(Note—I realized there's a bit of a continuity error after the argument, where time gets wonky and doesn't make sense. I forgot a whole segment where Jazz packs for her trip and warns Danny to be careful while she's gone. Danny's capture should take place when he goes out later that afternoon, not right after the fight. Sorry! I have no clue how to edit my old chapters so this is what we get) ,)

4

Danny's head swam as flashes of light and dark mingled painfully in his mind. Strange shapes and voices filtered through the haze, chilling and unintelligible. He couldn't tell how long he had been floating in this space. Had it been minutes? Days? Years? A gentle sensation began to pull him from the swirling chaos and into a slowly lightening gray. A trembling hand caressed his hair; another slowly entwined and released his fingers. Sound followed shortly after light, and the gentle clicking of gears filled Danny's senses.

He stirred slightly; his eyes were open, but he couldn't see.

"Danny?" Tucker's voice called out, and the hand grasping his tightened. He groaned foggily as all the aches and pains across his body reminded him of their presence.

"Danny!" Sam stopped gently stroking his hair and gripped his shoulder tightly, shaking him. Danny grumbled. Sam and Tucker let out relieved laughs, choked and tight, glad to have gotten a response.

With his free hand, Danny pawed at the thick bandages covering his face and winced as his eyes burned. "Guys...? What's going on?"

"We could ask the same of you, young one." A third voice, deep and wise, countered. Clockwork snapped his fingers and Danny felt himself be lifted gently into a pile of what felt like giant beanbags. "You gave your friends quite the scare."

Danny searched his foggy mind for the memories of what happened, but all he could remember was a purple haze and a feeling like a heartbeat in his whole body. A roaring noise and white light filled his senses, but gave no hint as to what occurred.

"I... I'm not sure," he murmured. "I don't really remember."

Tucker let out a sound of dismay. "What do you mean you don't remember?! I showed up at Sam's place to find you bleeding weird white ectoplasm all over her floor and shaking! We couldn't even touch you, it was so cold. We had to transport you in the thermos! Not cool, dude."

Sam chimed in too, her worry replaced with anger. "You scared the shit out of us, Danny! We thought that was it." Danny could feel the weight behind her words, the 'what if you died' that always lurked beneath the surface.

He cringed. He hated making his friends worry, but he really had no clue what had happened. He remembered flying out on patrol over Amity and enjoying the breeze, but after that things became hazy. The pieces of his memory that he could recall were unpleasant at best, and he had a feeling they would only get worse as he remembered them. His bruises seemed to share that sentiment.

"I think now would be a good time to remind you that Daniel is hurt, and that lectures can wait until later." Clockwork mused from across the room. Sam sighed loudly, but it sounded like agreement. Tucker was quiet, gently rubbing Danny's hand in his own as if to chase some of the perpetual cold out of it.

"What's wrong with my eyes?" Danny croaked, touching the bandages nervously once more with his free hand. They felt like they were crawling, like his small cuts felt when they healed, but on a bigger scale. He could feel wisps of vapor escaping his bandages and frowned.

"Your eyes were badly damaged. They'll reform, but it will take time. You're lucky your core is so powerful; you would likely be permanently blind if you were a normal ghost. Your friends were wise to bring you here. The ambient ectoplasm will speed the healing dramatically." Clockwork explained. Danny's breath hitched in his throat as it sunk in that he could have been permanently disabled, never to fight ghosts again. How would he have explained things to his parents? He tried to squash the growing panic and took deep breaths.

An image of himself as Phantom beating ghosts with a walking stick flitted across his mind. Cujo as a service dog soon followed, and Danny had to hold back a smirk. His panic faded as quickly as it had arrived. My sense of humor is fucked, he realized.

Sam stood up and walked a few paces away. "I'm gonna call Jazz," she explained. "She'll be pissed if we keep her out of the loop on this one." Sam sounded disgruntled about talking to Jazz, but her sense of responsibility outweighed her anger. Her voice blended into the quiet background noise of Clockworks tower as she started explaining.

"Incredible that she gets cell service in the Ghost Zone," Tucker mused. "Must have one hell of a cell plan." Danny snorted, glad to hear Tucker settling back into his usual routine of cracking jokes at any opportunity.

"I'm sorry I worried you guys," Danny said truthfully. "I wish I had some kind of explanation for what happened, but it's like there's a fog covering everything. All I remember is one minute I was going on patrol, and the next minute I..." Danny trailed off, a hint of a memory nagging at his brain. "Wait, how long have I been here?!" He sat up suddenly, feeling panicked. How would he explain his absence to his parents? What if the Foleys and the Mansons grounded Sam and Tuck again? What if Amity needed him?

Tucker gently pushed Danny back down into the soft pillows. "Relax, dude. It's only been, like, half a day. And Clockwork said he had done something weird that made it so we would get back home at about the same time we left." Clockwork hummed in affirmative from across the room. "Besides, you need time to get better. Your eyes aren't the only thing that isn't doing too good."

Something about the way Tucker said that last bit held a lot of significance. Danny could still feel a slight tremble in Tuck's hands as he had leaned him back into the pillows. His gut twisted with guilt. He had really fucked up this time, and Sam and Tuck were suffering for it.

Danny's eyes itched. He wanted to take off the bandages, prove he was alright so they wouldn't need to worry. Sam asked Tucker a question, and while he was distracted Danny began unwinding his face.

The bandages caught on old, dried ectoplasm, tugging painfully at his skin. Flakes of it fell all around him and he felt queasy from the thought of it. Slowly, the gray-white seascape of his vision faded and was replaced with ever more dazzling lights and colors. Everything blurred around him as tears cleared the remaining gunk from his eyes, but he could see, and that was good. His vision was still horribly blurred and his eyes stung in the light, but with each passing second it became clearer.

Sam let out a squawk of dismay and crammed her phone into Tucker's hands, rushing over when she saw what Danny had done. Jazz's voice was muffled and confused through the empty end of the phone.

"Dumbass! Why did you take those off?" Sam growled, holding his face in her hands and gently turning it every which way to see if it was damaged. Her eyes held a look of panic that sent chills down his spine. Danny squirmed in her grip and brushed her off.

"Look, I'm fine, see?" He said brushing the dried flakes of his ghostly blood off of his clothing, noting with a sudden shiver that it was a pale greenish white instead of the usual dingy green of dried ectoplasm. His vision had almost returned to normal, and his eyes only throbbed slightly. He hoped Sam and Tucker would be able to relax now. Danny looked around and realized he was right about being in Clockwork's tower, and the beanbag-esque things he was lying on were, in fact, beanbags. Danny didn't question why Clockwork had them. Clockwork himself was sitting about twenty feet away, monitoring the timelines.

"You're not fine, Danny! Look at your eyes!" Sam snapped.

"Would if I could," he deadpanned.

Sam let out a huff of irritation and dug in her bag for a small, bat-shaped mirror. She flipped it open and let Danny peer into it.

Danny let out a hiss of surprise, touching the skin around his eyes gently.

His eyes, previously a solid, toxic green, had regrown entirely different. The whites of his eyes had been replaced with a green so deep it was almost black, and his irises had become spirals of toxic lime that swirled slowly and dizzyingly out towards his eyelids. His skin was bruised and raw, healing slowly, but looked awful. He appeared more dead than usual, if that was even possible.

Tucker caught a glimpse of Danny's new look from a few feet away, where he was desperately trying to calm Jazz down after she had panicked when Sam dropped the phone. His eyebrows practically shot off his head in surprise and he volleyed the phone back to Sam, eliciting another shout from Jazz.

"Woah, woah, woah--" Tucker began. "That is not what eyes are supposed to look like," he squeaked.

"No shit, Tuck!" Danny replied, panic rising in his voice. "Clockwork...?! We need some help!"

Danny turned to look at Clockwork, but as he did, he began to notice his vision was changing still. It had bit-by-bit returned over the last few minutes, finally reaching its normal state, but now it was crossing that threshold into a new realm entirely. The colors around him were becoming increasingly more saturated, casting the world in strange, psychedelic hues. Reds, and oranges faded until all that was left were varying shades of blue, purple, yellow, and green. When he finally locked his eyes on Clockwork, the old ghost appeared as a searing shape in his vision, burning brightly green and yellow against the dark background. A haunting, otherworldly aura surrounded Clockwork in a color that Danny had no words to describe, curling around him and originating from somewhere in his chest. Danny could see Clockwork tilt his head curiously at his shocked expression, but the old ghost's look of concern was altered by the disconcerting colors and shapes swirling around him, transforming it instead into a haunted mask that sent Danny's tired muscles trembling.

"Danny? What's wrong?" Sam cried out, but he was afraid to look at her. Clockwork floated over and Danny involuntarily flinched.

"Daniel," the older ghost murmured, shrinking into his child form and looking Danny in the eyes. "I need you to relax. It appears something very rare has happened, and I need to explain some things to you." He put a gentle hand on Danny's shoulder, and the small halfa began to slow his breathing, nodding shakily.

"Good, good. I can assure you, all is as it should be. This is not an injury, but instead a new power; a gift, if you will. Have I ever explained resonant cores to you?" Clockwork questioned. Danny shook his head. "Ah. I see."

"Every ghost's core resonates at a specific frequency. It's very rare that two ghost cores would resonate at the same frequency, but it's not unheard of, especially if both ghosts have similar obsessions. Take Johnny and his shadow, for example: their cores have harmony, and as a result they have a unique bond unlike any other. When cores resonate together, a variety of things can happen. The resonant cores can, in incredibly rare occasions, combine into one entity or even destroy each other. More commonly, however, the two cores coexist and swap knowledge. The weaker of the two typically benefits the most from the sharing of knowledge, and it can result in increased strength. Pariah Dark was the result of two mighty ghosts combining when they discovered the resonant frequency of their cores. It can lead to immeasurable power."

Clockwork slowly faded into his adult form, backing up to float a few feet away from the three teenagers huddled on the floor. "This is nothing new in the Ghost Zone, however, and does a poor job explaining the strange way you healed. No, to explain your newfound vision, a small history lesson is in order. One pertaining to the origin of the Ghost Zone itself."

Danny furrowed his brow. His vision, though jarring at first, was starting to show him the locations of ghosts far away, visible as hazy dots of varying brightness through the walls. When he glanced back to Clockwork, he could see the gears and springs whirring inside him, as well as a bright shape that could only have been... His core.

"The Ghost Zone is much more complex than humans believe. It appears on the surface as an alternate dimension housing ghosts and spectres, but in reality, the Ghost Zone itself is nothing more than a ghost like you or like me."

"And like you, Daniel, its core obsession is to protect."

Around him, Danny could feel the Ghost Zone hum.