~Chapter 21~

About a month had passed at school and Danny was more on edge than ever. These ghost attacks were becoming so frequent it was worrying him about his family's safety. Sam, now she could look after herself, as could everyone else...except Danny Junior and Lilith. Danny Junior Manson and Lilith Brooke Manson. They were everything to him and he couldn't stand the thought of them getting a single scratch. For that reason he'd been carrying a cell phone on him all the time, every day, and only charged it at night when he was in the room with them.

Lately it had become hard to get to sleep, especially given how many ghosts attacked per night. Most of them would appear within a mile of his home, much too close for his comfort. Thankfully some of them were passerbys and were merely traveling or sightseeing. But whenever he felt a chill around him, he woke up with a start and jumped out of bed, immediately transforming and scanning the room. The window...that was where he always looked first. Then he would look in Sam's most hated spot, the darkest corner of his room. That evil place where the creepy shadow people went to hide from her imagination.

And all those ghosts, all those times he felt the need to protect his family, were taking a serious toll on his sleep patterns. During school hours he was half-dead, no pun intended. His brain had a hard time registering anything relatively boring. He was often caught napping around an hour or so before lunch.

"FENTON!"

Danny looked up to see Mr. Lancer sternly pointing a pencil at him. "Malaysia?"

"Dude, that has nothing to do with Astronomy," a voice beside him said. Tucker. "We're also taking a-"

"Mr. Fenton," Lancer began, "are you aware that you are in the middle of a test? Instead of daydreaming about Malaysia, I suggest you focus long enough to write down a letter!"

He dazedly looked down at the test in front of him. When and how did that get there...? And...how much time was left?! He snapped his eyes to the clock, finding that he needn't worry. It had only been a few minutes. There was still time. He could still do this, he just needed to buckle down and focu- The loud sound of probably Technus brought him from any of the little focus he'd managed to gather. But...wait, his ghost sense... It didn't go off. So the sound wasn't a ghost, so what was it?

A vibration on his thigh drew his attention. Oh...of course, the phone. It...wait...it was ringing. The phone was ringing! He quickly took it out and looked at the caller ID. Sam. He flipped it open and all but slammed it to his ear. He'd forgotten to answer it in the process.

"FENTO-"

"SHUT UP!" he screamed. This time it was his turn to point fingers. "Do you have any kids, Mr. Lancer?"

Not yet having gathered his bearings, the teacher slowly shook his head, jaw dropped and mouth wide open.

"Then would you please BE QUIET so I can MAKE SURE my CHILD is OKAY?!" he growled rather audibly.

He realized his mistake in not answering the phone and pressed the Answer button. His voice was the first to be heard.

"Sam! Are you okay? How is everyone? Is something wrong?!" he panicked.

Sam chuckled on the other end of the line. "No, sheesh."

He let out a sigh of relief and slowly lowered himself into his chair, his eyes becoming relaxed and half-lidded. "Okay. Sorry." He ran a hand through his hair. They were safe... His family was safe... They were okay, they were fine, it was alright... "So to what do I owe this unexpected call?" That might as well have made him jump out of his skin.

A girlish, high-pitched squeal rang in his ears. "I think I'll let our little lady tell you herself."

There was some shuffling before a slightly muffled, "Who's on the phone?"

No answer.

"Lilith, who's on the phone?" No answer. "Can you say it for Daddy? Tell him."

Clearly poor Sam was trying to get Lilith to say something but she wasn't having much luck. The little girl wasn't exactly responsive right now...

"Uh, Sam, you think this can wait? I'm kinda in the middle of a test." That he didn't know was on his desk until Tucker pointed it out to him.

"Lilith, tell him. Who do you love?" she continued.

And finally... "I love Daddy."

His jaw dropped and the widest grin covered his face. "YES!" he shouted as he raised a fist into the air. "I AM NO LONGER DODDY! Hey, hey, do it again, say it again. Please?"

Sam laughed and said, "Who do you love?"

"I love Daddy."

Biggest smile grew even bigger. He opened his mouth to say something but was immediately cut short by Mr. Lancer. Smile faded. Something about Astronomy and the test and Malaysia and just a whole slew of stuff that he really didn't want to hear right now. So while Lilith was still on the phone and listening...

"Daddy loves you too, sweetie, but he has to go now," he murmured before hanging up. It was the last thing he wanted to do to his little girl, but getting in trouble at school would be deadly if Sam found out about it. Although he had warned her about the test so...maybe that made up for it...?

Lancer seemed to have heard him, every word he'd said, because his finger drooped down and his face softened as his eyes turned thoughtful. Almost...almost like he was daydreaming... Wait, were teachers capable of daydreaming? It didn't seem right on any level you put it on.

"Danny, meet me after school today. I would like to have a word with you," he mumbled.

Students all around the room were giving him strange looks, most of which he couldn't comprehend. Yup. He was definitely in trouble. And of course it didn't help that he'd yelled at his teacher. Nice... Very nice...

At lunch, after making sure no Mosquitoes were in earshot, the halfa excitedly told his friend what had happened over the phone. And apparently Junior refused to go to sleep, which meant Lilith kept waking up. Sam wasn't coming today. It was a shame, really, because he was so excited about finally being promoted to a daddy. Their efforts had finally paid off.

"That's great, dude, but if you want this to stay secret...lower the volume," Tucker advised.

Danny sheepishly smiled and said, "Right. Sorry. It's just, she's never called me that before. It was always 'doddy' and we still don't know why she kept calling me that. And more than that, my baby girl had two surprises in store for me today."

Tucker went unfazed by the 'baby girl' addition to the sentence. Danny did that from time to time, calling Junior his 'baby boy' and Lilith his 'baby girl'. Occasionally 'baby girl' was replaced by 'little girl'. Likewise, 'baby boy' would get replaced by 'little boy'. He also referred to them as 'my daughter' or 'my son'. It was official. He was a dad through and through. Now names and references like that came naturally to him, as though it was something he'd been doing and saying all his life. It was actually habitual for him now. And he couldn't, or didn't want to, or probably both, break that habit.

"What's the second surprise?" he asked. Two surprises in one day was a lot for such young children.

He smiled a non-sheepish smile this time and replied, "She said she loved Daddy."

The techno-geek playfully punched his friend's shoulder. "That's great, dude! It's about time Doddy got to hear that!"

"Ah-ah-ah!" he corrected. "It's Daddy now. I am not a doddy, I am a daddy. As decreed by Lilith."

He crept slowly into the classroom. School hours were over and the building was evacuated aside from a few stragglers, one of them being Mr. Lancer. And there he was, sitting at his test looking over today's tests. Danny had always wondered when and where the teachers graded their students' work. Now his lifelong question had been answered. Victory over school!

"Um. Mr. Lancer, you wanted to see me?" he asked.

The teacher gestured to a nearby chair and the halfa pulled it up to the opposite side of Lancer's desk. Lancer neatly stacked all those papers and stuffed them away in a drawer.

"Yes, I did want to see you," he said, his eyes staring straight at the halfbreed, almost seeming to tear a hole into his very soul.

"I'm guessing I'm in trouble, huh? Look, I'm sorry about yelling at you earlier, I just-"

"Wanted to make sure your family was doing okay," Lancer finished. "Danny, I want to ask you something."

At the mention of his nickname, instead of 'Fenton' or 'Daniel', Danny shifted uncomfortably in his chair. "Yes, sir?"

"Today, you stood against me, knowing I was of higher authority and knowing what the consequences would be. You even yelled at me."

"Okay, I'm sorry, I-"

"But it was all for the sake of your family. And that, Danny, is actually respectable."

"Uh... What do you mean?"

Mr. Lancer cracked a smile, his eyes not leaving Danny's. "You were being a father."

"Well...yeah... I have kids and they need me."

"Kids?" A look of interest crossed Lancer's face. "Every time I hear you talk about your family in class, you always refer to one child."

"Yeah, because Sam's life was pretty miserable here when she was pregnant. She didn't want anyone to know anything, so Tucker and I never told them anything beyond a kid."

"Then why are you now saying that you have 'kids' instead of 'kid'?"

"Sam gave birth to twins."

"And you've been helping her raise them, haven't you?"

"Yes. They're mine." Danny smiled with pride. "And they're the best things that ever happened to me."

"Mmm." Lancer looked up for a moment in thought and, without looking back down, asked, "What's it like, Danny?"

"Uh...what's what like?"

"To be a father, I mean. As you found out earlier, during your little fit, I don't have children. Not even a wife. I'm thinking about adopting though, and I couldn't help but wondering what it was like to father a child when I saw you stand up to me for the sake of your kids. And when you were on the phone worrying that something was wrong, it made me realize that a father has more duties to his family than I first thought," he explained.

Danny thought for a second. "It's hard being a dad. It's exhausting to come home every night knowing you have more important things to worry about than just your grades or homework. You have to balance time with your family and time with your studies. You have to work really hard to take care of them. And it's not easy to think about all the responsibilities you have. Even before they were born, I felt this urge to protect my children and their mother. And now they're in the big world and you watch them grow up. They're almost two now. Time's passed by quickly. And as a parent, it makes you miss those times when you could hold one of the twins without the other trying to trip you to get to the other. They weren't so sassy back then, and they wouldn't run all over the place."

"Hm. Sounds like a little too much work to be-"

"Fun?" Danny laughed. "No, it's fun. The twins run up to me and grab onto my jeans when I walk through the door. When I lay down on the floor, they climb on me and start playing with me and each other. They'll run away from me laughing and I'll chase them around, kinda like a game of tag exact you have to go slow so they can get away. I have to pretend not to see them when they try to hide and say something funny like, 'Oh no, I lost the twins! Where can they possibly be? Oh, Mommy isn't gonna like this...!' and they'll pop out of their hiding places and crack up like it's the funniest thing in the world. Then there's the peek-a-boo game, they love that. They're starting to say proper sentences and they'll tell us what they do and don't want. Turns out, kids really do say the darnest things. They've uh...they've found ways to embarrass Sam and me before. They're hilarious sometimes, it's like they'll team up against us, and don't ask me to specify that because it's not one particular thing."

Lancer nodded thoughtfully.

"I'm exhausted. But I'm happy. It's worth all the hard times, all the work you have to put into it. I never knew what my dad meant when he told me it was rewarding, but I guess you have to be a dad to really know. All in all, being a father is the best job in the world, even if you're not getting paid."

"You're awfully young to be raising twins. You could've left her like most teen fathers do."

"I've never even thought of doing that, but if I had thought about that, then I'm glad I didn't."

"You make it sound so easy, but from what I've heard, it's not."

"Then you've heard right. If I made it sound easy, then I didn't mean to. It's the hardest thing I've ever done."

"The hardest thing?"

"Oh yeah. I didn't know what I was in for. But now I realize that I never needed to know. My mom told us that nothing could ever prepare us for what came with raising children. She was more right than she's ever been."

"Sounds more life-changing than I've heard about."

"It is. Before Sam was pregnant, I never would've imagined myself as a dad. But eventually, and don't ask why I was called this, I became a doddy. And today, I became a daddy. My daughter said so herself. And I have a son, her brother. I would give my life and more to protect them."

"You make it sound like they're your whole world."

"They are. And it feels great when I know they're okay. I've been edgy lately, which is why I panicked when I Saw that Sam had called me. I thought it might be something with her or the twins. Thankfully everything was fine; she only called to let me hear my daughter tell me, for the first time, 'I love Daddy.'"

"What would you have done if something was wrong?"

"Oh, I'd have burst through the window to get over there fast enough. If I was outside eating lunch, I'd flip over every table standing in my way."

"And what would you do if someone tried to stop you?"

His first thought was to say something about blasting them to bits with his ghost ray. But it wasn't exactly the best idea to reveal his secret, especially since nothing was happening that needed his attention. But if a ghost was stupid enough to come near right now... Oooohhh he or she was gonna get it but good!

"I'll do anything for my kids, Mr. Lancer," he said evenly. "I won't allow anything to stop me."

Not even the Guys In White. He'd stabbed himself with a scalpel, and then sliced himself up with said scalpel, because they had threatened his family. He was cooperative but it proved that he could get out, and did. Not even the government could keep him from his family and he would let nothing else keep him from them.

"One last question. How does it feel to be called 'Daddy'?"

He smiled at that one. "I'll admit you have to get used to it, but every time I was called 'Doddy', because 'Daddy' just happened today, I wanted to fly."

Lancer smiled in return and nodded once. "Thank you for sharing this with me, Danny. Anytime a matter involving your family comes up and you react as a father, like you did earlier today, I'm sure I could let it slide."

A/N

Go to my profile. Copy/paste the link. ;) Enjoy.

I dunno, I think I wrote this because I wanted to tell you all myself exactly how Danny feels about being a dad, and what comes to his mind whenever he thinks about his family in danger. I was also tired of making Mr. Lancer so useless, plus he has no children so upon seeing a true father in action, I thought it was the perfect motivation for him to consider being a father himself and start thinking about adoption, but interrogating Danny before actually deciding on it yet. So...will Mr. Lancer adopt? ;) Pfft. Like I'll tell you.

Kind of a stale chapter but I was DYING to have Lilith finally call him Daddy, and I couldn't resist throwing in the "I love you!" part of it. :D TOO CUTE!

Anyhoo, review quota, two hundred ninety-four (294) reviews.

Review replies...can't do it this time. DX I'm sorry, it's just...my dizzy spells aren't gone yet and I'm exhausted and I just wanna get this thing updated... But thank you very much to all those who reviewed, and everybody PLEASE DO NOT FORGET THE POLLS.