This is a day later than I wanted it to be because I totally forget what day it is and keep thinking that every day is Tuesday.

Thanks to everyone who has been following, favoriting, and reviewing! I can't believe the incredibly positive response that "Gothica" has gotten from readers! I'm really glad I decided to take on this project and hope to keep posting every Wednesday! I still have about a month's worth of backlog left at the moment, so don't fret!

-Song

Danny had grown up in a house with two supernatural scientists that claimed that ghosts were real his entire life. They'd been studying and hunting ghosts since their days at college, and having a pair of kids wasn't going to change that.

That meant that every single bump in the night when Danny was small wasn't explained away as rusty pipes or the house foundation settling during the winter.

No, when six-year-old Danny Fenton had been afraid of the dark, his parents had said, "Of course you are, sweetie! There are ghosts in the dark!"

This horrifying statement was immediately followed up with, "But don't worry, we'll protect you from anything that might come into the house," and eventually graduated to: "We've invented a device that prevents ghosts from coming into the house AT ALL!"

So, by the time Danny was eight years old, the idea of ghosts had become fact, like how gravity existed and that the Earth went around the sun. He never felt like he was in any sort of danger. He'd certainly never seen a ghost. At first, his young brain decided that he'd never seen one because his parents had kept their promise to protect him; that they were, in fact, keeping the ghosts at bay.

But as he grew, so did his suspicions.

Maybe he had never seen a ghost because they weren't real. Maybe they never had been.

No one at school believed in ghosts. Tucker and Sam surely didn't, and Sam had believed in vampires when she was eight. Even Jazz, his ten-year-old big sister and equal-sufferer in living within a ghost hunting household, didn't believe it, much to their parent's chagrin.

Even worse, Danny started to suspect that maybe his parents, who he had thought were so brave and smart, were actually deluded. Crazy, even. Maybe they were chasing unattainable dreams fostered in their youth that they hadn't grown out of, and Danny had been a fool for believing them.

So, on his eleventh birthday, he decided that there was no such thing as ghosts.

Well, it turns out he was wrong.

.

.

.

Danny spent a week after their team meeting in the park learning what he was capable of through trial-by-fire. Sometimes Sam and Tucker were over for emotional and moral support, but most nights, he was awake in his room just trying things out.

It was a mixed-success process.

Sometimes he would end up in the hallway without even realizing that he hadn't used the door and would look around frantically for witnesses, of which there were always none.

Other times he would be standing in front of the mirror and then focus really hard until he was gone from view.

More often than not, though, he hurt himself, made a mistake, or even once got stuck halfway between his room and closet, his torso caught in the doorway.

Those were the worst times.

Then, almost seven days after that baseball had hit him in the face, Danny saw his first ghost.

"Danny!" his father had called from the living room.

Danny groaned because he knew that that was the "chores" voice. He set his gaming headset down on the desktop and took the stairs two at a time down to the living room.

"Yeah, Dad?"

His father was holding up one end of the sofa while his mother inspected what appeared to be a snapped leg.

"Do us a favor, son, and go down to the basement for me. I think there's a Phillips-head screwdriver in the red toolbox on the bench. I want the big one, not the little one."

"Oh," Danny said, surprised that he wasn't being asked to leaf blow the yard or do the dishes. "Sure, I'll be right back."

He turned quickly on his heel and headed for the basement door, which was made of heavy metal and labeled "Fenton Laboratory." It was surprising just how many things in the house were labeled. The toaster, for instance, had "Fenton" on it.

Danny punched in the five-digit code for the basement door and headed down the dark staircase. He would have turned on the stairway light, but in his hurry, he went downstairs in darkness.

Once at the bottom, he stepped over to the workbench, which was glowing with radioactive half-projects and strange jars of ectoplasm. He tried not to think about his own green blood, and regardless of what Tucker and Sam had said, regardless of his powers, he still struggled to see himself as the same kind of creature his parents hunted.

As he rummaged through the old red toolbox his father had been referencing, Danny shivered. He didn't think much of it until his skin began to rise and form goosebumps all over his arms. He rubbed one arm and continued fishing around in the toolbox. In moments he was shaking like he had a sudden fever, or like he was in the cold storage freezer at school that Dash had shoved him in once during their freshman year.

Then, he realized he could see his breath.

"W-what is this?"

Danny suddenly felt like he was being watched.

This was a phenomenon that he used to have when he was a kid. It was dumb, he convinced himself upon turning eleven. There was no such thing as ghosts, so there could be no one watching him unless there really was another living person around. Since he was the only one in the basement, there couldn't be someone watching him.

But there was. He was sure of it. He didn't know why, but there had to be.

Danny turned around slowly, feeling foolish all the time until he saw it.

Clear as day, standing maybe five feet tall and pacing around the basement as if it was looking for something and had found Danny instead, was a ghost.

Danny was glad he hadn't found the screwdriver because he was sure he would have dropped it. He stood, his back to the workbench, shivering and frozen. The ghost's face was pinched in irritation.

He - if you could call it that - was short and hiding a balding head beneath a skull cap. His outfit was strange, like out of a World War I movie; he was wearing overalls that might have belonged to a dock worker in the early 1900s. His frame suggested that he was strong but short and stocky, and he wore thick working gloves and boots.

Danny blinked again and again, but the ghost and the absolute impossibility - the absurdity - that it existed at all, would not disappear.

"Can you see me?" came the ghost's echoing voice. His red eyes focused on Danny, and he gave a sinister grin.

Danny didn't respond but he didn't have to. Of course he saw the ghost. Of course, he did, they were staring right at each other.

"I am looking for a particular box of great importance to me. Do you know where it is?"

This seemed like a more direct question that required an actual answer.

"W-what box?"

"A lunch pail from my life. It's mine, and your family has stolen it in the hopes that I might appear one day to retrieve it. I guess I did."

"W-who are you?"

Danny's half of the conversation wasn't very productive, which made the ghost even more irritated.

"You dare lure me to your human laboratory of torture and you don't even know of my power!? I am the Box Ghost! Ruler of all containers that are cubic or rectangular! I am a master of cardboard and wood and metal alike!"

The ghost went on and on like that for a while, and Danny's shaking started to dissipate. His first reaction had been absolute terror, disbelief, and the horrible realization that his parents HAD been right all along, but the way that this ghost seemed utterly more interested in himself than in Danny pulled him out of it. The ghost didn't even seem threatening.

"Hey, um, Box Ghost?"

The ghost stopped his rant and focused his full attention back on Danny.

"Look, I dunno about any lunch box or whatever. Please leave my home."

"What did you say, human?"

"Cross over, you know? Go into the light. Please leave."

The red eyes of the ghost began to glow, his face contorting terribly into a frown, and Danny realized immediately that he had made a grave error.

"Leave? No. Not without that which is rightfully mine!"

The Box Ghost flew across the room in seconds and reached for Danny who put his hands up in both fright and defense and closed his eyes. A hot, bright flash erupted between him and the ghost, and he almost stopped breathing for a moment as he considered the distinct possibility that he might be dead for real this time.

But nothing happened for five seconds, and so Danny opened his eyes. The ghost was floating ten feet away from him looking shocked and a little frightened himself. Danny looked down and realized that his clothes had changed. He was wearing the hazmat suit from the day that he had briefly died. He bet that his hair was white and his eyes were now green, too.

"What are you?" the Box Ghost asked, his voice changing from menacing to worried confusion.

"I'm…" Danny hesitated. What was he?

The Box Ghost shivered. "Impossible. That's impossible!"

Then, without another word nor a sound, the ghost flew to the Fenton portal door - which was supposed to lead to 'the other side' - and disappeared through the thick metal. He did not return.

Danny was still shivering, but his breath stopped showing as soon as the ghost was gone. He no longer felt the incredible cold from before, but he did feel empty.

Impossible, the ghost had said. Danny was impossible. I'm… unheard of. I'm not supposed to exist.

What other explanation could there be? If a literal ghost thought that Danny's existence was impossible, then what the Hell was he really?

Danny closed his eyes and braced himself back against the workbench, taking deep breaths. He tried to remember what it was like to feel warm, to have blood running through his veins, to feel the soft beating in his chest, and just like that, his body changed back. That hot, bright light returned only for an instant, like a camera flash, and then Danny was himself again. He was wearing jeans and a t-shirt and his hair, which swept down into his eyes, was black.

"Let's hope my eyes are blue," he told himself as he retrieved the screwdriver and climbed the stairs.

His hand was shaking as he placed the screwdriver in his father's large palm.

"What's up, Danny? You look spooked. Did you see anything weird in the basement?"

His father's eyes were so hopeful, and his mother looked up from where she was fiddling with the couch leg.

"Um. A big ol' spider?"

Somehow it didn't seem right to tell them about the ghost. Somehow he knew that it might lead to questions that he wasn't prepared to answer.

"Aw, well, that's alright," his mother said. "Hand me the screwdriver, Jack. Hold the couch will you both?"

Danny and his father complied, but Danny's mind wandered.

Impossible, echoed in his head, you're impossible.