Disappearance
Words: 4994
Danny was glowing, she realized, with an observation that was growing more horrendous with every second. His knees were digging into the carpet below him, arms flaccid at his side, and there was an expression of confusion and fear glued to his face. Maddie couldn't decide if she wanted to run from him, or crowd him with her maternal vigilance. She didn't have to make the choice, however, because he spoke first.
"Mom?" his alien green eyes seemed to pierce through her like a blade, "What... happened?"
Those weren't the eyes of her son. She wasn't even positive that those were the words of her son. And the explanation was simple: he was overshadowed by a ghost. Some nasty specter had overtaken her baby boy and was now playing with the wheel, tainting him with ectoplasm and causing his entire body to be used as some kind of ghostly lamp. As a mother, she felt disgusted, and wanted nothing more than to destroy the thing inhabiting her son.
"Danny," she said his name with a bad taste in her mouth. (That was not Danny.) "You just fell. You – you need to come down to the lab with me, right now."
Those soulless green eyes mimicked befuddlement. "I fell?" he asked. "What are you talking about? W – why the lab? I feel okay."
"We just need to go to the lab," Maddie insisted. Because there she could save her son and get that thing out of his body.
"No," he said. "There's no reason to."
She was getting frustrated. Clearly this ghost knew that she was a ghost hunter, and that the lab meant an inevitable doom for ghosts. She wouldn't be able to deceive it into entering the lab, so she would have to force it. And to do that, she'd have to shatter it's little act.
She took a step towards it and said with minimal hesitation, "There's a reason to when you're possessing my son, ghost."
She felt something stab her in the gut when she saw the look of immediate hurt on Danny's face. It was raw, forlorn trepidation; his eyes dulled, the corners of his mouth quivered, and for a moment it almost seemed like he was trembling. Maddie couldn't let this affect her, because even though it was eminently convincing, that was not Danny. That was an ectoplasmic entity, extremely adept at acting, residing in his skin.
"No," he whispered. "Not again."
"I see through you," she continued. "And I am not letting you stay in Danny."
Maddie reached out to grab his arm, and he flinched away, taking a few steps backward. The action was almost redundant for a ghost, but Maddie was grateful that it wasn't running away with Danny's body.
"I – I'm not going to the lab," he repeated. "I know how this nightmare ends. I don't want to do it again. I've had it too... too many times..."
Whatever the ghost was saying didn't make sense. Was he trying to convince her that she was in a dream? Or was he pretending that he was in a dream? Ghosts certainly couldn't dream, nor sleep, so that meant that it was still trying to imitate Danny.
"I don't want to be your experiment again. I wanna wake up. Please let me wake up, Mom." The look in those fiery green eyes was desperate. It's a facade, she reminded herself.
"I know you're not Danny," she confirmed. "You can't fool me. You're just a ghost, pretending. If you don't leave Danny right now, I will make you leave."
He took another two steps back, strategically putting more distance between the two of them. "Please, Mom... I wanted to tell you. I want to tell you so much, please don't do this to me. I don't want to be ripped apart again." She was taken aback when tears obviously welled around the corner of his eyes. The ghost must have a very deep connection to Danny's body if it's able to provoke crying. She had to sever that connection before it permanently harmed Danny. "I don't want to be ripped apart again."
The fake crying was finally what set her off. Maddie was done trying to negotiate with this thing. It was cruel, and it had the very audacity to use her son's body as a flesh puppet, only to act like she was the perpetrator, trying to make her believe that she was the one hurting her son. "Stop pretending to be my son!" she screamed.
He flinched away from her, feigning more false tears. "Can't I just wake up this time?"
There was a scuffling noise behind her, and Maddie turned defensively, ready to fight. Maybe it was a second ghost, maybe the ghost overshadowing Danny was just supposed to be a distraction! She kept an eye on Danny while she maintained a resistive stance towards the direction of the noise.
A new figure emerged from the darkness, descending from the stairs. Thankfully, Maddie took no time at all identifying her daughter's frantic sprint, and stopped herself before she kicked Jazz in the chest.
"Mom," Jazz breathed, weakly. Maddie realized she must have scrambled out of bed and ran down the stairs. "I heard screaming-"
Jazz's eyes curiously fell on Danny, who's green gaze was strewn with barely luminescent tears. He held his arms close to his chest and was breathing heavily, like air was a burden to him. Maddie watched in wonderment as Jazz's mouth fell open, establishing a firm determination in the young girl's stare. When Jazz walked past Maddie, opting to go towards Danny, Maddie was stupefied.
"Jazz, your brother is being overshadowed!" she warned. However, Jazz didn't seem to acknowledge that nor care. Instead, she approached Danny and comfortingly put an arm around him.
What...?
The ghost whispered something to Jazz, and Maddie swore she heard the word 'experiment'.
Jazz looked at Maddie coldly. "Mom," she started, "how much do you know? What did you say to him?"
Why was Jazz humoring the ghost? Anybody could clearly see that Danny was overshadowed, so why was Jazz playing into it's hand? And why did Jazz look so... bitter towards Maddie?
Nonetheless, Maddie found herself answering her daughter honestly. "I – Danny's overshadowed by a ghost. At first it was just floating in the living room until I came down here, and now it's pretending that he's Danny in some sort of nightmare or something. I just, I'm trying to get it down to the lab for tests so I can get it out of Danny."
"Nightmare?" Jazz repeated quietly. Maddie could almost see the cogs turning in Jazz's head as she reached some sort of enlightenment, prompting her to turn to the ghost. "Danny, look at me," she said, softly. "It's Jazz. Everything's okay. You're not in a dream, you're awake. You were sleepflying again and mom saw you. This is all a misunderstanding, everything is alright. No one is going to experiment on you."
Danny blinked the tears out of his eyes and looked at Jazz in shock. "What? This is actually happening? Jazz?"
The ghost had fooled Jazz. It was stringing her along, and despite Maddie's warning, Jazz was falling for every single move. She couldn't let that happen, she couldn't lose her daughter too.
"Jazz, get away from that ghost! It's using you!" she interrupted.
"This isn't a ghost, Mom!" Jazz argued. "This is Danny! He isn't overshadowed!"
"How do you know?" Maddie asked. None of this was making any sense.
"I just do," Jazz said. "Look, this is Danny, and not some ghost. All the stuff you saw him do was him, not anything controlling him. Isn't that right?"
"Yeah," Danny added, clearly too frightened to elaborate further.
"That – that's a lie," Maddie decided. "People can't just float, Jasmine! I'm not an idiot."
"People can't float, maybe, but ectoplasm can change a lot about an individual's capabilities," Jazz said.
Was she saying that Danny... was contaminated? He wasn't overshadowed, but his body was tainted by himself?
"Are you saying that Danny's been poisoned by ectoplasm?" Maddie heard her voice crack and almost flinched.
"Look, Mom," Jazz said quickly. "Danny hasn't been poisoned. Not overshadowed, not corrupted or anything. He's himself, and if there's a little ectoplasm in there, then – then it's a healthy amount. No need for any tests. You just gotta trust me Mom, okay? I promise that we've already made sure it can't hurt him, and that I monitor his mental state like a hawk. Can you just trust us and leave this alone for now? Please?"
"I'm fine," Danny added.
They were making up lies, Maddie realized. There was something deeper here that they were attempting to cover up. There was something wrong with Danny, and both of her children were saying as much as they could to appease Maddie into a false security and to persuade her not to ask any questions. They were deliberately avoiding a confrontation in the lab, which suggested that medically, there was something that they didn't want Maddie to know about Danny. And it had something to do with ectoplasm and ghosts. Whatever was wrong with Danny, it gave him ghostly attributes, and that wasn't alright. She had to know what was going on with her children.
Maddie clenched her fist against her side, "I want the truth, now. Immediately, or I swear I will drag you down to the lab and find out myself, Daniel Fenton."
Danny and Jazz looked at each other, sharing some kind of reluctant decision between them. She could see the vulnerability between her children, and the depth of their silent conversation did nothing to reassure Maddie's worries.
Jazz took a deep breath. "Danny has ghost powers," she said with an unclouded finality. "The portal accident-" she recalled the incident, remembered Danny's skittishness and Sam and Tucker's assurances that everyone was okay, remembered how her scientific eagerness outweighed her parental concern,"-bonded ectoplasm to his DNA. It's not harming him, though, and we've figured out that getting rid of it would definitely kill him."
Danny was slowly nodding, but Maddie couldn't bring herself to consider Jazz's words. Ectoplasm... bonded to him? There were many reasons why that should be impossible, since ectoplasm is, but not limited to: radioactive, toxic, and pretty much the anti-matter of all life. Beyond the theoretical realm, it would never be able to bond with someone's DNA without downright killing them first. Years ago, Maddie herself had conducted many different experiments examining that hypothesis, and she had determined that ectoplasm was incompatible with all forms of cellular life. Vlad Masters was living proof for crying out loud! He suffered for years in the hospital after he was poisoned with ectoplasm, and now Danny and Jazz were trying to convince her that Danny was the exception? No, no she wouldn't fall for that.
"Ectoplasm can't coexist with living tissue," she told them firmly.
Jazz continued to hold her arm around Danny, "It can, given the right... conditions."
"No," Maddie reiterated. "Ectoplasm can't bond with DNA because they're basically the opposite of each other. Humans can't have powers. The only way you'd have ectoplasm in you would be if you're contaminated or you're a ghost. And you're not a ghost, Danny."
When she said the words, she didn't expect the reaction she got. Instead of another argument or half-explanation, Danny visibly swallowed and averted direct eye contact. Jazz acted in a similar manner, unable to bring herself to look Maddie in the eyes.
Maddie's mouth felt dry. "Danny?"
His answer was quiet, almost shameful, but he at least managed to look up. "I'm... part ghost," the words sounded wrong coming from her teenage son, and she almost convinced herself that they were a figment of her imagination. "I'm still alive, I have functional organs, warm blood, and human brain, but I can... turn," he said the word distastefully, as if he wasn't used to utilizing such a term, "to be like a - a ghost. My human and ghost sides overlap a lot, which is why my eyes are-" he gestured to his green eyes, "-like this, right now. Well, I mean normally I can control them, but at 3 AM it's hard to explain."
"You're not a ghost though," she said, simply. She couldn't... this wasn't making sense. At first they were saying it was just ectoplasm in his DNA, now they were expecting her to believe that Danny was some sort of what – a human-ghost hybrid? Alive but with some kind of permanent ghost attributes? It wasn't sensible, wasn't known, wasn't – wasn't-
"That's what I said, I'm part ghost. Not full," the way that he said it suggested that admitting this was almost painful for him. "I have the abilities of a ghost."
To be a ghost, but not completely dead? It was unorthodox, it was a preposterous idea, akin to something from science-fiction.
She clung to denial. "That can't be-"
"It's true, Mom," Jazz interjected. "You saw him floating."
She had seen him floating. And even now, his eyes reflected that eerie green haze. There had to be some other explanation, because she would by no means accept that her son was part ghost. Theoretically, the implications of being alive and dead in a single existence were terrifying, unknown and messy. She didn't want that kind of misery for Danny, she had to ensure that Danny wasn't part ghost, she had to achieve some conclusive source of evidence, and that meant...
"Let me run tests," she said.
"No," Danny said immediately, "no tests."
"You definitely have ectoplasm in you, Danny," she said. "You say you're 'part ghost', and that scares me. I have to find if you're right, and if so... I can't let you be that, I have to fix it."
"Wha – what do you mean 'fix', Mom?" Danny's voice wavered. "There's no fixing this, we've... we've tried and getting rid of it will kill me!"
"I'm an ectologist, I'm pretty sure if anyone can fix it, I can," she insisted. "Go down to the lab."
"No, Mom! I'm this way, whether you like it or not! Don't you get it? What happened did happen, and I'm stuck like this for the rest of my life. I'm okay with it, I have to be, because there's no other option. I'm not going to be yo – your lab rat just to prove you wrong."
"You don't know everything," Maddie spat. "You are fifteen, Daniel. You're not the one who makes these decisions."
"I've dealt with this for the past year, so I'm confident that I definitely know more about what I am than you. I get that you're having troubling understanding it, we can talk it out, but that doesn't mean that you have to experiment on me-"
"I never said experiment!"
"It always comes back to experiments," Danny accused. "Especially with ghosts. I'm almost one, so don't you think I'm a little justified to be hesitant?"
Maddie's eyes glassed over. "Don't you dare say that," she demanded.
Now Danny was confused. "Say what?"
"You're not almost a ghost," Maddie whispered. "You're Danny. You have ectoplasm in you, but you're not almost... almost-"
"That's what this is all about, isn't it?" Jazz summed up. "You can't handle that he's part ghost. You want to run tests, and if Danny's too ghostly, you're going to try and 'fix' him. Because even being part ghost is too much for you to bear."
"And can you blame me?" Maddie blurted. "I can't let my son be like that, like – like a ghost!"
"And what if you can't fix me?" he muttered. "What if you try everything and still can't?
"I won't let that happen. My son will not be a ghost." She gripped Danny's arm, once again trying to direct them to the lab. She pulled on him, but despite her tight grip, he wouldn't budge an inch. She was so absorbed in this movement that she missed the look of fear cross across Danny's face, and almost missed seeing him vanish into the air, seconds after he slipped intangibly through her grip. Disappearing.
Jazz was the first to react, "Danny!"
Maddie's mind reeled at the unexpected disappearance, struggling to process what had just happened. "Wha-?" One moment Danny had been there, in her grip, and the next moment he was just gone! For the life of her, she couldn't piece together how that had happened. She wondered, was that... was that one of the ghost powers that Danny had mentioned? (But those powers still couldn't be real!)
"We have to fin him," Jazz didn't allow much time for Maddie to dwell on her panicked realizations. She noticed that Jazz was also on edge, that she also hadn't actually expected Danny to straight up fade into thin air.
"What do yo mean find him?" Jazz was talking like Danny had gone somewhere, like he had walked away. But he had completely disappeared. Despite her usual tactful reasoning skills, Maddie still couldn't understand most of this. "What happened?"
Jazz shot her an incredulous look, as if she should know the answer by now. This was all new territory for Maddie. Ghosts... ectoplasm... part-ghosts... refusing to go to the lab... powers... So much had happened in just the past five minutes – how was she supposed to keep up?
"He used his powers to leave," Jazz confirmed Maddie's dismissed suspicions. She looked over Maddie and decided something, And on second thought, I should be the one to look for him since he trusts me more. That and you still don't know about..." she trailed off again, before blinking rapidly and forcing herself to continue. "Alright, you stay here. If I don't return by sunrise, go to Sam and Tucker for help."
She was slowly bringing herself to more conclusions, and this was starting to spiral out of control too quickly. "Jazz!" she protested as her daughter started to trek back upstairs, presumably to get something to aid her in her search. "That's crazy! You can't just go out in the middle of the night-"
"Well too bad," Jazz shot back, putting the banister between her and Maddie. "I have to, because you scared my brother out there." She didn't look back down as she practically sprang up the stairs. "Not going after him would be crazy. Protecting him is my responsibility, after all."
Her words were simple, but she could hear the undertone of venom laced within Jazz's explanation. She disappeared up into her bedroom, and Maddie was left alone and astounded at the turn of events. Everything from the moment she saw Danny floating... to Jazz revealing that Danny had powers... to his reluctant admittance that he was part ghost... and to the moment she went too far, when she crossed the line of what Danny was apparently comfortable with. She still didn't want to believe that he was part ghost, she couldn't wrap her mind around it. But his disappearance... it was gradually assisting in convincing her.
That, and Jazz's harsh words still reverberated in her mind. Protecting him is my responsibility. Those words hurt the most; she was Danny's mother, she was supposed to be the one to protect both of her children, and from what she could see, she had failed. What mattered was that Danny had been tainted by ectoplasm, hurt by the nature of ghosts... no. Her invention, the Fenton Portal, was the thing that irreversibly imbued him with ectoplasm, and by his claims, he was unable to be fixed. And by that logic, since it had been her invention and lack of supervision, it was her fault. She had created the circumstances for what he was, some sort of in-between anomaly.
(No! What was she saying! Danny still isn't part ghost!)
She was still denying it, over and over, and she needed to conquer her denial. Even though she couldn't prove it in the sanctity of her lab, she had to trust that Danny and Jazz were telling the truth. And that's all that mattered now, because she had screwed everything up.
She was the one who told him that she wouldn't allow him to be part-ghost, which was what she unknowingly made him into. She was jagged and cruel and Danny was justified to use his... abilities to run from her. He was right to be afraid of her. Hell, she realized now, that when he had awoken, he had been convinced he was in a recurring nightmare. And his nightmare was her, he had begged her not make him her experiment again. He must have been bearing this burden and harboring this fear for how long and she just... rejected him? (It's common sense that you don't want your children to be part ghost, though! Fixing him is the easiest solution!)
Tears were welling in her eyes, and she didn't have enough awareness to blink them away. As if on autopilot, she slowly dragged herself back to the couch, and plopped down on it haphazardly. She placed her head on her knees, trying to condense her body to occupy as little space as possible. The question echoed over and over throughout her head as she cried into nothingness.
What had... what had she done?
Jazz found the Booomerang discarded in a spare drawer, threw it in the air, and followed it's trajectory. Instead of leading her outside though, it lead her to the Fenton Portal first, meaning that in order to follow it, she had to quickly start up the Specter Speeder without any preparation. She'd only flown it a handful of times, and at times the controls were frustrating, but it was operable nonetheless. She tracked the Booomerang through the portal and let it lead her to Danny, who had already fled deep within the ghostly dimension. She knew that if he really tried he could fly up to 200 mph, so she was a little anxious, since the Booomerang's maximum tracking speed was 10 mph, at most.
However, the search for Danny didn't take as long as she anticipated, and after half an hour she found Phantom huddled on a nearby floating rock. When he heard the telltale sound of the Speeder's engine, he looked up in a panic, but Jazz quickly turned on the intercom to reassure him, "It's just me!"
Seconds later the Booomerang threatened to smack him in the head, and he threw up a hand to catch it.
Almost immediately, his expression placated, but she could that there was still some weariness there. Just like she was afraid of; Maddie's words had really hurt Danny. He was absolutely dejected, and even though avoiding the issue sounded nice in theory, Jazz knew that he needed her as support. She wouldn't let Danny suffer through their Mother's mistake alone, they would reach an understanding with her, allow her to see that Danny's ghost-side wasn't something that needed to be 'fixed'. And then once they reached that point, they could tell her the rest, tell her about Phantom, but only when everyone was ready.
"Why'd you come after me?" Danny spoke, and the microphone outside the Speeder relayed his query. "Leave me alone, Jazz."
"You really think I'm going to leave you alone? Now?" she asked. "After your little disappearing stunt?"
He was silent, and shifted uncomfortably on his rock. For about a minute, neither of them spoke, testing the unpleasant silence, as if to test who would break their previous reality first, see who would talk about what Maddie did.
Danny eventually buckled under the pressure. "She's gonna hurt me. She wants to get rid of Phantom," he blurted.
"She doesn't know anything," Jazz countered. "She hasn't seen enough of your powers to really know that you're not in danger. She cares about you. She was just jumping to conclusions. In fact, I think that your disappearance, maybe... helped her readjust some of her priorities."
"That doesn't change the fact that she still doesn't want a ghost for a son. She said it herself. All I am is her biggest disappointment," he muttered, hopelessly throwing his head down.
It was almost painful for Jazz, because everything in her was telling her to go and comfort him, but she couldn't. She couldn't leave the Specter Speeder, since neither Mom nor Dad had installed an autohover feature yet, meaning that she had to manually keep the vehicle in the air.
"No you're not, Danny," she reassured.
"Yeah, I am, Jazz," he mimicked. "She hates me now, and everything in my nightmares has come true. And I'll have to stay here alone for the rest of my half-life, because it I ever go back, she'll experiment on me for sure!"
"Not if I can help it," she said.
"You barely stopped her from dragging me down to the lab tonight!" Danny yelled. "Face it Jazz, I'm not safe with her. I'm never going to be safe with someone who can't accept that I'm part-ghost. I mean, she doesn't even know that I'm Phantom, and she hates me this much already. I'm a hopeless case."
"She never said that she hates you," Jazz pointed out.
"That hate was already in her eyes. You didn't see her when I first woke up, Jazz. She was ready to kill me."
"You're misinterpreting things, Danny."
"Yeah? And you know everything since you're little Miss Psychoanalysis?" he asked sarcastically. "I can't go home, ever."
"And what? You're just going to disappear in here forever? Leave Amity Park to fend for itself? Never see Sam or Tucker ever again? Never graduate or go to college?"
"I-"
"You can't disappear forever," she continued.
"Then what do I do!" he screamed. He floated up from his rock and pointed accusingly at the Specter Speeder. "How am I supposed to deal with this!"
She took a deep breath and articulated her words evenly. "You come with me in the Speeder, we go home and sleep, and we talk about it with Mom and in the morning, and start everything afresh."
"That's a horrible plan," he stated.
"It's not," Jazz said. "We can't just run away from her, because if we do that, she has even more reason to suspect that you're just some emotionless husk of ectoplasm. We have to face this, show her that even though you're part-ghost, that you're still the same you. And we'll make it clear that you, as her son, has boundaries."
"That's giving her too much trust, though," Danny looked down again. "What if – what if she does do something-"
"Then you can just disappear again," Jazz said wryly. "You've made it clear that you're capable of that. But Danny... when I don't think that will be a problem. When I... left the house, I'm pretty sure I heard her crying before I came to get you. That at least means she regrets what she did."
"Or maybe she was upset that I'm a nasty ghost," Danny mumbled.
"We know Mom. It isn't like her to cry over a thing that's out of her control, however, she's much more likely to cry over something she directly caused," Jazz paused. "I said some things to make her realize that it was her fault you left – so I have no doubt that she's guilty about it."
"I... you're sure?" there was a certain vulnerability in his voice.
"Ninety-two percent, give or take," she admitted. That seemed to be what made up his mind.
"... Can you turn off the Speeder's ghost shield for a second?"
She obliged, and seconds later Danny was by her side. He turned back human, and she switched the shield back on. The ride back to the portal was spent in silence, and normally, at this time of night both of them would've been fast asleep due to the lack of conversation. Both their minds were occupied with enough paranoia to keep them awake for the entire ride.
When they finally made it back home, it was somewhere around 5 AM, and they realized that Maddie had cried herself to sleep on the couch. They left her there undisturbed, afraid of waking her; neither of them wanted to really try speaking to her again until they were well rested.
The walk upstairs almost felt like some sort of premature acceptance of everything they would have to face tomorrow, realizing that these final hours of sleep would be their last moments of subterfuge; the morning would bring reckoning, and both of them would have to own up to the truth that they had revealed. It was almost surreal, those short moments before reaching their bedroom doors, and both of them reflected on the events that had occurred previously in the evening. However, their sleepy reveries were broken by the startling sound of toilet flushing.
Both children jumped at the unexpected noise, only to spot Jack stumbling out of the bathroom at the opposite end of the hallway. They were both greeted with the feeling of relief.
"Danny? Jazz?" he slurred, questioningly. The hallway was still dark, shrouding him in shadows.
Danny looked at his father cautiously, quietly asking him, "Dad, why're you up?"
Jack steadied himself against the wall, "I think... my fever broke," he mumbled. "Wha-"
"That's good..." Jazz cut him off.
"Goodnight, Dad," Danny said quickly, skittishly.
Wordlessly, Jack saw both of his children disappear into their bedrooms. The encounter puzzled Jack, but he supposed that he was still experiencing fever dreams, and fell back into bed without another thought. Unbeknownst to him, there would be a reckoning in the morning, but in the early hours of dawn, everyone was content with resorting to the temporary escape that sleep provided. Because nobody could run away from their problems forever, secrets were bound to be revealed, and similarly, every fever had to eventually break.