Her Own Legend

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Chapter Five

'Dreaming'

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Disclaimer- I do not own Danny Phantom or Eragon. I own Valerie's mom, some characters in Chapter one, and that's it. I think. Possibly. For now.

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Okay, I sort-of-semi lied in the last chapter without meaning to when I said there was no DV. There will be implied DV. I don't do romance, as a rule, and I am disgusted by how much implying I've done in the two chapters Danny and Valerie have been in here. Just thought I'd give fair warning, because there's more implying here.

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Dani was crouched on a tree branch as a million fragments of memory that weren't hers rushed through her mind. All of them seemed to feature a red-suited girl some deeply buried fragment of Danny announced was Valerie.

She was dimly aware of Eragon leaving the clearing, but made no attempt to move until later that night when the memories finally faded. She slipped down the tree and crouched down at its base, hugging her knees close to her chest. It was cold and a little bit spooky alone in the mountains at night, and against her better judgment, Dani made a decision.

'Tomorrow I will go down the mountain and find Eragon's village.' She shivered as a wolf howled somewhere in the distance.

'If I can make it down alive.'

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She was dreaming again.

Valerie rarely dreamed of anything but ghosts, and when she dreamed of anything else, they were usually stupid things (Last month's had featured a school made entirely of banana peels, where each of her classmates had abruptly turned into said fruit), but tonight was different. Tonight, she was dreaming of her mom. At least, she assumed that the woman before her was her mom. She couldn't really be sure, the logical part of her brain pointed out. But still. She was absolutely positive that this was her mother.

A brown haired woman with darkish skin who looked around forty or forty-five sat at a simple wooden table. Valerie watched as a younger girl(around her own age) approached the woman, sitting down across from her. As she took her seat, her face was momentarily illuminated by the flickering firelight cast by the quietly burning logs in the corner fireplace, and Valerie gasped, despite not being really surprised. It was her dream, after all. Why shouldn't she be in it?

"Mom?" The Dream Valerie asked, and the woman studied her intently.

"Mom, is that you?" There was still no reply.

"Mom!"

"Come on, Valerie. Let's go. It's not her." A comforting hand was placed on Dream Valerie's shoulder. It was Danny. "Come on," he added, when Valerie didn't move. "They're waiting for us at Jeod's."

Valerie sighed and began to rise, but the woman spoke for the first time.

Valerie struggled to hear the words, but the dream was breaking up. First there was silence, then the colors started to swirl and distort, and then they dulled to gray, before Valerie returned to wakefulness, snapping up in bed with a start.

Valerie wasn't the only one to have dreams that night. Approximately two and a half miles away, Danny Fenton was twisting and turning under sheets drenched in sweat, after returning less than forty-five minutes ago from patrol. His conversation with Valerie had made him late for curfew (again), and as a direct effect of this, he was now effectively under house arrest for a week.

He didn't mind.

Well, he did, but not as much as usual. His mind was preoccupied- with Valerie. His conversation with her had disturbed him more than he was letting on. She had actually sat and talked with him like a civilized person.

Needless to say, it was a strange occurrence.

And now she was occupying his dreams.

As in Valerie's dream, the surroundings were clouded. He could only see two people clearly, Valerie and himself (Phantom, not Fenton). Judging by the amount of light and muted brown and green colors around them he guessed that they were in a forest somewhere or other.

"So now what do we do?" Valerie asked Dream Danny, who shrugged.

"What can we do? We're stuck in some woodsy place neither of us has ever seen before, and is probably in another dimension, and to top it off, it's getting dark and-"

"And someone's coming!" Valerie interrupted. Both looked up at something Danny couldn't see, but a moment later he saw himself relax slightly.

"Danielle!"

A third person now entered the dream. Dani Fenton, Danny's 'cousin.'

"Dani, what are you doing here? Where is here?"

"Who's she? How do you know her?"

Dani was peppered with questions, but she refused to answer any of them, saying simply, "We're almost at the foot of the mountain. We can be down in an hour or so if we hurry, and then I know somewhere safe we can stay."

"Do you trust her?" Valerie whispered to Dream Danny as Dani led the way out of Danny's field of view.

The dream faded, and Danny woke, his eyes snapping open.

The next morning was a Tuesday. When Danny got to school, the first person he saw was Valerie.

"Hey, Danny," she said. He was sitting on a picnic bench outside the school (Which wouldn't start for another thirty minutes or so. Danny was actually early for once, and Valerie always was, because her dad had to get to work really early and he dropped her off on the way in). She sat down next to him, setting her backpack carelessly on the ground.

"Hi, Val," he answered.

There was a moment or two of silence. Then, at the same time, they both said, "I dreamed about you last night."

Danny blinked, "What?"

So Valerie told him about her dream, then asked, "And what about you? What did you dream about?"

"Oh, you know," he said vaguely, "We were in a forest… some stuff happened…" he was reluctant to tell her that he'd been Phantom at the time, or tell her anything about Dani.

"Real specific there, Danny," she said sarcastically.

He shivered, and a blue mist escaped his mouth, he glanced at Valerie, who to his relief didn't seem to have noticed. She was reading a book Mr. Lancer had assigned them over a week ago, and was supposed to be read by third period that morning.

'You haven't read that yet,' a voice in the back of his mind reminded him.

'Shut up,' he told the voice, 'I'll get to it later.'

'Later?! It's due in two hours!'

Danny pushed the homework-loving ghost to the back of his mind and focused on looking for the ghost.

He groaned. It was Didious.

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It had been a while since Dani had first dropped into Eragon's world (At least two months, maybe more), and in that time something very… unexpected had happened, in the form of Eragon's 'stone' hatching into a dragon. Saphira. Dani was staying in the forest, just off the edge of Eragon's family's farm, and when the dragon hatched, she joined her there. Saphira was getting big, now, and Eragon was starting to consider telling his family about her. Maybe, he always said, maybe I'll tell them tomorrow.

On Dani's part, she knew she should have told Eragon about her stone, the orange one, but for some reason she didn't. Maybe some part of her still thought it was the only way to get home. She knew it was an egg. But it wasn't going to hatch anyway, so why should she get rid of it?

Why should you keep it?

She could never answer that. Besides, she had more pressing problems now.

The night before, Dani had slept fitfully, and the little sleep she had was punctuated, with short, unclear dreams she couldn't remember. One, however, stood out clear and defined.

Pure blackness. Dani was standing in the middle of the dark, but it was so thick she felt like she was being smothered by it. She couldn't feel herself in the blackness. It was freezing cold. She was alone… or she thought she was.

A voice. Deep, and rough. She'd never heard it before, and it spoke in an alien language that she puzzled over for a long while. Hours. She stood in the same position, terrified to move, listening to the same sounds over and over again.

Understanding. Before she even realized that it was happening, she began to understand what the voice was saying. Well, not exactly saying. It was painting a picture. Showing her an image.

Recognition. She knew the place she was seeing. The mountain, where she had fallen (Thanks to the stone- it was all the stone's fault, of course).

Shock. She saw Danny. How did he get there? She hadn't seen her cousin, not in a long time, and she knew that this wasn't just a bunch of memories combining in her mind, because Danny looked so much older, so different than she thought he would look at (fifteen, now? Was he fifteen now?)

Awakening. The dream ended. Dani knew- she had to get to the mountain.