A/N: Another chapter mostly written on the fake beach. Discovery: I can't write romantic scenes with someone in the room, with a straight face. It's either dopey grin or unbridled embarrassment. Oops.
Sorry for taking so long with this one. I finished exams on Thursday, but on Friday my friends and I had an all-night all-episode DP marathon and didn't finish for sixteen and a half hours, and then I crashed, and then my friend came to visit from Ontario, and she'll be here until Sunday, and then Monday is my birthday...so I haven't had time, and I'll be short on time all week, but I'll try to keep updating as much as possible. There's no point in telling me 'we don't mind waiting,' because I mind waiting. ;)
Don't forget to check out Plantman.EXE's illustration of the final scene from chapter 7! You can find the link in my profile!
Epyon Zero - Selfish admission, twice, now. XD
L'ange-Sans-Ailes - Val's hatred carries over from canon - you'll notice that the book mentioned Axion Labs a few times, more specifically the time Cujo and "Inviso-Bill" trashed it!
Galateagirl - Good God, no! Read on for some DxS goodness!
chocolatemercury - So far, he's not, but 'Stephen' was almost named 'Vlad,' just for kicks. Then we considered the implications of such a thing...
RoseGirl from planet Pluto - So did I, but it's just so sad... :o
Ohka Breynekai - Yup, he did! Since that was unclear, I guess I'll fix that in the final edit!
HAlFa34 - Sorry, I can't promise no cliffhangers, haha!
animeobsessed3191 - Not a lot of time these days, sadly, but after graduation I will certainly be enjoying some vacation and writing/relaxation days!
Anasumi - Thanks again for your wonderfully large reviews! They're so well-thought-out and my ego just completely inflates. XD To answer a few questions, Danny's accident with the ghost portal took place when he was 14, and he stopped aging then, but it took a couple of years for him to figure out that something was wrong. At the time of the lake accident he was by all rights and purposes 17. Let me know if it wasn't clear enough, because I can definitely fix that in the final edit! As for Tucker, I haven't yet decided to include him (I hadn't even planned to include Valerie, the idea came into my head the same day chapter 13 was written, and within hours I had put her forward!), but in case I don't go into more detail I'll just let you know that yes, Tucker was aware of Danny, Tucker actually helped hide Danny between the time of his "death" and the time when the Fentons left Amity. Everything else about Tucker (both of them) I'll keep to myself for now just in case I do bring in more of his story!
mrit - You do not, of course, need a shout-out to know how much I appreciate your input, but here's one anyway! Beware!
Millions of thanks to Sparky the Wonder Weasel, Crossover Fiend, conan98002, Anomaly25, Jimmy the Gothic Egg, wandering star, dArkliTe-sPirit, SilverstarsEbonyskies, Kagome M.K, Frost Mage, Fanficaholic, The Adversary and HokiPoki1213 for reviewing the last chapter as well! Thank you guys so much, and I really hope you enjoy this one!
Ami-chan, Zippo, Epyon Zero and mrit, you deserve a medal for helping me relax and eventually focus. XD Playing with my hair certainly makes me write better. Even if it looked like it was making me fall asleep at the time. Love you all!
(Finally, thanks to Ed/Mega Man.EXE, if you ever read this, for patiently sitting by while I just spent two hours working on this chapter! Sorry to neglect you!)
Estrelas
Chapter 14
by Shimegami-chan
Instinctively Sam shifted in front of Danny, blocking him from Valerie's view - a split second too late, she already knew, swearing under her breath. Behind her, Danny also mumbled a curse and laid a hand on Sam's arm.
The dark-skinned woman's eyes were wide. "Danny Fenton? But that's impossible! Jasmine...what's going on?"
Jazz shut the door behind the newcomer and hurried back to the couch to intercept her before she reached the half-ghost. "Actually, Val, this is my...nephew. He's visiting for the summer."
Sam heard Danny breathe deeply once before he pulled away his hand and stepped out from behind her. "Hi there."
"Nephew." Valerie stopped a few metres short of the raven-haired boy. "What? Uh, hi..?"
"You must be Valerie," he said brightly, extending his arm, palm up. "I'm...William."
"William," Valerie repeated, looking slightly dazed. She shook his outstretched hand, peering at him over the rims of her glasses. "I'm sorry, I thought..."
"They say I look a lot like my uncle," Danny said with a brilliant smile. Sam noticed with surprise that his irises had shifted back to that familiar green. The sight of Phantom's intense eyes hidden beneath the human Danny's black bangs was striking and a little alarming to her - she supposed that their colour was one of the ghostly qualities he controlled. Probably.
"Wait a minute...nephew?" Val rounded on Jazz before either teenager could blink. "How's that possible?"
Danny glanced at Sam and raised an eyebrow. Jazz put one outstretched finger against her cheek and cupped her elbow in the palm of her other hand. "Well, hmm, you know my little brother Stephen, right?"
"What? No..." Val looked incredulous. "You have a little brother named Stephen? You had two brothers?"
"Oh, I thought you knew," Jazz replied airily. "Then again, I don't really know if you kept in touch with my parents after they moved out West, did you...?"
Valerie just stared at her.
"I guess that's a 'no.'" Jazz's smile seemed genuinely apologetic.
"This is Sam," Danny added, capturing the Goth's hand in his. Warmth shot through her, and she fought back a blush. She tried to do the math in her head to support Jazz's story, but she found she couldn't concentrate on dates and generations when his fingers were so tightly wrapped around hers.
"It's a pleasure," Valerie said, still looking disbelieving. "I'm sorry, Jasmine, I didn't mean to barge in. I just thought you might want to know what I heard. Inviso-Bill was on the news just a moment ago--Penelope called me--"
Something in Jazz's eyes hardened. "Ah...I'd heard."
"Are you going to talk to him?" Valerie asked, sounding nervous.
"Well..." It was obvious to Sam that Jazz was trying to avoid looking at Danny. "I guess I have to. I thought he'd, ah, crossed over. Are you going after him?"
"I'm retired," the other woman replied. "I've had enough of ghost hunting for two lifetimes."
Sam could almost sense the relief that washed over Danny, and she breathed a little easier when his hand began to relax. It came as kind of a surprise that this poor woman's presence made him so tense. He shot her a reassuring look, blinking twice with a slight smile on his lips. They weren't out of hot water yet, but the ex-ghost-hunter had bought the nephew story and seemed uninterested in stirring up trouble for Danny.
"I did say I'd try to communicate with Inviso-Bill if he showed back up," Jazz said in Valerie's direction, but more for Danny's benefit than hers. "William, maybe you should take Sam home while I go and deal with this."
"Sure," Danny said easily.
"And I don't want you getting into any trouble while I'm gone." She gave him a Significant Look. "I need to talk to you about something important as soon as I get back. Really important. So you'd better come back."
Danny didn't miss the message - it might as well have been a billboard. "Okay, okay, I got it. I'll be good." He smiled confidently at Valerie and, still holding Sam's hand tightly, led her around the couch and out to the porch. "See you later, Auntie Jazz."
Jazz, covering her worry with admirable skill, just waved and offered them what could only hope looked like a maternal smile. "Have fun."
"Yeah, we completely need to talk about something important as soon as I get back...something called 'Stephen,'" Danny grumbled as soon as he was out of the house, shoving his free hand in his jeans pocket. His eyes flared disturbingly before turning blue once more.
"It's not that bad a name," Sam comforted without really knowing what he meant.
"As long as it's not true." He looked away from her. "Another brother? How could that be possible?"
"Well, when a man and a woman love each other very much...you ought to have learned about it in school, even if that was back in the fifties."
Danny's face turned purple. "Sam," he warned reproachfully, but she noticed he made no effort to let go of her hand. "... Besides, it was the sixties."
"Ah." She couldn't stop herself from laughing. "Anyway, if you really did have a brother, I'm sure someone would have told you previous to this. Jazz would have mentioned it."
"I just get worried when she lies so quickly and so well," he sulked.
"As I understand, she's had to do a lot of covering up."
Mollified, he nodded, walking a little slower and running one hand through his ink-black hair. "I guess you're right."
"Danny, you never finished the story," she said a few moments later, noticing his thoughtful frown. "Why did you leave Jazz and move back into the attic?"
"Ah." He tensed slightly. "That's kind of complicated too...and it has to do with Spectra, so you might not want to hear it."
She scowled. "Oh, I do."
He sighed again, long and deep. "Well...by the time I met her, most of the ghosts in town were pretty contained. The Fenton Portal was closed ninety-nine percent of the time, and generally the ghosts that were coming through it either didn't know about me, or hadn't learned their lesson yet. Spectra fell into the second category.
"I was living with Jazz by then, after things had calmed down around here. I hate to say it, but without my parents to leave the Portal open all the time, the ghost problem wasn't nearly as bad. Sometimes something would force its way through, or a new ghost would come into existence out in the real world instead of in the Ghost Zone, but in general hardly anything happened anymore. I'd kind of come to terms with the whole...eternity...thing." He frowned. "Only thing was, that, I think I was kind of losing my grip on my humanity back then. I hardly ever came out of ghost mode; it was so easy to stay in and not have to eat, not have to sleep, but to just hang there in the balance. And occasionally zone out so much that I'd realize a year or two had passed in between."
Sam tightened her grip slightly. "Then why aren't you a ghost right now? Why are you still in human form?"
He hesitated. "I don't really know if I want to go back to that just yet."
"I don't understand."
"Humanity..." he trailed off, tilting his head up slightly. "I never believed that I was any less human after the accident. Just that I could change my body, I never thought there was any change to my mind. Maybe there wasn't anything at all, or it was just my imagination...I don't know if it was the degeneration, or just an effect of spending years and years in ghost mode without turning back. Somewhere along the way I started to care a lot less about what was happening to anyone but myself and Jazz."
"I think I understand." She didn't, completely, but her smile was reassuring.
"I think I was just steeling myself for the inevitable," he continued quietly. "I knew Jazz couldn't live forever. I thought about just letting some ghost destroy me completely, if they could, so I could go first. But I chickened out. And then Spectra showed up."
"When was this?"
"Fourteen years ago," he admitted quietly. "2006. She was posing as a school therapist at Amity Park High, my alma mater. It was Casper's centennial Spirit Week, so they made a huge deal of it, and because of who Jazz is - besides pretty much founding the paranormal psychology field, she had the highest scores in the history of the CAT, and was valedictorian of her class - she was asked to come in during Spirit Week and give a speech. She wanted me to go and see her."
Danny frowned, and Sam could tell from his expression, however guarded, that thinking about it upset him. "Spectra had been sucking the energy out of the kids ever since she arrived, and when it came time for the ceremony, there was no spirit at all left in them. They were completely out of it. Her plan was to kill Jazz in front of the whole school, so that they'd be so depressed, she could feast on the negativity."
Sam put her hands to her mouth. "Oh, God."
Grimly, Danny continued. "I was in the back of the auditorium; I guess far enough that my ghost sense didn't catch her or Bertrand. And I almost didn't notice the huge lasers trained right on the podium where Jazz was speaking, until a split second before they were activated and took the stage right out from under her. The force of it hit Jazz just before I got there, and we flew back and hit the wall after I turned tangible again." A pause. "I wasn't thinking," he then confessed. "Spectra was watching the whole thing, and when I'd helped Jazz up she was already screaming that I'd tried to push their honoured guest into the blast. Never mind the fact that her assistant set up the whole stage. But I lost it, and I grabbed Jazz and went straight back to the house and stayed human for days. I was so furious that I didn't even stop to figure out who the real culprit was.
"Jazz, of course, had the police knocking on her door not half an hour later, and had to cover for me while I sat on the roof, invisible and sulking. It was just like it is now - all over the news that the evil Inviso-Bill had orchestrated a terrible attack on Amity's most precious VIP. Worse, Valerie had investigated the attack, because she'd just published the first edition of her book, and she ended up getting Spectra's side of the story, and got pretty cozy with the spook. You'd think Val of all people would have a sixth sense for ghosts by now." He sighed. "Jazz told people that I'd saved her, but Spectra was still controlling the school until Jazz finally figured her out and convinced me to go ghost and take care of the problem. After that, I--" he faltered. "Well...that taste of my human emotions was a nasty wake-up call after years of being just Phantom. All of a sudden the danger of losing Jazz was really real, not just from Spectra and the other ghosts anymore because she was in the Ghost Zone, but just from anything. She was fifty-nine years old then, and retired, and she didn't deserve what I was putting her through. All that time she'd wasted on analyzing me, trying to find some kind of a cure or a Fenton mechanism that could either take away my ghost half or at least restore my aging, was a complete waste, 'cause at fifty-seven, I still looked fourteen. The only thing that ever changed was my weight, and even that stopped when I didn't need to eat anymore."
"She never found anything at all?"
"I never gave her the chance," he said quietly. "I was only making her worry, and I was so selfish, Sam, once I had all those feelings bombarding me, all that fear I'd pushed away, I didn't want to see her get any older or cry over the family photos from when I was alive. I hated seeing my own picture on the television, being blamed for almost causing her death. So one day, I wrote a note to thank her for everything she'd done, and I left."
"Back to the attic?" Sam asked, her fingers tightening around his.
"Yeah. Jazz already didn't have access to the lab, because my parents had removed the door and sealed the entry with concrete. The only people who could get in were ones who could go right through walls - just me, essentially. I hid out there for a while, and then moved back into the attic. She found her way in sometimes; either with her real credentials or by slipping in the bathroom window, but I always hid, or was in one of my withdrawals. All the sensor equipment was locked away in the lab, so I guess she never knew for sure if I was ever there. Eventually, she stopped coming."
Sam's heart almost broke for Danny's sister. She couldn't quite wrap her mind around how someone could so easily leave behind those they loved, especially knowing how much hurt it had to have caused Jazz. She tried to hide her frown, but Danny could sense it without even looking at her. "I know it was terrible of me, Sam, and I wish I hadn't. I'm sure holding back my feelings was what caused the degeneration to start not so long after, and the worst part of it is, I felt so much better after I'd forgotten it all. It wasn't until I turned human again that I remembered why I'd let myself forget. Then, it was even worse, because I knew I'd put Jazz through something terrible, and I couldn't stand by while she cried over my memorial again."
He fell silent, and Sam knew he wanted to say more, but was waiting for her reaction. Instead of recoiling, though, her first instinct, she clasped her other hand around the one that already held his. "Danny...I'm so sorry."
"Why?" he asked, confused.
Biting her lip, the black-haired girl avoided his intense stare. "You're saying you've been selfish, but don't you have the right to feel too? I can't imagine having to watch all of your friends and family die one at a time."
He smiled sadly. "I'd like to think that Jazz understands too, but I guess I can see why she wanted me to stay. She still thought she could help…and even if she couldn't, why couldn't I have been someplace where she would have known I was okay, right? I'm sure that was what she was thinking. But once I'd made the decision, I think I already started down the path of pushing those memories away." His voice broke. "Don't you see? I gave myself over to the degeneration. I wanted it."
"And now?" she asked quietly.
He flinched as if she'd slapped him. "Now I'm sorry. Now I wish I'd stayed. Before she even knew I was standing there, I wished I could take back the past fifteen years, because no matter how hard you try, regret isn't an emotion that can be switched off. And Jazz…I knew I wasn't going to stop missing her, or vice versa, so I really just brought it on myself." He paused. "And I hope you're not agreeing just to make me feel better."
Sam scowled, tightening her trip. "I can't believe you'd say that," she shot back. Even if there's a grain of truth in it. "Of course I don't think you should have left Jazz...not when she obviously wanted you there, and was concerned for you."
"Oh, good," he said, sounding relieved.
"But," she added gently. "I do think I understand what it's like to be overwhelmed like that. I understand that you just wanted to run away from the pain before it hit."
"Then you understand why I shouldn't get any more involved with you than this," Danny whispered, looking down at her trembling fingers. "Why I told you to stay away from me. Maybe something good could have come from it with time, but it'd end in heartbreak for us both."
"Go ghost," she told him suddenly, causing their slow steps to halt.
His azure gaze caught hers. "Why?"
"Just do it."
Expressionless, he activated his power, the crackling energy passing over her hands like a jolt of electricity. Sam felt the cold, ghostly feeling reverberate right through her body, chilling her to the core. Danny smiled expectantly at her then, but it was sad, defeated smile. "And now?"
"And now what do you think?" she asked, refusing to be the first to look away. "Are you emotionless? Do you wish you'd never met me?"
"Of course not!" he said, shocked by her bluntness.
"Then," she urged gently, "tell me what you feel now. Tell me if that ghost half really does have some humanity in it."
Looking pained and revealing his thoughts with just that act, he disentangled his hands and laid them on her shoulders. "It doesn't. He's just as dead as everyone in this town thinks he is."
She smiled despite herself. "You're lying."
"I'm not."
"You are. I can see it in your eyes."
"I'm not lying."
"So that kiss meant nothing to you."
She studied his face until it broke. "It did," he whispered. "And you do. But I can't do it, Sam. "
Shaking her head, she took advantage of his slumped posture to move close, placing one hand on his chest. He tried to shrink away, but suddenly one hand had caught the fabric of his jumpsuit and the other was on his face, touching it gently, just as he'd laid fingers against her cheek the night before. "Why not?"
He was cold to her, and not unpleasantly so, but to him she was like a white-hot star. Danny tried not to give into his temptation to throw aside his resolve and let himself fall for her. "Because you don't deserve to go through that," he finally whispered, miserably.
Sam shook her head and leaned forward to press her lips to his, not caring who might see her kissing the ghost boy right out in the open. "So why can't I stop myself from wanting it…?"
-to be continued…