In Tucker's opinion, he's doing a pretty good job of not freaking out. He didn't wreck his dad's car on his way home from Central Park. He didn't fumble his keys at the front door, he didn't curse to find an empty house when he'd hoped to find Sam and—
And he took a shower and didn't slip. He got dressed with only a modicum of shaky hands he could pretend were the fault of hunger rather than anticipation-slash-dread. He might have dropped a glass in the kitchen, sure, but he didn't nick his fingers cleaning it up. He's only hiccuped out a few high, thin curses since he's been home, nervous jitters rattling down his spine.
He's fine. He's definitely fine.
Danny's back, that's all.
Danny's back.
He opts to pace the living room instead of attempting something so restrained as sitting. His bare feet hiss along the rug as he twists the cap of a water bottle he'd grabbed out of the refrigerator. Half-open, half-shut, half-open, half-shut. Just to have something to do with his hands.
Where are they?
He twists the cap off fully, gulps down a cold mouthful of water, twists it back, and picks up pacing again.
Rinse, lather, repeat.
The bottle is nearly empty when there's—finally—a knock at the door. He tosses the bottle over his shoulder, hears it thump against a couch cushion. The cap's on, he thinks. It won't leak, probably, who gives a shit.
He wrenches the door open.
Sam's there, of course. Looking worn out from last night, from dealing with Cujo, from only getting a few hours of sleep. Her face is pinched though, rather than simply scowling. Worry? Fear? He can't tell. There are dark smudges around her eyes; more than what yesterday's makeup can justify. It makes sense that she looks like hell, doesn't it? He woke up to a half dozen texts from her, increasingly frustrated and caps locked as her night wore on and Cujo proved to be as much of an asshole ghost mutt as ever.
But she's not alone. Of course she's not alone. She told him she was going to pick Danny up, so of course Danny's a black and gray shadow just behind her.
Danny—
The sight of Danny sends a chill right down Tucker's spine, twists his guts into knots even before he's really had enough time to take in the guy standing on his doorstep.
Danny's dressed in heavy layers, all black, wearing a pair of shades that look like he stole them off somebody cosplaying a character out of the Matrix. Danny looks—
—there's only a few seconds he can stand there and just stare, really—
—it's him. It's really Danny. It's really his best friend standing there. But—
But maybe Tucker's just gotten used to the Danny left behind in old photographs. Frozen at fourteen, traces of baby fat still softening his face and a year late on the growth spurt Mr. F's generous frame promised. Danny now, here, standing right in front of him, is recognizable in the unsettling familiarity of a police artist's mock up. A loose, second-hand sketch transposed into clunky CGI; a mockery of the reality it's trying to mimic. One look is enough for Tucker's brain to scream uncanny valley, just as it so often does with the wild-eyed and shrieking ghosts that come tearing out of the Fenton Portal in search of the kind of fun that ends in blood. He has to force himself to hold his ground, and isn't that a half dozen kinds of bullshit? To be instinctively scared of his own best friend?
But Danny's a sickly gray beneath a sun-beaten tan. He's got his dad's jawline and his mom's cheekbones jutting out at uncompromising, hungry angles. He's got a crater of an acne scar at one temple, a white slash across his lower lip, a chunk missing from one ear. Danny's hunched shoulders are in a bitter civil war with the easy smile on his face.
He's never looked more like a ghost.
"Danny," slips out of Tucker's mouth on its own volition; half-reverent, half-dismay.
But Danny's mouth yawns in a wide and happy grin. Then he's edging around Sam, knocking his knuckles against the doorframe as he rushes up and scoops Tucker up in a hug that lifts them both clear off their feet. "Tucker!"
Tucker yelps laughter, as startled as he is relieved as he kicks his feet in mock-protest. "Jesus, you're freezing!"
"And you're—! What the hell is this?" Danny sets him down and wraps one icy hand around his bicep. "You're practically beefy!"
"I wouldn't go that far," Tucker replies, playing at demure while he pretends he isn't pleased to hear Danny I-can-pick-a-school-bus-up-with-one-hand Fenton is impressed by his guns. He shrugs Danny's cold hand off, grinning like a loon. Danny's back. "But being one-half of the head of Amity Park's teen militia kind of comes with this whole expectation of being in, y'know, not horrible shape? So I've had to set an example to the troops."
"Wait, what?" Danny laughs, hooking his thumbs in his hip pockets and grinning right back at Tucker. "Militia? I never pegged you for the rank and file, man, let alone being in charge of that shit."
Behind him, Sam slips in and shuts the door behind her without so much as an amused scoff. Samantha Manson, not taking potshots? She must be really tired. Or maybe something happened? Sam's looking from him to Danny, biting her lip with this absolutely miserable look in her eyes. Yeah, okay. Something definitely happened. Tucker'll let her spill the beans on whatever it is in her own time. He knows better than to push.
"Yeah, well, somebody had to step up, and your parents have had their hands full with the protect-and-defend junk. Sam and me? We stepped in to take care of the offensive." He winks at her, but she doesn't roll her eyes like he'd expected her too. She looks kind of like she wants to puke.
"For real?" Danny smiles, easy and familiar—or, no. Familiar in its shape, but still set uncomfortably in the uncanny valley. His mouth is too wide, canines are too sharp, his teeth stained and translucent. He's a bad replica of himself. "Sam didn't mention any of that. That's great, really. I'm glad you guys have been handling things without me around."
"Well I dunno about 'handling.'" he laughs, giving Sam ample opportunity to step in with her usual droll jokes about the absolute shitshow most of the last three years have been, but she stays mum. "But I mean, the town's still here and mostly in one piece, so I guess that's a win. But forget about all that; what about you?"
He can't tell with the shades on, but he thinks Danny's making a big show of rolling his eyes. "What about me, dude? I've been Freakshow's bitch for three years. It sucked, now I'm free. Big whoop."
"'Big whoop?' Man, come on, we were worried half to death over you. I mean, we knew Lydia was the one who took you, but we never heard anything from Freakshow, so—"
"So you didn't know what to think," Danny finishes. Far too gently, considering. "Or do. I know. It's okay."
Tucker shudders a breath in and out, relieved and guilty and—and torn up. Danny's a mess. Danny's been through hell. One look's enough to tell him that much. Danny went through hell because they didn't know how to find him to save him. How can he feel anything but guilty? "Jesus, Danny. What happened?"
Danny shrugs. "What didn't? Freakshow got me again, and this time he made sure I couldn't shake him loose. If Lydia hadn't gone and changed her mind..." His mouth quirks halfway between amusement and a grimace. "Well, I sure as hell wouldn't be standing here right now, that's for sure."
Beside them, Sam looks at Tucker with this wild-eyed expression, like she's trying to tell him something grossly important with just the stretch of her eyebrows alone and—
Holy shit, has she been crying?
Tucker's known her since middle school but he's only ever seen her cry once before, and that was late after a particularly horribly botched patrol that had ended with calling 911 and a body bag and the mutual admittance that it wasn't likely Danny was ever coming back. He'd been assuming her red-rimmed eyes had been caused by her relief, except her mouth is pinched to a miserable white knot and her fingers are all tangled and squeezing. Something is terribly wrong, but he has no idea what it could be.
Well, his house, his rules. If he's gonna host this teary-eyed reunion, it's gonna be a cozy one, come hell or high water. "Come on," he says, jerking a thumb toward the kitchen. "Let me whip up some cocoa or something. Hell of a cold snap out there, huh?"
"Is it?" Danny asks mildly. Tucker gives him some serious side-eye that seems to slide right off him.
"Yeah, yeah, I know you don't get cold." Except he is cold right now. He ought to be a shivering, teeth-rattling mess of let's-get-him-to-a-hospital levels of hypothermia for how cold to the touch he is. But he's just standing there, smiling blandly with his head cocked at a bemused angle. Sam takes a hesitant half-step towards the kitchen but doesn't go any farther, her eyes darting nervously to Danny. She's hovering. She never hovers. Tucker gets that Danny's been—gone, kidnapped, mind-controlled, stolen away—for a long time, but why the hell is she acting so bummed now that he's back?
"You comin'?" He asks. "Jeez, you're both acting like you've never been in my house before."
Danny cackles out two practically delighted syllables of laughter. "Gimme a break, dude. I've only been kidnapped for three years. Forgive me for not remembering Foley house etiquette—"
"Danny's blind!" Sam blurts out.
Danny—
—stills.
His easy smile turns brittle, his lazily gesturing hand crabs to a tense knot of claws. Something in him pops; his neck or knuckles or maybe a knee. Tucker can't tell.
"Thank you, Sam!" Danny says far too loudly, far too brightly. "I was planning on breaking it to him gently so we wouldn't have a repeat of twenty minutes ago, but sure! Let's do it your way! Right to the point and damn the consequences, right?"
Sam's face has gone white, and that could be from shock or misery or shame or who knows what else, but her eyes flash with unmistakable anger. "Oh, I'm sorry, but how much longer were you planning on playing pretend? How much longer were you going to act like nothing was wrong? How much longer were you going to lie to your best friend?"
"Kindness isn't lying," Danny retorts coldly.
Tucker blinks. Fighting? Sam and Danny never fought, not really. It was always him and Sam at each other's throats, picking fights over the dumbest shit. Danny was their mediator, their buffer, the common sense their sparks of indignation or righteousness always clung to. They've chafed against each other so much over these past three years without him. They've made do without him, trying to work together without friction in the face of a greater danger, but it was never good enough. Not really. He doesn't—
He has no idea what's going on.
"What?" He asks meekly.
Danny sighs. "Sorry, Tuck. Sam's telling the truth. I'm one hundred percent totally and completely blind."
He says it so calmly. So matter of fact. He's just standing there, waiting for Tucker to pick his jaw up off the floor and say something. But Tucker—
Tucker is speechless. His head's full of buzzing, startled static, and his tongue is glued to the roof of his mouth. He looks at Sam. He looks at Danny. He expects a punchline, a grandstanding just kidding! that he'll pretend to spite them for to cover up his relief. But they just stand there. Sam wrings her hands and Danny grins like he's in a toothpaste commercial, flashy and false. They just stand there, waiting for Tucker to get his act together and react.
"You—" He clears his throat, swallows, tries again. "You're serious."
"Yup," Danny says, as light as if they're chatting about the weather. "So hey, if you wanna nudge me in the direction of your coat rack or whatever, I'd appreciate it."
"You're—" Shut it, Foley. Nobody likes a broken record. "What—what happened?"
Danny shrugs as he tugs his leather jacket off, folding it neatly over one arm. "I told you. Freakshow wanted to make sure I couldn't shake him off this time around, so he found something better than that staff of his I broke." He angles his head toward Sam, holding his jacket out. "D'you mind? Tuck's gone all tongue-tied and honestly, I can't remember the layout here at all."
"O-oh. Sorry, yeah." She fumbles to grab his jacket, stepping carefully around Danny to place it on the coat rack not two feet to his right.
"Uh—" Blind? Blind? Like, seriously, blind? "How about that cocoa?"
"Sound great," Danny says. "Lead the way."
Tucker hesitates, looking at Sam for guidance. She looks as mortified as he feels, so clearly she's still wrapping her head around—around this as much as he is. He swallows to keep his voice steady. "Do you, uh, need to hold onto me, or...?"
"Relax," Danny says with that same familiar, unfamiliar flash of too-sharp teeth. "You've got wood floors and I've got great hearing. Just lemme know if I'm about to trip over something, otherwise I'll be fine."
"Okay," Tucker says for lack of anything better to say.
He leads them both to the kitchen, watching nervously over his shoulder. Sam stays glued to Danny's side as he moves with slow, calculated steps, his hands raised to feel out any waist-level obstacles. He's. He's not kidding, is he? He really is blind?
What did Freakshow do to him?
At least it's not far to the kitchen and the little four-chaired dining table in the corner. Danny navigates the distance fine, bumping his hand against the nearest chair with a pleased little hum. "Now, was that so hard?" He says coyly, pulling the chair out and settling in with a graceless heap of angles along the tabletop. He waves one hand in Tucker's direction, waggling his eyebrows. "Chop chop, I demand a cup of hot choc for this delightful conversation, stat."
"On it," Tucker replies mechanically. He turns away to fetch three mugs and all the fixings for his mom's closely guarded secret stovetop cocoa. He pretends not to hear Sam hiss instructions at Danny or Danny's irritable huffs. Once the saucepan's sorted he turns around to face them, just in time to hear something clatter across the table. They're sat with Danny directly across from him and Sam on Danny's adjacent left, and in the middle of the table is a ruby amulet on a fat gold chain.
Oh, but that particular shade of red has never boded well when it comes to ghosts.
"Is that what Freakshow used on you?"
Funny, how calm he manages to sound with his heart hammering fit to burst in his chest. Mind controlled for three fucking years. Fuck.
Danny shakes his head. "Uh-uh. This amulet is what he used on the other ghosts. He didn't get his hands on it until I'd been under his control for, eh, a few months? I think I helped him get it, but all that's kind of fuzzy." He shrugs. "A lot of details are still fuzzy for me. Dunno if I'll ever get it all back. I know we were somewhere in eastern Europe when he got his hands on this thing."
"Europe?" Sam echoes. "You've been in Europe this whole time?"
That'd explain why it had been so hard to find anything on Freakshow, but Danny shakes his head. "No. We came back to the States... last spring? Summer? I dunno. I just remember it being really hot."
"So, fleeing the country after busting out of prison and kidnapping-slash-mind-enslaving a minor makes sense to me," Tucker says, and pauses to share a mutual wince with Sam over how flippant that came out, "But why Europe?"
"For this thing," Danny replies, tapping the chain. "I remember him monologuing at me and Lydia about it constantly. All this shit about his family history and how he came from a long line of like, ghost whisperers or whatever." His mouth thins, disgust twisting his face into something cruel and wholly un-Danny-like. "The Showenhowers have been putting leashes on ghosts for a long, long time."
"He wrote a book about the paranormal and supernatural," Sam pipes up. "I found it, um, maybe about a year after you were kidnapped? Took me a while to figure out he wrote it though. It's this big encyclopedia of spectral history and artifacts. It's been a while since I've cracked it open, but this necklace looks familiar. I think it's in the book."
"Huh," Danny says. "That sounds pretty useful. Could I borrow that from you?"
"Sure—uh. I can—read it to you, if you want?" Even though he's got his eyes on the stove Tucker can perfectly picture Sam's open mouth, insert foot wince. But Danny just chuckles.
"Thanks for the offer, but it's for my parents. I asked them to take a look at these things for me, to see if there's any way to outline their energy readings so they can track down anything else like them. If there's even one other creepy supernatural gizmo that can control ghosts, I want to destroy it."
Tucker glances at Sam. Oh good, she looks as perturbed by the vehemence in Danny's voice as he feels. He loves it when they're on the same page.
"So, Freakshow got this necklace after he kidnapped you. What'd he make Lydia use on you?" He stirs cinnamon into the saucepan, the better to hide his oh, shit wince from Sam. Not like Danny can see it, right? Fuck. "I—we knew Lydia was the one to attack you, but, uh—"
"Relax. Sam said there were witnesses that night." Tucker hears a hiss of metal and turns in time to see Danny pull a thinner chain out of his collar. A pendant flashes in the late morning sunlight pouring in through the window. No, make that a vial, and there's something that same worrying shade of red tinkling around inside. "Some kid recorded our fight and everything, yeah?"
"Yeah," Tucker confirms. "The quality was shit, but it was clear enough. Wes—the guy who filmed it—missed some stuff once you two phased through into Baskin-Robbins, but he got the tail end of things through the glass front. She did something to you that made you pass out, then she flew off with you."
"Basically. That's what I remember, anyway."
Sam reaches out to touch the vial dangling from Danny's fingers. Danny flinches, pulling away and gripping the vial tightly to his chest.
"Sorry," they say at the same time.
Danny's the one to relax first, dropping the vial so it dangles again. Weird red light splashes across the dining table, unrealistic and creepy as shit in Tucker's experienced opinion. "It's okay. Here. See anything like these things in your book?"
"Um, I'm not sure—"
The saucepan boils over, spilled milk hissing. All three of them jump. Tucker hastens to lower the temperature, stirring in a little more milk and a few liberal drops of vanilla. Sam's laugh is too high, too nervous, and though Tucker keeps his eyes trained on the stove it's all too easy to hear the tinkle of the chain as it exchanges hands.
"Danny." Sam's voice is too thin, trembling with a fear that doesn't fit her at all. "Are these needles?"
"Oh, I did not just hear that," Tucker says loudly before Danny can say yea or nay. "Time out. Time out. I don't want to hear any of this until I've got marshmallows spilling out of my ears."
Danny laughs. When Tucker glances over his shoulder he can see Danny's weirdly twisted hands held up in mock-defense. Jesus. What even happened to his hands? Never mind. That can wait for now. If there's going to be any talk about needles and mind control, Tucker wants—needs, if he's honest with himself—to be sitting down. He still hasn't gotten over his phobia of anything remotely related to hospitals, and frankly he's not in any hurry to start on that, thanks ever so.
He hears Sam murmur to Danny while he juggles mugs and nearly-boiling cocoa, though he doesn't hear exactly what she says. Danny huffs again, so she's probably needling—ngh, talk about a bad choice of words—to be honest. With a little help from Mom's goofy bee-patterned oven mitts he gets all the mismatched mugs distributed around the table with a shallow bowl of marshmallows set in the middle, right beside Freakshow's freaky amulet. Now that he's sat at the table he can see a wide crack through the largest facet. Does Danny even know it's there, considering he's—
Ngh.
Tucker can't wrap his head around it—that—yet. The sunglasses aren't an aesthetic affectation, are they? His eyes; what the hell did Freakshow do to him to blind him?
Honestly, he's not sure he wants to know the answer to that.
Honestly, he knows he owes Danny every discomfort he can give him, for all the years they failed to bring him home.
"Okay," he says with forced calm. "Needles. Mind control. Blindness. Not a lot of conclusions a guy can draw here, and hoo boy, I don't like any of 'em."
Danny's expression turns grim. It's the most honest he's looked since Tucker opened the front door. "Nailed it in one, Tuck. Good job."
Sam's spinning the vial in her hands, face tight like she's expecting the needles to prick her fingers through the glass. "So, what? Freakshow blinded you out of—what, revenge?"
"Basically, yeah," Danny concedes. "But also not quite. I never had any opportunity to ask him much, but the application of those needles seemed to be—hmm. Kind of the cherry on top for him. While they were in my eyes I could see fine—as long as he wanted me to see, anyway—and it was removing them that blinded me for keeps."
Tucker immediately regrets the three marshmallows he's swallowed.
Sam frowns at the vial. How the hell is she so calm about this? "There are four needles in here."
"Well, he had to control his favorite puppet somehow, didn't he?"
Tucker flinches. Sam does too, and he's relieved to see she does. Danny keeps using this dissonant tone; this too-light, too-disinterested voice. Like if he pretends hard enough that they aren't talking about the twisted fucker who blinded him, Tucker and Sam won't be as horrified by the things he's been through.
Tucker decides here and now that he's not having any of that. "Jesus," he says. "Don't say it like that, man."
"Like what?" Danny reaches out, hesitant, his head not moving even a little, until he knocks his hand against the mug Tucker put near him. He wraps his hands around it like a lifeline, breathing in deeply.
"Like—like this is all a joke. Like you're telling us some stupid shit the Box Ghost pulled when we weren't there."
Danny leans forward, resting his elbows on the table. His mouth opens in a mute snarl—shit, were his teeth that long a second ago?—before he seems to get control of himself. His voice is low, controlled, so calm it just can't be called human. He sounds as automated as the generic woman's voice on an answering machine. "For starters, it was Lydia who put the needles in me. She was also the one who pulled them out of me. I've been free for months. I've had plenty of time to deal with everything Freakshow put me through. I've talked it out with the other ghosts he controlled, the ghosts just as trapped as I was. I've been angry, and I've been sad, and I've been terrified too. I've dealt with this. I've had plenty of time to deal with all the shit that bastard put me through. So forgive me if I'm not brimming over with with all the woe-is-me misery you seem to be expecting."
"Can you blame us?" Sam asks. "I mean—you look awful. You're—that sick bastard blinded you. You might be used to it but we're still—fucking, Danny—that guy has got to pay for what he's done to you! You can't seriously be okay with letting him go on his merry way, right? He's going to come back for you. He's fixated on Phantom, and maybe you too. Don't you—"
"No," Danny says. So, so calmly. "I don't think so. Freakshow won't be coming for me."
"How do you know that?" Sam demands.
Danny takes a long gulp of his cocoa, makes a pleased little hum at the taste of it, sets it down and wraps his twisted hands around the mug before he deigns to answer. "Because I killed him the first chance I got."
Later, Tucker will think, Danny may as well have dropped a bomb in his kitchen.
Like I said previously, the majority of this sequel was written during NaNoWriMo. A lot of seat of my pants shit going on. I distinctly recall post-NaNo trying to go back and write a proper chapter/scene that dealt with the fallout of Sam and Tucker hearing Danny had committed one murder (he would have quickly realized how horrified they were at the prospect of him killing Freakshow, so he would have stayed mum on the rest). I also distinctly remember hating every single draft I tried at it, and that I tried an easy half-dozen drafts. Past!anthrop hated apparently every draft enough to delete them all, so I'm afraid we'll be skipping right over some incredibly important characterization and reactions. It's really a shame I never could figure out how Tucker and Sam would react (both together and individually) to the news of their best friend killing a frankly unforgivable man. If I recall, Sam would have been more against it than Tucker, but the how and why of all that morally-gray reactionary stuff as told by the perspective of two teenagers never did come out right.
Shrugsville. Hope you don't mind the weird jump over to some more Valerie content next chapter! I wasn't kidding when I said she was our deuteragonist.
