Phantom didn't know where he came from. He'd gathered, in small scraps of knowledge from others, that this was normal. You forgot things, when you died, when you became a ghost, when you gave up what you were in exchange for what you could do.
It followed that Phantom must have died.
That was what the others said, what they implied when they didn't say anything, what the word ghost meant in the first place.
Phantom was a ghost.
A brand new ghost. So freshly dead and shiny new that Johnny sometimes joked about smelling grave soil on him, on the days Phantom could stand him.
Phantom couldn't always stand him. They'd fought a few times, the most recent being over a girl with red hair who wasn't Kitty and no they couldn't have her.
This was normal, too. He was a feral little thing with a haunt too big for him. Territorial and untrusting. A child in every way that ghosts counted, reeling from the great change and fighting for control.
What wasn't normal was a ghost who couldn't reliably hold onto corporeal form and consciousness for more than an hour to keep that too-big haunt, to fight and win against ghosts who had been in death's uncertain embrace hundreds of times longer than he had.
Phantom was okay with being weird.
He was okay with walking out of a flash of light and into a fight in a familiar-not alley, or classroom, or park with little, because that meant he was spending his time properly, not wasting energy he could be using to keep his place and people safe and protected.
It made him feel good. Made him feel more, if only for a moment, before tiredness faded in and he flared out into… into whatever he was between moments of awareness. Some kind of shade, maybe?
It probably didn't matter. According to everyone who would talk to him, he'd stabilize before too long. He'd be able to do more than just fight.
He sighed, and smiled dreamily up at the stars. It wasn't that he disliked fighting, it was important, but he knew that if he had the time, he could do so much more! He could help people with other things! He could fix problems before they got bad!
He could have more moments like this, too.
Moments when the ghosts were gone and the chaos stopped and the people safe and everything was good and right.
The stars twinkled at him as gravity began to pull on him more urgently, his feet making silent, but firm, contact with the ground.
"Until next time," he said.
There was a flash of light.
.
Danny leaned his head against the wall of the nearest building, not caring that it was probably unsanitary. He moaned. It hurt, and he was shaking, exhausted.
Breathe, he reminded himself. He didn't know where he was, and panicking would only make that worse.
This had happened before. This had happened before and he was fine. He should be getting used to this by now.
It was still hard not to cry.
Luckily, though, given this was the umpteenth time he'd sleepwalked out of the house or blacked out, he'd been prepared when he went to sleep. He wore slippers to bed, now, and kept his phone on a lanyard around his wrist.
He fumbled the clamshell open, his fingers clumsy from lack of sleep and the general disorientation that followed episodes like this. His eyes barely registered the blurred numbers proclaiming the time to be 2:57 AM. He didn't need to look at the screen, anyway. The home phone was on speed-dial. His parents didn't sleep with earplugs anymore.
The phone rang three times.
"Danny? Did it happen again?" asked Maddie, immediately upon picking up.
"That no good ghost!" shouted Jack in the background, barely audible. "When I get my hands on it–!"
Danny didn't believe in ghosts. Yeah, more people talked about them now, but as far as he was concerned, it was all an elaborate joke on the kid with ghost hunter parents. A mean one, considering it all started up right after his accident with the portal. He'd never seen a ghost, besides, and Jazz backed him up, saying that he probably had some kind of sleep disorder.
"Yeah," said Danny. "I, um, I don't see any street signs, but I think I'm in the warehouse district." He swallowed. "It's really dark here."
"It's okay, honey," said Maddie, soothingly. "We'll just track your phone, and we'll be down there in a jiffy."
"Okay," said Danny.
"Stay on the line, alright?"
"Okay," said Danny. "I'm sorry…"
"You have nothing to be sorry about," said Maddie, crisply. He heard a door slam shut on her side. "It's those darn ghosts. You don't deserve to be bullied by these malevolent pseudo consciousnesses!"
Danny felt his headache increase. "Mom, I have a sleep disorder. I'm not being haunted."
"The sleep study didn't find anything," said Maddie, defensively. The familiar roar of the GAV started in the background, followed by a squeal.
Danny sighed. "Can we not do this right now? I'm… tired."
"Do you have a headache?" asked Maddie. "You should really try those ectopurifying tablets again…"
"They made me sick last time," said Danny, "and they aren't approved for human consumption."
"They're perfectly safe," said Maddie. "None of the compounds we used are toxic to humans. We tested them ourselves."
"Please don't feed me anything that isn't FDA approved," said Danny, echoing Jazz's ultimatum from earlier that year. "Do you have tylenol with you?"
"Of course, honey, we always have tylenol."
"Thanks," said Danny. He inhaled shakily. "Why does this keep happening to me?"
"We'll find out," said Maddie, reassuringly.
"I hope so." Danny looked up. He could see more stars here than he could elsewhere in the city. It was a single nice spot in what would probably shape up to be a really awful day.
The bright lights of the GAV swung around the corner, and Danny squinted at them even as the vehicle came to a shrieking halt. The back door popped open, and Danny climbed in.
"Hey, Danny!" greeted Jack, with rather forced joviality.
"Oh," he said, "it's warm in here."
"Mhm," said Maddie, looking back over the front passenger seat to look him over, and handed him the tylenol bottle. "You aren't hurt?"
"No," said Danny.
"Remember, if you're hurt, you need to call nine-one-one first."
"I remember," said Danny, leaning back and digging the heels of his palms into his eyes. "Do you think I could skip school today?" He'd missed too much school already, but… it was worth a shot.
Maddie reached back to pat his knee. "How about you see how you feel when you wake up?"
Danny shrugged, already half asleep. "'Kay…"
(And they slept.)