Chapter 3: How Does It Feel To Be A Ghost?

Danny groaned, slumping into a free seat at the table at the Nasty Burger. Sam and Tucker shared an inquisitive glance with each other, shrugged, and then Sam kicked Danny's shins. Before he could protest, Tucker cut in with the question they both wanted to ask.

"What's got you so riled up man?"

Danny glared at Sam, luminescent green bleeding into his blue irises, but huffed out an answer anyway. "The whole thing with that corpse that they found in the woods is what's up."

"Danny, you can't blame yourself for everything criminal that happens in this city," Sam attempted to soothe him, but her success was rather limited.

"It's not just that they found that body, it's..." he trailed off, biting his lip in thought. "The police interviewed the entire Fenton family yesterday. Like, all of us, separately."

Tucker quirked an eyebrow at the news, and he could see Sam doing the same. Simultaneously they asked, "Why?"

Danny shrugged as the green finally left his eyes. "Dunno. They asked a bunch of standard questions, if we had heard of it and stuff like that. Not sure why they asked us, though."

Sam's eyes suddenly lit up, and she snapped her fingers. She looked like she suddenly understood everything. Tucker couldn't help but nudge her. "Looks like someone figured it out."

She nodded, and spoke with extreme confidence. "The Accident."

Tucker frowned at her, and Danny reeled back with a similar expression on his face. "The accident?"

"How is that related to the police interviewing the Fentons to ask about a body buried in- Oh."

Danny turned to face him, an increasingly agitated expression on his face. "I still don't get it."

"Danny, do you remember when you first came out of the Portal?" Sam spoke with a gentle voice, clearly hoping to calm him down.

None of them liked to talk about that day. It was easier to forget about it, to only think of Danny's powers without remembering their origin.

"Uh, yeah? I came out as a ghost, and we were all really confused because you didn't realize that I was me, and-" Tucker saw his eyes widen as realization struck. "Oh, crud."

Seeing the situation spiral downward, Tucker decided that this situation needed some cheering up, stat. He slung an arm over Danny's shoulders, grinning widely. "See, this is why we call you clueless." Danny answered with a huff, shoving the arm away again, but didn't say anything. Tucker could see the corners of his mouth twitch up, though. Mission successful!

Sam rolled her eyes at their shenanigans, but the fond smile on her face told them how she really felt. "Alright, so we've established that the body that the police found is probably Danny's. Now what?"

Tucker shrugged helplessly. Danny groaned and shoved his face back into the tabletop. "Ignore it and hope that the situation resolves itself?"

"Danny." The chastising tone of voice was rewarded with a groaned "Sam".

"Seriously dude, they must've identified the body already, otherwise they wouldn't have come to the Fentons. So they're probably gonna interview you again to figure out how you're still around if they found your corpse."

"So then what? Tell them about what happened in the lab that day? Because I doubt that that will go over well."

"Danny, you're a teenager. Rebellion is kind of what we're known for, you know?" Sam supplied. Tucker muttered an "especially you" under his breath and was rewarded with a cutting glare from Sam. Worth it.

The boy in question shrugged. "I don't know, Sam. You say it like I should just clam up and refuse to answer their questions, but I don't think that they'll like that either."

"Dude, you'll be fine. If they call you back for more interviews, just evade their questions or something, and we'll work on a solution for this whole thing. Who knows, maybe they'll just give up." Danny's expression suggested that he didn't believe it, but Tucker's apparently-endless confidence seemed to help ease his worries.

"Yeah, and don't just evade their questions either. Question them back! Ask them why they want to know whatever they're asking. Make them uncomfortable!" Sam's eyes lit up with a passionate fire, and Danny cringed back from her.

"I don't think that I'm comfortable with how excited you are about this whole thing."

Tucker huffed out a laugh. "Me neither dude, but that's Sam for you." The combat boot impacting his shin did little to spoil his mirth.

"So, the plan is for me to be too stubborn to answer their questions, and then hope that they'll give up or something?"

Sam shrugged at him. "Yeah, basically."

Danny rolled his eyes, but then nodded, a determined expression on his face. "Alright, let's do that. If it comes to that. Which it will, because that's just how my life goes."

"Yep!" Tucker grinned at him, popping the 'p' as he spoke.

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Detective Payton watched as the ghost passed by him to enter the interrogation room, and followed suit. He had to admit that the specter was incredibly convincing, both in appearance and in the way it acted.

Unfortunately, that only made his job harder.

Since the last interview his team had gone through every option they could think of to identify if the ghost was Daniel Fenton or not. In the end they had come to the conclusion that there was no way of telling. By now, the specter had spend over two-and-a-half years pretending to be Daniel. There was no knowledge, nothing they could ask for, that the ghost couldn't have known by now.

They had concluded that the only way was to get him to confirm his existence as a ghost. From there they hoped to find out everything the spirit knew about the death of Daniel Fenton, which in turn could prove whether the spirit was Daniel or not.

The boy sat down in the same chair as last time, shortly glancing at the reflective mirror before settling his gaze on Payton. He then, with a strangely purposeful air about him, laid his arms on the table in front of him, setting down his chin in the palm of one of his hands, eyes half-lidded and with a bored expression on his face.

Payton quirked an eyebrow at the boy, but dismissed the behavior in favor of moving over to the second chair.

"Why did you ask me to come back?" The tone was more petulant than last time, and, combined with the slumped positioning, made the ghost look even more like a stereotypical teenager. Did the ghost suspect that they knew, and was it trying to act more convincingly? Or was he just a teenager acting up?

Cursing his lack of experience with these kind of situations, Payton instead focused on the maybe-teenager to answer his query. "We had more questions to ask you."

"Yeah? Why couldn't you have asked them last time?" He raised an eyebrow at Payton, still supporting his head with the arm he had propped on the table. His eyes were half-lidded, but underneath they were sharp.

Payton rewarded the obstinate behavior with a reprimanding glare, but it went unheeded. "The questions are based on a recent development in the case."

The boy stiffened for a split-second, but before Payton had the chance to react he relaxed again. With a slightly too casual air, the boy shrugged. "Fair enough, but I still don't see why you're asking me."

"As mentioned last time, the case involves a teenager."

"So?" the boy dismissed, flapping the hand that wasn't supporting his head in the air. "There are a lot of teenagers in this city. Why am I special enough to get interviewed for this case? And not once, but twice?"

Payton glared at him again, but the ghost once again ignored him. Instead Payton settled for rolling his eyes, resisting the urge to huff in annoyance. "We were already interviewing your parents, so asking you to come the first time was a logical choice. As for this time," he smirked at the boy, "well, you already know the details of the case that the public can't know. Better to ask someone to come back than to risk another person with the details, no?"

The boy eyed him with a suspicious frown on his face, but eventually nodded. "Yeah, I guess so. Although I do wonder what kind of details you've found that would involve questioning a random teenager that has nothing to do with the case."

Payton made a clicking sound with his tongue. "Perhaps, mister Fenton, we're not questioning a random teenager." He made sure to keep his eyes on the boy as he said it, hoping to catch the split-second reaction.

The ghost flinched, but settled back into his original position so quickly that Payton almost missed it. His eyes remained half-lidded, but his gaze sharpened even further, filled with suspicion.

Payton filed the behavior away as further proof of this ghost knowing about the death of Daniel Fenton, even if he wasn't directly involved.

"Oh yeah?" the boy asked, his voice a mix of skepticism and accusation. "What are you trying to say? That I'm somehow involved in the death of a kid my age?"

Turning around to watch the boy via the reflection in the window, Payton hummed. "Maybe we are."

The ghost snorted, finally pulling himself into a more upright position, an incredulous expression on his face. "You're joking. I thought you guys thought a ghost was responsible, not a frigging 14-year old."

"I never said that we suspected you to be the one responsible." Payton turned back around to face him. "Unless you're claiming otherwise?"

"What, no! Of course I didn't kill anybody!" the boy spluttered, frown melting off of his face in favor of confusion. "But if you're not accusing me of being responsible, and I obviously can't be the victim because I'm not dead, then what do you suspect me of?"

Payton gave the boy a pointed look. "Look, the game's over, okay? You're not fooling me or any of my officers anymore. Just tell us the truth."

He huffed, rolling his eyes, before slumping back into his chair, apparently falling back into his role of being a bull-headed teenager. "You're not making any sense, and I don't know what you're talking about."

Payton resisted the urge to snap at him, instead running through possible retorts. He had tried just about every way he could think of to push the ghost into admitting the truth, and he had already pretty much told the ghost that they already knew. He had reached his wits' end, and decided to throw all subtlety out of the window, going for the direct route instead.

He set his hands on the table, leaning closer to the boy as he growled his admission. "Dammit boy, we know you're a ghost."

The specter, in answer, jerked back from the table, eyes blown wide with barely hidden fear.

"I- I don't know what you're talking about," he stammered out. "Me, a ghost? That's- That's crazy."

Payton sighed deeply, rubbing his fingers in his eyes. How could a ghost be clever enough to be so convincingly human, and simultaneously be so stupid that it didn't realize that it couldn't talk its way out of this?

"Look, we identified the body as Daniel Fenton's. That means that you," he poked the boy in the chest with his finger, "are either Daniel's ghost, or you're some spirit playing pretend."

The ghost scowled and swatted away the finger, speaking with venom dripping from his voice. "I'm no pretender."

Not quite the breakthrough that Payton had hoped for, but at least the boy wasn't denying that he was a ghost anymore. He wasn't sure how he felt about the admission that he was Daniel, though. Why hadn't the boy told anyone about what happened to him?

"So then why not tell us who killed you? Because I gotta tell you kid, when we asked you about the body last time, you looked ready to murder whoever did it."

Daniel hunched in on himself, blushing, with embarrassment of all things clear on his face. "I… forgot."

Payton froze, his brows raising up so far he was pretty sure that they had merged into his hairline. "You what?"

The boy shrunk in even further. "I forgot about the body," he said, rubbing the back of his neck in what had to be a nervous gesture.

Blinking at him, Payton straightened up. "You forgot that you died?"

"Not that I died!" Daniel clarified, "Just- Just where we left the body."

Payton groaned, sinking into the second chair, and buried his face in his hands. "You're joking. Can you at least tell us who did it? Who was this 'we'?"

The boy smiled sheepishly, still rubbing the back of his neck. "Uh, it was an accident. And my friends and I, we just kind of, uh, panicked. So we buried the body and then just kind of forgot about it?"

Lifting his head from his hands again, Payton set his weary gaze on Daniel. "Well, we're gonna need official statements from you and your friends. And then we'll have to inform your parents."

"Wait, no, you can't! They're ghost hunters! Why do you think we decided not to tell anybody?!" Daniel scrambled up, the panicked look back on his face.

"Hey, calm down." Payton made some vague hand motions, attempting to coax the boy back into his seat. "Look, it's just protocol, alright?" he attempted to soothe, but Daniel glared at him.

"Really, you have a protocol for 'a kid dies in an accident and comes back as a ghost'?"

Payton grunted wordlessly, but thought back of his observations of the Fentons. "Kid, just calm down, okay? I promise you that it'll be fine, your parents clearly love you."

Daniel huffed, but slumped back into his seat. "Fine, so what now? Official statements from the three of us, and then? Gonna officially declare me dead? Send me off to the Ghost Zone? Set ghost hunters on me to make sure I don't turn malevolent?"

Payton resisted the urge to growl, instead settling for a fierce glare, but the boy ignored him once more.

"Well, if Phantom hasn't kicked you out of the city then you're probably fine to stay." Daniel snorted in answer, but gave no further reaction, nor did he respond to Payton's quirked eyebrow. A curious reaction, but he had more important things to focus on.

"As you guessed, we don't have protocol for this. Most people outside Amity don't know ghosts exist. Hell, most people in Amity don't even know that they could pass for living as well as you apparently can." The boy muttered something under his breath, but Payton didn't catch what he said, and instead opted to ignore it.

"So, we'll take your statements, including the full explanation of your death, and then we'll talk with your parents. My team and I will talk with you and your family to figure out what we'll do next. How does that sound?"

Daniel shrugged somewhat listlessly. "I guess it's okay. But for the full explanation you'll have to wait until my friends get here, since I can't remember everything. Since it involves, you know, being dead, and all that."

Payton snorted at the sarcastic tone, pulling himself out of his seat. "Yeah, alright. In that case, we're going to move to a conference room so we can all talk. And we're going to need to know who these mystery friends of yours are, so we can call them in."

Daniel nodded and stood up as well, following detective Payton out of the room.

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And so Samantha Manson and Tucker Foley were guided into a conference room at the police station, where they were met by several officers, a medical examiner, and a more-than-slightly panicking Danny Fenton.

The two of them shared a glance before sitting down next to the boy, laying their hands on his shoulders in a show of solidarity. Several of the people present raised their eyebrows at this, but no one said anything.

The boy visibly relaxed.

Payton ended up breaking the silence by clearing his throat, drawing everyone's attention to where he was standing.

"Well, I suppose it might be best to start with introductions. I'm detective Payton, and I'm leading the investigation regarding the body found in the woods. These are the members of my team who are directly involved in the case." He waved his hand in the general direction of the other cops, silently encouraging them to pick up where he left off.

Rosie answered his plea, standing up from her chair. "I'm officer Carver. I suppose that I've been the skeptic of the case." She glanced at detective Payton, but as he made no move to interrupt, she sat down again.

Mike licked his lips, and then stood up. "And I'm officer Milligan. I guess I was the one who suggested, y'know, the possibility that a ghostly doppelganger was involved. Since we somehow found the body of a kid who was still present in the city." He shrugged, somewhat awkwardly, and then promptly fell back into his seat.

The medical examiner rolled her eyes at the young man, but sighed and moved out of her seat as well. "And I'm doctor Beckett. I'm the medical examiner."

The three teens held a short and silent conversation, compromised entirely out of split-second glances, before Tucker stood up. "Tucker Foley, at your service. That's T.F., as in-"

He yelped as the other two pulled him back into his chair, interrupting his own sentence. The team hovered, uncertainly, but Sam shoved Tucker further down into his seat as she stood up.

"And I'm Sam Manson. Not, under any circumstances, Samantha." She glared at the people present, making sure every single one got the message, before she sat down again.

Daniel glanced around the room, but remained seated as he spoke up, voice wavering slightly. "And I'm, uh, Danny Fenton." He shrugged, somewhat helplessly. "But I think everyone here already knew that. Sort of."

"Right," Rosie hummed, "the ghost of the dead kid."

Sam moved as if to answer, but Danny laid his hand on her arm and she settled down again. Payton would have suspected him of using some kind of ghostly power, except that every single interaction between the three clearly showed that they were extremely close. There likely was no need for special powers.

Really, every interaction between the three showed how close they were. To Payton, it felt like further proof that this was, in fact, Daniel as a ghost. There was no way that his friends would've let him be replaced.

"So now that introductions are out of the way, we would like to know more about how a teenager died two years ago, with no one informing the police or the parents of said teen."

Sam and Tucker shared another glance, as if quietly debating who would speak up first. Apparently Sam somehow won, as the boy cleared his throat and spoke. "Right, uh. How much do you know?"

"Not much," Beckett admitted. "We know that Daniel – sorry, Danny – died roughly two years ago, and that his body was badly burned. We know that you two were somehow involved, or at least were present when it happened. And we know that it was an accident. We can also assume that Danny became a ghost almost immediately, since he wasn't missing for long enough to raise concerns."

Sam nodded. "Yeah, that sounds about right. But I'm guessing that you want a full description of the accident?"

"Yes please," Payton replied.

Once more, it was Tucker who took the lead. "Right, so we all know that the Fentons have been inventing all kinds of crazy stuff since way before the ghosts ever showed up. They had strict rules for the lab, though. No one was allowed to be down there without supervision and all that."

"But I wanted a photo of one of their new inventions, even though it didn't work, so we snuck in while the Fentons were out," Sam continued. "I wanted a picture with Danny in it as well, so Tuck and I convinced him to check it out from closer."

Hesitantly, Danny followed up. "I uh, I tripped and hit the invention. It turned on and… I guess electrocuted me?"

"The machine gave off a lot of light, so Sam and I couldn't see anything. When it turned off again, there were two people where Danny had been."

"One was lying on the floor, still smoking. It was…" She shivered. "It was horrific to see, and I can't imagine that it looked much better when you dug it up. The other… Well, we hadn't seen anything like it, back then."

Tucker followed up. "But we could guess, based on context clues. Nowadays, we've dealt with enough ghosts to be able to recognize one instantly. But the accident, it happened before we had ever seen a ghost."

All three remained quiet for a moment, as if trying to figure out what to say next. It was Payton who broke the silence, however.

"You're saying that Danny instantly became a ghost, but that he didn't look like he did when he was alive? Like he does now?"

The boy in question was the one who answered. "We- We think that it was because of the invention. An unintended side-effect. Dying in contact with ectoplasm, or something."

Payton hummed, then quirked an eyebrow at the three teens. "And the more ghostly appearance?"

"Well..." Tucker paused, licked his lips, then tried again. "He looked like a pretty typical ghost, I guess. But when he realized what had happened he just kind of, I dunno how to describe it, changed?"

"Yeah," Sam agreed. "He changed back almost instantly, looking like nothing had ever happened. He's still pretty cold, and his vitals are kind of… off, but it's convincing enough."

Seeing everyone's gazes settle on him, Danny shrugged and put on a sheepish smile. "I don't really remember what I did, though. I wasn't even aware of it at the time, didn't know I looked different until after I changed and Sam and Tucker pointed it out."

"So you got into a terrible accident, straight-up died, and decided to keep it secret from your parents?" Rosie questioned. "Why?"

The boy started rubbing his neck, a nervous gesture that Payton remembered from their previous conversation. His friends clearly recognized it as well, as they sympathetically bumped shoulders with him and offered him comforting smiles.

"Well, there were two reasons, really. I wasn't ready to move on yet, for one. I mean, I was fourteen! I wanted to live my life a little longer, even if I wasn't really alive anymore."

He licked his lips, hesitating for a moment, and then continued. "And I guess I was afraid of what my parents would think. I mean, they're ghost hunters! And at the time, no one had any proof of the existence of ghosts. Heck, my parents hadn't even seen a ghost yet, and there I was, a ghost!" He shivered momentarily, but calmed down as his friends wrapped their arms around his shoulders.

"I guess I was afraid that their scientific curiosity would outweigh the fact that I was their son."

Seeing that he was done, Sam cleared her throat. "So yeah, we decided that if Danny could blend in so well, then no one had to find out about what happened until he wanted them to know. So we borrowed some of the stuff from the shed, took the body to the woods, and, well, buried it."

"And then we got so distracted by, y'know, figuring out what being a ghost meant for Danny that we kind of… forgot?" Tucker offered them an uncertain smile.

Payton frowned at this. "What do you mean, 'figuring out what being a ghost meant'?"

"Well…" Danny hesitated. "It's not like you get a manual when you die, y'know? Ghost have all kinds of powers, but no one ever discusses how they use and control those powers."

Tucker snorted, apparently attempting to stifle laughter. "Yeah, he spend a lot of time going intangible at the worst moments those first few months. Got a permanent ban at school for handling glassware, since he kept dropping everything."

"Not to mention the incidents where he would phase through the floor, or the chair he was sitting on, or his bed." Sam grinned at the boy, who huffed somewhat peevishly in answer.

"Yeah yeah, laugh it up. Can't imagine you would have done much better."

"Well, regardless of the circumstances at the time, Mr. Fenton," Payton cut in before the three could lose themselves in their squabbling, "We're going to have to inform your parents, and then figure out a plan for your future. No matter how well you can blend in among the living, you can't keep doing this forever."

The boy nodded, somewhat uncertainly. "Yeah, I guess so."

"Does anybody else know? Besides these two, of course." Payton gestured broadly at the other teens as he spoke.

"Uh, yeah. My sister knows."

"Really? Of everyone you could have told, the only one you told is your sister?" Rosie quirked a questioning eyebrow at the boy.

"Well, I didn't tell her, per se." Seeing the continued questioning gazes, he added, in a more defensive tone. "She caught me doing something ghostly, so I had to explain it to her."

"That explains why she was so defensive during the interviews," Mike chimed in.

"And it makes our job easier as well, since we won't have to tell her." Payton turned to look at the teenagers. "Mr. Foley, Miss Manson, you're both free to leave. Mr. Fenton, you'll be joining me and officer Carver on a visit to your parents."

Danny groaned, but didn't put up any protests. His friends nudged him, offering him hopeful smiles, which he gratefully accepted. Eventually the two left, and Danny dragged himself out of his chair.

"Well, let's get this over with, then."

AN: Title from Sweetie Little Jean by Cage the Elephant. Also, we're finally reaching the less OC-heavy content! Getting content from the POV of our actual characters! Incredible!

This chapter also contains some of my favorite quotes from Unearthed. Rewriting the entire thing just to re-use Payton's incredulous "You forgot that you died?" was absolutely worth it. Honestly that entire conversation was something I really liked in the original, hence why it's copied over almost exactly for Disinterred. Don't change what isn't broken and all that.

Next week: Chapter 4 - And There Will Be Nowhere I Can Run