A/N: Jazz time Jazz time Jazz time!

On a more serious author's note, Jazz is a character I always felt a slightly skewed alternate universe version of myself would have latched onto as hard as this version of myself has latched onto Danny. If I'd kept up those good grades I might have gone to college instead of running off to the military. Who knows! Certainly not me. What I know currently is that I don't actually know shit-all about that whole 'going away to college' business. Me and my haphazardly earned IT degree have literally the barest understanding of Ivy League schools, and even less understanding of Jazz's preferred major. We're muddling through here, and Jazz's characterization definitely takes a hit wholly due to my total lack of understanding of that late teens/early 20s College Experience. Ah, well. Hopefully she still rings true? For all that I never write her I really do love this kid as much as the rest of 'em.


Jazz pulls up to Fenton Works at a quarter past ten. She's been driving since dawn had only just begun to bleach the sky that colorless shade of hazy brightness so common this time of year, running on bad sleep, worse coffee, and an excitement too much like panic to allow her to catch her breath the whole way home. It had been so, so tempting to drive through the night, but she'd already gone nearly the whole day with hardly more than pit stops for gas and crappy fast food and there was only so much caffeine and loud music could do to keep her from drifting off at the wheel. Crashing at a motel had cost her another night and it had burned. Still, it was the smart thing to do and anyway she's finally here now, and in a matter of minutes she'll be hugging her parents—and Danny too.

Danny's home. Danny's alive.

Danny's blind.

That last one still hasn't quite sunk in yet. Her baby brother, unable to see? Danny, who'd inherited Dad's startling blue eyes, no longer has eyes at all? She can't help but picture such an injury like something out of a horror movie; grisly and dripping, his round face miserable with a pain she'll never understand. It isn't the first time she's had to stamp that mental image away with a guilty shiver. At least Mom had sworn he wasn't hurt—aside from well, that. That's something that happened months ago, apparently. His eyes, or whatever's left, have had time to heal. He's had time to heal, and now he's home.

She's trembling with nerves as much as the cold by the time she gets to the front door, nearly dropping keys as she fumbles for them. The door swings open and then she's shutting it behind her. The familiarity of home is a welcome relief from the cutting wind and dirty slush outside; the warm air is flush with the smell of fresh brownies.

That could be a good sign. She'd called from the motel last night to let them know that she was okay, her best guess at when she'd arrive today, and to ask if Danny wanted to talk to her. He'd gone to bed by then however, and Mom had been reluctant to disturb him. Dad could well be making brownies simply to welcome her home.

It could be a bad sign. Dad's sweet tooth had upgraded to stress eating after Danny had gone missing, and finding out about what the accident had really done to Danny had put Dad off eating and onto stress baking instead. The sleepless nights and countless dead ends and gnawing fear for the worst had run them all into the ground, and the worst the Fenton Portal had to spit at them while the militia was trained up didn't help matters either. Dad's weight had yo-yoed a lot, those first two years.

She hopes brownies are a good sign. The underlying smell of lemon-scented cleaner and the magazine-pristine tidiness of the living room suggests otherwise. Mom's been on the warpath again. Still. Probably best if she pretends not to have noticed.

"Hello? Mom? Dad? I'm home!"

There's a clattering from the kitchen, then Dad appears in the doorway with a smile that's more relieved than delighted. "Jazzy pants!" He exclaims. There's hardly any time to drop her bags and brace for impact before he's swept her up in a hug that takes her clear off her feet. She shrieks laughter when he plants a kiss to her temple, and does her best to keep the surprise off her face. He hasn't shaved yet today. The amount of gray in his stubble startles her when he finally puts her down. When does Dad ever forget to shave?

Mom walks out of the kitchen at a more sedate pace, though her hug leaves Jazz just as breathless and bruised. "Oh, it's good to see you," she says, letting go with obvious reluctance. Her smile is pinched; even her strict makeup regimen can't wholly hide the weariness gathered at the corners of her eyes. Jazz can't say she's surprised, considering how tired she'd sounded on the phone yesterday.

"it's good to see you too," Jazz replies with the widest smile she can muster. It's hardly any effort, really. With the distance and her workload she's only able to afford to come home for a couple visits a year, and the distance and time apart would have stung them all terribly even if Danny had never been stolen away. They've always been a close-knit family, if as volatile and weird as they come, but Danny's absence had drawn them even closer. It really is good to be home. "How are you?"

"Fine, we're fine," Dad answers, much too quickly. At least he has the self-awareness to wince when Jazz raises an unimpressed eyebrow.

"How are you both, really?"

Mom cards a glove through Jazz's hair, settling on her shoulder to squeeze a touch too roughly. Her smile is smaller this time, and more honest for it. She looks older than she is. "We... we're fine, sweetie. It's all just been, well, a bit more difficult than we ever imagined it might be."

"Danny," Dad starts, and the guilty wince and dart of his eyes toward the stairs are red flags and klaxon bells both. "He—well. There's a lot we never anticipated, is all. We'll get it all sorted soon enough though, won't we, Mads?"

"Of course!"

Well.

Jazz had expected Mom to be some kind of honest, for all that she'd likely do her best to soften the blow, but if Dad's not bothering to feign boisterousness? Clearly things are more strained than she anticipated they'd be. She wets her lips, chapped to the point of pain. She'd forgotten her lip balm when she'd packed, and then kept forgetting to buy more the whole drive here. "And Danny? How is he doing?"

They're both quiet an uncomfortable beat too long. She's torn between concern for their worried silence and relieved they're taking all of this so seriously, never mind that as far as she knows they still haven't contacted the police or the hospital or anyone at all with legitimate experience and expertise with regards to kidnapped teenagers that managed to beat all the odds and make their way home again.

Dad sighs. "He's twice the chatterbox he ever was, before. Happy to answer any questions we ask him, but at the same time it's…"

He looks to Mom for help, as he always does when words fail him. Her other hand unerringly finds his arm, reassuring him with a touch as her own gaze drifts toward the stairs. "It's like he isn't telling us anything at all. I don't think he's lying—" She falters, and how strange a thing it is, to see her so obviously conflicted between maternal worry and… is that fear? "—at least, if he is it's surely meant to, I don't know. It's coming from a good place if he is."

Jazz can't help but stare, a little. Both her parents, bastions of strength and skill through the hardest Amity Park has had to endure in the years since their Portal turned on, are uneasy. She finds herself made uneasy too. When have they ever been less than one hundred percent confident in their abilities?

Well, that's a stupid question. Danny has always been where they've faltered. First as their son, then as a middling student, then all his strange behavior after the accident, then he went missing and the truth came out too late—

And now he's home again. Home, but irrevocably changed from the boy he'd been before that fucker Freakshow had stolen him away. Danny has made their parents uneasy for a long time, for all that he hasn't been here. Maybe now is only the first time they've had to confront it.

Dad pastes on an unconvincing smile. "What are we standing around for? C'mon now, I'll help you with your things. Danny oughta be outta the shower soon and the brownies'll be done in oh, fifteen minutes or so. You two can catch up while your Mom and I get some work done down in the lab, how's that sound?"

It sounds like an easy out for their parents. Are they avoiding Danny? She'll have to prod them for more details about the last few days, later. She musters up that wide smile again as she hefts her backpack onto one shoulder. It's a little harder than before, but that's fine. That's expected. "Sounds good," she says. "And don't worry, I got it. I didn't bring as much with me as usual."

They relent after a couple more rounds of strained reassurances, returning to the kitchen only after she's promised to holler if she needs anything, and then there's only a flight of stairs between her and finally seeing her brother again.

The bathroom door is shut when she reaches the landing, though the shower isn't on. The urge to stand there and wait for him, or to even barge in and tackle him in a hug that'd give their Dad's bearhugs a run for their money, nearly overwhelms her. She'd shared this bathroom with Danny for practically his whole life, at least until he was taken. He always stole her conditioner, always left the toothpaste uncapped, always splashed water all over the mirror and floor. Sharing with him used to drive her up the wall. She'd hated having it all to herself more.

But—

But jumping on him first thing wouldn't be fair to him. It wouldn't be kind. He doesn't need to be smothered or harangued with a million invasive questions, never mind how altruistic her motives are and never mind that she has three pages of invasive questions penned into one of her notebooks because making lists has always helped settle her nerves. He needs to be welcomed home gently. She has to let him set the pace of things; allow him to initiate physical contact. She has no idea what he's had to endure these last three—three!—years beyond only the broadest strokes, and the broadest strokes are nothing short of kidnapping, mind control, and blindness. And all of that's to say nothing of the half-ghost business either. There's no telling what physical and psychological effects that would have on a person in ideal conditions.

So.

So she swallows her old grief and new nerves and keeps walking down the hall. She can wait ten more minutes. That's no personal hardship for her. It's fine.

Dad had kept his word about converting her bedroom into a crafts room after she left for college. The fact that she took a gap year after high school or that there was already an empty bedroom gathering dust in the house were things the three of them had never discussed. Her bed and dresser are still in here, if moved to give Dad more room to spread his organized chaos around in the best lighting. For all that she only visits a few weeks a year this room still feels more like hers than her dorm does. For all that home had become a hollowed out shell of itself after Danny was taken and the truth about Phantom had come out, it's still home. There's something about the comfort and familiarity of the place she grew up that she simply hasn't been able to recreate elsewhere, no matter the posters or stuffed animals or cookbooks she filled the space with. She drops her backpack and duffle onto her bed, not fighting her giddy grin. She's home early, if only temporarily, and she's home because her family is whole again.

She burns a few minutes unpacking, though she really didn't bring a fraction of what she typically did on visits between semesters. Discounting the time for driving to and from Amity Park she's been excused from classes for all of a week; even that much time is a leniency she hadn't expected. A family member returning after years spent missing and presumed dead isn't an emergency for all that it feels one. Danny's home, not at death's door. She snorts. Technically he's already been there and came out the other side with superpowers, not that anyone at school knows about that. Still, the dean had said her "unique circumstances" should warrant as much time as could be spared, and she'd been speechlessly grateful for it.

Ten minutes pass. She's hardly put anything away, the time mostly spent fidgeting and reminding herself not to rush him. But finally she genuinely can't bear waiting a second longer and leaves her room with half her toiletries still shoved haphazardly in her duffle. Once she's in the hall she can see the bathroom door is open so she beelines for his bedroom door. She means to knock and wait, or that's what she told herself she'd do while she was waiting, but her hand finds the knob and throws the door open of its own volition—

—and there he is.

She freezes in place, his name dying on her tongue. Danny freezes too. His back is to the door, a black shirt bunched in one hand. He only has a pair of skinny jeans on, black as well. The curtains of one window are drawn, allowing a stream of weak wintery light in. It's more than enough to see too many ribs, the bulge of his shoulder blades, wiry muscles shifting under his gray-hued skin. Even at this distance she can glimpse the suggestion of things too big to fathom without feeling something like horror on his behalf; thin white slashes interrupting his oddly colored spine, an oblong burn curling around one elbow, a large greenish scar at his hip. Her delight fails entirely when he turns around.

"Jazz?" He asks, a nervous waver to a voice that's familiar and yet strange to her ears all the same. But of course he's nervous; she hasn't said anything yet so he doesn't know it's her that barged in. All he has is the knowledge that she'd be arriving today to give him context.

She swallows the sudden lump in her throat, but "Danny," is still all she can manage. It sounds dismayed even to her own ears. His face is gaunt and pale to the point of caricature; his cheekbones jut, his jaw cuts. His eyes are hollowed—not that she can tell that literally, for all that it's somehow horribly true. From here he simply looks exhausted, hunched in on himself, unbearably tense. He looks at her—or, well, faces her—and smiles. All it does is draw attention to how big his teeth look in his thin face.

"Jeez, couldn't even wait for me to get dressed, huh?"

"Danny," falls out of her mouth again of its own volition.

His smile slips, then strains wider. He's as aware of the disconnect, of the selfish little hole in her that feels torn between disappointment and guilt, as she is. She knew he'd be different, but Mom had said he didn't need to go to the hospital. All she sees now when she looks at him are red flags shouting otherwise. "Aw, c'mon, not you too, huh? I've had Mom and Dad goin' all weepy at me since I got back." He drops his shirt on the bed and holds out one arm, and that's invitation enough to close the distance and pull him into a hug. He returns it with an amused huff that tickles her ear. She shivers at the chill of him, as cold as an open freezer, and hugs him tighter. Ghosts run cold; this is something she's used to. She isn't used to her baby brother running the same. Still, despite time and distance and everything Danny's had to endure, they fit together like they used to. They're still family.

"You're really here," she murmurs. He's home. He's alive. He's real.

"Missed you too," he murmurs back. His grip on her is tight, but she knows he's holding back. Phantom had been capable of startling feats of strength, and Sam and Tucker had told her about all the little ways his powers had bled over into his human half. Comparing Danny to Vlad had left a sour taste in all of their mouths, but he was the only point of comparison they had. In that regard, it's all too likely Danny's powers have only grown over the years. She appreciates his restraint, or perhaps it's better to call it control? She wonders if it chafes him to need to. She had so many questions for him that were left unanswered when he was taken, and this brief glimpse at what three more years as a half-ghost have wrought in him has already raised dozens more.

"If you think any louder, I'm gonna have to get ear plugs," he jokes, pulling away. His hands linger the same as Mom's did, cold fingers curling loosely around her upper arms, and that more than anything reminds her how fiercely glad she is to have him home.

"Sorry," comes out far happier than anything else she's said. She can't help but grin while taking in all the slight changes in him now that she's properly face-to-face. His hair is shorter but shaggier than in the old pictures. He has more piercings in his ears than she does. Scars stand out whitely on his face despite how pale he is. Old then, or maybe that's his faster healing at work? There are scars around his eyelids too, and he has almost no eyelashes to speak of. She'd feared empty eye sockets, but blue eyes almost, but not quite, meet her readily. They're too dark. Fake, then. Glass? Acrylic? Custom made? Who do you even go to for something like that? Who helped him get there? Where even was he when it—whatever it was—happened?

She doesn't know enough to guess.

She blinks, frowning at him. "You don't mean that literally, do you? If you can read minds now we're going to have a talk about personal boundaries and invasion of privacy."

He snorts, letting her go. "God, no, no mind reading here. You're just so quiet, I figured you're thinking at Mach 3 about, well." He shrugs, gesturing wryly at himself as he turns around to pick up his shirt. "I know, I look like something the cat dragged in. Mom, Dad, and Tucker are all bullying me into eating seconds at every meal though, don't worry."

"That's a good start," she says instead of demanding an explanation for why he's so thin in the first place. Freakshow kidnapped Phantom, not Danny Fenton. It doesn't take much deductive reasoning to realize a kidnapped ghost would be treated a hell of a lot differently than a kidnapped teenager. Her eyes fall to his back, watching ribs and muscles flex. The boniness of his spine is almost hidden by shadows and lines. "Mom and Dad are gonna flip out when they see that."

"See what?"

"Your tattoo."

Danny freezes again, shirt halfway over his head. Then, very carefully, he pulls it off to look at—to face her. "...what?"

Oh.

Oh, no.

"Did you not... know about it?"

"I..." His throat clicks when he swallows, shaking his head. "Uh-uh. It. A lot of it's still—hazy. When I was still. Y'know. Where—um." He tosses the shirt aside again to better draw his hands up and down his arms. "Where is it?"

"Your back."

He frowns, a twitch working in his cheek. He reaches back to splay his left hand across his trapezius, then twists around and throws both hands to his sides. "Show me," he orders. A wince shudders through him. "Please?"

She doesn't understand at first, then it clicks. "Oh. Yeah. Sure. Can I, um. Touch you?" He nods mechanically, so she steps closer. Touching his back with her bare fingers makes her break out in goosebumps, but she clenches her jaw and doesn't flinch away. Slowly, she traces a cross-shape across his back; from shoulder blade to shoulder blade, from the top of his spine to just above the waistband of his jeans.

"Jesus," he hisses. "That's—huge. What, uh. What is it?"

"A staff. Or scepter, maybe? It's kind of Dungeons and Dragons in a, mm, evil wizard kind of way? The crystal orb, here—" she traces the circle at the top of his spine, pressing hard enough to avoid tickling him. Danny used to be horribly ticklish. She has no idea if that's something that would get better or worse as a half-ghost. "—is a few swirling shades of bright red. Fire engine, strawberry candy, traffic light red. Beneath the orb is a bat with green eyes—" she keeps tracing, following its outstretched wings. "—ghost green eyes, really. Um, I'm not sure what species it might be, sorry. The bat and the rest of the staff are in black ink. The staff is pretty plain, except for this coiling shape going down it..."

She bites her tongue and falls silent, watching Danny's shoulders shake with silent laughter.

"Mother fucker," he growls.

"Do you recognize it?"

He steps away from her hands, groping for the shirt he'd thrown aside. "It's the staff he controlled me with the first time."

Oh, god. How could she not put that one together? "I didn't—Sam and Tucker never said what it looked like, I'm sorry—"

He hauls the shirt on, hiding his tattoo and scars and skinny ribs under long sleeves and a design like an album cover for a band she's never heard of. "It's fine. You're fine. It's—" He takes a breath, shaking his head. "I'm not angry at you. Just. None of the other ghosts told me about it and I don't—I don't remember getting it."

"There—you could get it removed—"

He makes a cutting gesture with one hand. "That's more trouble than it's worth. And anyway, my money's on Lydia being the one who stuck this thing on me. It'd probably only come off if she wanted it to because of bullshit ghost power rules, or whatever." He runs the same hand through his hair with an aggravated sigh. Ghost green lights sparkle at his fingertips.

She swallows, fighting the urge to step away. "Lydia. She. She's the one who took you, right?"

"Yeah. Yeah she was, but she's the one who freed me too. It's complicated." Another growl, this one with a curl to his mouth that flashes teeth. "Whatever. It's fine—or, actually, hang on a sec. Is it at least like, a decent quality enormous fucking backpiece?"

She doesn't really know anything about tattoos, nor is she any kind of artist. She's only ever gone to a parlor to get her third piercing done. Both her roommates have tattoos, but they went together or with other friends of theirs. Still, she's relieved she can be honest about this. "It's—gorgeous, Danny. I didn't do it any justice, but it's really detailed in its shading. It's not realistic, exactly, but the style is crisp and the red parts practically glow, though that might just be because you're so pale—"

He scoffs, rolling his eyes. If she didn't know better she wouldn't think they were fake at all. "I'm working on that too, jeez."

She wonders if the piercings, all five of them, were his idea, or if he could at least remember getting them. Any of them. She doesn't ask, wary of upsetting him further. "It's a very nicely done tattoo." Reassuring him rather than apologizing for something she had no hand in seems the wiser choice, and it seems to do the trick. He smirks at her, and it's almost convincing.

"Well that's something," he says agreeably, and goes to a battered backpack, black, to fish out a pair of rolled socks, also black. She's starting to sense a theme here, and she hopes it started before he lost his eyesight.

Humor might be the smarter option too. He'd mentioned being irritated by Mom and Dad's waterworks, and they really had both seemed like they were one loud noise away from bursting into tears. A warning sign by itself, but she'll let it lie for now. And besides, the realization she's had really is funny. "So much for that growth spurt Dad promised," she teases.

He scowls in her direction, ignoring gravity with the ease of any full ghost to shove his socks on. "Unbelievable. I'm gone three years and the first thing you do is call me short."

"No, I'm pretty sure the first thing I did was barge in and hug you before you could get dressed."

"Same difference. Just because you're a giant—"

"I'm the same height as Mom!"

"Mom's not exactly tiny," he points out tartly. "Man, Sam and Tucker are both taller than me too. This sucks."

Jazz bites her lip, fighting a grin and glad for it. "I don't think Sam owns any shoes that don't add at least two inches."

His scowl deepens as he bends down and then holds up a broken-in combat boot. Black, naturally. "Neither do I."

She laughs. She can't help it. The aggrieved defeat in his voice and slouch are so perfectly, exactly Danny. And it seems like getting her to laugh was his goal too because he lights up, unmistakably pleased with himself. Not as brightly as he used to, with smug grins and sniggering he hardly bothered to stifle behind one hand when a joke landed well. Still. A tension bleeds from him, replaced by a smirk that purses like he's fighting a grin himself. Good.

He doesn't bother lacing his boots, just tugs them on and then pats around his nightstand until he finds a pair of wraparound sunglasses. "Oh," falls out of Jazz before she realizes she's closed the gap between them. He twitches badly when her hand grips his. She pulls back guiltily but needs to make sure he understands. "Don't. You don't need to wear those—not if you don't want to, I mean. Just—it's okay. I don't know what anybody else has told you about how—about how your eyes look, but really. You look good, Danny, I swear. You don't need to hide what happened to you."

Not here. Not with family.

He blinks at her, clearly startled. "I…?" He chuckles, turning the sunglasses around in his hands—his hands. What happened to his hands? How had she not noticed sooner? "Huh. Y'know, that didn't even occur to me?"

"Huh?"

He gestures at his face, or more likely, his eyes. "Before—before this, I mean, when I still belo—uh. When Freakshow was still controlling me. I'd disguise myself to look human, but I couldn't ever get my eyes to match. They always stayed red. Like, super obviously ghost red, ha ha. I always had to wear sunglasses so nobody'd notice. I'm just so used to wearin' 'em now that I didn't… I didn't even think about what anybody else would think about me wearing them indoors all the time."

He chuckles again, and slips the sunglasses into the collar of his shirt. She taps his arm with a finger, then squeezes it, pleased.

"Much better," she says, and means it.


A/N: Danny's tattoo, iirc, went through several variations in the NaNo days that were originally meant to be an homage to some DP artist or another. Weirdly enough, however, by the time I circled back to this bit I couldn't find who in particular I was trying to allude to. Plus my attempts at describing whatever the fuck was originally going on with his back sounded gaudy as hell. It wasn't until I was cleaning this fic up for wildly belated posting that I was hit by the lightning bolt bullshit inspiration of Freakshow demanding Lydia put the crystal ball staff on Danny. It's so fucking petty and yet also so up Freakshow's alley!

This won't come up in the remaining chapters but this tattoo absolutely glows in the dark, because I'm a simple woman and I think ghost tats are neat. :) It doesn't get its colors all fucked up by Danny switching between human and ghost either for the same reason. Logical? I never knew her.