A/N: Apparently I... forgot to ever cross-post this chapter here...whoops.
Back in the NaNo '15 times I was distinctly unhappy with how this chapter turned out. It was pretty much a dull repeat of Danny and Valerie sniping at each other with no plot progression at all. Circling back to it now I wanted at least SOME payoff, especially with Valerie constantly remarking on how strong of a ghost he pings on her scanner. Paired with that is also a frustration with my own lack of research done back when I wrote the original fic. I avoided it almost entirely by retreating into Danny's childlike POV, then I avoided it in the NaNo of this fic because who the hell has time for researching during NaNo? And now here I am making a point not to overthink this experiment in posting old fic and still getting irked at myself for all the researched I could have (and should have!) done back in the day.
Ah, well.
This is the part where I linked part 1 of the Spotify playlist elsewhere, but FFN continues to eat links for breakfast in this the year 2021, so you're just gonna have to make do with a couple suggested listenings for this chapter instead. Check out Cirque du Solei's "Carrousel" and Peter Gundry's "Dance of the Damned." You'll know where to chime in with them. :)
This time, Valerie expects her radar to ping as the snow-dusted football field comes into view. This time, she knows to look for the green smear of Dee doing acrobatics in the end zone. This time, she doesn't bother putting her board into stealth mode; there's no point really, with those bat ears of his.
She isn't expecting the grin. Toothsome and monstrous yes, but an undeniably happy grin all the same.
Wary, she banishes her board. "Did we have a good day?"
Dee, mid-cartwheel, belts out, "We had a great day!" He staggers on the landing but saves it by simply rolling into the air, legs melting to an eye-wateringly white tail. His grin only seems to widen, teeth sprouting like upsetting mushrooms from his green gums. "I smoothed things over with my friends, and my parents didn't cry at me! Not once! Shit's still fucked sideways, sure, but things are a lot better than they were. My friends and I just sat around and hung out for a few hours. Hung out! Ha ha! I haven't done that in years!"
"And it looks like you've got some energy to burn now," she says, indulging in a note of dry humor.
He does a tight loop-de-loop, proving her right. "And! And I met another ghost today! And that went way better than I thought it would, seriously, I don't know what I was worried about—"
"Whoa, time out. Which ghost?"
He either doesn't catch or decides to ignore the warning note in her voice, all a-flutter about her like he genuinely can't help himself. "Technus, Master of All Things Technological! Or whatever he's callin' himself these days. Apparently he's got an accord with the city or something? It sounds pretty legit; all signed off by the mayor and everything. He can come and go as he pleases—"
"—so long as he pays his due whenever another ghost attacks," she finishes flatly. "Yeah. I'm aware."
"Oh, yeah, course you know. That's—" He laughs again, loud and light, twirling in a tight pirouette with his grin only growing unpleasantly wider. "—incredible! A truce between ghosts and humans! I never could've imagined something like this ever happening!"
"Oh, it's happened," she says. "Technus was just the first."
He, finally, hears the bitterness in her voice. He stops with the leaping and twisting around like an over-excited puppy, smile slowly shrinking to something that actually fits the planes of his face. "You... don't approve."
"I understand the practicality behind it," she admits grudgingly.
"Well damn, Public Affairs, why don't you tell me how you really feel?"
She can't help but throw her hands up with an irritated growl. "It's nothin' against Technus, all right? He's a good guy, even considering—"
"—that he's a ghost?" Dee's voice is suddenly soft, a warning note threaded through his myriad fangs.
She rolls her eyes. "Considering he's made multiple attempts at world domination, but sure, go ahead and put words in my mouth."
He huffs and holds up his overlong hands in mock-defense. "Sorry, sorry."
Sorry. Not a word she's used to hearing from ghosts. One more tally in Dee's favor, though what the end result of this pros-versus-cons list she's making is anyone's guess. "Technus is—a business partner, I guess you could say. He's upgraded my suit a couple of times—" His mouth shrinks further to form a silent O of understanding, "—but the thing is, how many ghosts do they plan on giving practically unrestricted access to Amity Park? To Earth? When is enough enough? Are they gonna let the likes of—of the Fright Knight through? Or Nocturne?"
He tilts his head in doglike curiosity. "Who's Nocturne?"
She clicks her tongue, forcing calm. Of course he wouldn't know. "Big, spacey-looking ghost that can manipulate dreams, summon armies of sleepwalkers. He almost conquered the city in a single night. Bad news, basically."
He hums. "Sounds it. You beat him?"
"...Not alone." It galls her to admit it, but Dee's been nothing but honest with her, so far as she can tell. Fair is fair. "It took most of the militia, in the end."
"My pa—mm." Another hum. Swallowed amusement. "I've heard about the militia, some. Nobody's explained it to me yet. D'you mind?"
She thinks about it. About him. She hasn't heard a whisper of a sighting of him from any of the usual suspects. He's staying out of trouble, sure, but she does not like how well he can hide himself. "I do mind, actually," she decides aloud, and before he can snark adds, "I thought you wanted me to take you out for walkies tonight."
He barks laughter, bouncing—actually bouncing—on his suddenly reappeared heels. "Right! Right. I totally spaced. Y'got somewhere in mind?"
"I do," she repeats, and leaves it at that. She's definitely not going to admit to the hours she wasted today thinking of just where she might feel comfortable taking this strangely amicable ghost. Ambiguity is half the fun of all of this, she's come to realize. No sense in clearing the air now for the sake of simpering reassurances.
She's standing near enough to him that she can hear the audible grind as the last of his excess teeth sink back into his gums. The end result is something far friendlier than what she's come to expect from him. It's the closest to human he's looked so far—not that he's managing anything halfway human with his gaping eye sockets, too-wide mouth full of too-sharp teeth, and overlong limbs. He's an alien thing, as distorted from human as an echo is from a human voice. "Ahhh," he drawls easily. "Mystery walkies. I like it, I like it. S'long as you bring me back here after, I'm happy to let you lead me where thou wilt."
She wants to ask what the hell's the deal with the Shakespearean speech, but then wonders what the hell's so special about this drabby football field, and then remembers that this is the only place he remembers how to find post-blinding, and as such it's the only sure place he knows how to get home from. "Right," is what she says instead of any of the knee-jerk apologisms that spring to mind. Then, swallowing an unexpected nervousness, she asks, "I know you can fly on your own, but did... d'you wanna ride with me?"
Dee's eyebrows—such as they are—rise. "...You don't trust me that much already. Do you?"
She can't help but grin at that, a little. "Oh, I trust you about as far as I could throw you. I just don't want to have to waste my time scraping you off a billboard."
He cackles, teeth flashing. "Rude!"
"Well? Y'want a ride or not?"
"Mm, nah. I'm not gonna push my luck with you. Just—go slow, okay? And don't trick me into any billboards."
"No promises," she says.
The flight from Casper's football field to their destination is the slowest Valerie's gone in—a long time. She honestly can't recall the last time she chose to take so leisurely a pace. Her V-board grumbles underfoot and her own impatience makes tight fists out of her hands. She's always had a short fuse when it's come to dealing with others, human or otherwise. Still. She can afford some kindness. Can't she?
Dee follows her, claustrophobically close; a searing white streak in her periphery. When she looks over her shoulder it's easy to see the nervous twitch of his ears, his hungry fear. What must it be like, to be able to fly but not be able to see where you're going?
...Probably not all that different from how any blind human must feel going about their day-to-day. Valerie can't decide if she feels guilty or irritated by that comparison, let alone where that guilt or irritation should be pointed.
"Hey," she calls out.
"Yeah?"
"It's—I was wondering—um…."
He inches closer, and closer, until he's flying parallel to her. His white tail stretches into the dark, sinuous as an eel. "When or how?"
"What?"
He repeats the question, this time gesturing at himself, and it clicks. He already suspects what she means to ask, and is saving her the trouble of finding a way to ask without fear of insulting him. There's no anger in his voice, no justified defensiveness. She'd be relieved if she wasn't so busy chewing her cheek and hating how obvious she's being. "Both."
His ears swivel as she takes them through a gentle curve until they're following Poe Avenue. She can see their destination now; a broad, black square stark and stood apart from the regimented and well-lit streets surrounding it. "...Died a few years ago," he says. "That was an accident. Been blind a few months. That wasn't."
Vague, and frustratingly so, but more than she expected. She lets it be.
They touch ground again a few minutes later, kicking up a dusting of snow and scattering trash. A neon green cat streaks off into the night, all three of its tails puffed up. Looks like the militia's been slacking again; no surprise there. Dee sprouts legs as she banishes her board again. She watches him roll one ankle and then the other, as if reminding himself of how the joints are meant to work.
He sighs, breath pluming between his clenched teeth. "Ghosts nearby."
"I know." Her scanner shows another half-dozen ghosts apart from Dee. Small fry. Nothing to worry about unless some idiot decides to go poking at one of them with a stick, which still happens from time to time. Some people just don't ever learn. "This place has been haunted for years. Level threes on down like to gather here, though nobody's figured out why yet. The militia comes around now and then to clean it out."
He swivels to give her an unreadable expression over one sharp shoulder. "Above your pay grade?"
"Somethin' like that, yeah." The wind picks up, and he twitches at the sudden flapping that follows it. He makes an odd face, twisting this way and that as he tries to pinpoint the sound, like he's trying to squint without eyelids. "Relax," she says. "It's just the old Circus Gothica tent."
He goes very, very still. His neck is strained enough that she can see it when he swallows his obvious fear to ask, "It's still here?"
She didn't need the confirmation, but it's nice to have all the same. "Well, that Freakshow guy didn't come back for it after he broke out of prison, so."
"But—why? Why is it still here? Why didn't somebody t-t-take it down after I—" He shrinks, stifling and curling in on himself in a tight knot of stammering unease. Dots of neon green stain his long-sleeved shirt where his claws sink too deeply.
She watches him, chewing her cheek again. It's an obvious display, a theatrical farce. Bad acting, plain and simple. Ghosts can't think or feel the same way humans do. It's simple physiology. Anatomy's a joke to them, and the only thing they're made up of is ectoplasm. True emotions are a result of neural and chemical responses. Valerie might have scraped through Anatomy with a C—and that only thanks to a well-manicured sob story, a hell of a lot of extra credit, and decent results on every test—but she knows that much. You can't think you're scared without feeling scared, and ghosts just don't have the parts to feel. Not really. Not in any way that matters.
She banishes her helmet, eyes watering in the sudden chill as she drags her gloves hands through her tangled hair, smoothing it over one shoulder. "After the cops picked this place clean, the city waffled on what to do with it. The ghosts moved in before they came to any decision, and then the Fentons and everybody else figured it was better to have them congregate out here instead of at the elementary school, or wherever."
"...oh."
She clicks her tongue, wondering if she's misstepped after all. "You mentioned a ringmaster last night, and a circus the night before. I kinda figured... probably not a coincidence."
He doesn't say anything, barely managing a jerky nod.
"Freakshow kidnapped you after he broke out, huh?"
Another nod.
Maybe this was a bad idea. Maybe Freakshow killed Dee here instead of some far-off other place. Maybe she shouldn't be pressing her luck with a smoldering eight. "We can leave, if you want."
"I..." A slow exhale, steaming in the cold night like there's still warmth in whatever passes for lungs inside him. "No. No. I want to..."
He doesn't finish that sentence. He starts walking instead; slow and cautious steps, easing his claws out of their death grip to splay them out at waist-height. Snow crunches underfoot. His passage makes neat prints where most ghosts wouldn't bother to remember that trick. She follows him at a distance, biting back the insane urge to help him. Soon enough his hands catch on the old black tent canvas; he recoils as if it's shocked him, then laughs at his own overreaction. He paws right, sidestepping away from the dark slit of the entrance. It'd be cruel to let him go the long way around, right?
"Other way," she calls out, soft.
His pause is impossible to parse. The seconds of stillness squeeze. Then he moves left, eventually finding the entrance. He pauses again, chuckles to himself, then slips through into the darkness.
Against all common sense, she follows after.
Dee's ethereal glow is the only light source inside the tent, and he's a shit one at that. His aura blinds rather than illuminates. He's a magnesium flare that leaves the great swath of the tent's interior ink-blank, cavernous. She feels only the suggestion of a vast and empty space yawning ahead of her, and shivers despite herself. She watches as he draws his claws along the walls on either side of them, shearing the black paint away to expose the cheap plywood beneath.
He laughs again. There's nothing happy about it. Then he pops his tongue, a jarring sound far louder than it should be. She recoils with a bitten-off curse, ears aching.
"Ow," she snaps out. "The hell was that?"
"Sorry," he says, not sounding sorry at all. "Helps me focus."
He walks further into the blackness, a skinny streak of otherworldly light. If his fiery shock of white hair didn't flicker in an imagined wind she'd almost think he was frozen in place, just some oversaturated burst of color slapped into real life. Typical, really. All ghosts look like this; burst highlighters and neon paint and chemical fires splashed into a shape that could almost be called familiar. There's nothing special about Dee at all.
"I should hate him," he says. His voice is low, and he doesn't turn his head to speak over his shoulder. She hears him perfectly all the same. That's ghosts for you. "I know that. I do. But I spent so long under his control. Years. He made me dedicate every part of myself to him. He made me feel like I… cared. About him. Loved him, even. I know none of it was real. I do. But it felt real when I was his, and… and it doesn't feel any less real now that he's dead."
Another pop of his tongue. She hardly notices him correct his trajectory after, too busy prodding her sore ears and checking her gloved fingertips for blood. Fuck, that hurt.
"And it was—fun, y'know? I never had to worry about anything. I couldn't, not unless he wanted me to. He'd order me to do something and I did it, simple as that. No second guesses, no doubts, no what-ifs. He made it so it never occurred to me to ask why at all. It was just—orders. Build. Learn. Perform. Take. Kill."
His claws catch against the center pole of the tent. He makes a small sound, something startled but pleased, then turns to rest against it. His ears swivel, chasing sounds. "I liked it. This. Performing. I know he made me want to do it, but I… I think I really did like it. If I lied well enough, people liked me. They'd want to talk to me, teach me, be my friend, tell me all their stupid, pointless secrets."
"Yeah?" She goads when he falls silent a beat too long. She's curious to see what he'll let slip, so sue her.
"People keep so many fucking secrets, y'know? 'Cause they're scared of—I dunno. Getting embarrassed, or being turned down, or making mistakes. Scared to rock the boat. They're just so fuckin' scared all the time. I don't get it. I used to, once, but it just—" A huff, harmless irritation. "It infuriates me now."
She creeps closer as he talks, out of the claustrophobic entrance hall to the edge of the center ring. She knows he knows she's approaching when his ears swivel in her direction. But he isn't threatening her, so she in turn does nothing to threaten him. She just… feels kind of silly, keeping such a distance when all he's doing is telling her a story. She wonders at how much he doesn't say, and wonders too, what he could be pressed to say if she simply asked.
"It was ages before he let me perform. He didn't trust me. Ha. He never trusted me. I get why he didn't now, of course, but it—hurt—back then. I knew he hated me, but I never understood why. Didn't I do good? Wasn't I good enough? Didn't I do every stupid, menial, degrading task he ordered me to down to the letter? Didn't he make me happy to do it all for him?"
He cracks the back of his head against the pole. Dust hisses in the dark.
"When he finally let me perform though, it—I was—ha ha! It was like being alive again. The closest to it I could ever remember being, anyway. It was—incredible. I was incredible. It never mattered the size of the troupe, or what we did, or the audience—none of it. It was the performance that mattered. Contributing to the work. Being part of something bigger than my own small—bullshit."
Another crack of his head against the pole.
"The acts we ran with were so small before—mm. Ha ha. Before Kamila. Before any of the others. Before our reputations preceded us. We had to make do with so little. Cheap sets. Cheap costumes. Cheap everything. Not even a megaphone for the barkers to get asses in the seats. We had to shout over their jeering to be heard. We had to PROJECT."
Valerie has a gun trained on Dee's skeletal face before she realizes that that burst of sound wasn't a precursor to an attack after all. He'd twisted his voice somehow, made it ring throughout the tent as if they were in a deep cave instead. His crooked grin is back on display, claws clattering as he makes wide, scything gestures. Playing theatrical to an imagined audience, to old memories. Surely not just for her benefit, right?
"There's something—wondrous in a performance done well," he continues. "I could put me away, become whoever the performance needed me to be instead. I could forget me for a night, for an hour, for a few perfect minutes I could be something other than what he wanted, and it was perfect. I was perfect! Listen, Valerie. LISTEN. Do you hear it?"
And—impossibly—she can. The first faint strains of music, soft and tinkling as a music box, then the peculiar strained timbre of a calliope. The song is tilting and unsteady, following the dance of his knife-sharp fingers.
Then: voices. Whispers and murmurs prick her hearing, raucous laughter echoes throughout as green shadows fill row after row. She looks to the nearest bench and sees human shapes gain definition until they look real, humans sat beneath bright green stage lights rather than echoes. Every face and voice and gesture unique, strangers from some long-ago audience, or perhaps some amalgamation of dozens of performances past.
The rigging above creaks and groans, more dust spilling down as the weather-worn rigging moves of its own accord. Actual stage lights pop on; blinding slices of brighter green swoop in drunken arcs across the center ring. Smells permeate the chilly air; fresh popcorn, sweat and hay, the acrid burn of fireworks, spun sugar and fried foods. Dee waves his hands and the music grows louder, and louder still. Clarinets and flutes take the stilted chorus, trumpets and saxophones fight over the song, bass drums add depth while a snare drum pushes a militantly frenzied pace. Faster. Louder. Faster, louder. The ground itself seems to unsettle beneath her feet.
"There's power in a performance," Dee says, voice deepening with reverence, with something close enough to hunger that Valerie feels no qualms at keeping her gun trained on him as he sweeps his long arms about. "Each act a story, each step demanding a response, and the humans so eager to respond exactly as we wanted them to!"
More green shapes etch themselves into existence all around Dee; clowns bleached of their bright colors yet still recognizable by their baggy outfits and strange makeup. The summoned crowd laughs at their antics, overwhelmingly loud, a deranged and hysterical shrieking from a thousand imagined throats. Dee crows, throwing out his hands, and the stage ignites in bursts of green pyrotechnics as transparent acrobats flip and twirl on rippling swaths of green silk.
"Entranced!" One of his long hands sweeps across his bestial face and it transforms, becoming something pristine, sleek and demure and unsettling in the way of ceramic dolls. He becomes otherworldly in a way that hypnotizes rather than repulses, and the audience coos and sighs accordingly.
"Horrified!" Another sweep and his face elongates into something jutting and crooked of angle, covered all over in glowing red eyes with a beak made of grasping fingers. The crowd shrieks; not laughing now but screaming, curling in on themselves to hide from the leering monster.
A third sweep and his face changes again. The dimensions become almost tolerable, human-adjacent. A thin-lipped mouth framed by sharp cheekbones, cradled in a sensible jaw. Pockets of pink-tinged darkness are still carved out of his face where eyes should be, but even that seems less gut-clenchingly wrong than before. His hands sweep and extend, curl and unfold. The music grows louder, and louder; more instruments joining in until it feels like Valerie is standing in the midst of some deranged orchestra. Bows saw across taut strings, reed instruments squall, the brass blats and drips between notes, the drums drive the pace on, and on, and on.
All the while more performers fade in and out of existence. Shapes dance along a highwire, knives spin between jugglers, a lone figure turns mad circles in a cyr wheel, contortionists tangle amongst themselves with beatific smiles, decorated elephants rear back to pose on their hind legs, big cats snarl, laughter reigns over all.
The back of Valerie's knees hits the front row bench; she sits in surprise and alarm. Her ears ring. Her suit bawls alarm bells. The smoldering eight has deigned to show his hand, and if he weren't wasting energy on nostalgia he could surely level the neighboring blocks with hardly any effort expended. The audience members she's accidentally sat between have a terrifying presence; weight, warmth and shape to the way their arms jostle hers. She'd think them real if she couldn't see their neighbors through them, if she hadn't seen Dee think them into being. He could give them knives to stab her with, fire to burn her, claws to tear her. His audience could just as easily be Nocturne's sleepwalkers, Pariah Dark's skeletons, Undergrowth's children.
And yet—
And yet the song reaches its climax in a burst of sparkling fire and frenetic fury. The performers twist into truly impossible shapes, growing and shedding limbs and eyes and mouths. Some fall apart into heaps of splintered bones and glistening meat, others wither to shambling corpses, others fade to so much smoke. The performers go the way of all things, and the audience follows suit. Delight and frightened schrieks reach their crescendo. Applause thunders, a thousand bodies jumping up for a standing ovation, and then they too fall and wither and fade away. They all fade to spills of green ink, then mist, then nothing.
The music fades, and all that's left is a green-white flare stood with his arms raised high in a dark and empty circus tent, skinny chest heaving in an imitation of exertion. The air is left soured, a smell of burning plastic and lemons heavy on Valerie's tongue. There are afterimages pressed into her vision when she blinks, green and gold and empty.
Dee wilts where he stands. His arms fall, his spine stoops. His empty sockets swivel toward her. "But that's all gone," he says. "What the hell am I s'posed to do now?"
Valerie sits still. She sits rigid. She swallows twice to keep the shake from her voice. "Well. You haven't given me any grief yet, so I say whatever you're doing in the A.M. seems to be a good start."
Dee leans back against the center pole again, chuckling. He sounds tired. She can't remember the last time she heard a ghost feign it so well. "Right."
She asks, "He made you kill people?"
And his smile falls away. "Figures that'd be what you'd zero in on."
"Doesn't mean I didn't hear the rest," she points out. "But I have to start somewhere, don't I?"
She knows he sighs again by the ribbon of breath that falls up out of him. "You don't need to worry about that."
"Don't I?"
"He made me do it."
"He make you like it too?"
"...Yeah."
Which means he remembers liking it too. Well. That's a sticky mess she finds herself in no mood to deal with now. Instead she says, "If you used to perform for people I guess that means you've got a decent human disguise to go with the lightshow. What, do I not rate the effort?"
He gestures expansively at himself. "You saw me the other night and wandered on over for a conversation anyway. No point in pretending with you."
"Should I be flattered?"
"You can feel however you want." But he tuts, an absurdly prim and displeased sound. "It—I—it was easier for me, before—I was seen. I endangered the Ringmaster. Endangered everything. He—he overreacted. When he punished me. Ever since…." Another sweeping gesture at himself. This one carries an unmistakable air of revulsion.
Human once. Human no more. Valerie wonders. "Did he make you kill the person who saw you?"
"Hmph. You're real hung up on the 'killing people' thing, aren't you?"
She's got good fucking reason to be. "It's a yes or no question."
He bares his fangs, sharp shoulders hunching. "No, he didn't. No, I don't know why he didn't. No, I'm not interested in continuing post-mind control as a fucking serial killer now that I've got a fucking say in the matter. Is that good enough for you?"
He's angry now. Of course he is. The realism he's sculpted out of his face strips back to his original form; his original face is too stripped of feigned muscle to be capable of expressing his anger—his default expression is something between cartoonishly angry and the upsetting indifference of some deep-sea fish—so the only real tell is the hoarsening snarl in his voice. His human good humor shrinks. The ghost comes crawling out.
All at once Valerie finds herself exhausted and twice as uninterested in dealing with—with any of this. She'd hardly begun her usual patrol before abandoning it in favor of the football field. For Dee. For all that's hardly past 11 she's ready to crash, and crash hard. "It's late," she says without preamble. "I've got school tomorrow. You ready to go?"
He sloughs away from the center pole, shedding his legs to float an unerring circle around her. There's no threat to him, to any twitch he makes toward her. His exhaustion is a palpable thing. "Ready when you are."
