to die
Like Sam. He could admit it to himself now, what the hell did it matter anymore? He'd cared about her (shot fifty-one). He'd cared so much that it had torn apart what few shreds of a heart he had left when he'd first seen her alive again. But he'd refused to admit it. It was a matter of pride. If she (shot fifty-two)—if she'd cared back, she'd have stopped him from cheating, wouldn't she? She and Tucker, they could have made an effort to stop him from making the biggest damn mistake of his effing life.
You choke down all your anger
Forget your only son
You pray to statues when you sober up for fun
Shot fifty-three. Oh, hell, who was he trying to fool? They had cared, and he knew it. He knew it. It hadn't helped them though. Not when they'd been smeared all over the parking lot. In fact, (shot fifty-four), caring so much was part of the reason why he'd become so evil, such a blight on humanity. There was irony for you. If he hadn't felt the loss of the only people who mattered to him so keenly as to almost be a physical pain; if he hadn't been willing to tear his soul and humanity asunder just to make it stop, he'd have remorse left to feel for the thousands of lives he'd taken in the cold punishment he'd inflicted on the world that had dared to let him destroy himself.
Your anger don't impress me
The world slapped in your face
It always rains like hell on the losers day parade
Although, wasn't he feeling emotion right now? Bitterness, hurt, anger...wasn't he in his present state because he'd tried to divorce himself from those feelings in the first place? He threw back his fifty-fifth shot and considered this revelation. So...basically...in spite of his efforts to protect himself from those darkest of human emotions...he ended up with nothing left but the very feelings he'd tried to escape. Making him...a failure.
You see, you'd love to run home
But you know you ain't got one
'Cause you're livin' in a world that you're best forgotten
And when you're thinkin' you're a joke
And nobody's gonna listen
To the one small point
I know they been missin' round here
Dan wondered with a surprisingly detached attitude at why being a failure hadn't occurred to him before. Maybe he had subconsciously figured it out a long time ago (shot fifty-six). That might explain his hard-to-explain desire for violence. The screams of the doomed, the adrenaline rush of battle, the irrational pride in knowing that he could decide whether someone lived or died—they all just were distractions, really. Shot fifty-seven. Sometimes...in the quiet moments, when there was nothing left to break, to destroy, to inflict his own inner agony upon...he had sat amongst the rubble...and wondered why. Why he bothered. He wondered why, because, in the darkest depths of his ravaged soul, he knew—he could not deny the truth (shot fifty-eight)—eventually there would be nothing left. No one but himself. That was the one thing he feared. Because really...really, the real truth was that he hated himself.
Broadway is dark tonight
A little bit weaker than you used to be
Broadway is dark tonight
See the young man sitting
In the old man's bar
Waiting for his turn to die
Dan threw back shot number fifty-nine and regarded the bottle with a pained air, as if it were a child who had gravely disappointed him. So much for getting too hammered to remember his own name, much less his crappy life (the original plan); the drink seemed only to have thrown his inner turmoil into sharper focus. Fifty-nine shots. Terrible. He took a sixtieth for good measure.
You see, you'd love to run home
But you know you ain't got one
'Cause you're livin' in a world
That you're best forgotten
When you're thinkin' you're a joke
And nobody's gonna listen
To the one small point
I know they been missin' round here
The old barkeep came round to his corner and glanced at his quarter-filled bottle with what seemed a mixture of incredulity, resentment, and admiration. "You've a braver soul than I'll ever hope to have," Dionysus said, indicating the bottle. Dan shrugged, took his sixty-first shot, and darkly asked to no one in particular, "What soul?"
Broadway is dark tonight
A little bit weaker than you used to be
Broadway is dark tonight
"We're cleaning up now; I hope you don't mind," Dionysus gestured around the emptying tavern. Dan seemed to consider protest for a fraction of a moment, then drained the last shot glass, flipped a coin onto the counter, and strode for the door. Dionysus watched him leave as the last strains of the final chorus echoed plaintively after him as they faded.
See the young man sitting
In the old man's bar
Waiting for his turn to die...