This is kind of late, but it's also really long, compared to other chapters, so I think it evens out. I will not be posting tomorrow, and the next couple of weeks are going to be very sketchy as far as updating is concerned. I can't guarantee when I'll update at all, although hopefully I'll be posting more often than I will be during the school year.

MsFrizzle: Yeah, I was actually going to go in a different direction for the demonstration, but then I realized that it would be out of character for the shadows, and would probably just freak Maddie and Jack out, and make them angry at the shadows, so I changed my mind. I am curious, though, what did you think would happen?

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Chapter 51: the Time I Ended the World

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"You were serious about that," said Maddie.

"You think that I would lie about that? I was trying to get you to like Phantom. Or, well, not hate him any more." Danny curled farther into himself. "Not hate me." He fell silent.

"Danny, if you don't want to talk about this, we can wait, it can wait," said Maddie.

"No. I don't think it can. This'll just keep bothering you if I let it wait, and you'll never be sure after if I told you the truth or not, or just came up with an inventive lie. It's just hard. It's hard to know where to start." He buried his face in his knees, and ran both hands through his hair. This was difficult. Impossible. Because he would have to lie, or at least make some pretty glaring omissions. He couldn't tell them about Vlad being a hybrid. He had promised not to, as long as Vlad left his family more-or-less alone. Danny didn't break his promises. "Time travel makes things weird. Like, I don't know if there's really a real beginning."

"Start from what was the beginning for you," said Maddie, helpfully. "You said something earlier about the CAT?"

"The CAT," said Danny. "Yeah. Okay. Around that time, ghost attacks were really picking up, and I was under a lot of stress, because Jazz hadn't told me that she knew yet, and I hadn't figured out how to balance schoolwork and, you know, everything else."

Jack frowned. "This was just two years ago, wasn't it?"

"About that, yeah," said Danny.

"I don't remember any increase in ghost attacks around that time."

"You wouldn't. The actual number of ghost attacks per day is something like two or three times more than what you record, even now, and the rate always ticks up when the weather starts to get colder. I was kind of freaking out, and I was causing a lot more property damage than usual, because of how worn out I was. Then, I had to deal with the CAT, and I had no time to study, and the Boo-merang kept hitting me in the head, and you just, well. It wasn't just you. It was everyone. Jazz and Mr Lancer, and all the other teachers... I didn't want to disappoint you. Especially since I was disappointing you so much already with grades and staying out late and all."

"We didn't want you to feel that way, Danny, we just wanted you to have options, for the future," said Maddie.

Danny nodded. "Then, in the middle of all that mess, a ghost showed up, a new one, who I hadn't ever met before. She said that she was from the future, she was the daughter of two of my enemies, and she had come to kill me, because in the future I did something bad. Our fight wrecked the Nasty Burger. It was mostly my fault. I was focusing too much on beating Box Lunch, that was her name, and not on the, um, consequences of my actions and collateral damage. Mr Lancer was there with the answers to the CAT, and I found them in the wreckage after the fight.

"I- I honestly don't know if I would have used them. I think at that point, this time line, our time line, might have diverged from the other one, if things were left alone, but, like I said, time travel is weird. But I probably would have used them. I wouldn't have ever admitted to having them, regardless, so it doesn't really matter. I- I knew that using them would be wrong, but I didn't want to disappoint you, and I was doing so much. But then another ghost from the future showed up, and he was way stronger. Sam, Tucker, and I beat him, but it was a close thing." Danny fell quiet again, fiddling with a loose string on his jeans.

"Is that something that happens often?" asked Maddie. Danny smiled thinly.

"What, close things? More than I'd like, but most of the time no one is actually trying to end me, so it's less of a problem than you'd think. Um." The smile slid off his face. "Anyway, we knocked off the time medallion he was wearing, and we were all touching each other, so we all got transported to Long Now. That's, um, I still don't really understand how the time medallions work, but they have some of Clockwork's power in them, so if you're wearing them, you can use his temporal portals, and stuff." Danny rubbed his chest. He couldn't tell if the pulse of pain he felt was real, in the moment, or from memory. "But if you take it off, you either get sucked back to your own time, or to Long Now. Which is Clockwork's lair. Stuff happened, and we wound up going through one of Clockwork's temporal portals. Ten years in the future from then. I guess it would be about eight years from now, if it had happened. If it would happen? If it would've happened?" Danny shook his head. Now was not the time to get bogged down with tenses. "Anyway, we were there, then, and things were bad, and I got the impression that Amity was better off than most other places. We met Valerie, older Valerie, and she told me some of what had happened. Then He showed up. Sam and Tuck took off their medallions, and they went back to our time, thank the Ancients. I-" Danny shivered, hand pressed into his chest.

"'He?'" asked Jack.

"The one who destroyed everything. It was, it's my fault that He existed. That He exists." Danny took a deep, shuddering breath. "He called himself Dan. He was awful. He was a monster. I didn't stand a chance. But he didn't kill me, because if he did, then he wouldn't exist." Danny shivered again, shrinking.

"What did he do?" asked Jack.

"Wait," said Maddie, "he called himself Dan?"

"I'll tell you why. Just- Just give me a minute."

Mirror made a soft crooning sound, actually a word in a ghost language so old that its name was lost, and gave Danny a hug. The sound was picked up by Echo, who appeared on Danny's other side.

"Perhaps I should pick up from here?" asked Fractal, hands clasped. "I remember it as well as you."

Danny shook his head. "No. I've got to do this. He- Dan- He phased the time medallion into my chest and left it there, partially intangible and then- and then- um. I- I couldn't- couldn't take it out. S-So I couldn't come back. It hurt. It really, really hurt." He rubbed his chest. "Then he tied me up, and left me in the Ghost Zone." He paused. How much should he say? "Dan is- Dan was- Um." He set his head against his knees. "Fractal, help."

"Ghosts store memories differently than humans do. If two ghosts have similar enough ectosignatures, they can share memories via... a number of methods."

"I didn't know that until later, though. It didn't register. It, I- I- I was scared and hurt. He tied me up, and chucked me in the Ghost Zone a-and... It was bad. It was really, really bad. Even there, everyone hated me, wanted me dead. I..." He shivered again and hiccuped. "G-ghosts can... um..."

"Danny, breathe," said Echo. "Breathe, remember what Jazz says, in and out, slowly. Maybe Fractal should do this part? Or you should just go with what happened to you, instead of talking about that jerk?"

"Or I could guess what comes next?" suggested Maddie, gently. "You can just say yes or no."

"Okay," whispered Danny.

Maddie smiled, with difficulty, and patted Danny on the shoulder. It was as much contact as the shadows were going to allow at this point. "'Dan' was you," said Maddie, "or would be you."

Danny nodded, face still half hidden.

"Not exactly," said Fractal. "You really need to hear the rest of the story."

Maddie regarded the shadow coolly. "By 'not exactly' you mean that he was all Phantom? I'm not sure what you're trying to prove with this, but you aren't changing my mind."

"Yet again, you're wrong," said Echo, angrily, half-rising to loom over Maddie. (A feat accomplished more by sheer force of personality than anything else. Even with his boots, Echo was much smaller than Maddie.)

"Echo," said Danny, quietly, almost inaudibly. "Mom, you and Dad did some research a while ago, about whether or not ghosts could, um, combine."

Maddie nodded. "We'd seen some smaller ghosts eating one another," said Maddie, "but then we noticed that afterwards the surviving ghosts responded to stimulus similarly to how the eaten ghosts had."

"It's called a soul merge," said Fractal, "or a merger of souls."

"Th-that's what Dan is. B-But I'm doing this out of order, I think."

Mirror scoffed. "There is no 'in-order' when you're dealing with a paradox."

A small, shaky, smile crept onto Danny's face. "Right. I was able to get away, out of the Ghost Zone. Um. To a safe place. I went- I went and found Vlad, and he helped me."

"Of course he did! Good ol' Vladdy!" boomed Jack.

But Maddie frowned. "Why didn't you come to us?"

"I-I'm getting to that. Vlad, h-he told me what had happened, and I started to remember His memories. Some of them were from before he was... Him. I- In that time line, a different fight wrecked the Nasty Burger, and I still got the test answers, and I cheated. I cheated on the CAT. But, apparently, I suck at cheating, because I got caught, and Mr Lancer called you up for a parent teacher meeting." Danny paused for breath.

"I don't get it," said Jack, "what does a parent teacher meeting have to do with an evil ghost?"

"Well, Mr Lancer's a drama queen, so he had the meeting at the ruins of the Nasty Burger, and, um, Jazz came too, because, you know how Jazz is, and Sam and Tuck came for, like, moral support, but, ha ha, the Nasty Burger apparently uses napalm or something as one of the ingredients in its secret sauce, because the vat overheated and the whole thing exploded. You all died. So did a bunch of other people. Construction people and clean-up guys, and Mrs Bower."

"Who?" asked Maddie, feeling a little shocked.

"She's the attendant for the parking lot across the street. She got hit by some of the shrapnel. I was the only one there that lived." Danny laughed, without humor. "They said that it was a miracle. That I was lucky."

"It didn't feel like it," said Echo, sullenly. Mirror shuddered, and pressed closer to Danny, who pressed back.

"I blamed myself. It was my fault that the Nasty Burger was in ruins in the first place. I was the one who cheated. I was the one who was a freak. I was the one who hadn't saved you. If I blamed all of myself, it would probably have been fine. But I- I made the same mistake that you're making now. I blamed Phantom for everything." Danny sniffed. "Everything. I drove myself a little crazy, separating myself in my mind like that. Forcing all that blame onto the part of me that could least stand it, all because I couldn't face up to my own mistakes."

"There were other factors," added Fractal. "Both human and ghostly."

"But then I made the worst mistake of all. When you- When you had died, I went to go live with Vlad, because apparently, according to the government, Spitoon, Arkansas, isn't an appropriate place to raise a child. I told him about- about everything, and I- I asked him to help me remove my ghost half. Permanently. I didn't want the thing that had caused the death of my whole family, and both of my friends, and so many other people to be part of me anymore. I'm sorry."

"It didn't work?" asked Maddie, afraid to know the answer.

"No. It worked perfectly. This next bit is going to sound crazy. I was separated from myself, and I ran. I, Phantom, had screwed up, I had failed my obsession, so, so badly, that I didn't even want myself anymore, and you were gone, and everything hurt, and I was angry, with myself, and with Vlad, and I was scared. I couldn't face myself, knowing how much I was hated. While I was gone, I searched the Ghost Zone for you. I hoped that maybe you, or Jazz or Sam or Tucker had become ghosts. But I never found you, and I was destabilizing. After a while, I was just so lonely, that I went back. I was- I was hoping that I would take myself back, then, after so long alone, that I, the other me, would have that same emptiness. The same pain. Or at least, that the other me might forgive me before I faded. But- But I was too late. Remember what I told you about my body not functioning properly when split? I had died while I was gone." Danny swallowed. "Did- did you follow that?"

"No," said Jack, bluntly.

"The human part of you died in the other future," said Maddie. "You only have Phantom's memories of what happened."

"After the split, yeah," said Danny.

"Oh," said Jack. "That makes sense. Yeah."

"I sort of wrecked Vlad's place after that, more than I had on the way out, I- I hurt Vlad," said Danny. He shivered. "I was... really upset. Vlad had promised that he- that I- would be okay. I hadn't even been gone all that long."

"You're shivering a lot," said Mirror, suddenly. "Are you cold?"

"Maybe?" said Danny. Echo and Mirror exchanged glances.

"I'll be right back," said Mirror, fading into the shadows.

"What's he doing?" asked Maddie.

"Dunno. Getting a blanket, or something, I guess. I was completely insane at that point. Irrational. I was letting myself be driven by obsession, grief, and anger, which isn't a great combination. I had just seen my own body. My own self, my other half, dead. Sort of. Not that that's an excuse for what I did. I- You remember the Wisconsin Ghost, right?"

"Yes," said Maddie. Jack just nodded.

"Vlad had him. I let him loose. We fought. We've never been on equal footing. I wounded him, but he- he-"

"He ate you," said Maddie, faintly horrified.

"Mhm," said Danny, trying to breathe through his nose, and chase away the gray at the corners of his eyes.

"'Absorbed' or 'merged with' would be more accurate," said Fractal. "After that..." He shrugged. "Obsessions combine, change, warp. Utter insanity. There are parts of our obsessions that are similar, believe it or not, but others are so different, and our viewpoints, and our views on life, are so different, that insanity was inevitable. I think that part of him was still trying to do good, but with such a warped worldview-"

"No," said Danny sharply. "No, he's a monster, he's evil, there's no excuse for what he's done. For what he's tried to do."

"Danny," said Echo, gently, but Danny flinched away, keening. "Danny," said Echo again, reaching out to take Danny's face in his hands. "Look at me, Danny. Breathe. In and out. Maybe you want to rest now? Go to sleep? I can take you back."

"We can take it from here," said Fractal. "We remember what you do, we can explain."

"You've already done the important part," added Echo.

Danny shook his head. He had to see this through to the end.

"Don't push yourself," murmured Echo. "We're here for you, and even you don't have the whole story with your own eyes."

"What does that mean?" asked Maddie.

Danny drew in a deep, shuddering breath but his words caught in his throat.

"There are parts of the story that we don't know first hand," said Fractal. "You'll have to ask Jazz about them."

Mirror reappeared, blue eyes briefly flaring. He had a thick blanket tucked under one arm, and a huge, almost bowl-like, steaming mug cupped in his hands. He passed the mug off to Echo, and draped the blanket over Danny, tucking it carefully around him. Echo then pushed the mug into Danny's surprised hands, wrapping Danny's fingers securely around the base.

"At least you aren't running a fever anymore," Echo said, quietly.

"You were running a fever?" asked Maddie, worried.

Echo glared back at Maddie. "What do you care?"

"Echo," scolded Mirror, as Danny took a cautious sip of spiced hot chocolate. "Be nice."

"What you did to Danny wasn't without consequence," said Fractal, bitterness in his tone. "You made him relive his death, force open a portal, and then you leaned on his connection to us, to the lair, to make Echo. He's robust, but everyone has limits."

"We-"

"Shut up," said Echo, draping himself over Danny like another blanket. "They were weapons, you made them to be weapons and you used them on purpose, to hurt him."

"Echo," said Danny, holding the cup close. The blanket made him feel safer, somehow. Or maybe it was just the presence of the three shadows. "They didn't know. They're sorry." It was interesting, being around them. Danny didn't have to be anxious about the shadow's safety. It was nice, in a way. It wasn't the same as being with his friends, though.

"Not sorry enough," said Echo, sullenly.

"He had a fever before," said Fractal. "Now he's too cold. Normally he'd be able to cope with that, he copes with colder."

"On a regular basis," interjected Mirror.

"But he's depleted his resources," finished Fractal.

Mirror patted Danny softly. "Would you two like some hot chocolate, too? We make it New Tenochtitlan style."

"Sure!" said Jack, his deep voice sounding strained.

"No," said Maddie.

Mirror nodded and vanished again.

"I think I'm okay now," said Danny. He took another sip of hot chocolate. "So that's how He exists," he said. He shivered again despite the blanket. "Anyway, Vlad helped me. I was- I was a little worried, after all that, that he was going to kill me, because of what I had done. I would have deserved it," he said, his voice hollow. "But he helped me. He got the time medallion out of me, so I could come back. When I got back, He was there. I still don't know how he got back to that time, not in detail. He had you. All of you. He had you strapped to the boiler at the Nasty Burger. He was going to kill you. He thought that if he killed you, I'd go down the same path, and I'd become Him again." Danny lowered the cup. "He was wrong," he hissed, showing the razor points of his teeth. "I fought him. I used a lot of your inventions. You'd be shocked how many of them actually work. Or maybe not. I don't know. You got thrown off a lot by me and my weirdness. I won. I sucked him into a thermos."

"Well, that's good," said Jack. "Us Fentons, we're winners, right?"

"Not- Not really. Ever hear of a Pyrrhic victory?" Danny didn't wait for an answer. "I beat him, but I took too long, used too much power. The boiler blew up, and you died." Danny shuddered. "I saw you burn."

"But we're still here," said Jack confused.

"Mhm," said Danny. "That's when Clockwork showed up. He saved you. He exploited dozens of loopholes in the Observants' rules to roll back time. He even brought me back to before the CAT was over. He said he thought that I deserved a second chance. You know the rest after that, I went to Mr Lancer, and admitted to cheating, and stuff." Danny shrugged. "Jazz knows the rest. I don't really know what happened while he was here."

"Wait," said Jack, frowning deeply. "Where is this 'Dan' character now? He's not sitting on a shelf in a thermos, is he?"

"Ancients, no. Clockwork has him. Just a tip, if we wind up at Long Now before we get home, don't open anything." He took another sip of hot chocolate. He was feeling calmer now, sleepy. He had to wonder if Mirror had spiked the drink. "I owe Clockwork a lot."

"But didn't he create the problem to begin with?" asked Maddie.

Danny shook his head vigorously. "The Observants created the problem. They're mean and nasty. Clockwork helped me. Helped us. Helped you. More than once, too. You remember when Vlad and Sam and Tucker got ecto-acne? Clockwork let me look back at Vlad's portal accident. That's why I knew what the extra contaminant in the ectoplasm was."

"If he was really helping, couldn't he have stopped Vladdy's accident in the first place?" asked Jack, brow furrowed.

Danny blanched, going even paler than he already was. "No. Just, trust me on this, messing with time like that is not a good idea. Heck, with Him, what the Observants did, what they made Clockwork do, basically made sure that he would exist." Danny rubbed his chest. "Without them messing around, odds are that future would never have come to pass. Not that I'm making excuses for myself, much less Him. I made bad choices."

"What happened?" asked Maddie.

"Well, I didn't exist in that time line, and neither did Jazz, and you guys weren't married, so that kind of sucked. There was other bad stuff going on, too, but, for me that was kind of the main thing."

"Okay," said Maddie. She pinched the bridge of her nose. She was still frustrated, but her opposition to what Danny was saying, what he was trying to say, had softened. "Okay. Anything else we should know about?"

"I was cloned this one time."

"What?" said Maddie, still holding her head in her hand.

"It was Plasmius. Um," said Danny, recognizing the blank looks on his parents' faces. "The Wisconsin Ghost. Plasmius is his actual name. He cloned me. It didn't work out very well."

"For someone so smart, he makes a lot of stupid mistakes," said Fractal.

"Mistakes such as?" asked Maddie, now thoroughly distracted.

"Not expecting Ellie to find out what was going on and switch sides. I mean, like we said, ghosts with sufficiently similar ectosignatures can share memories, and for the Deathless, initial obsessions are inherited."

"Alright," said Maddie, clearly nursing a headache, now. "So this 'Ellie' is a copy of your ghost side?"

"She's a clone, not a copy," said Danny, "and she's a clone of all of me." He smiled lazily. He wondered how Danielle was doing. It had been a while since he had seen her. The last time had been fun. She'd had a growth spurt after being stabilized, and was now as tall as he was. They'd amused themselves by, among other things, dressing Ellie up as Danny, and seeing how many people they could get to do double takes. Danny wanted to see her again. But the smile vanished before his next words. "She almost melted once. It was scary. I thought I'd lost her." The hot chocolate was now cool enough that Danny could take small mouthfuls, instead of tiny sips.

"We'll have to talk about that more later," said Maddie, massaging her temples.

"Okay," said Danny, agreeably. He was feeling nice and sleepy, now. A bit warmer than he would like, but otherwise very comfortable.

Maddie sighed. "You've really been through a lot, haven't you?"

"I guess," said Danny, blinking sleepily.

"We haven't been very helpful, either."

"It's okay," mumbled Danny. "It's my fault."

"No, Danny," said Jack, cautiously stepping past Fractal, "it's ours. Can you forgive us, son?"

"Yes," said Danny. He was barely keeping the mug from tipping over. "Of course. Never blamed you." Echo caught the mug before it could tumble out of Danny's fingers. He set it carefully on the mossy floor while Danny watched with sleepy interest.

"Danny, are you alright?"

"Yeah," said Danny, blinking at his mother. His gentle smile faltered. "You still hate Phantom, though, don't you?" he asked sadly. "You still think that ghosts are bad."

Maddie bit her lip. He saw indecision flit over her features. "You really think that Clockwork helped you? That he didn't just cause the problem?"

"I know he helps me, and he's not the only one," said Danny. He adjusted the way he was sitting so that Echo took on most of his weight, and playfully extended his leg until his foot rested against his mother's knee. "Frostbite helps. Pandora helps. I get lots of help. There are lots of nice people here." He blinked sleepily.

Maddie's frown deepened. "Are you sure you're alright?"

"Hm," said Danny.

"He's fine," said Fractal. "As fine as he can be with core damage, anyway. We just put a little spectral poppy in his hot chocolate."

"Not fair," complained Danny.

"We could have leaned on the link to get you to go to sleep, but we don't know what effect that would have, what with all the other problems."

Danny wrapped the blanket closer. "Don't have problems."

"Don't worry, it isn't addictive," said Fractal.

At the same time, Echo said, "You need sleep, after all of this."

Then Mirror blinked back into view, another, slightly smaller mug in his hand. He offered it to Jack, who regarded it with extreme wariness. Danny giggled.

"There isn't any spectral poppy in this one," said Mirror.

"He's going to pass," said Maddie.

"Eh, I'll take it," said Jack.

Danny giggled again, and tapped Maddie's leg with his toes. Everything was much funnier when he was sleepy. He was glad that everyone was getting along. Well, they were getting along more than they had been, anyway. "Wanna hug," said Danny.

All eyes but Danny's (and possibly Fractal's, it was hard to tell where he was looking) went to Echo, who was still draped possessively over Danny. Echo glared at Jack and Maddie, as if daring them to ask him to move.

"Hug," complained Danny, urgently.

Maddie inched closer to Danny, and, ignoring Echo's death glare, put her arms around Danny. Jack, balancing the mug in one, huge, hand, followed shortly after, ignoring Echo's angry hiss. Fractal and Mirror settled down on Echo's side, moving carefully, slowly, so that Maddie and Jack didn't even notice them until they brushed up against their arms. Danny snuggled closer to his parents, humming happily. This is the way it was supposed to be. Everyone hugging, everyone happy. He was happy.

(He knew that things weren't quite so simple, that his parents hadn't quite decided whether or not ghosts in general, or Phantom in particular, could be good, but they were, at least, tolerating the shadows for Danny's sake, trusting him to keep them under control, but the fuzz of spectral poppy was casting everything in a rose gold light. Still. It was progress.)

He fell asleep.