Author's Note: Why am I putting Danny through all of this? Danny, Danny, what's it like to be you? "Winter hair, acid eyes, hiding in your Wi-Fi. Open secrets, anyone can find me. I hear your written fantasies running through my mind. Play me, break me, make me feel like Superman—you can do anything you want to me. I'll take you where you've never been and bring you back again. I'm on top of the world because of you. I do so much that they could never do. If you forget, I'll fade away. I'm waiting with you wide awake. Walk through the fire straight to me." - Anamanaguchi

Danny, Danny, are you ever lonely? With all of us here watching you so closely?

(after being) Disparaged

Danny leaned out his open window, his arms resting on the sill. He surveyed the neighborhood, gazed at the distant lights of the part of the city that was still awake.

And why was he still awake? He had been so exhausted earlier, had wanted so desperately to fall and never get up again, but now with his lights off and in the dying hours of the night, his mind was tired but too troubled to let him go just yet.

The town seemed quiet and undisturbed so far, but he knew very well how quickly that could change.

"Danny?" a voice whispered from his doorway.

Danny turned to see his sister's darkened silhouette.

"Are you going out tonight?"

Danny leaned back against his windowsill, tilted his head back so that the night wind set the strands of his thick hair fluttering. "No."

Jazz's face could not be seen very well in this light. Her head moved slightly. "You're not worried about the ghosts?"

Danny shrugged. "It's not like I've never taken a night off before. Besides, Mayor Vlad has his own anti-ghost measures in place." He paused. "I can't risk Mom seeing that I'm not in my room."

"Does that mean you're never going to go out again?"

Danny turned just his head to look back at the town. "I can't do that. They need me." He imagined the sleeping townspeople, strangers and classmates, shoppers he passed at the mall, faces he recognized but didn't have names to go with them. So many who slept soundly each night never knowing what he had to do to ensure that they could keep sleeping soundly. "I'm just going to have to figure something out, some way to make Mom think I'm still in my room. Maybe use the Fenton Ghost Catcher." He chuckled. "Or if I could just master duplicating myself."

"But Danny, you said yourself that Vlad has anti-ghost measures in place."

Danny looked curiously at Jazz.

"It's just…you're a kid, and what you do isn't safe. And it seems to be taking a toll on you, emotionally and physically."

Danny was not sure where this was coming from, where she was headed with it.

"You were almost killed last night—"

"Stop," said Danny sharply. "I've been almost killed many times."

"That's my point." Jazz walked up to him, the moonlight from the window illuminating her concerned expression. "And it's going to keep happening, and one of these times might not be 'almost.'"

"What are you suggesting? That I stop fighting off the ghosts?"

"Maybe."

Danny made no reply.

"You know…you've never really told me why you feel like you have to stop all these ghosts and protect everyone."

"If I don't, no one else will. I stand a better chance, am able to take ectoplasmic shocks better—"

"No, Danny. Why? Why do you really do this?" Jazz's voice was trembling slightly. "Why do you keep doing this when you are so badly injured on a regular basis, often in so much pain that you have to take a maximum dose of painkillers, when you repeatedly come close to death, when no one even appreciates what you go through to keep them safe?"

Danny couldn't meet Jazz's gaze, had to turn away, had to lean out the window to give him an easy way to avoid her.

How could he possibly explain it to her? Not even Tucker or Sam had asked him this so pointedly before. At first, he had convinced even himself that he was just doing it to make good use of his powers, to take responsibility for what he had done when he turned on his parents' portal and subsequently made their town a magnet for ghosts.

But the more he fought with the ghosts, the more he realized that there was more to it, that there was an obsession embedded in his ghostly molecules that compelled him to keep fighting no matter how much it physically hurt him. He had kept it to himself, had concealed it under layers and layers of heroic reasoning and noble excuses. He couldn't say the truth, couldn't say that it was something far more selfish than that, couldn't say that the guilt and shame from not doing whatever he could to protect the townspeople from the infestation he himself had inflicted on them would consume him.

He kept hoping there would be an end to it. Each time he released ghosts back into their own realm, he wanted to cry and beg them to stay, stay, please don't return this time. I don't want to keep doing this. Don't you see what this is doing to me?

He couldn't tell her. He couldn't tell anyone. They would only worry about him, and he was so sick of everyone worrying about him.

"Danny?"

Danny turned back with a plastered smile. "Jazz, really, I do it because I'm all this town has got. Vlad's anti-ghost measures could never measure up to my powers. You know that."

In the pale light streaming in through the window, Danny could see the smallest shine of tears in Jazz's eyes.

No, Jazz, stop—

What was he doing wrong? What had he done to make her cry?

"Please don't," said Danny, standing up straight. "I promise I'm fine."

Jazz nodded and headed toward the door. She turned back, her hand on his doorframe. "If there's anything in here you don't want Mom to find, you should hide it tonight."

Danny frowned.

"There's a good chance she'll be searching your room tomorrow," explained Jazz. "But I'll tell you more in the morning, okay? You should get some sleep."

Once again alone in his room, Danny turned to look at the wall behind which he had hidden his ghost-related contraband, stolen tools and weapons from his parents' lab and artifacts from the Ghost Zone that he certainly didn't want anyone to ever find, things that anyone else would have to tear out the wall to get to. No, those things were perfectly safe. He could hide some other things he'd be embarrassed to have his mother find, magazines and photos that would make her blush, but perhaps that would be too suspicious. Maybe it'd be better to let her find those things to keep his real secrets safe.

So his room was okay…

But she had his cell phone.

Easy. He was sure she was keeping it in the drawer of her nightstand since that was typically where she kept things she took from either him or Jazz. He would just invisibly phase through and grab it, delete the app that he had been using to secretly communicate with Sam, Tucker, and Jazz, and then replace it. Not a problem. Why had he been so concerned earlier? Sure, his ghost powers often landed him in trouble, but they could just as easily get him out of it.

Invisible, Danny walked into his parents' room and paused as he observed his parents in their bed. Their breathing patterns were heavy and deep, indicative of tranquil sleep. Danny phased his arm through Maddie's bedside table and wrapped his fingers around the familiar shape of his phone, pulled it up and turned it invisible. He took it out into the hall so that its light would not disturb his sleeping mother.

Relief. Finally.

4304

Nothing. The phone remained locked.

He was probably just tired, had probably hit the wrong number. He tried again, more carefully.

4-3-0-4

Still locked.

Catching breath.

4. 3. 0. 4.

4! 3! 0! 4!

Four! Three! Zero! Four!

FOUR! THREE! ZERO! FOUR!

Danny stared numbly at the screen which informed him that his phone was now disabled, try again in one minute.

She had changed his passcode. She had anticipated this exact situation. She really didn't trust him? Really had so little faith in him to follow her stupid rules that she would lock him out like this?

Oh, but it was exactly what he had done. Such cruel irony. And he could never mention it to her, not without her knowing that he had taken it.

He gripped his phone and held it to his head, gritted his teeth and seethed.

Calm down, calm down…

His mother was still not one to invade his privacy, and as long as he gave her no reason to believe that he would be hiding anything in his phone from her, she wouldn't try to find anything. He just had to keep it together, had to convince her that he was cool and collected and definitely not lying about anything—

Right. Because he was doing such a good job of that so far. That morning, after dinner, when she found him asleep by his computer, when she reminded him to keep his door open—

Well done, well done, you stupid—

Danny stopped these thoughts. Berating himself wasn't going to help, would only make him more agitated.

Take it one step at a time. First, he had to put the phone back. Invisibly, intangibly, no problem.

All right. Should he do something about the files on his computer? They were hidden, password-protected, and further encrypted, but if their existence was somehow discovered, he'd be forced to explain them, asked to open them, and no amount of refusal would save him from the ruthless scrutiny.

He couldn't delete them, not after all of the time he put into compiling them, the hours he spent writing up log entries of important ghost encounters, the grief he felt when he wrote about what all of this was doing to him on a personal and emotional level, the pained secrets he kept from even Sam and Tucker.

He hadn't written about what happened to him the night before, what she had said to him, what she had done to him. If he didn't write it, then it would be as if it never happened, and with time, he could surely forget it.

Downstairs, he approached his computer. Tucker and Sam both had their own copies of the ghost files they had all worked hard to put together. He could delete them now and restore them later. He just couldn't risk her finding them no matter how well-hidden they were. He would feel so much better if they were just completely gone.

Denied access. His computer was locked with a new password.

No, no, no—

Why oh why did she have to be so right not to trust him?

His pulse quickened, his head throbbed. He breathed deeply, tried to talk himself back down.

She hadn't locked him out of his phone and computer because she wanted to stop him from hiding or deleting anything. She just wanted to be sure he would have no way to use them, no way to rebel and get around the constraints of his punishment. As with his phone, as long as he gave her no reason to think he was hiding anything in his computer, she wouldn't look through it.

And besides, she would unlock it for him tomorrow so he could do his homework. He could just delete them then.

It would be fine.

He would be fine.

He was already fine.

But his head was aching with all of this worry, his injection sites still sore. She had already seen the one on his neck, so no need to hide that anymore. Although the redness had subsided significantly, so significantly that it really did look more like a bite than anything else, he wanted to reduce it even further. Maybe one more dose of ibuprofen would do it, would also alleviate the pain in his head so that he could sleep.

(in his head? imagined or real?)

This would be his last dose for a while. He knew it wasn't safe to take so much so often, but a little more wouldn't hurt.

In the kitchen, he opened the medicine cabinet—

No, he didn't open it. Danny blinked in confusion at the lock that had been installed. The realization that he had been locked out of yet another thing was sinking deep, dragging down his breaths and jolting his heart.

What did this mean? What did she know?

He couldn't ask about this either, not without her asking why he was trying to get into it in the middle of the night—

Well, wait, that wasn't so strange, right? Wasn't that what this cabinet was for anyway?

But it was locked now, and she wouldn't have locked it if she wasn't trying to keep someone out—

—that someone obviously being him. He recalled how she had asked him about taking something for the sore area on the back of his neck. The way he answered must have tipped her off, or perhaps she already knew which was why she asked in the first place.

But she had never seemed to notice before, had never mentioned it to him. Why all of a sudden? No, rather, why when she was already so suspicious of what he had been doing the night before? Suspicious because oh sure he could fight off ghost after ghost after innumerable ghost but for some reason was completely incapable of putting on a stupid affectation that would convince her. Why did this have to happen all at once? He couldn't do this, couldn't handle all of this at the same time—

No, he was fine. He could handle this.

He would tell himself that over and over and over until it was finally true.

The lock wasn't actually a problem. He could easily phase through. He held his arm before it, willed it to go intangible.

Paused.

Shook.

If he did this and she noticed—

Would she notice—?

She had so meticulously covered all of the other bases. He had definitely not inherited his intelligence from her. She was certainly superior in that regard—

—and yet she couldn't see that he was so obviously the ghost she had been lusting after—

—she would definitely notice. He knew her, knew that she made careful observations when she was investigating.

And right now, she was investigating him.

He pulled his arm back with a frustrated groan. So much power and yet no power at all.

All right. Okay. He'd just have to buy his own from now on. After all, there were no restrictions barring minors from buying over-the-counter painkillers.

But that didn't solve his problem right now.

Back in his room, he closed the door out of habit but then practically threw it open again when he remembered that he was supposed to leave it open so that she could easily check to make sure he was still in his room, because she felt he couldn't be trusted otherwise.

His head was hurting even more now. (or he only thought that? no, no, pain this bad had to be real) He looked again at the wall with so much hidden behind it including a sizable collection of hydrocodone that he had been accumulating with Sam's help. It had started out simply enough. He had been complaining of pain that prevented him from sleeping and moving very well, and Sam graciously stole just one pill for him from her parents' supply.

"I can get you more if you ever need it," she had told him, "but I can only sneak you one at a time."

"What exactly is this?" he asked, looking the small pill over curiously.

"It's a strong painkiller, so strong that it can lead to addiction. It's the kind of medication you're required to show ID to pick up at the pharmacy, the kind that doctors can't even prescribe for their own families."

That powerful?

"Why do your parents have this?"

"Various surgeries and procedures. But honestly, all rich people have their own supply of opioids." She looked at him sternly. "I'm only giving you this because I know that you go through a lot, but you should only take this when you're in so much pain that you can't sleep. Promise me, Danny."

"I promise."

Since then, she had given him just one pill at a time with the instruction to only take them in extreme cases.

Was this extreme?

He moved to the wall, placed a tangible hand against it. All he had to do was reach through.

He sharply turned away and climbed under the covers on his bed. He was stronger than that. This pain wasn't bad enough to warrant a narcotic.

He'd feel better in the morning after getting sufficient sleep. It would all be better in the morning. He just had to relax and stop thinking, let his troubled mind shut off and drift away.

On his back. The bruise on the back of his head still hurt too much, not to mention it seemed difficult to breathe in this position. He turned over, put his arm under his head.

Hard to breathe in this position, too.

More shifting, lifting his head, turning his pillow over.

Why couldn't he get comfortable?

And why couldn't he—

BREATHE

He sat up, clutched his sheets, kept his head down and eyes closed. He filled his lungs, pulled in air, pulled in even more air, let it out slowly.

His airway was fine, not blocked. He could breathe just fine. Why was he feeling as if he couldn't?

He lay back down and stayed still, focused on drawing in more air. But despite the large volume he was putting into his lungs, he was still struggling, gasping for more as soon as he let it out.

He tried to think about other things. Jumping sheep. Music. He sang lyrics in his head, focused on their words.

Outlines of the cleanest plastic wrap become the doorways of perception leading all deceptions home, but—

BREATHE

It wasn't that he couldn't breathe. It was just that he had to think to breathe. He had to manually pull in oxygen; his mind was so focused on his troubles that it had stopped transmitting the command to breathe automatically.

No, that was ridiculous. He just had to stop thinking about this so much—

But if he stopped thinking, he'd never breathe again—

Every breath felt like it could be his last.

His heart was palpitating, echoing in his ears, thrusting blood in sinuous waves to his arteries that were beating against his sheets. He was sickeningly aware of his physiology, all of its nauseating pulses and throbs and vibrations struggling to keep him alive—

Struggling to keep him alive? Was he dying?

Dropping into a greying lightness that filled his head, an eclipsing heaviness that filled his chest, a prickling compression that traveled through his veins and tightened them.

Was he losing his mind?

He shot up and gasped, pulled in a knee and rested his arm and head on it. What was going on? Why was he feeling like this?

His pillow and mattress were far too soft and pliable, closely surrounding him and making breathing even more difficult as he suffocated in them. He threw his blanket off of him and fell to the floor beside the bed, lay on his back with one knee up and his hands in his hair.

Better…

He could definitely breathe more easily on this firm surface.

Shaking, trembling, he focused only on his breathing. No words. No song lyrics. No memories. Air in, air out. Ebbing and flowing, pulling in the tide and pushing it back out…

Pushing him down.

Danny jolted, sat up, backed away from whatever had touched his shoulder.

Whatever, no, whoever—

Her.

She was saying something. What? Didn't matter. All he could hear was the whir of her loaded gun aimed at his head.

"Danny."

Standing over him.

"You weren't in your bed, so I—"

Kneeling down.

"Danny?"

Reaching for him.

He jumped up.

"Danny!"

Against a wall, her hands were gripping his wrists, holding them up so that he couldn't get away. She had him. He was hers.

"Danny." She was crying. "Danny, what's wrong? Tell me what's wrong."

Her words finally reached him. The air stilled and quieted. Danny locked eyes with her in motionless silence.

"Danny, how can I help you? Please tell me." Maddie begged him, desperately shook him.

He took his arms out of her grasp. "Sorry. Bad dream. You just startled me."

Maddie's eyes glimmered in the light shining through the cracks in his blinds. "Why were you on the floor?"

"I couldn't get comfortable on my bed." Not a lie.

Her lips were quivering. "We have to talk. Now."

"There's nothing to talk about."

"There is, and you're going to talk to me about it."

He glared at her. Just what made her think she could make him do anything? "No," he said simply but not unkindly.

Maddie glared back at him. "Danny, this has to stop."

"What has to stop?"

"You know what I'm talking about."

She reached for his arm. Danny pulled back and walked around her so that he was no longer trapped against a wall.

"No," he said again, more firmly.

"I'm not giving you a choice, Danny."

Oh, really? Was that so? And just how far would she go to make him talk? Put him under duress, belt him down to her operating table and tear into him until he confessed everything, admitted to all of the terrible crimes she had already convicted him of?

No matter what, she couldn't make him talk, and he intended to hold onto what little power he had as her son if he could not use his power as her desired ghost boy.

"Talk to me, Danny."

Danny shook his head.

She was approaching him again. Danny held out his hands to stop her. "Don't. Just go, please."

"Why?" demanded Maddie. "Why do you not want to talk to me?"

"I just can't right now. Please, please just go."

"Why not? Why can't you talk now?"

Endless questions. Relentless prying. Why not now, she wanted to know? Because all he could hear was her threatening his life, telling him he wasn't worth keeping alive, accusing him of being an affliction on the town that needed to be erased. According to her, there was only one way he could be of benefit to anyone, of benefit to her: constrained and confined to an existence of miserable experimentation and unremitting torment.

"Mom, please." Danny shut his eyes, refused to look at her as he placed his hands on his dresser and leaned against it with his head down. "Please, please just believe me for once. I can't talk now."

For so long, too long, an eternity, she stood there. Danny could sense her boring into him, but he didn't dare look back at her.

He just wanted her to go.

He heard her walk out his door. Danny leaned against his dresser for some time before turning and raising his eyes. He could see Jazz's unmistakable shadow in his doorway, her long tresses catching the fragments of moonlight streaming in.

What do I do now? he soundlessly asked her.

In response, she disappeared into the darkness of the hallway.

(Have you had enough yet?)