Danny's thoughts begin to spiral.

Chapter 7: Where Everything Starts to Fall Apart


Lancer knows. Lancer knows. Lancer knows. Those two words repeat on loop, echoing in Danny's head as he soars over Amity Park through the wind and rain. It started as a drizzle not long after he left Lancer's house, but it wasn't long before the wind picked up and the rain grew into fat drops. Now it pelts against Danny, plastering his hair to his forehead, soaking into his clothes. The bandages on his shoulder feel heavy. It stings every time a drop hits his stitches. The rain, combined with a relentless wind, beats Danny down. He can barely see, barely think except for those two words.

Lancer knows. Lancer knows. Lancer knows.

Danny's chest sparks. Before he can realize what's going on, he plummets from the sky. He only has a second to brace himself, wrapping his good arm around his head before he hits the ground. A burning pain tears through his left shoulder as he skids across the sidewalk and tumbles into the road. Danny cries out, but can't do anything until he stops rolling. Once he finally does, he lays splayed out in the street. He should get up. Move. This isn't a safe place to rest, but Danny is so tired. If his pain was at an eight before, it has hit eleven now. Just the thought of lifting his head hurts.

By now, his double vision is gone. It was gone by the time he woke up from his nap at Lancer's place. His headache has returned with a vengeance, however. All that rattling around as he fell. He opened his mouth to catch his breath but ends up catching raindrops instead. He is forced to turn onto his side if he wants to breathe properly, but he's not even sure if he wants to do that. Breathing, like everything else, hurts, too. He has to move, though.

Danny drags himself out of the middle of the road—a bad place to sit at any time, much less during a storm like this—and huddles against a parked car. He felt fine back at Lancer's place, but his frantic flight pushed his limits. Turns out Lancer lives a lot farther outside the city than Danny expected. The morning commute must be a bitch.

The car doesn't protect Danny much, at least not from the rain; it blocks some of the wind. He waits until he has caught his breath before checking his shoulder. The sight of his favourite jacket startles him. Danny holds his arm out, surprised to see red sleeves instead of black. Through the rain and the pain, he hadn't noticed the transformation. It explains a lot, though. Danny unzips his jacket and works the sleeve down. The bandages underneath are dark. At first, Danny panics. It takes a lot of blood to turn a bandage that dark—he knows from experience. It's not blood, though. The bandage is black.

His relief is short-lived. Danny peels the tape off and pulls the bandage up, leaning out of the car's shadow and into the nearest pool of light from the streetlamps. The skin underneath glistens red. There's too much blood for him to see the state of the stitches, but he assumes it's bad.

"Shit," he mutters. "I'm such an idiot."

Every decision he has made since saving the doctor has been a mistake. Going with her, calling Lancer, he never should have done any of it. But that's what Danny does. He wrecks things. He wrecked the future, once. He wrecked the past by putting everything in motion with that stupid portal. And now he's wrecking the present with his own stupidity. Danny never should have gone with the doctor in the first place. He has enough experience treating his own wounds. Everything would have been fine. But it's too late. And now... Danny doesn't know what happens now. If Lancer calls the Guys in White, or Danny's parents, it's all over. He will spend his last days splayed out on a dissection table. At least he will get to see what his insides really look like. Danny's voice cracks as he laughs. What a mess he is.

It's hard to see through the rain, but Danny tries his best to get a good look at his surroundings, get his bearings. There's a familiar store nearby. A dessert place Tucker likes. If Danny remembers right, it's only a couple of streets away from Tucker's house, and not much further to Fenton Works. Maybe ten blocks in all. He can do that. He can make it that far. Bracing himself against the car, Danny pulls himself up and tries to transform. He only sees a spark of white before a stabbing pain rips through his chest, sending him back to his knees. He gasps, struggling to catch his breath—his stupid breath in his stupid lungs that he apparently doesn't have as a ghost. It hurts, God, it hurts. Not just the ripped stitches in his arm or the stabbing in his chest, but the look of horror in Lancer's eyes seconds before Danny fled. The man had only asked a simple question, but that was all Danny needed.

Lancer was too smart. He cared too much. Why did he have to care? Everyone else so easily accepts what they see on the surface. They look at Danny, his bruises, his poor attendance, and think that's a delinquent in the making. A troubled teen. They sneer and turn their backs. Just look at the other teachers, at Sam's parents. His own? Danny shakes his head. No, no, not them. They care. They care. He wishes Lancer didn't, though.

He hobbles to the end of the street, limping, and curling his arms around his stomach. What a sight he must make for anyone looking through their windows. The great Danny Phantom, humbled by a few tonnes of concrete. Pathetic. As he hobbles home, he wishes he could be in ghost form. Judging by the state of his powers right now, flying would be out of the question, and he can hobble just as well in either form. But the numbing effect of his core is always stronger as a ghost. The natural cold he exudes provides a modicum of comfort, although the rain is making him cold enough. Maybe even too cold. Danny shivers—something he doesn't do much anymore—and curls into himself. He has a long way to go.

Tucker's bedroom light is on when Danny finally reaches his house. A part of him wants to go inside and seek out the comfort of his best friend. That's what a smart person would do. Another part of him, a larger and louder part, wants to go home and collapse into his bed. He should let his friends know that he's safe but telling them that would mean telling them what happened today. Telling them about Lancer.

Danny moves on without so much as knocking on Tucker's window. He wants to hold on to that horrifying fact for a little longer. If he tells his friends, then they have to deal with it, acknowledge it. If he keeps it to himself, just for tonight, he can pretend everything is fine.

Today was great. Danny handed in his essay on time. He avoided Dash's ire for a full six hours at school. A herd of animal ghosts forced him to ditch the last period, but that was okay. He managed to take them down one by one. Caught the last ghost seconds before it could ram into a nearby building. He suffered the usual superficial wounds that animal ghosts leave. They're always a little more volatile, less predictable. Like wrangling a real animal, except half the time they can throw ectoblasts.

Today was great and now Danny is on his way home to reward himself with a good night's rest. Today was great.

Lancer knows. Lancer knows. Lancer knows.


The first thing Danny does after phasing through his front door is check the time. According to the living room clock, it's past one o'clock. That's ten hours since he last talked to his friends. Longer since he saw his parents. Guilt makes Danny's stomach turn. They must have been worried. Without Jazz home to act as a buffer between them, his parents have started paying more attention to him. It's nice, on the one hand. On the other, it makes hunting harder. It's not easy finding excuses for why he skips class and stays out late so much.

Danny limps his way up the stairs. He tries to keep his steps light, but exhaustion wears on him. His shoes thump against the stairs. Oh. He forgot to take them off at the door. Turning back, he finds a trail of soggy footprints marking his path across the floor. He winces at the sight of it. Tomorrow, when he's feeling better, he will take care of that. On the landing, he pauses to catch his breath, leaning against the newel post. Ten more feet. Just ten more feet and then he can go to bed and let sleep take him.

A door creaks down the hall. Danny goes invisible out of reflex. Good thing, too, because his parents' bedroom door opens, spilling light into the hallway. His mom sticks her face through the opening.

"Danny?" she asks.

He shrinks, taking a step back down the stairs. Even though he is already invisible, the paranoid part of him panics when Maddie scans the hall. Her gaze pauses on the stairs. She shouldn't be able to see him, but the way her stare lingers makes him squirm. Eventually, too long for Danny's comfort, she moves on and settles her gaze on his bedroom door.

"Is he there, Mads?" Jack's voice comes from the bedroom.

"Let me check." Maddie emerges into the hall fully, dressed in her pyjamas. She breezes by Danny on the stairs and knocks on his closed bedroom door.

"Danny?" she calls again. No answer, obviously. Danny holds himself as still as possible, not even daring to breathe. "I'm opening the door."

Maddie peeks inside. When she finds the room empty, she leans back and pushes the door open.

"He's not here, Jack," she says.

"I could have sworn I heard something."

"So did I." They sound worried. Danny should show himself. Someone tonight should get to know that he is okay. He leans forward, about to drop his invisibility, when Maddie continues. "I don't know what to do, Jack. Has he always been like this?"

Jack pokes his head out of the master bedroom. He dons a frown, following Maddie's gaze into the empty bedroom. "I don't know."

"I know he started pulling away when he began high school, but I thought that was normal. Teenagers do that all the time. Remember Jazz? She became so independent after she started reading those psychology books. But Danny... he isn't like that. He is always gone, always late, and never tells us anything. I found a pair of jeans with bloodstains in his laundry last week."

Jack grimaces. That's not the standard reaction a parent should have when hearing about something like this. He doesn't look shocked, just disappointed. As if he expected it. As if this isn't the first time his parents have found something like this.

"Did we just not notice?" Maddie continues. "I know our work can be consuming but we've tried, haven't we? And he still—" Maddie cuts herself off with a sigh.

"We're doing our best, Mads."

"Jazz turned out so good. Where did we go wrong with Danny?"

Silence falls. Neither Jack nor Maddie has an answer to that question. With a final shake of her head, Maddie turns and heads back to bed. She takes the light with her as she closes the door behind her, leaving the hall dark once more.

Danny, still huddled on the stairs, stares at the floor with tears in his eyes.

As he said, he wrecks everything.