Is There Still

8

"Hey! I just had my hair trimmed!" Danny yelped as he ducked, one hand going to the newly singed white hair on his head. Then he ducked again, this time flying away from the school.

He vaguely saw his classmates pointing up at him, and he definitely heard Paulina's ecstatic squeals as Danny Phantom flew past. He tried not to grimace as he looked back for Sam and Tucker, hoping that Paulina didn't think the he was looking for her. No such luck, she was blowing him kisses as Danny remembered that Sam and Tucker both had detentions. Or Tucker had detention and Sam was skipping out, because that was definitely Sam and her combat boots breaking through the crowd to race after him as he fled, dodging Plasmius' repeated ectoblasts.

"Come now, little badger. Do you really think you can escape me?"

Danny let out a strangled gasp as he misjudged another ectoblast from Vlad, getting his arm singed in the process. He was in trouble. Oh he was in a world of trouble, and there was no way of getting out for it. The older halfa had never really tried to hurt him before, not like this, not like a cat toying with the mouse it's planning to eat. He needed Sam. He needed Tucker. Hell, at this point, Danny would even be grateful if Valerie or his parents showed up.

Dodging them was bound to be infinitely easier than dodging the deranged fruit loop.

There, there! The park, empty, no people to worry about getting hit by falling debris and flying ectoblasts. Or to see the halfa known as Danny Phantom flickering back and forth between ghost and human. That's what it was coming to, Danny was certain of it. Vlad wasn't going to hold back, he was going to make this his D-Day, his invasion of Normandy. He was out for blood, Danny's and—

"Oomph!" Danny gasped out in pain and the breath whooshed out of him as something drove into him from above.

He twisted just enough to take the statue in the fountain in the side, feeling stone crumble beneath the force of Skulker driving him down and jagged edges ripping into flash as Danny lost control of his power and flickered back to Danny Fenton for more than a few heartbeats. His left side burned where stone stabbed into it and Danny felt blood dripping sluggishly from half a dozen scrapes, more than a dozen tiny puncture wounds along it and his arm as he raised his uninjured right to try and force Skulker off of him.

And then Skulker was gone, taken down by Sam in an astonishing tackle that neither of them had been expecting. With a shake of his head, an absent wiping of blood from pale skin, Danny climbed to his feet and then shot up into the air, the familiar silver-white rings forming and leaving Danny Phantom in Fenton's place. He raised his fists, both glowing green, and began taking potshots back at Plasmius.

This is it, he thought dully as he let several ectoblasts loose so that they flattened into Vlad's shield, then tossed one that was actually carefully aimed that almost—but not quite—made it through the shield. If I can't stop him… But Danny couldn't bring himself to finish the thought, especially not when he was sure that this was really it.

"You can't protect yourself," Vlad drawled as he leveled a pink ectoblast at Danny, smiling wide when it took Danny in his stomach, making him go pale with the pain and drop through the air a few feet. "You can't protect your little friends."

"My friends can take care of themselves," he retorted, dusking another blast from the older halfa and wincing as the movement made his already injured body scream in protest. "At least I'm human, and not some crazed up fruit loop!"

Danny smirked as he saw Plasmius' face go still at the accusation and took advantage of the opening to send a ball of swirling energy at the other ghost, almost crowing in victory as it made it past Vlad's hastily erected shield to burst into his chest, sending him stumbling back in the air several feet, one hand clutching at the smoldering ruin of his clothes and the faint charring of ghostly skin beneath.

But that moment of pain and surprise was all Danny got before Vlad floated back up to even level with Danny and spread his arms wide, laughing. Just laughing, dark and without humor, sending chills down Danny's spine as he realized that he'd been right before, and that the faint hope he'd had of surviving this battle had only been him misleading himself.

"You don't really think that you are still human, do you, Daniel?" Vlad enunciated carefully, letting his tongue roll over Danny's given name like it was an epithet. He waved a hand at Danny, casual and careless, and the ectoblast rolled over Danny, impacting his chest and knocking him back down to the ground next to the already ruined fountain, concrete cracking beneath the weight of his fall but holding, still holding.

And then he was shouting in pain as he was driven from the air by an impenetrable force, a flash of black and white and—blue? "Of course he's human, you moron," a more than familiar voice shouted as Vlad dropped in the air, fighting to break his fall without hitting the ground as the eerie specter of Danny Fenton in black and white hazmat floated in front and above him.

"I, however," he continued, one hand lifted and blazing with a terrible bright blue flame, "Am not."

---

"Oh my gosh, Danny, are you alright?" Sam rattled out as she dropped to her knees next to his still form as he blinked up, dazed.

"Skulker?" he rasped out as he coughed, touching lips tinged green with ghostly blood. And then he yelped as Tucker popped up from behind him, waving a Fenton Thermos at Danny and grinning hugely. "You have detention! Actually, you both do."

Sam shrugged as she took the thermos from Tucker and gave it a hard shake, smiling darkly at the pained grunts Skulker gave from inside. "Do you really think I'm going to let you go up against Vlad alone, Danny?"

"Yeah, dude," Tucker chimed in. "Okay, so I was planning on staying in detention, but you—he—came and got me."

"He?" Danny repeated dumbly, then followed Tucker's raised arm to see the two figures flying and flashing around in the sky. Vlad, yes, and apparently taking a beating, and… Himself? Really, himself, in his Danny Phantom hazmat. Black hair, blue eyes, blue… fire? "He's me."

Sam nodded, eyes shuttered against any real emotion beyond the relief that Danny, her Danny, at least, was still alive.

"Did anyone see?" Danny asked frantically as he rounded to Tucker while climbing to his feet.

Tucker shook his head. "No, it's good. He stayed invisible. But just so you know, they think I was kidnapped by a ghost. They're probably going to pin it on you." He stopped and chuckled. "Well, at least this time it was you, even if that's only a technicality."

"I don't understand," he said weakly as he watched the his other self deliver an exceptionally painful looking punch to the other halfa's jaw, sending him flying into a stand of trees, one going down as the ghosts snapped it's thick trunk like a toothpick. The other Danny floated back over to where he and Sam and Tucker were standing, watching, confused and very nearly frightened.

"It's time to be ruthless," the other Danny said softly as he reached a hand up to finger a familiar medallion, a stylized C and W twined atop a gear.

"You're me?" Danny asked softly, eyes tearing away from the Time Medallion and staring into the burning, sparking flames of his other self's eyes.

He gave Danny a crooked smile and tugged the chain off, dropping the medallion into Danny's unsuspecting hand. "Not anymore. Don't waste this."

The other Danny began to fade out almost immediately and Danny ignored the gasps from either side of him. "I don't understand," Danny burst out as the rest of the other Danny began to wilt into dust motes, swirling around him as he closed his eyes. For a moment, Danny thought he heard someone say, But you will, from in the back of his head, and then he was dropping to his knees, stomach heaving and head aching as a hundred, a thousand, a million painful images raced through his head, making him retch into the grass.

Students staring, Sam and Tucker crying. We buried you yesterday. A distorted image—Danny Fenton in Danny Phantom's hazmat. Beloved son. Sam hugging him tightly, falling into a pile of broken concrete. Run. Blue flame dancing along his body, stealing Sam away to the edges of the atmosphere. Tucker, Jazz, Mom, Dad… And the pain. Oh, god, the pain that rippled through his body as he stared up into darkness.

Please, I love you.

Her lips, her hair, her body, her tears. I don't want you to be dead.

"Is there still a twist that I can take?" He didn't realize he'd said it out loud, still lost in the handful of memories he'd manage to pull from the maelstrom that threatened to tear him apart. But when Sam and Tucker pulled on his arms, yanked his face up and forced sick and wild blue eyes to focus, if only for a moment, Danny snapped back into reality, his reality, and gave a long shuddering sigh that he felt from the top of his skull to the very soles of his feet.

"Are you okay?" Tucker this time, and just as worried as Sam had been when Danny had hit before.

Another voice from the back of Danny's mind whispered to him, and Danny bared his teeth in a smile that was much more a growl than anything else. "Better. Much better." He stood, rotating a shoulder to ease the ache in it and looking around. "Where is he?"

"I'm right here."

Danny turned sharply, shoving Sam and Tucker behind him as silvery white flared at his waist to leave his ghost form behind and he narrowed eyes at Vlad Plasmius. And then startled wide again as he realized that Vlad was actually injured. Green ghost blood trickled from a cut across one cheek bone, his cape was torn halfway down the back, trailing in ragged flutters. One leg bore the telltale scorch marks of a serious burn, or at least a serious fire if there was no burned flesh beneath.

Danny chuckled loudly. "Back for me, old man?" he drawled dangerously.

"Oh no, little badger. You are not he. I don't know where you hid him, but I will have him. Once I'm done with you." A gloved fist raised, pink ectoenergy dancing across it as Vlad leveled it at Danny and let loose, smiling wide enough that his pointed incisors gleamed in the afternoon sun.

And with a look of pure venom Danny blinked green eyes closed and then open, a shield sliding across himself and his friends where they huddled at his back. A green shield, not a blue one, and Danny breathed a sigh of relief as he saw that, though there were flames dancing across his power, it was green, really green, and not the ice blue he had dreaded seeing.

Without a second though Danny stepped through the ghostly flames leaving Tucker and Sam safe beneath it and stalked towards Vlad, who wasn't looking as smug now as he had been before Danny had unleashed his new and improved shield. And to think, a terrible little voice in the back of his mind whispered. It's the least of what I'm going to do.

"You set me up," he said softly, the words low in his throat and bordering on a growl as fire lit up his fists. "You were going to kill me."

Danny broke off as fire licked its way up his arms to dance across his shoulders and spread up his neck and down his body, his eyes sparking out in brilliant green as he brought a fist back and let fly with a blow to Plasmius' chest that sent him skidding into the ground a dozen feet away. He stalked forward again, consciously letting the dome over his friends flicker and then burn out, knowing without a doubt that they weren't in any danger from Vlad anymore.

In fact, no one was in any danger except Vlad himself. Because death had taught Danny one very valuable lesson: how to be ruthless.

He stooped and tore Vlad's limp body up from the ground, hissing at the half lidded gaze, "You did kill me."

Another blow, this time a half formed ectoblast that sent Vlad flying into the air, arcing and falling less than five feet from Danny. He only stood there and watched as the other halfa struggled to pull himself together, to his feet, summon enough energy, any energy at all, trying to form a shield, or perhaps to disappear in a puff of pink smoke.

"Not this time, Vlad," Danny said softly as the other halfa turned to him with wide red eyes. Danny stretched a hand out to Vlad, letting a wave of energy wash over the older ghost and making him scream as it burned through him, draining what little power he had left away. Plasmius dropped to his knees before Danny, who only stared down in blank pity.

"You killed me," Danny whispered, his head aching as even more memories fought to surge forth as he said it. Dark laughter, fire in his side, falling. Always falling. The thick taste of coppery blood in his mouth, the dust of broken concrete on his lips. Sam lying across his chest, sobbing like her world had ended and begging him to not die, she needed him, she loved him.

The flames roared across Danny as he reached a sure hand out, pressed a finger to Vlad's forehead without a smile, without a frown, with nothing more than the sense of justice running through him. Glowing green fire spread down his arm and finger to eat across Vlad's face, into his hair and own his neck, his chest, his arms. Vlad screamed and flickered back to Masters after a moment as the ghostly fire ate into his skin, his bones, his very soul, seeking and destroying what Danny hated more than anything in the world.

More screaming, writhing, begging as Danny withdrew his finger, his hand, and stepped back toward his friends, silently willing the fire that burst along his own body to die down, dampen, and flicker out as he watched Vlad Masters writhe underneath a different set of flames. They did, he did, until the last faint trace of fire was gone and nothing but Vlad Masters was left behind, bewildered, in pain, and terrified as he realized that he couldn't turn ghost anymore.

"Go," Danny murmured as he turned his back on his once archenemy. "Go, and don't come back. Leave me and mine alone, my friends, my family, my town. Or I swear next time I'll finish what I started today."

He didn't bother to turn back as he heard the painful stumbling of the older man making his escape, only glancing around with dull green eyes to check for witnesses before letting go of his ghost energy and becoming Fenton once again. The pure relief to be able to do so was nearly overwhelming and Danny dragged his hands across his face, the warm flesh, the black hair that caught at his fingers and was left messier than when he had touched it.

The pulse that beat steadily, is a little slow, at his throat.

The deep breathes that filled his lungs.

The purely overwhelming sense of humanity his other self had missed without even knowing it.

He startled back at the gentle hand on his arm before his eyes shot open and he realized that it was only Sam, only Sam, his best friend, the girl he loved more than anything. She was pale, blood flecked her face, his blood, and Danny closed his eyes against the wave of memory that welled at that thought. Sam screaming, against a tree, Skulker, fire, falling—

Her hand slipped down to his, fingers threaded through and squeezed. A lifeline that Danny clung to it, eyes opening again, frightened and blue and wide as he stared at his two best friends.

"He was you?" Sam asked, frightened, tone hesitant and lavender eyes pained.

Danny nodded, unable to say it out loud as his heart clenched. It had been him, could have been him still. But it wasn't. He was still alive. He had a new set of memories, a new understanding of his powers, but he was alive, and he was him. Danny Fenton, the same boy he'd been when he'd woke up that morning. Very nearly.

Because that morning he couldn't remember what it felt like to die.

Danny flinched away from the hand Tucker carefully laid on his uninjured shoulder and then, with a gasp that was more than half sob, reached out to his two best friends, arms around their necks, face buried against two shoulders, and cried for what he had so nearly lost.