Lying there, cast rough against the pavement, feeling scrapes burn on his back, rubbing up against the inside of his suit, Danny looks up.
Above him, the night sky seems to throw itself through his vision with abandon, the stars spinning, leaving dizzy, fading trails behind them as they go. His head pounds. Cool, almost-winter air settles on his face, and he stays very still as he waits for the world to stop careening.
Slowly, the throbbing in his head subsides, and the stars wind down until they're still against the black void. A ways away, he hears a familiar whine, and short, tentative footsteps. He can afford to ignore them for now.
As he gazes upward, Orion glares down at his prone form, the three lights of his belt burning a lonely trail into his eyes. He can't seem to focus enough to recognize any other constellations, just the one, lone warrior, silhouetted against the black, a striking portrait. He imagines, fleetingly, a bright hand reaching down to him, plucking him from the asphalt, stealing him away to places unknown.
It's a tempting fantasy, if just that.
Seeing that he's made no move to get up, the footsteps approach him, more confidence in their gait. Her gait, he should say. He knows who it is before she leans into his vision, obscuring some of his view of the sky. Childishly, he wants to push her down, out of the way. He wants the entire expanse of the night in his view. He doesn't want to watch her movements match their sounds: the whine of an ectogun powering up, the squeak of a hazmat-clad arm raising. The bright, poisonous green of power gathering in the barrel.
He tries to smile, eyes locked unceasingly on the night. He tries to invite Orion to grab him away. He tries to implore the great void to scoop him from his place here on Earth, caught between living and unliving, death and undeath.
Nothing happens. No help comes.
His mother stands above him, looking down on him with, for once, her goggles pulled up. Unwittingly, he meets her eyes, and she gazes at him confidently (lovingly?). He is no threat to her now.
"M—" Danny tries. He chokes on blood (ectoplasm).
"Shh," Maddie says. "I've studied you this long. I know how to help you now, Phantom." She smiles, somehow.
"M—Mo—"
"Shh," she says again, and presses the barrel of the ectogun to his forehead. And pulls.