Is There Still
10
"Right on time, Danny," Clockwork said from where he floated by his time portal.
"You knew I would be." Danny's stomach twisted painfully as the words echoed in his head and another set of memories welled up even as he tried to cut them off. He smiled faintly through the nausea. "You know why I'm here."
"We've had this conversation before, have we not?" The ancient time spirit was smiling, and Danny nodded. "You're looking for answers, Danny. Just like we both knew you would."
"It really happened?" The whisper was small and soft and pained in the spaces of silence between the movements of the tower's gears.
"You know it."
Danny closed his eyes, turning away and letting the ghost energy go. He looked at his hands held in front of him as he resolved into human and clenched his fists, then opened them again as he watched, knowing that the last time he had spoken with Clockwork he had been dead. "I… I hoped it wasn't."
"Hope. A powerful motivator," Clockwork said as he floated closer to Danny and laid a cold hand on his shoulder. "Possibly the most powerful; lesser emotions like fear and anger have nothing on it. You have a new future, Danny. you should embrace it with all of your hope."
"It was inevitable?" Another chuckle from Danny as he looked up at Clockwork, a wry grin creasing his face.
"My boy, you have a gift for irony. You already know what happened in that time and place, you have those answers. Perhaps now you'd like to ask the questions that you could not before?" Danny shivered as power washed over as Clockwork shifted into infant and the other ghost pulled his hand away. "And there is your first answer; you will always be more sensitive to the ghostly energies that surround you, and every other ghost that exists."
"Why?" Danny asked. "Why did it have to be like that?"
"Because some things, Daniel," and Danny bit back the annoyance as Clockwork used his given name, making him think of another ghost, another day, another time, "Can only be learned in the most painful and difficult ways possible."
Danny looked up at Clockwork, then sank down to the ground, knees suddenly weak as he understood. He understood what the other him couldn't. "Was it that much worse?" he asked, understanding flickering through blue eyes and leaving them pained.
"Yes," the Time Master said steadily as his form rippled and shifted to ancient and stooped.
"I… I don't understand."
This time Clockwork wasn't amused, or even close, because this time he knew the halfa had no way of understanding. There was no way that he could ever comprehend how losing his humanity and becoming a full ghost on his own could make him so much more terrible than when he had merged with the twisted evil of Vlad Plasmius. Danny Fenton had no true knowledge of the concept of revenge.
Danny Phantom, however, without a human half to contain the ghostly urges, obsessions, had. And it had been terrible to behold.
"What drives Vlad, Danny?" The startled look on the boy's face was entertaining, but the confusion that followed was better. "Obsession, my boy. What is—was—Vlad's obsession?"
Danny shrugged and climbed back to his feet, pacing toward the time portal and watching fascinated as butterflies flitted through it, dancing in the air above several brightly colored flowers. "He's insane. There's no basis."
"Think," Clockwork ordered.
"He wanted my mother. He was obsessed with her, did everything in his power to get her, just like he'd bought every other thing he ever wanted. "Except the Packers," and Danny smirked. "He can't buy them. he can't buy my mother. He can't buy me." There was a full halt to his words as they caught up with his brain and his thoughts made sense, and Danny turned to Clockwork.
"Vlad's obsession is possessing the things he wants, and can't have."
"Very good. Do you understand why I asked you now?" Clockwork waited expectantly, knowing that the boy's logic would follow. He rally needed to use his mind more; it was a terrible shame to waste the gifts he had beyond his ghost powers.
"You want me to figure out what my obsession is." There was uncertainty, and Clockwork nodded, smiling in approval.
The thought of having an obsession frightened Danny. It was something he'd always associated with full ghosts, nothing that he'd have considered having himself. He truly, honestly didn't see himself as an obsessive person. Lazy, maybe. Well, without a doubt. He was male and a teenager; it was a genetic legacy passed down since the dawn of time, a biological imperative that he be a sloth until well beyond puberty.
But obsessed?
He fought ghosts, and yet he didn't like it. There were no perks, no benefits, nothing directly related to himself that made it worthwhile. But beneath the surface thought, there were others. He fought to protect. His home? In a sense, yes. But that didn't explain it all, because he had fought battles when his home, his town, weren't involved.
His friends, his family, then. The people he loved, cared about, relied on. But that still didn't quite fit in Danny's mind as he thought on it, pacing as he did. Yes, there was always the knowledge in the back of his head that he was trying to keep his parents, his sister, his best friends safe. Sam. Always, always Sam. But there were times when they would be just as safe without him fighting.
He needed to change his view, Danny realized, thinking back to something he had learned years before from Sam. Ever the artist, she had once tried to teach him to draw. However you first hold the pencil, change your grip a little so that you focus on how you're holding it. He needed to step back, change how he saw, focus on how he saw it, and not what he saw.
The picture his memories painted fro him was a disquieting one.
"Jazz is always telling me that I have a hero complex. Sam and Tucker have agreed with her for ages," he said quietly to Clockwork, eyes glued on the portal and the current visage of a forest, beneath moonlight, and snow falling. No part of the world that Danny knew, and he let it soothe his thoughts. "Can a hero complex be called an obsession, Clockwork?"
"Perhaps it would be better to say that you are obsessed with justice." Clockwork smiled at Danny, though he knew it couldn't be seen. "Your humanity instilled a higher sense of morality in you than Vlad's did. But then, he was already well into his fall when your father flipped the switch that day."
Danny turned to Clockwork with an amused smile. "So I'm like Spider Man?"
Clockwork did laugh, even as he had known the comment was coming. "Better to say that for this application of obsession, it had a positive basis grounded in love, trust, and a general sense of positive self image." The laughter let his face and his voice grew grave. "Now take those things away, Danny, and tell me what you have left."
"Nothing," Danny said flatly, his voice hard and hurting.
"Now picture this, knowing what you know, and the things you have just learned." Clockwork stopped for a moment, carefully going over what he was allowed to say, and what he was bound by the strictures of time not to tell. Better that Danny never know that he had driven Samantha to suicide, that his lack of humanity had cost him the affections of his remaining friend and family.
The very nature of a ghost was alien enough to mortals that to have a loved one suddenly reappear as one, no matter how understanding they are, the changes would be too great to accept. And now he had to tell Danny this without telling him exactly what had happened. A difficult task, but he had had time to choose his words.
"Without humanity, there were changes."
Danny nodded. "Tucker was telling me about it then. Sam said I was acting like a poltergeist."
"Do you think that these changes would have stopped? That you could have tried to act human?" Danny shook his head and Clockwork nodded. "And as time passed, and your friends and family had lives of their own, lives that you could not be involved in, and you, Danny, never changing, never aging."
"I lost it, didn't I?" he asked quietly.
"It could be argued that you never had it in the first place, given the mental conditioning you receive at home. But yes," Clockwork said gently, attempting to soften the words with humor. "You tried to stop it, to avoid it. But in the end, without what makes you human, you didn't have the power to stop it."
It still hit Danny like the blow of a sledgehammer, sending him mentally reeling as he remembered all of the things he had done in a different dark future. That had been bad enough on its own, he had killed. Thousands, millions. Almost an entire world. Maimed ghosts, destroyed the Ghost Zone and the human world, and taken out his pain and anger on the unsuspecting populace of Amity Park, wreaking undeniable havoc when he finally had broken through the shield Valerie and her father had designed.
"I need to see it." The words were like mist hanging between Danny and Clockwork, and the sick desperation in them echoed. "I need to see what I did."
"You needn't be so stubborn; the world will not end if you don't see something that no longer will happen." A futile effort, he already knew, but the desire to try and save Danny the pain he was about to put himself through overruled Clockwork's innate knowledge of past, present and future.
"I need to, Clockwork."
"I know."
It was dark in the time portal as Clockwork pointed his time staff at it, and then a twist of it made the portal come to life, only this time it was no Dan Phantom laying waste to the town of Amity Park. In fact, it wasn't the town itself bearing the brunt of the wrath. It was the people themselves, and an absolutely merciless Danny Fenton in black and white hazmat wielding his ghost powers to their fullest extent.
Danny's jaw clenched as he saw himself, or rather the self who had died, standing amidst cowed people, some who he knew, and Danny's stomach twisted to see that it couldn't have been too very far in the future. He could easily recognize the limp form of Dash Baxter, who looked like a bloody red painted statue. Paulina was there, her face in tatters that dripped blood thickly, but alive and screaming.
No Tucker, no family, but more people that he didn't know except from a distance or not at all. Some bleeding, some broken. Most dead, hideous corpses as the Danny-that-was, the Danny-that-could-have-been, walked through them. Calmly, casually, like it was no more than a stroll through Amity's park for him, and Danny closed his eyes against it, imagining that he could smell the thick salty tang of spilt blood, the death and desecration he had inflicted on his home.
And Sam.
Danny's eyes snapped open as he heard her pleading, begging him not to. Whatever it was, he couldn't be sure because his back was still to the portal. But it couldn't be good, he realized, because Sam, his Sam, who was always so strong and brave, was cowering against a wall with her face buried in her hands as she cried. And still she begged making Danny's heart bleed with the anguished pleas.
And then he saw, the Danny-that-was turned and seemed to stare straight into the time portal, and Danny's world dropped away as he saw himself, but not himself. Still black hair, still blue eyes, skin barely tinged with death, if you could see skin underneath the blood that candy coated his face, his neck, his entire body. It was matted into his hair, and Danny fought back the urge to drop to his knees and retch as the Danny-that-was snapped a hand out to where he couldn't see and dragged someone Danny knew, someone he knew, into frame.
And then casually snapped Lancer's neck with enough force that his head was nearly ripped from his body, spraying blood, more blood, fresh, dripping and red blood, across his face.
Danny lost the battle when the other Danny flicked a tongue out to lick the crimson liquid as it dripped, sighing in pleasure at the taste. "Enough," he gasped as he wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, vividly recalling what his own blood had tasted like in his mouth, and gagged once again as the thick coppery flavor flooded up inside his memory.
He could feel the air growing thick around him and his eyes shot open as he realized that it wasn't the air itself, it was the wall of flame that had built up around him as his control slipped, as the horror and helpless rage at himself built inside of him. No, he told himself, eyes blind to everything but green fire. Not here. Not now. Not in this life.
A scream rent through the fire to him, and he closed his eyes against the pain and anguish of it, knowing it for Sam's voice. "No more!" he screamed, collapsing over his knees, face buried and hands over his ears trying to block the sounds out.
The fire abruptly died as Clockwork watched, knowing that the hard lesson had been learned as clear blue eyes glowed green and Danny stared up at him. "No more," he whispered. "When I die, if I don't move on, kill me, trap me. Just never let that happen. Please."
The time master nodded once, short and sharp. The pain, the doubt, they were all he had to keep the power inside Danny in check, and as much as he hated inflicting it upon the young halfa, he knew it was the only way. "It shall be as you ask."
He was cheating. He was manipulating. He was doing it all over again, reassigning the boy's destiny without so much as a second opinion. The doubts that Clockwork felt as he looked past Danny and to the time portal that suddenly glowed brilliantly, silver and gray, and the myriad multitude of possible futures that sent Amity Park, and eventually the world, into a hell worse than anything Dan Phantom could have inflicted, began to fade in the swirling mists.
Clockwork closed his eyes in something akin to relief, as Danny bowed his head again, and Clockwork sighed as he felt himself shift back into his infant state, and then floated lower to Danny, reaching out and forcing the young halfa to look into his eyes. "You are still a child, Danny," he said quietly, gravely. "But you have taken on responsibilities that few men grown could shoulder, much less carry out. You have changed the future, your future, and the future of your world."
"It's still inside me," Danny said dully. "I'm capable of such darkness…"
"Without your humanity, you are capable of many things. But with it, you are capable of many more." Clockwork floated higher as he shifted, pulling Danny to his feet and grasping his shoulder firmly. "When you have doubts, I want you to think on this," and he gestured to the portal once more, and Danny blinked at it before realizing what he was seeing.
Himself. Just himself, surrounded by people, some that he knew, most that he didn't, and the thought of yet swept through his mind. A familiar figure carrying a cake, candles on top of that lit the darkening room and a laughing Danny blowing them out. Sam, Tucker, Jazz. Dani? Danny's eyes widened as he recognized her, older, much older, nearly as old as himself. The candles flickered as he blew them out, and the Danny in the portal smiled as his sister reached out and ruffled silvery hair.
It faded after that, and Danny looked at Clockwork. "That's my future? Safe? They're safe?"
"Better to say that it is the most likely future." He smiled as his form shifted again, and he hefted the time staff in his hand as he pointed it behind Danny at empty space. "Let's just say that if that future ever wavers, you will know, because I will be there."
Danny smiled, faintly, but still smiled as a swirling green portal formed behind him. "A shortcut, Danny. travel safely, and don't hesitate to come back if you feel the need."
"Thank you, Clockwork," Danny said. He stepped through the portal and it shrank until it was gone as Clockwork watched Danny in his time portal, smiling.
"His choice, as ever, was always his own," he said firmly into the emptiness, and shot an annoyed glance behind him as two expected figures appeared. "I trust you know where the door is."
A dismissal if ever he'd heard one.