OK, I admit, I'm a loser and I was reloading my email yesterday every 15 minutes in hopes of seeing a new review alert pop up. XD All your comments are so wonderful and inspiring!
It's so strange; this story is getting written everywhere. I've taken to carrying a pen and paper with me at all times because I keep coming up with random little bits of dialogue and plot points, and scribbling them on the nearest surface I can find. Not limited to textbooks, LiveJournal entries, course outlines, invoices, bedroom walls, and once in a while I manage to write them in my notebook, even. I've woken up spontaeneously at 5 a.m. to write out a piece of a scene that just popped into my head and would surely be gone by morning.
I'm beginning to think I'm starting to lose it. XD Haven't thrown myself into my writing in quite some time now.
In any case, thank you guys so much for keeping with me, and please enjoy chapter 6! This one is a little shorter than the last because I wanted to conclude on Danny's POV, and also quite frankly, five thousand words in a night like what I did yesterday is pushing it, even for me. XD
L'ange-Sans-Ailes - Thanks and take care!
enigmatic penguin - Don't worry, I'm extremely prone to only commenting on the most recently updated chapter of something, mostly because I'm in such a hurry to discover what'll happen next! Thanks so much for your compliments, I was indeed bursting with pride (ego x 10000!) after reading your pleasantly lengthy review, and it put me immediately in the mood to continue. If I can comfortably fit other characters into the story (though after this chapter you'll definitely be sure who my recurring ghost is) I probably will, if not then they'll be mentioned in Legends of Amity Park, when Sam and Danny do their detective work in the next chapter. Thanks for pointing out the typo, too; I'll fix that in the final edit!
mrit - You know I would be delighted to hear what you're speculating, because ya know, it just might fit nicely into the story. XD There are clues EVERYWHERE, but the one thing I haven't hinted at at all is a really big thing...I'm sure it's going to be totally unexpected. I hope I can find some way to forshadow it a bit before I hit the climactic chapter. ;
dArkliTe-sPirit - References all over the place! Unfortunately the tragedy is not the same as in TUE. ;) So far the only eps I've directly referenced or planned to are from My Brother's Keeper and Shades of Grey. I'm trying not to make references to episodes that heavily involve Sam, for obvious reasons (there's no DP on this Danny's jumpsuit, for instance!), though I've been throwing in stuff from miscellaeneous other eps, so who knows?
Epyon Zero - The "relive love with a new generation" idea actually crossed my mind at one point. I also considered making "Sam" the granddaughter of the original, when I was trying to plot out an ending to this. But in the end I just went with my first instinctive idea, which is...wait, I can't say. XD Harhar. Glad you like, though!
Ohka Breynekai - You're forgiven; I'm kinda throwing these all out at once here. :P I'm sure you can imagine how much sleep I've been getting (or should I say not getting). Thanks!
chocolatemercury - Three updates in three days, now. XD I realize the dates are a tad confusing, the reasoning is that I wanted to put a significant number of decades between Danny's time and Sam's (long enough to eliminate the witnesses, to be honest), but not put him so far back that he's in the technological Dark Ages. I wanted to portray Amity in Danny's time as old-fashioned, but not so much that I can't, uh, kill him off in the way I intend. ; In order to get that effect I had to push Sam forward by a few years, and so Sam's book was written in approximately 2015, and I haven't decided on a solid year for the story to take place in, but safe to say it's around the 2020s. Yes, I threw the flying car concept seen in The Ultimate Enemy's 2015 right out the window. I've messed with the canon enough already that hopefully no one will notice or care. XD
Kagome M.K. - I will indeed!
Soni - I don't mind a bit of impatience so long as you're enjoying the story! Hopefully I can keep on top of this updating schedule despite all my school stuff this week. ;
katiesparks - Danny's in such denial. But it's true! He really likes her, and he can't hide it, hee hee!
Arin Ross - Oops, too late, poor Sam. XD
Estrelas
Chapter 6
by Shimegami-chan
Sam glared sullenly at the table, turning a pencil over in her long fingers. She avoided the therapist's gaze by inspecting her freshly painted violet nails, three coats applied while trying to ease the long wait between reveille and firing squad.
"Why do you think I'm here, Samantha?" Penelope asked cheerfully. Her tone was so condescending that Sam had to resist the urge to lunge across the table and wrap her hands around the woman's throat.
"You're here because my parents think I'm insane," Sam muttered in reply.
"Oh no, hon, they're just trying to help you," Penelope insisted, assuming a pained expression. "Your poor mother is just so concerned."
"Yeah, imagine the social consequences of having a daughter in the mental," Sam shot back, causing Penelope's smile to falter slightly. Sam couldn't explain why the mere sight of the woman drove her to open hostility - she had barely spent two minutes in the therapist's company and already would have preferred a week with her stuck-up classmates back home.
"You're such an angry little girl," Penelope told her, as if she was five years old. "Why is that, Samantha? All these years of rage, this can't be healthy. Isn't that why you've been talking to your imaginary friends so much?"
"I don't have any imaginary friends," Sam retorted. "I just like to talk out loud, that's all."
"That's right...you said you didn't have any friends at all, isn't that true?"
That was not at all what Sam had meant, but if it moved Penelope away from the subject of her attic meetings, so be it. "Yes."
"You poor dear, you really are all alone in this world." The woman clucked her tongue. "I suppose maybe what your mother suggested to me was the best course of action after all."
"Do I even want to know?" Sam sighed.
"She thought maybe you and I could have one of these nice little sessions every week, until we have all your problems out in the open. Wouldn't that be lovely?"
No. "I don't have any problems."
"Of course you do. You'd hate for these troubles to keep coming up all your life, wouldn't you? Imagine being alone forever...imagine finishing high school with your dismal grades, and graduating only to live off your parents good fortune, without any friends or lovers. Imagine dying an old maid...maybe even in 'the mental', as you so eloquently put it. Is that what you want for your life, Samantha?"
"I wish you'd stop saying my name so often. You know it bothers me."
"Oh, I know." Penelope smiled gleefully. "You can't escape from all your problems, dear! People like me will always be around to try and set you right, so you ought to get used to it."
Sam looked away, her expression murderous.
"Anger, of course, is how humans best conceal despair," the woman told her matter-of-factly, looking down at Sam over the rims of her purple sunglasses. "You can't fool me. I know that inside you, there's a little girl who's crying out to be accepted and loved...who wants real friends, and to have a future with a boy you love, living in a beautiful house."
"You obviously don't know me at all," Sam said dryly, for Penelope seemed to be painting a very white-picket-fence kind of fantasy, which wasn't exactly Sam's style.
"Can you look me in the eye and tell me you're happy?" the therapist prodded gently.
Of course, Sam could not. For every falsehood that Penelope assumed, there was a truth lurking close by. She did want a successful career, and to follow her dreams to make a difference in the world. She did want to have true friends who'd be there when she was feeling down. And...
...and Sam's next thought was cut short as a slight chill swept throughout the kitchen, causing her to sit up straight, wide-eyed. There's a ghost in the room.
Danny? Or something else? Sam didn't know for sure. Worried, she put her palms on the table and stood up, locking gazes with the therapist. "Listen, I appreciate that you're trying to help me, but I don't need it. I told you last time to stop prying, and I'm not going to suddenly open up to you now. Please just leave - I'm not going to talk about this any more. I'm going to my room." Turning her back on Penelope, Sam left the kitchen and sprinted up the steps to the guest bedroom, slamming the door closed behind her. "...Danny?"
A moment later the cold sensation followed her in, confirming Sam's suspicions. He reformed by the dresser in a translucent but visible form, a fluctuating wisp in place of his lower body. "Are you all right? I sensed another ghost nearby..."
"Huh?" She blinked and sat down on the bed. "I haven't seen any ghosts until now."
He frowned. "But my ghost sense went off...some spirit was close to the house. I'm sorry, I didn't realize you had company, lucky thing I went down invisible..."
"No, don't worry about it." She waved away his apology. "I didn't want to talk to that woman anyway. She's the psychiatrist I told you about."
"Oh...I didn't think she'd be back."
"Neither did I." Sam grimaced." After the last time Grandma caught me in the attic, she told my parents that she was worried about me. My mother called Penelope and begged her to come back and talk to me again."
"So that's why you haven't come up to see me in the past few days." Danny frowned. "I'm really sorry about all this, Sam. I'm causing a lot of trouble for you."
"No big deal, just another thing on the list of stuff my parents would rather keep quiet," the Goth said airily.
"That's not really a good thing."
"No," she laughed, "but it isn't out of the ordinary. Besides, I don't really care what other people think about me. Penelope thinks I'm crazy. Who cares? As long as I know I'm not, what's it matter what she thinks?"
"I guess so..."
"Listen, though," she told him seriously. "You can't stay down here, or Grandma or someone else might hear you, and that'd be about seventeen more kinds of trouble. How about I meet you in the attic this evening, once she's asleep?"
"Okay," Danny agreed.
"I'll do some more reading from my book and bring it up with me. Maybe we can find something about you in there. All right?"
"Yeah." He paused and gave her a little wave, drifting up towards the ceiling. "See you tonight!"
"Wait," she instructed, extending a hand. "You're going up through there?"
"Sure. Do I look like the kind of guy who takes the stairs?" He gestured at his astral body with a devilish grin.
"Can you...make other people go through walls, too?" An idea lurked at the back of her head. How better to sneak out of the room unheard, and climb into the attic without the rickety creak of the hatch?
"You want me to fly you through the ceiling?"
"If you can."
"I can, yeah." She couldn't quite read his expression, but his mouth twitched as though he was trying not to smile. "What time shall I pick you up, milady?"
Sam's heart beat a little faster. "Ah, that is...how does midnight sound to you?"
"I'll be there on the hour." He bowed in mid-air and vanished through the ceiling, leaving her standing below with mouth open, slightly dazed. He was flirting with her...wasn't he?
I shouldn't even entertain the idea. Then again, who knows what rejection could do to a ghost? Sighing, Sam flopped down on her bed, staring up at the light fixture. She wondered how long he'd been in the kitchen with her and Penelope; what he'd heard. She was tempted to be angry at him for coming downstairs where there'd be more risk of blowing his cover, but he'd looked so concerned for her...
He sensed a ghost. She supposed that was some sort of thing ghosts did, identify each other by presence, or something. And yet there'd be no attack, no spook around save for him, and maybe the Box Ghost. Could that guy have escaped? Sam wasn't sure, but it seemed reasonable that Danny would have caught him again if he had. Maybe a spirit had been just floating by on its way elsewhere and caused Danny to panic. It was kind of sweet of the guy to rush down and check on her. She thought she might be blushing, but didn't want to check the mirror, just in case it was true.
In the late evening, Sam again retired to her room to do more reading on Legends of Amity Park, after a lonesome dinner of salad. Grandma Manson had gone to a card game with her friends, and had only recently returned, (predictably) opening Sam's door to check on her. At that point, the teenager was two hundred pages into the volume, and extremely sleepy. By the time the clock in the hallway struck twelve, Sam was completely unconscious, enjoying a dreamless sleep.
When Danny snuck a peek through the ceiling at 11:59 to see if she was ready, he found her curled up on top of the covers, one hand on the open book, the other trapped beneath her head, as though she had been propping herself up on one elbow, and only succumbed in sleep. Some ebony hair had fallen across her cheek, hiding her face from view.
If the phantom had a beating heart, it would have skipped from merely looking at Sam. Her features were more relaxed than in waking, and he took a moment to study her in the moonlight that spilled through the window, casting shadows from the trees across her still form. She really is so beautiful. I'm lucky to have met her.
It would have been nicer to meet her while I was alive.
Danny descended and touched down on the floor with two legs, absolutely silent, but still hesitant as he studied the girl on the bed. What would he do when she left? He had a feeling that he had been in such a situation before, though his foggy memory could not produce a specific example of such a thing happening. Did I know someone like her in my life? Or is it just that now that I know her, I don't want to lose her, like I lost...
Them. Who was "them?" It frustrated Danny to no end that he could not remember, now that he had a reason to. There was a faint recollection of old feelings and worries, but the memory was not just difficult to dredge up, it seemed to be gone. It seemed to Danny as though he had only existed for a few short years before this week - but of course that couldn't be true.
Pushing his concerns aside, Danny approached the bed and floated up above it, reaching out a hand to touch Sam's shoulder. He hesitated briefly here, not only afraid of how she might react to his cold touch, but hating to disturb her from her rest. Instead, he returned to the ground and turned solid, seating himself against the wall beside her bed, and waited there for his form to come to room temperature.
Sam slept on, and Danny watched her, smiling. She still reminds me of...something. Maybe what it was like to be human...if I ever really was.
He shook his head to himself. I had to have been human; all ghosts supposedly were. I just wish I could remember it...remember what's keeping me tied here. I don't understand why I didn't pass on...is there something I still need to do? Some task from my former life? He closed his brilliant eyes and just thought, trying to organize all the feelings and fleeting moments of memory he still possessed. There had to be something there...some recollection that could tell him why he still roamed the human plane, and what he had stayed behind for.
He withdrew into thought, then, losing a bit of the appearance of solidity, and remained there until well into the night.
-to be continued...