He traced his fingertips over the slack muscles, brushing a thumb over the kneecap before hooking his hand around the joint to lift.
It was still strange, the lack of feeling, the deadweight that should have been moving but wasn't. They said he was lucky, somehow, that the damage hadn't been worse. No damage to his upper spine, which was apparently a risk when spinal damage was a result of electricity.
I still like you, Danny, I just Dont know if we should be together.
"Because I can't walk, now?"
"It's not that! It's just, I dont want to… y'know… take care of you."
He could feel the frost gathering under his fingertips. Able to stamp down the anger, but not quite able to keep the chill out of his voice, he tried to meet her eyes. It was humiliating enough to try and get used to his change of bathroom use without people apparently thinking of it when they looked at him.
"I can take care of myself. "
She was still avoiding his gaze, one hand wrapped around to grab her elbow.
"I know that… I just - I still want to be friends!"
"Right."
He knew he sounded hollow, the last 't' sliding out with a listless hiss of breath.
"Still friends, then"
He managed a strained smile, and Sam returned one of her own, mumbling something about a meetup with friends before shuffling away.
He toyed with the lip of rubber under his palm, the texture becoming more and more familiar as his hands got used to the strain of moving wheels.
He needed to fly.
To run away.
The transformation was easy as ever, a quick sweep of light over his body, the wheelchair turning a shining silver, like some sort of throne. That color would fade, the longer he left it alone.
"Danny, pay attention."
He dragged his eyes back up to the speaker, resentment building up in his bones. He didn't need to let the chair be his legs. He could hover, even in human form - could turn the wheels intangible if he had to roll over something tricky. It was a challenge to overcome, not a machine to integrate into his life.
He didn't need this.
Spectra mocked him, laughing that ugly little cackle from where she perched in a tree.
The modified Spectre Deflector hummed tauntingly from behind his back, installed despite his protests this morning.
"I dont even have to say anything!"
Her voice was sickeningly gleeful.
"All this misery, this anger and you can't do a thing about it!
She probably didn't expect him to throw himself out of the chair, initiating the transformation the moment his legs were clear.
Those same limbs didn't reappear this time - they hadn't for a while.
Spectra hissed at him and flew away, no longer as cocky once he made it clear that he was far from helpless. He'd remove the Deflector later, or disable it somehow.
Danny wasn't sure when he first forgot to make his lower limbs form, but it was becoming habitual. There really wasn't a point in forming legs as a ghost - no reason to stand when he could hover. They were starting to become numb, anyway. He didn't like the stiff joints or staticky lack of feeling that just reminded him of how his human side started down that slope.
Mist was easier anyway.
For a while he wondered how difficult it would be to live the rest of his life as Phantom. Fly around the world, maybe accompany Dani for awhile.
Just vanish one day.
Probably less difficult than this.
(how many people would notice?)
The first time someone grabbed the back of his chair, it was a nurse right after he was loaned a hospital chair. He was in the way, clumsily trying to turn the damn thing without knocking into a table. She scooted him into a corner, grabbed what she needed, and left without a how-do-you-do.
It was confusing, and struck a strange chord in his heart at the time.
That thing - the grabbing thing - it happened more than he would like. Usually when he was 'struggling' with something (which, to be honest, was a lot in the beginning.), or showing any discomfort with what he was doing. Some 'kind hearted' person would walk up and push his chair over the bump, or up the hill, or over the loose gravel or whatever.
At first he was too surprised to comment, but after the third time of his wheels starting to turn under his fingers - tight grip on them being ripped off - he was too pissed to hold in a comment.
"Let. Go. Of. Me."
The woman looked down at him, face a mixture of indignance and pity. There wasn't even handles for her to grab onto, she had just grasped the backrest's side bars.
"I'm just trying to help. You were-"
"I KNOW, this is HARD, LET ME GO."
He was getting looks from passerby, fingers clenched next to the wheels. They didn't matter, but it was so damn FRUSTRATING.
She made a snide comment under her breath, tossing her hair and crunching away.
Danny just took a breath, grit his teeth and stared at the gravel ahead of him, muscling the wheels forward under the shifting pathway.
Over time, he did get used to his wheels.
He learned to wear gloves when he planned on traveling long distances, to bring lotion along because apparently his hands could get chapped and crack.
Learned the feel of the backrest against his muscles.
Teamed up with Tucker to craft a laptop holder, and little generator that charged his batteries from the centrifugal force of the spinning wheels.
Adjusted to the way that some people's eyes would slide over him, like they wanted to pretend he didn't exist.
And the people who only an echo of him, thinking he was some poor pity case, well… Most people lost their 'friendly' approach under steely silence and a fierce enough glare.
Figured out the best ways to stretch tight shoulder muscles, and how to properly lock the wheels so he could climb into bed or into Jazz's car without help.
The ghosts, they learned too - eventually.
They learned that in Amity Park, lived a boy in a wheelchair, with a stare like ice.
They learned not to assume he was powerless, or by any means weaker. If you could see the white rings engulf him, it was too late to fly away. He was faster. He would catch you.
There was no room for weakness in that straight-backed chair.
And nothing but ruthlessness for any who would threaten his town.