Disclaimer: I don't own Danny Phantom.

Thanks to Invader Johnny, Zighana, SweetestChick, ShanniC, Crystalmoon39, starwater09, Margot-Eve, KraZiiePyrozHavemoreFUn, ZoneRobotnik, hjfiosdj, ElectricThrillsandChills, Guest, and Dareeen for reviewing last time!

Shot Summary: A universe crossover between Aftermath and Dan's Secret VALentine Plans. Clockwork temporarily takes the Ghost King Dan Phantom and Queen Valerie Gray's baby and places him in the hands of a Dan and Val from another universe. Parental crises abound.

Chapter Warnings: Some mild sexual content/innuendos.


Deliverance

Shot 37: When Worlds Collide (Part 4, Epilogue)


That night, Valerie had the same nightmare again. She was staring at the bloated, dead body of Nathan Green, swinging from a rope. Then at the ghost of the same man. He leered toward her, reaching out to tear her clothes—

This time, she woke up with a jerk, a large hand clapped over her mouth. Panic overwhelmed her, and she nearly began to scream, tightening her body to fight.

A familiar male voice hissed quickly into her ear. "Shh! You are waking up Jax."

She knew that voice.

Dan. As her vision cleared in the dark, she saw the outline of his body above her, his false-blue eyes dark with some emotion. His hair had fallen from its low ponytail to straggle down his shoulders. Something about him looked frazzled.

His cool fingers slipped away from her lips, catching a few of the tear tracks that streamed down her face. "What is wrong with you?"

His question brought forth all the images of her nightmare, and her vision blurred all over again. She sat up, tears running down her face, struggling to breathe. She ran her shaking fingers through her hair. "Oh my god," she whispered shakily. She touched her face, trying to recalibrate to reality. "What the hell." Then she touched the collar of her shirt, patting it to make sure it was still there and not ripped.

Dan watched her in curiosity. "I know this is not from me." There was an undertow in his voice suggesting he wanted to know the reason for her tears.

She hesitated in fear of speaking the truth. And then she realized she had no words. Her tongue was silenced in the vast chasm that was the nightmare of Nathan Green. Tears fell from her eyes.

When she did not respond, he reached out to her.

She flinched away. "Don't touch me." And then her voice broke, choking up with confusion and then shame. "Just d-don't."

The all-powerful ghost watched with an increasing frown as Valerie bent over on herself, the bones of her spine sticking out against her dark skin. She quivered in a struggle to keep herself together, and he was reminded of her face when she'd discovered Nathan's disturbing shrine to her body. It was a raw emotion—the real Valerie Gray beneath all that anger and deflection. An awe that she was entirely out of control.

"Art of W-War," Valerie whispered to herself shakily. "Heart of Darkness. White Noise. B-Beloved."

She was reciting a list of books on her office shelf. Dan narrowed his eyes, realizing that she was trying to center herself away from the dream—which suggested that she'd had the dream more than once, and that her recitation was a learned strategy. A therapy tactic.

This, he realized, was likely some kind of post-traumatic stress.

"Valerie dear," he murmured to her, "if you were hoping to hide this, the damage is already done."

"Sh-shut up."

"Absolutely not." He reached for her again, this time wrapping his arms around her body and pulling her into him. She stiffened only for a second before her hands reached up to embrace him back, an odd sob hitching her breath. Her fingertips brushed against the mottled scars winding up his shoulder.

He held her close, her ear pressed against his chest as he stroked her hair. She seemed to be in some kind of daze for a time, repeating the book titles again. Her voice was a shaky vibration against him.

It was then that Dan Phantom, the Ravager of Worlds, came to another odd realization—which was that he had not saved her. Not truly. Her body pumped blood as it always did, but there was a permanent scar on her mind because of Nathan Green. Just like the scars he now carried down his shoulder and back.

The sound of Valerie's shaky voice woke up the baby, who whined at the sound. Dan grimaced in hopeless anticipation. If Jax had any love for him at all, perhaps he would not begin to cry too—but then, Jax seemed to cry all the time.

"Valerie," he murmured to her, "I do not want a repeat of last night, in which he thinks me a villain against you."

That seemed to jog her a bit. She squeezed her eyes shut and shuddered out a breath. "I know."

The baby began to cry a little more, rustling his blankets. And so Valerie pulled away from Dan, feeling strange and distant as she touched her face. She wiped away some of the tear tracks. And then she stared at him, realizing that this was real life and that the dream wasn't real—but that she'd just cried all over this very real man who was in fact the most hated being on the planet.

And he'd let her.

His false-blue eyes almost seemed to glow in the dark. "Ten years," he said, "and you decide to get post-traumatic stress now?"

She turned away, face burning with embarrassment. "You don't just decide to have nightmares," she snapped. She leaned over the dresser drawer on the floor and pulled up a crying baby. The baby latched onto her tightly, comforted only by the fact that Valerie was capable of holding him. He could hear her elevated heartbeat and uneven breath—he knew she was crying too.

Dan's baritone voice bristled with displeasure. "Explain to me for what reason you've had no nightmares until the last few days."

The human woman gave him a look caught between irritation and pain. "It's not been just the last couple of days," she said, adjusting Jax in her arms until she was holding him close, his head leaning against the crook of her neck as she stroked his back to calm him. For the first time, she was immensely thankful for the presence of the child as a distraction. It gave her somewhere else to look besides Dan's odd expression.

Dan stood. "So why you are suddenly having nightmares and reciting book titles to keep sane?"

Valerie did not answer, face flaming harder in a blush of embarrassment. Anything less than the truth would result in Dan further harping on it. Then she swallowed hard and turned back to him. "Look, maybe you can forget about it but…do you know what he would have done?" Her breath hitched unsteadily, teal eyes watery. "If he'd shot me?"

There was a pause between them, and Dan's eyes darkened. The man she was referring to had to be none other than Nathan Green. "Do not entertain those questions," he murmured, voice strained with a protective instinct. "Thinking of such increases my desire to destroy things."

He knew at some level what Nathan would have done. It would have been despicable and cowardly—and Dan's entire face twisted suddenly with a murderous desire, his eyes glowing red at the thought of Nathan touching Valerie's limp body in the silence of his depravity.

Valerie blinked, and tears slipped down her face with an embarrassed grimace. "My mind just…goes there sometimes."

The tight clench in Dan's jaw suggested the thought was hardly tolerable. "I did not sacrifice my hide so that you would live in fear." He reached forward, and his calloused thumb caught a tear as he caressed her face. It was an odd, distancing feeling to think that one day he would not be able to touch her because she would be dead. It made even her tears sacred, despite his general dislike of such weakness. "You cannot allow a worm such as Nathan Green to dictate your reality."

The human woman leaned into his touch as she held onto Jax, closing her eyes. "I know," she breathed shakily. The baby in her arms whined a bit until she readjusted him. He clung tight to her shirt. "I know."


The next morning, Valerie awoke twisted in the bed sheets, her body slung around a still-sleeping Dan. His body was warm from seeping her heat, and she could feel the vibration of his power core beneath her ear, his arm limply resting over her back to pin her to him. Her face warmed a bit when she realized his fingers had ridden up under her shirt, brushing against her bare ribs. It was not an unfamiliar feeling—to be so close to him. She realized then that her hand had run up his naked side, her fingers planted against one of his scars.

She closed her eyes again, fighting with herself to move. The sun was bright outside. She'd already slept in.

And then a moan of complaint escaped her pillow. His arm and hand tightened up against her skin, bunching the already twisted hem of her shirt. He didn't open his eyes. "No," he said, tone rough with sleep. "Don't move."

Her voice was muffled against his chest. "I need to."

He gave a noise between a complaint and a scoff. "I am not killing anyone, and Jax is not crying." The light of the sun had begun to seep through the heavy curtains of the room—a ray or two splaying out to catch the edge of the dresser, the floral painting.

Valerie felt her body relax against Dan's as she exhaled tiredly. "But I don't sleep in," she muttered petulantly. "No matter what."

His hand slipped down the bare slope of her spine beneath her shirt, pausing over each vertebrae. He found interest in the dips and the occasional scar that crossed her back. "Valerie dear," he said lazily. "I fully intend to rob you of such old-lady sleeping schedules."

"No, you won't," she snapped without enthusiasm, still not moving. "I'll fight it."

Dan's dark hair was in a wild halo about his head, but his voice carried a demonic sense of amusement. "You'll lose."

She huffed at him, feeling a bit soft about it. A part of her wanted to lose that battle. She had only a slight guilt that she was in the arms of her enemy and that she liked it.

But as Valerie turned her head to relieve a crick in her neck, her thoughts blanked at a curious sight. The dresser drawer lined with baby blankets was empty. And then her eyes widened, and she elbowed Dan straight in the gut in an attempt to launch off him. The ghost's face twisted as he 'oofed' and instinctively reacted to her, grabbing onto her elbow just as she leapt off.

"The hell are you—?"

"—Jax!" she hissed, pulling away from him again in panic. "Oh my god."

At the name, Dan sat up fully, sharp eyes alert. "What?"

Valerie pointed at the dresser. The baby was gone. "You lost him!" Her raspy voice screeched up. "He's gone. What the—how the—?!"

Dan's eye twitched in irritation despite his rising panic. He stood up, flaring out his power in an attempt to seek out other sources of ectoplasmic energy. "—What do you mean I lost him? As if you were not sleeping on top of me the entire time."

Valerie looked away without fully comprehending his comment, her ringlet hair whipping over her shoulder. "Oh my god," she said again, mind racing. She raised her arm and activated her armor. Sleek, red metal swept up to her shoulder. She pushed a button on her forearm and opened a port for her radar. "I'm seeing only you on here," she said, panic now fully setting in, heart pounding. "Do you feel him at all?"

The all-powerful ghost closed his eyes, but his face was tight with tension. "Not yet. His signature is small. If he is not using power, it would be impossible to feel him from a distance."

"Well, he used power earlier to disappear," she snapped. "Why the hell didn't you feel that?"

Dan's eyes snapped open into slits. "And isn't your highly advanced technology supposed to alert you to ectoplasmic output?" He grabbed onto his shirt, which he'd tossed carelessly onto the bedside table, and he quickly pulled it over his head.

Valerie grabbed her jeans on the floor, slipping them on over her tight sleep shorts. "He could be dead," she worried in a frenzy. "Maybe he fell through the floor, or he floated up or—"

Dan interrupted, "—Then let us split to cover more ground." The air around him wavered. Shadows pulled from his body in seven directions, and the shadows became flesh, solidifying into undistinguishable clones of himself. Each of them eyed Valerie with a tense determination.

Then all seven clones and Dan himself dematerialized, blurring out in a storm into the air.


Soon enough, Valerie was running down the halls herself, hiding her radar with Dan's jacket. "Shit," she said. "Shit, shit, shit—I hate kids." Her face was flushed from anxiety, and she was damning the chaos of her life. Eden might not have had ghost weaponry, but that did not mean a terrified human wouldn't hurt a red-glowing baby that looked like something straight out of the Exorcist.

Her heart was wrapped in panic. "The other-me is gonna kill me," she complained. "Jax can hardly even hold his head up! How the hell does a newborn even—?!"

She clicked her mouth shut and stopped running as a family with a few children came prancing through the hall, munching on free donuts and bagels from the lobby. Their giggles and happiness pulled at Valerie in a way she wasn't expecting, and she found herself staring at them in a pained curiosity as they passed by in their blissful ignorance. It seemed entirely unlawful for anyone to be happy while Jax was missing.

But she supposed if someone were still happy, that meant no one had found a red-glowing baby.

Yet.

Valerie looked down at her radar, grimacing in panic. She damned herself for calibrating the radar to pick up only signatures of Dan's magnitude for convenience. So much good it did for her now. No sign of even the slightest blip of a power core at Jax's level.

Seven large pulses of power were flitting back and forth, and so she moved in a new direction to cover more ground. With every second that passed, her panic amassed into a larger force, pulling her forward faster.

"Okay," she breathed to herself as she turned a corner, her ringlet hair flying back, "I can find him. Clockwork wouldn't have given him to us if he didn't believe we could handle it."

Right?

But perhaps Jax had gone missing hours ago and was scared and alone in a dark place, all while Valerie herself had been cuddling against Dan for her own comfort. "I could never be a mom," she suddenly cried to herself in guilt, overwhelmed. "I suck at this."

And for the first time, tears watered her eyes at the thought of losing one baby Jax.


At the sound of a baby's cry, Dan stopped, the lines of his body still invisible and intangible. With his supernatural hearing, the number of human beings—and their babies, good lord, they were reproducing like rabbits—made it difficult to focus on any one sound remotely similar to Jax. Any baby's coo made Dan rush to the room, only to view some average human couple doting over their child. Their contrasting bliss made him ground his teeth to avoid slaying them all.

He rounded back, his split senses obtaining no better results. "Dammit," he snarled to himself, frustrated as he ran a frazzled hand through his hair. He'd lost his hair tie some way back. "I should have known. I should not have turned my eye."

The way Jax's power core fluctuated suggested it was still calibrating, and the child seemed to have only a tenuous grasp on power. Perhaps the small thing had been overwhelmed by his own increasing abilities and now was helpless to mitigate them.

Dan gnashed his teeth, bearing a canine that glimmered into a fang. He was losing control over his human illusion in his attempt to maintain seven clones. He was losing emotional control with every minute that passed.

Somewhere in his cold, dead heart was fear. It was akin to the fear he'd felt when Nathan Green had raised his gun against Valerie to blast her soul into oblivion.

And so he dropped his human illusion fully and split into five more clones.


Nearly a full hour passed.

Valerie abandoned the hotel and ran through the streets of Eden, which were bustling with a morning cheer that she did not feel. She bumped into a jolly couple holding their own child, then again into grandparents babysitting a few toddlers and feeding birds. Several people began to give her strange looks.

Her eyes had long watered with tears that streaked down her face. It was frustration, anxiety—the realization that she'd been responsible for a soul and had failed. For the life of her, she could not get the image of a human-looking Dan holding Jax closely to his chest, back when they were first escaping to Eden. In that crazy jeep, there'd been some kind of strange peace in the man as he doted over Jax—

Then she stopped suddenly, an idea forming.

"If he fell down," she said to herself breathlessly, eyes widening, "then maybe…"

He could have fallen below ground?

Valerie suddenly turned back, racing down the wet roads toward the transport tunnels. "Oh my god," she whispered tightly. "Maybe he's down there."

The early March wind blew her hair back as she pushed herself harder. She feared activating her battle suit and giving away her identity as the Red Huntress. But the road to the tunnels soon enough panned out into multiple lanes. The supply caravans had not yet arrived; the reality that they would terrified Valerie. Her fingers shook as she entered in her credentials into the keypad and then raced down the lowered ramp into the tunnels.

And then, as the ramps locked in, she heard it.

A baby's cry.

Her heart gave out. "Jax!" She raced forward. The cries became louder. "Hold on—I'm coming!"

Upon turning a bend, she found him. A dark bundle was whining on the cold asphalt of the transport highway. She nearly stumbled to a stop, her eyes racing over him. His blanket was gone—and something shining just next to his ear made her fear it was blood. A relief and terror overwhelmed her as she leaned over to discover it was only car oil. Her fingers, hot with exertion, scooped beneath the baby to draw him to herself. Jax was shaking in cold and stared up at her with a teary-eyed bewilderment, as if he'd been fully expecting to remain abandoned.

For a time, the Red Huntress held this half-ghost child in her hands, in awe that a few years ago, she would have slain the child of Dan Phantom without a second thought. She pulled the baby tight to her, opening up Dan's jacket to wrap him in the leather and her own heat. Jax cried for her in confusion and pain, wrenching his palms hard into the material of her shirt.

"I know," she moaned, breath hitching as she tried to calm the beating of her own heart. Jax was ice cold. The simple clothes she'd dressed him in were ruined. "I know, I'm sorry I'm so bad at this. Your real mom would kill me. I'd kill me."

Jax closed his eyes, pale face streaked with tears.

"How the hell did you get down here, anyway?" Valerie said shakily, brushing her thumb against the baby's temple to wipe away some dirt. "Did you just blitz out or what?"

The baby leaned into her touch, and the stress in every small muscle of his body wore into exhaustion. Every so often, his fingers glowed red in some kind of instinctive desperation. But then it flickered out, as if there were no more energy to be had.

It hit her then that not even Dan Phantom had felt the child's power core was because Jax had worn himself out entirely.

"You could have died down here," she said shakily, moving off the track and onto the small road shoulder. "Got run over or froze." It left her with a chill of foreboding down her spine.

Jax's small breaths were as puffs against her neck, his body burrowing against hers on instinct alone.

The instant she rose out of the transport ramp, a clone of Dan's spotted her. The all-powerful ghost merged back into himself and reactivated his human illusion. He appeared from behind a nearby cliff, standing tight-lipped in worry. His sharp eyes narrowed in on the bundle in Valerie's arms, searching over the dirty, crying baby. "Is he alright?" he demanded shortly as he raced forward.

She gently worked to dislodge the baby from her. "He's cold," she said, voice halted. "And dirty."

The all-powerful ghost who had once despised children pulled the dirty infant to himself as if Jax were made of glass. His hands were reverent in a way that suggested he had not taken the baby's disappearance well. "You little devil," he murmured, voice strained. Something in him looked aged and tired. "Was your intention to punish me like this? I do fear you enjoy my pain. Must be from your mother's genes."

The baby giggled through its tears, reaching up to thread curious fingers through the ends of Dan's loose, wild hair. It seemed he found a simple pleasure in comparing the differences between his father and mother, especially the way their voices sounded and their hair felt. But like this—he knew they were real. He could see and feel them, whereas before there'd been only darkness...

A calloused thumb caressed the side of his dirty face, rubbing away the grime and oil of the transport tunnel.

Dan looked up at Valerie. In that moment, a great understanding passed through him—which was that the child meant too much. But instead of losing him to decades of age with a slight chance of his ghost side continuing, Dan would lose Jax in hours.

Forever.


After that, Dan stole the child away from Valerie entirely, even to wipe away the dirt and redress him. He held Jax with deepening apprehension, pacing around the hotel room as he fed the baby from a bottle. "I fear that he will continue to suffer growing pains," Dan declared, voice strained. "His core still flickers in odd ways."

"Growing pains, huh? Like a ghost version of teething?" Valerie asked, sitting on the bed. She munched on a bagel she'd snatched from the hotel lobby before they'd closed down breakfast, but she picked at it with some kind of odd depression. She could not take her eyes off the baby. "You sure it's not something worse?"

He glared at her. "As one of the first half-ghosts in existence, who has also traversed dimensions to understand such physiology, I would thinkI know more about his condition than you do."

"You weren't born that way."

"…It's the same principle." His false-blue eyes were hard with paternal fears—the possibility that there were was something worse wrong. That he'd have to let this child go to some dark oblivion. "Dammit, it must be the same."

Jax's blue eyes, which reflected his own with such innocence, seemed almost feverish. He alternated between suckling down milk in a frenzy, then falling into exhaustion and closing his eyes. On occasion, his fingers still glowed red to no effect.

"We can't take him out like this," Valerie worried. "People would see him and freak."

"And then I would have to kill the people of Eden," Dan said, voice distant as Jax pulled away from the bottle and jerked a bit to nuzzle closer into his father. "Which I'm sure would disappoint you."

Valerie agreed dryly, "…It would."

"But this place needs a good massacre for even the thought of injuring our child." He sat down on the edge of the bed next to her, kicking off his combat boots. The baby whined at being jostled, then settled down as Dan leaned back, holding him closely to his chest. "All the humans wandering around so blissfully ignorant of their own lacking value, reproducing like rabbits. It is disgusting."

"Not half as disgusting as you are sometimes." She set aside her half-eaten bagel and laid on her side next to Dan. She propped her head up with her arm in tired way. "Or as hypocritical."

He narrowed his eyes at her, his dark hair twisting against the comforter. He protectively stroked the back of the baby lying on his chest. "I do recall you moaned in desire for me," he challenged, his baritone voice a vibration between them. "You opened your mouth to mine and arched your breast against my hand, and were seconds away from spreading your legs. If I am so disgusting, then you have a peculiar way of showing it."

Her face reddened with the memory of his touch on her bare skin and how it had overwhelmed her. "It's how you think that's disgusting sometimes," she snapped. "Don't change the subject away from how you still want to kill humans. Even though you know what I am, and you're taking care of a baby. You don't make sense."

A dark humor came over him. "This is why you are going to become my Queen. So that you can fight me in delightful ways about such subjects."

"Then you must be a serious masochist, because when you talk about killing more people, it makes me wanna punch you in the face."

He angled a black brow and then murmured, "Such violence in front of the baby, dear. I can think of more…productive ways to release our frustrations."

Her face twitched in half-annoyance. "Yeah, you'd like that, wouldn't you."

"I think you would as well." The baby upon his chest squirmed a bit, fisting fingers into the loose cloth of his shirt. Dan closed his eyes for a second, reveling in the feeling of a life that so trusted him. His blood. Their blood. Then an agony pulled his face, drudging into even his power core. It deepened to such a point that Valerie noticed it, and her irritation with him softened.

She watched the pain on his face—the attachment he had to Jax. That no matter how hypocritical or disturbed Dan was, he loved this child with half her genetics.

For that reason alone, she sighed tiredly and then lowered her head, her ringlet curls mixing against the locks of Dan's.

"I hate you," she said. Then she touched his face, brushing away a stray hair from his cheek and gently twisting the fine, black hair around her finger in curiosity of its softness.

It was a simple and unassuming touch, without obligation or fear. It held little sexual tension and yet seemed to convey some deeper emotion. An attachment. A willingness to touch another soul in need.

Dan opened his eyes to gaze at her searchingly. Then he whispered, "I believe I will go mad after I give him up."

"…I know."

"You will despise me even more for it."

And then her full lips twitched. "Or maybe I won't."


It was late in the evening when Clockwork appeared to them. His power glimmered into the hotel room like a sigh, the room dampening into even further cold. His body was aged, his heavy cloak hanging from bony angles. "It is time," he said simply, his voice tired.

Dan, still in his human disguise, was standing with Jax in his arms. He'd replaced the baby's clothing with his original gold pins and silks and blankets. Something about Dan looked older in that moment, as if every second in Clockwork's presence was aging him.

Valerie watched from the bed, arms wrapped around herself from a chill. Her mouth was set in an odd grimace as she fought down odd pangs of some maternal instinct. Clockwork was going to take the baby away forever. Even if it weren't really her baby and she really didn't like kids and its whine was soloud

Each step appeared to greatly pain Dan. His large hands were solidly wrapped around the baby in his arms, feeling its heat and its little heart beat in a fast, curious rhythm.

"You are a cruel and ruthless bastard," Dan said, his baritone voice rough. An unstable agony had darkened his face, pulling his lips into a hard line and tightening his eyes. "To take this child from me on threat of temporal distortion."

Clockwork tilted his head. "On the contrary, had I not intervened to give you this time, you would have never known Jax. A version of Valerie you never knew would die. The child would have died a sickly death after a long struggle with malnutrition."

"That does not satisfy my charge against you," Dan hissed.

"A minor charge against those you have with me. And several billions of others." Clockwork leaned on his staff, an old, sad humor tempering his disappointment with the ghost before him. "But I'm afraid I've been rude." His red eyes turned to Valerie, having seen her cry for Jax and search desperately for him. "Hello, Valerie Gray. The Red Huntress. And possibly, I hear, the next Queen of the Ghost Zone?"

Her face paled in an odd way, then bloomed red. Her expressive eyes gave away all guilt, and she stood quickly. Her voice was tight. "How could you know about that?"

"One rather unfortunate habit of mine is to see the future and all of its possibilities. Nothing is guaranteed until the event comes to pass, of course." His clouded eyes glimmered in a soft, grandfatherly way. "But I will not give you away."

Valerie's breath hitched. "You can't know about this. No one can. If anyone found out—"

"—It would be certain death, I know. Just as no one can know about your adventures here with Jax." He turned to Dan again and held out his arms. "I must return him now to his real parents, before your…rather wayward self discovers he is missing."

Dan hesitated, blue eyes sparking red.

Clockwork was unfazed. He raised an old, dark brow. "Do you think yourself better suited to raise this child?"

"You know I am," Dan snapped, narrowing his eyes to slits.

The ancient ghost floated in silence, beholding his broken charge. "Yes. You are."

"Then allow him to remain with us." Dan did not plead, but his demands seemed strained with a pattern of weakness. This child was a weakness. "I would raise him as my heir. He would be a prince. Valerie would likely attempt to instill morality in him, which I'm sure you'd find satisfactory."

"I agreed you are better suited to raise Jax," Clockwork clarified, "which is a comparison to your…other self. But neither of you deserve to raise this child. Least of all you, who took explicit pleasure in the torture and bloody deaths of many a child. At least the other-you simply killed them."

From behind them, Valerie remained silent, lips pressed tight. She did not move to argue on Dan's behalf, for she'd known many of the children Dan had killed.

The powerful ghost's face twitched. "So you still seek to punish me, then."

"There are so few things with which I can," said Clockwork. "But for you to understand the agony you've caused so many mothers and fathers—that is enough for now."

Dan's black hair began to flicker at the ends, moving in restlessness against his human illusion. "Then do not even pretend to care for this child or for me," he hissed. "You use him as a pawn for your own schemes. You are no more worthy to have him in your afterlife than I am, and yet you see yourself fit to judge me like this."

The Master of Time sighed. "A more merciful judgment than what others have wished upon you, believe me. You see the world from only your perspective, but I see it from the eyes of the billions you killed. If I can maintain the safety of this child while also taming you, I will. Now please hand over the child as you promised to do. I would not risk the consequences if he remains missing in his world." He held out his hands once more.

For a time, the room was silent. Dan stood tensely, his large hands protectively cradling the child. Then he looked to Valerie, who gave a short, grave nod.

With immeasurable reluctance, he stepped forward. He raised the sleepy baby a bit in his arms, brushing his cheek against its head. And then he coldly transitioned the child into Clockwork's arms.

The instant Clockwork had the baby Jax secure in his arms, he looked up to Valerie. "Do you wish to say goodbye?"

Valerie swallowed hard, feeling stuck and raw and frustrated. "I already did," she said. Then she walked forward, grabbing something from the ground. It was a small container of baby formula. "But I want you to take this. You know, in case they need it in the future."

The old ghost eyed the human with a minor amusement. "Very good. Your…foresight is appreciated."

Then she stared at the baby who was cooing in Clockwork's arms. She felt her eyes begin to burn, and she blinked hard. "Just make sure they take care of him, okay? And don't tell 'em that we almost lost him."

With an easy adjustment, the ghost reached out and grabbed onto the container. His aged fingers brushed against Valerie's, and she felt the sharp buzz of his incredible power. "Do not fear," he said. His face softened for the human woman who had endured more challenges than most. "I will watch over him, as I watch over you."

Then, just as a simply as he entered, he disappeared into the air, whisking the baby Jax along with him.

Dan stared at his empty arms, the heat of the baby's body fading away quickly. And he stood, as if frozen. A full moment passed between them in silence, with Dan staring in a daze.

Valerie tentatively turned to him. Her voice was soft. "You okay?"

The sound broke his concentration. His face began to twist in odd ways, his lips pulling back into a grimaced half-sob. He felt it. The loss. The inconceivable abyss that was the lack of some light he'd cared for. And now it was gone. Forever.

Suddenly, his eyes lit a hot orange. His form blurred forward, materializing into the air, surging far away from Valerie and Eden and all of civilization. He did not know where he ended up, or how far he'd flown, but he came across an empty valley and allowed his powers to let go, dropping his human illusion and materializing onto the human plane as Dan Phantom, Ravager of Worlds.

Then he cried out, opening his jaws and bearing his fangs with total abandon. His power core surged with the emotional turmoil, and his cry turned into a scream that resounded into a Ghostly Wail. And then another. And then another until he wore himself to his knees.


Back at the hotel, Valerie gathered her things and tried to stuff as many of Dan's books that he'd bought into her backpack. She looked at the remaining clothes she'd bought for Jax—one terribly ruined, and the other still pristine from having only worn it several hours.

Her heart pulled in a strange way. And despite her aversion toward motherhood, she grabbed onto the ruined clothes and tightened her fingers in them. It felt as though he had died, even though she knew better. And so she hid the ruined clothes in her backpack to keep for something like a memory, then dropped off the remaining supplies in a donation pile on her way to check out of the hotel.

It wasn't until she'd piled her things into the jeep and began driving down an abandoned road that she pulled off to the side by the cliffs of Eden. She inhaled deeply, closed her eyes to center herself. "He's going to be a disaster," she told herself. "He could lash out. I'd rather it be me than someone else. Right? Right."

Then she got out of the jeep and activated her jet sled, her battle suit surging over her in seconds. And she discreetly flew out of Eden's city limits, gazing down at her radar. A single, ongoing signature pulsed on the screen, identified as Dan Phantom. She honed in on the coordinates and swept her jet sled toward that direction.

It was not in a location she knew to be populated, which meant that perhaps he was containing his madness to himself—an improvement from unleashing such on a poor city, or even other ghosts.

She soon found him. The infamous blue-skinned and red-eyed Dan Phantom, Ravager of Worlds, was kneeling in the mud, back curled over, hands pressed tight over his face. The ground—everything—was destroyed around him, as if he'd thrown a cosmic tantrum. The earth was upturned with piles of dirt and tree roots and a landslide from a high hill that now looked to be sorely missing a side.

The destruction was almost awe-inspiring.

With a grimace, Valerie recalled her jet sled and landed gracefully not far away. "I think you've got a new power you haven't told me about. Got a name for this one yet?" She kneeled down in the mud before him, not particularly minding the squelch of it. He did not move. And so she gently wrapped her fingers around his wrists and pulled his hands away from his face.

Miserable, teary red eyes squeezed shut in shame, and he turned his face to the side. Tears glistened down his cheeks, glowing with his energy. "Go away," he whispered shakily, looking unstable.

"No."

He suddenly pushed Valerie, eyes wild in pain and fury. "I said, go away!"

She fell back in the mud, barely catching herself. The dirt splattered up her back and her arm. Her initial shock wore away into irritation, and she narrowed her eyes at him. "And I said no." She unstuck her hand from the mud. "I ain't leaving you like this."

Dan stared at her, red eyes glowing hot in pain and fury and a thousand other emotions. For the first time in his entire afterlife, his heart was breaking. For a few days, he'd given into the lie that he could have it all. That his dream of an heir and an equal match was possible.

But that was all it was. A dream. A passing thought in the night—one that was slowly collapsing as Dan opened his eyes to reality. "Leave me," he demanded again, his voice dropping into something demonic that, combined with the tears upon his face, made him look insane. "Or I shall take my madness out on you, and you will suffer for it."

She huffed a little at that. "Oh, like you haven't done that before? I got plenty of scars from your 'madness.' And you better damn well apologize for pushing me in the mud, buddy."

Dan bared his teeth at her in a snarl, momentarily losing himself to fury. "You do not understand," he snapped, voice wavering with an odd anger. "This universe. It takes everything from me. And you—" His voice broke. "It will take you too, like it took Jax."

"So you push me in the mud for it?" She shook her fingers and flung some of the mud at him. "That makes a whole lot of sense."

"Go away," he demanded once more, voice rough. Valerie reminded him of Jax, which reminded him of loss, and of how he had weakened himself with them. "I do not want to see you. I cannot—"

"—Can't what?"

"I cannot look at you." He blinked, and his eyes watered again. "I cannot."

And at that, Valerie realized that this being before her was cracking open with a broken heart—and he no longer understood how to respond. He lashed out in violence because that was all he knew to do.

"I am not leaving you." And then she reached out to him, wrapping her arms around his waist, leaning her chin against his shoulder. His breath shuddered, and he suddenly latched onto her hard, hiding his face in her hair. It was an instinctive move—a desperate desire for contact despite his own attempts to push her away.

The woman swallowed hard as she held tight, feeling the quiver in his body. She was half-afraid that he would still snap and fly away to destroy some helpless city. "It's gonna be okay," she murmured to him, but her voice was strained. "He's gonna be fine."

"He's gone." Dan's voice was twisted in pain, dark with a brokenness. "Clockwork took him forever.My son. My only son." He seethed between the tears that rolled from his cheeks into Valerie's hair. He lost all sense of speech.

The pain was incalculable. Even knowing that the child was not dead but returned to another world meant as much as death. He would never see Jax again.

Valerie hesitated to speak. She knew that Dan Phantom deserved pain—some scars that would last on him as penance for the death and destruction he'd created. "I'll miss him too."

And they stayed silent for some time, Dan still hiding his face in her wild hair. Her curls still smelled of the hotel's shampoo, which reminded him again that it had not been some strange dream. The earth had fallen into darkness around them, a sign that for some reason, the world had not stopped turning around them.

Even now, Jax was probably on his way to grow into a strong heir for parents who did not deserve him—and Valerie's lifespan was ticking away as it always did.

The ghost pulled away from her, his eyes bloodshot and sharp face still glistening with tear tracks. He touched his cheek and then beheld his own glowing tears as they raced down his glove. "Damn Clockwork," he whispered. "Damn time, damn this whole universe. It is built of nothing but nightmares." He could not bear to think of the level of pain he'd feel when Valerie finally died in the future, much less the baby Jax. It was inevitable. Loss was always inevitable—he knew that more intimately than most.

Valerie retracted her battle suit up to her wrists, revealing her bare skin that goose-bumped in the cold night air. She gently ran her thumbs down his haggard face, sweeping aside his tears. She found herself in awe of how they glowed. These were the tears of a murderer, a sadist, a tormentor. And yet somehow, his pain was as a sacred as anyone else's. Just as human.

"Then help me with my nightmares," Valerie whispered with some kind of vulnerable amusement. "And I'll help you with yours."


On the other side of the quantum field of worlds, a nervous Dora collapsed in relief. "Oh, thank heavens," she cried as Clockwork reappeared in the nursery room of the castle. The room was dark but for the green glow of the Ghost Zone. "The King has been found and is to return soon. I feared he would arrive to kill us all, what with the Prince still gone."

The baby in Clockwork's arms tiredly opened his eyes again, only to realize the odd darkness and the way his eyes were no longer used to it, or his body to the entirely different coldness. He squirmed in discomfort, realizing he could not sense his mother or father, and then whined. Tears began to bubble in his eyes as he cried in want for things he no longer could feel—pure love, human sunlight, a moving and living wind. There was a coldness and darkness around everything in this world that made him want to hide.

Clockwork gently transitioned the baby to Dora. "I wish I could have left him there," he murmured. "He would have been much happier. But you know I would not have sacrificed those in this world."

Stress began to pull on Jax, and he cried harder in confusion, his tiny power core beginning to pulse.

Dora looked down at the baby in her arms, checking him over for health. "Oh, the poor thing. To be jostled back and forth…" She winced when his cries hit a particularly high decibel, and she gaze apologetically at Clockwork. "I will take him to his mother's room, and maybe that will help. In the meantime, I would hate it if the King confronted you unkindly, even though you have saved the dynasty."

Clockwork's thin, aged lips twitched wryly. "Well, I had a little help."

"And the…Phantom and Valerie Gray of that world?" Dora seemed curious and sad. "Are they happier than here? Did they love the prince or just tolerate him?"

The Master of Time said gently, "Their circumstances are different. But they loved him. The Phantom of that world mourns him even now."

The maidservant rocked the unhappy baby in her arms. "And, if you don't mind my impertinence, did they have a child as well? How else would Valerie have been able to nurse a baby? Was it wanted?"

At that, Clockwork smiled. And then he procured the small container of baby formula and said vaguely, "Valerie will know what this is. You might find it useful in the future."


Soon enough, the Ghost King Dan Phantom tore through the castle in a seething, panicked tantrum. "How is my Queen?!" he demanded. "What is this about a deathly illness? Is she dead?"

A very pale Dora floated, trembling in fear. "N-no, my King. She is resting in her chambers and is still very weak. We did not know for a time if she would pull through—"

He backhanded her in a blur, and the force was so hard that it sent Dora crumpling to the ground in a twist of skirts. "You ignorant, insignificant fool!" he snarled. "Endangering her life with your own stupidity. What do you mean, you did not know?"

The female ghost on the ground laid there for a second, fully stunned. It seemed the King had broken her jaw. Tears of pain rose to her eyes. "Mmmh," she moaned, raising a hand to touch her face, her green skin bursting with the odd feeling of a bruise. She feared even attempting to open her mouth—partially because it would hurt, and partially because she wanted him to know that Valerie's illness was a direct result of giving birth. Which was really the King's fault.

Dan Phantom looked down at Dora and sniffed in satisfaction at her pained and submissive position. "I will see to her myself," he declared. "And if I find your services to her lacking, I will personally send you back to your brother in boxes. Is that understood?"

The dazed and pained Dora barely managed a nod.

Then Dan flew on in a strange anxiety. Countless treasures and paintings passed him by without stirring his interest. "She cannot die," he growled under his breath. "She cannot die."

He'd left to relieve his temper and frustrations with her. But now, he worried if perhaps he'd cost himself something far greater than he'd imagined. And what about Jax? How had the child fared if Valerie had been so weak? And what if Jax could not nurse from her?

He floated through the doors to her private chambers, only to find it dark. His sharp sight narrowed in on the bed, where the familiar figure of Valerie lay motionless.

The ghost floated forward in panic. "Valerie."

A small cradle had been placed at the side of the Queen's bed, and therein lay their child, who seemed to be sleeping as well, his little belly rising and lowering with consistent breath. A slight relief came over him at the sight, as it appeared the baby had not suffered.

Dan approached the bed from the other side in an attempt not to wake up Jax.

Valerie was still sweat-soaked and pasty, her ringlet hair matted about her shoulders. She seemed oddly thinner, her hand that rested over her swollen stomach almost brittle in appearance. She hardly moved even to breathe.

The King knelt at her bedside, tight-lipped in panic. "You look like death," he snarled, his fingers softly brushing a curl away from her sweating temple. "Those incompetent fools—they might have killed you."

For a time, the human woman did not awaken or stir at his touch. And then she opened bleary, teal eyes to the ceiling. Nothing registered.

In mounting concern, the King grabbed onto her chin and turned her to look at him. She was clammy to touch. "Valerie. Speak to me. Tell me what they've done to you, and I will destroy whoever is responsible."

After almost three days of hallucinations and pain, she did not know if this Dan Phantom before her was real. He seemed terribly worried about something, but she did not know what. Her raspy voice, normally as sharp and stinging as a whip, was weak. It faltered after she inhaled shakily. "N-not them," she whispered. There was a deep misery in her. "You d-did this."

His face twisted, and he pulled his hand away from her. "What?"

Her eyes still seemed a bit feverish and unfocused. "Get out," she moaned, almost begging.

"I did not leave you simply so that—"

Suddenly, her entire body tensed, and her eyes darkened with pure hatred. "—I said, get out!" she screamed, her raspy voice breaking and reverberating against the walls.

The sound made the baby flinch out of sleep and begin to cry.

The King looked taken aback as Valerie collapsed back down, her breath in odd gasps and feverish eyes closing in pain. "Please," she begged. All the fight in her suddenly fled in her exhaustion and tears. They streaked down her hollow, thinned cheeks. "Please."

His eyes hardened against her. The sound of the baby's wail echoed between them.

"Very well, dear."

And then he dematerialized.


A/N: And thus concludes the mini-crossover. I really rushed to crank this out, since I know it's been almost two months since I last updated. The VALentine!Dan and Val might reappear at a later time in the Deliverance collection, as a continuation or anecdote of their own universe in relation to Dan's bid for Ghost King. Depends on if you'd care for such content. The next upload will be a full-Aftermath chapter. After that, I hope to introduce some entirely new one-shots and mini-threads.

Please review with thoughts, questions, ideas, or constructive criticisms! Thanks!