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"I'm sorry, Aragon was looking for a bride and he chose your friend Samantha?" The incredulous tone Ghostwriter had made Danny feel much more reassured that he hadn't exaggerated what hell he had gone through the last few days. He was never going to judge a beauty contest again, that was for sure.
"You know she'll kick your ass if she ever knows you call her that, but, yeah. I guess he had this idea that whatever girl I picked would be the perfect bride because I'm half ghost? I dunno, man, I wasn't paying attention too much with the whole dragon thing that was going on."
"Of course you chose her through some convoluted accident, as well. That does seem to be par for the course for your life." The fact Ghostwriter gave a dramatic little Jazz sigh was the truly insulting part of that.
"Hey, not every part of my life is an accident." Danny forced the lie out and prayed that Ghostwriter dropped the subject instead of calling him out on it.
"Mm." Alright, judgmental humming wasn't technically a callout, so Danny would let it pass for now. "What are you writing so furiously in?"
"Huh? Oh." Danny looked down and then up from where he was writing in his journal. "It's a stupid psycho thing that my sister's been making me do."
"Ah. She's been making you document your ghostly encounters for personal reflection?" Ghostwriter had to be speaking like that to purposefully trip Danny up. No one casually spoke like that. "I'll take your baffled expression as agreement."
"You talk like you're older than my parents." Which was old, as far as Danny was aware. "How old even are you? A hundred?"
"Depends on if you mean physically or mentally." There must have been some sort of complicated expression on his face, because Ghostwriter laughed. Danny had found that most of the ghost's laughter had come from Danny's confusion. "I'm joking, Phantom. Mentally and physically I'm twenty-two, but chronologically I would be… What year is it?"
"Dude, you don't even know the year?" Danny flipped his journal around to have the papers facing out so Ghostwriter could see the date, the ghost nodding slowly once he read it
"I'd be close to my fifties if I was alive? I became a ghost in 1983, I believe…" What a nice, avoidable way of saying he died, which, yeah, yep, nope. Danny did not want to think about how he was technically talking to a dead guy.
"Right. Right, uh, yeah, Jazz has been making me write things down about the ghosts and stuff, so I can, I dunno, have a safe place to sort through it all?"
"Oh! She's been having you keep a diary, then?" It was very tempting to throw his journal at Ghostwriter's face. Danny resisted, however, so that Ghostwriter didn't get the satisfaction. "Is it helping?"
"I… I think so. I mean, it's not hurting anything, and I guess I do kind of understand the motivation of the ghosts once I go back and read about it all. I'm more objective, I guess, when I'm reading it instead of telling it." Danny scribbled down his sudden thought about what a douche Aragon had been before looking back to Ghostwriter. "Talking it out helps, too."
"That doesn't surprise me. Talking over an event can help process it more than simply writing and thinking about it. When talking, you have an outside party that's able to help you process the emotions more so than you would be able to do on your own."
"Uh… huh. So, hey, quick question, how many psychology books have you read?" Because that had definitely been some psychology babble.
"More than I care for," Ghostwriter sighed – a great, dramatic exhale that had Danny choking back a laugh. "The nineties were rather boring."
"I'll take your word for it. The talking thing does help, yeah, but you're not- You're not like bored or sick of it or anything, are you? I mean, I can shut up or talk about something else, like the latest published books that everybody hates."
"As amusing as that would be, I like listening to the stories you tell me." Ghostwriter gave him a grin - not a smirk, but a full on grin. "They're great inspiration."
"Oh. Good. I mean, yeah, they're great stress relief and hold on wait a second." Running the last exchange over in his head, Danny narrowed his eyes. "Inspiration?"
"While poetry is my preferred medium of choice these days, it's not all I write. I used to strictly be a prose writer, when I was younger - mainly fiction. I could never grasp the subtle art of nonfiction, I'm afraid."
"Yeah, yeah, okay, shut up. You write books? Like, actual, honest-to-god books?" Alright, yes, Danny knew the man had the whole tortured poet thing going on, but he didn't think he was an actual writer.
"Yes, I write 'honest-to-god' books." Ghostwriter was fighting off a bout of laughter, which, alright, that was fair. "You wouldn't believe the inspiration that can be lent towards the mystery and crime genre once one becomes a ghost."
"Huh." That… did make sense, Danny supposed. "Could I read some of your books sometime, then?" Maybe they were good. If all Ghostwriter did was sit in and read and write, then his book would have to at least be decent.
"Of course." Ghostwriter's nice little smile turned evil. "If you can find them, of course. Oh, yes, it's possible they will be under a pseudonym, as well."
"You're so mean." Danny could feel the smile he was fighting off, but he thought he hid it rather well.
"And whoever said I was nice?" Ghostwriter leaned back in his own seat and propped his cheek on a closed fist, lips tugged into a smile from the motion. "You were telling me a thrilling tale about dragons and forced brides, I believe?"
As he launched back into the story of Aragon and his sister Dora, Danny couldn't help but think that it was nice to talk to someone who understood. Ghostwriter was a ghost - it was there in his name, after all - but he also understood the human aspect of everything. Danny could vent and complain and talk all he wanted, and he knew that Ghostwriter would be able to understand and keep up with every part of the conversation.
It… was nice. Jazz and his friends never seemed to fully understand the ghost part of things, and Clockwork seemed to miss the human part of it all, but Ghostwriter never did. He and Danny clicked together in a way that reminded him of when he met Sam and Tucker and knew they were going to be his best friends.
It was good. It was nice to have ghosts that he could talk to. It… He had friends in Wulf, Ghostwriter, Dora, Clockwork, and sometimes Johnny and Kitty if they were feeling nice. He was making friends with the ghosts and it was great.
Sure it was slow and it would take time to get to know them all and really call them friends, but they definitely weren't his enemies anymore. A lot of them seemed to even like him instead of merely tolerating his presence. It was good.
And, alright, he should probably be wrapping up his conversation with Ghostwriter and heading home, but another hour or so wouldn't hurt anyone. Besides, Danny wanted to see if he could get Ghostwriter to tell him just where those novels were.
::
"'Another hour or so won't hurt.' Fenton, you're an idiot. An absolute idiot." While talking out loud didn't make Danny feel better, it did keep him focused on finding the right way home instead of getting lost, again. "Three hours! How do you spend three hours talking about poetry!"
Alright, Danny could argue that they hadn't strictly been speaking of poetry the whole three hours. It had started that way, and then Danny had mentioned the Skulk and Lurk and Sam's own poetry, and then he had started talking about Sam, and then Tucker, and then how they had all met- It had been a very extensive rabbit trail, he was realizing.
While getting distracted talking to Ghostwriter for so long wasn't really a problem, it was a concern when his curfew was fast approaching, and he still had almost forty minutes of travel at least until he was home. It was already a little past nine, and he knew that while he was fast, he wasn't fast enough to beat the clock and play it off as him having been in his room the whole time.
"Focus, Fenton." He could do this. He just had to follow the route he knew, and he would get back safe and sound. Although… If he was remembering from their last attempt at a map, there was a nice little shortcut right through Pariah's Keep.
"Okay. I can either go straight, or I can turn here and cut through the castle of the former Ghost King." Pariah Dark was locked up, and Danny was Clockwork-certain that they wouldn't be dealing with him anytime soon.
Triggering his transformation enough to dig out his phone and check the time, Danny decided that the shortcut was the lesser of two evils. He'd rather face an angry Pariah Dark than angry parents.
It really was the quicker route, and Danny must have been getting faster because it took far less time than it once would have. The castle was also a lot more beat up than Danny remembered. It was like every ghost in the Zone had tried to tear the place down which, thinking on it, was rather accurate.
It was still standing, at least. It was also kind of cool, Danny mused. Sure, it was a ruined old castle, but he hadn't really had time to study the murals on the walls before. He would have thought a castle would have been all about tapestries, but it seemed like Pariah Dark and maybe whoever had come before him had been more about murals.
Considering he was making better time than he thought, Danny didn't feel too bad about slowing down and then doubling back to the start of the main hallway. This one, he knew, led to the throne room. It was even more easy to tell judging by the 'story' the murals were telling.
The first one seemed to be mostly colored in shades of green and it seemed to be a picture of the Ghost Zone – sort of. Danny supposed it could have been a more stylized version of the Ghost Zone if it were to look more like the human world. Whatever it was, it had the theme of 'and on the first day!' near printed in bold across it. Danny had a feeling Ghostwriter probably would have loved it - or loved hating it.
The next few seem to be about ghosts forming and the world growing and whatever seemed to be common in every 'in the beginning' myth Danny had ever heard. A few more and he couldn't help but laugh to himself and wonder where the 'Flood' mural was. His laughter died when he paused in front of an image that was so clearly Pariah Dark himself with the crown on his head.
The mural wasn't all that bad, but it was the ten figures in the background behind Pariah that caught Danny's attention. "You guys must have been the ancients, then." He had heard the story from the ghosts during the whole Pariah mess itself, but he still couldn't wrap his head around just who the ancients were. Maybe Clockwork had been one of them? Actually, he should probably ask Clockwork about that, some time, and see why he or the Observants hadn't stepped in. Although, maybe they had.
The ancients could have been the Observants, but that idea that left a foul taste in his mouth. He hadn't really met met the Observants, but he had heard enough about them from Clockwork to know all he needed to know.
Finally moving on to the next mural, Danny stopped at seeing the mural of Pariah having his crown taken away from him. It wasn't a happy mural by any stretch of the imagination, and Danny wondered who had come back to paint this one once it was all said and done.
Taking another step forward, Danny swore as he tripped over a pile of rubble. He barely managed to catch himself by hovering before he was turning around to see what he had tripped on. A bit of squinting and Danny cautiously judged the rubble to be more murals - ones that must have broken off during his own fight with Pariah.
"Huh." Dropping out of the air, Danny crouched down and tilted his head at one of the broken murals. While the other murals inside the Keep had all seemed to hold together, this one was shattered across the floor. "I wonder what you were supposed to mean."
It looked like it could have been the ancients, but they looked… different. There were ten of them painted across the stone, but they weren't the cloaked figures that looked like they had been copied and pasted. These ancients were all different and had varying sizes and heights and everything else.
It was cracked in a weird way, too - a suspicious way. The ten figures were all grouped up within a half-circle, but the way it had cracked had made it so two figures were separated from all the rest. It was an even split, too, and Danny wondered if that was really from his fighting with Pariah, or if it had been someone else to do it.
He had still half-thought that the Ancients were just the Observants in disguise, but these new figures didn't look anything like the Observants. The way the mural was, it felt like they were more than just Ancients. It… was more than that.
Hardly aware that he was leaning forward until he was falling forward, Danny caught his balance with both his palms flat against the cracked mural-
It had begun as one with the ambition to see the world safe and protected and it had all spiraled so quickly and it was never meant to be this way and eyes that shone like molten gold reflected nothing except death and hate and loss and pain and the screams echoed to the end of the world and back and how dare they how dare they how dare they do this to him when he had been the one to bring them all truly together and if they wanted to suffer then he would gladly show them suffering and he would make sure that they would never forget again-
A sharp smack of pain from his back was what had Danny realizing that he was on his back and staring up at the ceiling, panting and gasping for fresh air he wasn't going to be getting anytime soon. It took a solid seven seconds for him to find his voice and shakily speak to empty air. "What the absolute fuck."
That? That hadn't been his 'active imagination.' That had been- Fuck. Danny didn't know what that had been. Terrifying? Horrifying? Confusing? Definitely all three, that was certain.
A high-pitched beeping shriek had Danny sitting up with a jerk, eyes wide as he looked around before he realized it was his phone. Calming himself down enough to transform back and grab it, he immediately felt his entire world begin to crumble. He had five minutes to get home.
Hardly a second and Danny was in the air and getting out of the castle as quick as he could, flying towards the Fenton Portal and putting whatever the hell had just happened out of his head. It was probably just some stress induced hallucination and he would be fine after some rest.
Rest… definitely sounded like a good idea. Rest and trying to forget those sharp golden eyes and maybe, maybe, writing this little event down in his journal.
Just in case.