For DP's phic phight 2022.

Prompt: Ghostking!Danny meets one of his parents in the afterlife. (PR181)


I hope you know we had everything

Phantom was having a moment to relax. Those were scarce, but since the activity of the GIW and their copycats have diminished, he could steal a moment or two to simply exist and stop trying to be a competent military leader.

(Fake it till you make it, Sam had commented.)

He never wanted this. He had dreams and desires, he once upon a time wanted to graduate from Casper High with honors and maybe study astrophysics and become part of NASA.

Never in his wildest dreams he thought he would end up being forever fourteen and the leader of a whole dimension. Or worse, lead them into battle. Strategizing with a military council, looking at the numbers of casualties in both factions, acting as if it didn't break his heart to see people die.

It has been almost half a century and he stopped wishing he could go back to how things were before somewhere along the way. Was it before they lost the Science Tower to the GIW? Or after Valerie came to him crying because Plasmius decided to threaten her with killing her father if she didn't obey him? Danny still remembers Vlad's screams and sobs as they stripped him of his physical form and encapsulated his core in resin, to be displayed in the throne room.

In his defense, the man had tried to overthrow him one too many times. And he had the nerve of using Valerie the last attempt at it.

"My Liege?" A voice interrupted his rest. If he could call closing his eyes as he sat on the throne 'resting'. "There's been a development."

Danny made a gesture so the General could continue talking.

"A new soul has been found roaming the Wastes. It's… um…" It was weird seeing his ruthless general be at loss of words.

"Go on?" Danny tried to make his voice kind and welcoming. By the nervous look on the ghost he supposed he failed.

"We believe it is your biological human mother, sir. Madeline Fenton."

He should be surprised, but instead he felt cold and empty. "You believe?"

"We didn't dare approach, sir. Just in case…"

Madeline Fenton was infamous among his troops. The heartless woman had destroyed so many of his species during the years, via the GIW assaults or by her own hands, that it wasn't recommendable to approach her without backup.

Tales of the captured ghosts they managed to bring back still send shivers down their ectoplasmic bodies. Especially when those tales had to be sealed away with the memories of their time in Madeline's prison, to protect the ghost from breaking down and destabilizing.

"Bring her to me."


He had seen her when he joined the troops for the battle, and with time, he had stopped getting caught in her aging features; but he was not prepared to see her in her blue spandex suit, young again, orange goggles in her no-longer-white hair.

She looked just like she did the day he abandoned the human realm.

(The day he managed to escape from the basement lab with Jazz's help.)

She didn't see him at first, kicking and biting and apparently not caring who saw her screaming 'you criminal ghost scum' at his subjects.

Did she forget she was one of them, now? He chuckled at the thought.

"Phantom." She growled, finally seeing him there at the throne. "Where is he." It was an order, not a question.

But he obeyed no one. He was above all in his Realm.

"Maddie," his smile wasn't a happy one, "it's been a while."

The woman screamed and thrashed against the ghost soldiers holding her in place, but he stood there comfortable with the knowledge that she couldn't harm him. She was alone and she didn't have any of her toys here.

There was also the fact that he could compel her to obey, but that was a last resort kind of thing.

"WHERE IS MY SON!"

Danny had waited too long for this moment. He savored the way her youthful expression twisted with fury and confusion, how her eyes danced around the room, searching for exits, making an escape route. Or was she looking for this idealized version of her son she so desperately wanted?

Maybe once upon a time she actually was looking for her little boy, but with time it became less about motherly love and more about justifying her hatred. As if by eliminating all the ghosts somehow everything would be better, not really analyzing the flaws of that reasoning.

His mother was gone and only Commander Fenton was left, no matter how her ghost form looked like.

"He's here." The corner of his lip shifted a little bit higher. "But you don't deserve to see him."

"You MONSTER!" She fought against the soldiers, but gave up quickly. "What did you do to him?"

"I didn't do anything." He slowly walked down the dais, one hand gesturing for everyone in the room to leave. Only the two guards holding Maddie remained. "You did."

His words did the trick and the woman stopped fighting, shocked into silence.

"You weren't there, you ignored him, you hurt him - your neglect and lack of interest in your son's life cost him everything. And yet you claim to care about him." He chuckled, bitter. "Funny."

"Don't you dare-!"

"Another funny thought," he interrupted her, "your son Danny died and you never noticed. Yet you say his life is precious."

"If you touched him, I swear-!"

"I was there, the day he died. It was tragic. It was an accident, you know? One of your inventions - quite ironic, I know - was what was finally offed him."

"Danny, stop."

"Jazz?" Maddie looked away from the King to the new figure that seemed to materialize from behind the throne. "You… You are working for him?"

The now adult woman twisted her lips, clearly not happy with the situation. "Yes. I know everything."

Tears gathered in Madeline's eyes. "How could you? Phantom killed your brother!"

"Ah ah. I just said I was there, woman. I never said I killed him."

"And I'm supposed to believe you?"

"Do you really have any other options?" The Ghost King laughed harder when the woman frowned.

"Danny, stop doing this." Jazz walked closed to put a comforting hand on her brother's back. "She has to know."

"She doesn't deserve it."

His sister squeezed his shoulder. "She doesn't. But it doesn't mean she deserves to suffer. Rip the bandaid, as we talked about."

Danny didn't agree with his sister, but she was always insisting on him being a better person than Maddie. He didn't want to be the better person, he was tired of it. He was tired of playing the same old games with the humans.

"Honey, what are you talking about?" Maddie had given up her rage, at least for the moment. Confusion painted her expression as her eyes followed their every move. How hadn't she made the connection already?

"I was there, the day he died… because he became me." Danny let the transformation wash over him, his eyes not leaving Maddie's face. Rip the bandaid. "Hello, Mom."

The word tasted like ashes.

"..." Madeline's eyes opened wide, her legs giving up under her. "No…"

Danny smiled, knowing how he looked in his human form. He knew he had been neglecting his human side a little bit - or more than a little bit; yes, Frostbite, he slept a few hours (in a week but the yeti didn't need to know that), and yes, it was actual food what he ate yesterday -; but he hadn't cared about being pretty in the last two decades or so. They were at war and the ghosts needed a King. Simple as that.

He didn't have time for pleasantries or personal life anymore, either. If he thought it had been too much while he was in school, oh boy, he had a big storm coming the following years.

"Do you remember, Madeline?" His eyes glazed over, lost in the memory. "The portal didn't work one day and the next it did. What changed?"

"Danny said he invited his friends… over…"

Danny smiled at her, but his eyes were still far away. "Everything was simpler before the accident. We had everything - it wasn't perfect, but it was our little family. Then the ghosts came through the portal, and Phantom appeared, and it was like you and Dad didn't have time for anything else." He focused back on the woman, smirking when he saw the gears start turning in her head. "I realize now that everything we had broke down that day - that Danny Fenton died that day, and it was only a matter of time until I accepted it."

He made a gesture, and the guards that helped Maddie's arms let her go before also leaving the room. Jazz didn't dare approach, knowing her brother needed this little moment, this little vengeance. It wasn't justice - the life they once had was over and nothing could bring back the happy days in the Fenton household.

The woman looked at the King with wide eyes, mouth open but completely speechless.

"I didn't want to be King." His regal pose was out of place on his mangled human visage. "But you helped me decide. When you captured me, captured Phantom, and tortured me it was the last straw - it was what convinced me that any hope I held about having a normal life again was impossible. A mere dream.

"We couldn't come back from the pain and the torture. I couldn't see your face and not feel your hands ripping me apart piece by piece. I couldn't hear your voice without remembering you complaining about how loud I was screaming, ignoring me when I said I was also human."

He picked her face with a hand, ignoring the contrast of her glowing ghostly skin and his pale and dull human one.

"I see recognition in your eyes, Maddie. Do you remember that day?"

"Danny." Jazz said again, and he let go. When stepped back, he let his form change back to what he was more comfortable with. "You promised."

"I know."

"Promised what?" Maddie whispered, jumping a little when it echoed. She forgot again she was undead now. How funny.

Danny took his time to walk back to the throne and sat down, feeling very tired.

"I promised Jazz that if you were to become a ghost, which I knew you would, given your undying hatred for ghosts," he smiled at his own pun, "I wouldn't let you suffer alone. That I would be the better person and wouldn't kill you again."

He leaned in, forearms resting on his legs, hands clasped together.

"The thing is, I think I'm getting tired of being the better person, Maddie. Ever since I took the throne, you barely gave me a few weeks of rest before you started with your bullshit about finding Phantom and 'getting your son back'." He huffed at the words. "I watched you, Maddie. I watched you choose your own path, go on a downward spiral of your own making, always picking the route that brought violence. Violence against ghosts, against peace, against, well… me."

Maddie tried to get back up, her mouth opening to form words, maybe to explain herself, maybe to once again go on a rant about her son or about ghosts being liars or maybe to apologize and ask for forgiveness. Danny didn't care about either anymore.

He waved his hand and chains materialized around the woman's wrists and feet, but he made sure they didn't hurt her. He had made a promise, after all.

"I don't hate you." His eyes didn't meet Madeline's - instead he watched two pieces of metal clicking into place around her jaw, forcing it close. "This… treatment isn't because I'm going to make you experience what you did to me, what you kept doing to my people the rest of your life. No," he shook his head, "I'm going to be the better person this time, and I'm going to let you go unharmed."

A portal opened at Maddie's feet, her body sinking slowly to the stone floor. She panicked, not knowing that it simply led to the dungeons, where she would have time and peace to reflect on her actions.

And where his subjects wouldn't find her. Just in case.

"This is the world you created, Maddie. Maybe it's time you actually get to live in it." He looked at her eyes, reveling on the way they teared up as she realized what he was implying. "For the rest of your existence."

She was completely enveloped by the portal, her screams muffled and ignored. It got brighter for a moment and then the throne room was back to normal.

Danny heard Jazz sigh as if a weight was lifted from her shoulders. His sister hadn't taken the lying really well since the beginning, when she found out about him being Phantom; and when he asked her to cover for him as he left for his coronation to never come back, he knew a part of her died that day. Like many other things did.

"It could have gone better."

"It could have also gone worse." He snorted at her, but didn't turn to see her expression. Jazz wouldn't agree with how he handled this. Lately she didn't agree with how he handled many things.

"Do you think she would have believed you if you showed her early on?"

"She didn't when she was cutting me open."

"But maybe if we-"

"It doesn't matter, Jazz!" He turned at last, stopping the flinch when he faced his very alive and very old sister. Jazz was not going to become a ghost, he was positive, and he hated arguing with her when it could be the last time he saw her. "This is our reality now, this is what we get to live in! Maybe it's broken and fucked up, but we cannot get stuck with what could have been if Maddie and Dad had been better parents!"

"You could ask Clo-"

"We are not messing with Time, Jazz." His cape started floating, the air charged with electricity. His sister lifted her hands in a placating manner.

"Okay. Okay, calm down." There was fear in her eyes. She didn't want him to see it, but it was there.

Sometimes, Tucker and Sam looked at him like that, too.

When did things get this bad? How did everything go so wrong? He always told his sister not to dwell on the possibilities - that it didn't make sense to long for a reality that wouldn't be theirs, no matter how much they complained about it.

His existence was painful. He was never going to grow older. He was going to be the Ghost King for all eternity. His human life was over before it even began. Blaming all of this on Maddie was unfair, he knew, but it was just…

He hated every second of it. The fighting, the deaths, the fear. He had become a leader and a bogeyman, a savior and a punisher, but he never wanted to be either. He had been just fourteen. He wanted to be an astronaut.

And his mother was now forever chained to the wall in the dungeons.