Death days were something Danny had learned about the hard way, after he'd effectively walked in on a Technus in mourning.
Most ghosts celebrate their death days; they view it as a rebirth of sorts, and honor the 'powers that be' that facilitated their formation. Some use the day to reflect on their life. These ghosts are the ones most prone to change and growth. Others, however, mourn: the ones who still cling to life, the ones with true, heart-wrenching regrets.
Not all ghosts who attack Amity Park mourn their deaths, but almost all mourners attack at some point. Jazz was the one who pointed it out to him—that those who mourn almost seem to seek retaliation, revenge; they try to take out the hurt they'd been dealt on a world they no longer belong to.
How sad, Jazz had said.
It's customary to hole up in your lair when your death day comes around, so if Danny's visiting someone and their door is shut tighter than it should be, he knows to let it alone. Not that he visits ghosts much, anyway, when so many of them would have his head.
So it's a surprise when, on his way to visit Frostbite, Danny happens by an open door, from which oozes an aura that so densely reeks of mourning, he physically recoils.
He doesn't know whose lair it is, but when he circles around to take a look at the front of the door, the symbol etched in its upper half gives him an idea: an electric guitar, on fire.
"Ember?" Danny calls, having circled back around to peer in the doorway. It's dark, wherever it is, and he has to fight not to cringe away from the opening, for all the misery pouring through. "Is that you? Are you okay?" He waits a moment, but no answer comes. "I'm coming in, okay? Tell me now if you don't want me to."
Despite how little he suspects she'd want him in her lair, she doesn't respond, and Danny's quite certain there's someone home. So, against his better judgement (and against his own instincts, which scream at him to distance himself, lest he be sucked into the mourning, too), Danny touches down on the threshold, and makes his way inside.
The darkness clears some as he passes through the doorway. Inside is what looks like the interior of a standard inner-city apartment: small living room, kitchen off to the side, one hallway, down which there are only three doors. A bedroom, a bathroom, and a closet, he'd guess. What windows Danny can see all show the same sight: the swirling green sky of the Ghost Zone.
Now that he's inside, he can tell the aura has an epicenter. Standing just inside the door, it's obvious he's only ankle-deep in the shallows; the water gets deeper further into the apartment, and from what he can tell, it's deepest around the door in the very back of the hallway.
"Ember?" he calls again. No response.
He really, really does not want to go further in. The misery is potent, clawing its way into him, and though it would normally spark pity, this concentrated it just repels him.
But Danny can't help himself from saving those in need, and it's this that forces that first foot forward, taking him trailing through the apartment, a specter in a home not his own. For a lair, the apartment looks so oddly like a TV set—carefully arranged, put together with some goal in mind. Subconsciously, Danny tries not to disturb even the dust.
It's like wading through molasses, walking down the hallway, but he does it, and in the end he stands before that last door. It's plain: dark wood with a metal handle. It's just a door.
Even so, it's a physical struggle for Danny to reach up and turn the handle, movements jerky, eyebrows knit. He braces himself as he pulls the door open, and as it does, the despair that washes over him is like a tsunami, breaking around his trembling form.
Inside is a girl, though if he didn't know who she was, he probably wouldn't be able to tell even that much.
As he'd suspected, it's Ember. She doesn't look the way he knows her. As all ghosts on their death day do, so too has her appearance reverted to that of the girl she'd died as, mere hints of her ghostliness seeping through.
He knows immediately it was a fire. Her skin is charred and her features unrecognizable; the only way he knows it's her is her hair, blue, flickering eerily, stark against her blackened body. A few years earlier, he'd probably vomit at the sight. She wears no clothes. Her guitar is nowhere in sight.
"Ember?" Danny calls, and his voice is little more than a tremor.
She doesn't respond, again. He doesn't blame her. From the expression on her face—what little of it he can make out—she seems far away. She probably didn't have presence of mind enough to shut her door, too caught up already in her own regrets.
Danny enters the room, shutting the door behind him. Now that he's in the thick of it, it isn't so hard to breathe, and pity for Ember worms its way in. Determined to keep her company, at least, if he can't draw her out of her own head, he crosses the room and sits next to her where she's curled up on the floor, back resting against the side of the bed.
His shoulder brushes hers, and all too suddenly she jerks, startled out of her state of shock.
"Brady?" she blurts out, a crushing hope in her voice, and when Danny meets her eyes he can see that she's still far away.
"No, Ember. I'm not Brady," Danny says, gently, and she sits back, disappointment dashing all hope from her eyes.
"Oh." The atmosphere clears, just slightly, and she looks at him again, this time with recognition. "Babypop."
"Hey," he says, a sad sort of smile on his lips.
"Why are you here?"
"Your door was open."
"Was it?" Ember says this distantly, looking past him to the bedroom door, closed, and her face scrunches as much as it physically can in confusion.
"Is there anything I can do for you right now?" Danny asks, and she looks away, down at the ground. Though she certainly catches sight of her own body, she doesn't react to its charred state. She must have done this plenty enough to be used to it, by now. Danny still isn't used to the sight of Lichtenberg scars trailing along his body, even four years later—how long has Ember been dead?
She's silent for a while. "No," she says eventually, and the miasma intensifies some. "Unless you can bring me Brady Holfinger, a match, and oil." She says it with venom in her voice, but Danny can feel from the air around them that she doesn't mean it, at least not with the intense anger she tries to imitate. She's just sad. Mourning.
"What did he do to you?" Danny asks, against his better judgement.
She makes eye contact with him, and her face stretches into a gruesome grimace. "Stood me up for a date. I stayed up so late, waiting, but he never came." She chuckles humorlessly. "I eventually couldn't stay awake anymore. Because I was so tired, I didn't wake up when a fire started. Then I was here."
Her form shudders, sort of, and as Danny watches her, the Ember he knows bleeds a little back through. Her outfit wraps itself around her figure, and her guitar materializes beneath her waiting fingers. Her skin doesn't clear completely, but the burns become minor enough that her features are more recognizable.
"He didn't kill me," she says bluntly, "but it's easier to blame him, I think."
She plucks a few notes, letting them ring out as the strings slowly still. Danny watches her do it: reestablish her comfort, her agency. He bears witness as Ember reemerges, from whoever she'd been.
"Get out, dipstick," she says eventually, and Danny is all too happy to get to his feet and head for the door. Though she's more conscious now, the mourning hasn't cleared, and his very core has itched to leave. He stops at the door, though, when she speaks again. "And thanks."
Danny turns back, meeting her eyes. "For what? Invading your privacy?" He smiles small, tentative.
Ember grins back at him, shark-like. "Careful, Phantom." He smiles wider.
When he leaves, the door to Ember's lair swings shut of its own accord behind him, and he breaks out into clear, unharried air.