Chapter Seventeen

CW: Depression, suicide reference

School was canceled for the rest of the week. Between car accidents and people falling asleep in the midst of work and other activities, Amity Park's infrastructure suffered some severe damage. Casper High wouldn't have power back before the end of Friday at the earliest, and there were other parts of town that might not have power for over a week. They were lucky nobody died during the sleepwalker attack, luckier still that most of the injuries seemed relatively minor and that the attack hadn't hit the hospital or anywhere else where the consequences may have been by far more deadly.

It was, by a wide margin, the worst ghost attack Amity suffered to date, which meant naturally there were countless people knocking on their door, asking Maddie and Jack why they hadn't prepared the town better, demanding the portal be shut down (even though they'd proven already that it wouldn't do anything useful), and begging the government to send in folks from the Ghost Investigation Ward.

Asking about the scream, which was still giving her and everyone else in Amity Park nightmares.

She and Jack were due to attend a meeting with the mayor next week to discuss possible strategies and solutions in case something similar ever happened again. Maddie didn't want to think about the possibility, much as she knew they had to. If Phantom hadn't returned when he did, she didn't think she or Jack could have stopped the attack. None of their weapons were powerful enough based on the readings they managed to get, even if they managed to fix the issues with the ecto-skeleton, and her thoughts drifted uneasily to the containment field and thermos in the basement, wondering how long they could keep the ghost captive before it escaped.

At least she and Jack and Jazz were okay, thanks to the shield at FentonWorks. But Danny . . . Danny, who was opening up more and more to them before the attack now that they knew the truth, had retreated into silence again, no doubt scarred by what happened since he hadn't made it through the sleepwalker attack unscathed. He said he was ambushed, put to sleep, and woke up to the scream. That he managed to find his way back to Tucker's house, not wanting to walk home after seeing all of the damage and knowing he could use Tucker's phone to call them since his own died. Jack picked him up and brought him home. She could see him trembling when he walked in, looking paler than usual a little nauseous. She knew it had to be hard, given how much he wanted to believe that the ghosts could be less than the violent specters she and Jack taught them they were, despite even Danny acknowledging that there were exceptions to his own beliefs. But he didn't want to talk about it, either, brushing them off and then giving her and Jack a quick hug before he stumbled up the stairs and went to bed.

She watched Danny now as she sat across the table from her. Maddie was reviewing some research while eating breakfast. His appetite was low before the sleepwalker attack, but now it was nearly non-existent, her son not so much eating as simply stirring his cereal and milk around in his bowl. "Honey." Danny glanced up at her, dark shadows under his eyes. "You need to eat something."

"I just don't feel hungry," he mumbled as he dropped the spoon and pushed the bowl aside.

"Danny, you've barely eaten anything in days," she said. She hated to force this, but at this point she had to, and she tried to be gentle about it at first, at least. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing tastes right," he said. "It's just . . . I don't know."

"Well, you are eating cheerios, hon. They're not exactly known for their intense flavors," she teased gently, but he didn't so much as crack a smile. Maddie bit her lip, considering. "I know you hate the idea, but I'm going to try to see if we can reschedule the therapy appointment you missed the other week." Missing it wasn't an accident - Danny deliberately skipped it, claiming he didn't need to go, and Maddie should've pushed it then but didn't since at that point he seemed to be taking small steps in the right direction.

"No therapists," he insisted, gritting his teeth.

"Sweetie, I don't want to upset you, okay?" she said. "But if you keep not eating and, from the looks of it, not sleeping, then it's going to either be a therapist or a hospital visit. There isn't a third option."

Danny muttered something under his breath that she couldn't quite catch as he pulled the bowl of cereal back in front of him and shoved a spoonful into his mouth, grimacing as he forced it down, and she swore she saw a hint of green in his blue eyes. "See?" he mumbled as he scooped up another bite with a scowl. "I'm eating. So no therapy or hospitals required. Happy?"

Maddie sighed, barely resisting the urge to put her head in her hands. She tried so hard to be gentle, and she still pushed him too far. While he was at least eating something now, this wasn't the way she wanted it to happen, and she tried to think of something else, some way to ease the tension and the wall she could feel going up between them again. "Were you planning to see Sam and Tucker today?"

His hand froze as he scooped another bite of cereal, and it seemed like she inadvertently stumbled onto one part of the reason for her son's latest sour mood. "No," he said. "They–we had a–not a fight, I guess, but they're just . . . I don't know. They're having trouble with all the ghost stuff and said they needed some space for a few days."

"I'm sorry, hon. It's a lot for anyone to take in. I'm sure your friends will come around eventually," she said, reaching over to hold his hand, but he pulled his arm in closer, not wanting to be touched, as he kept his eyes locked on his cereal. He forced another bite down, saying nothing to her.

"Maybe you could catch up on some sleep?" she suggested eventually. "You look exhausted."

She expected a half-muttered "I'm fine" or for him to ignore her, but instead he pushed his bowl away again, putting his head down on the table. He made it through a little more than half of it. It wasn't enough, really, but it was more than he ate during any other meal for the last few days. She needed to get him to talk to someone.

"I'm not sure it'll do any good," he mumbled into his arms.

"Oh?"

"I keep having nightmares," he said, lifting his head to look at her for a moment before turning to stare out the window over the sink. "It kind of sounds like everyone else had dreams during the sleepwalker attack, but I didn't. Just nightmares."

"Sometimes I find it helps if I talk about my nightmares," she said. "Do you want to tell me about them?"

He said nothing, continuing to stare vacantly, and after a moment she picked up her pen to go through her notes again. She hadn't really expected him to tell her anything. Even now, even after they learned so much, he continued to hold back and continued not to trust them. She wished she knew why, to have an inkling so she could start to rebuild it.

"Sometimes they're about my accident," he said after a few minutes, breaking the silence, and she started, nearly dropping her pen. He still wouldn't look at her as he spoke. "Or about being in the hospital and all the stuff that just happened after my accident, y'know? But then . . . In some of my nightmares I'm a ghost." The words were so quiet it was hard for her to hear him, an odd tension there as he continued. "And I keep getting hunted down and experimented on."

Maddie felt her blood run cold. She wasn't responsible for whatever she or Jack might do in his nightmares, but she knew where this was headed before he said it. Why he couldn't bear to look at her. "By your father and I?"

"Yeah. And sometimes not. Sometimes it's people from the government, sometimes it's others. But usually it's the two of you," he admitted, sounding so fragile, and she could tell he was expecting something from her, but she didn't know what, and her mind spun as she tried to figure out the right thing to say.

"You know the nightmares aren't real," she said. "Your father and I, we'd never hurt you, Danny."

"I know." His voice was tight, and she knew that somehow, she failed. That this wasn't what he wanted or needed from her, and he stood up and grabbed his bowl, emptying the contents into the trash and then putting the dish by the sink. "Sorry. It's stupid. I'm going to try and go back to bed. See if I can get more sleep."

"Danny," she said, getting half to her feet and reaching out to him but then she froze as he stopped, watching her closely. "If there's something we've done that makes you think we might hurt you, I'm sorry."

"It's fine, Mom," he said, which meant it definitely wasn't fine, but before she could stop him Danny left and hurried upstairs to his room. To try to sleep, and where the only thing that would greet him were nightmares about his own parents hurting him.

She sat down, putting her head in her hands as she tried to force back the tears. She didn't understand it. They never threatened their son, never raised a hand to him, never even spanked him or Jazz. She didn't know where this was coming from. He might be a liminal, but that shouldn't–it wasn't the same as being a ghost. They talked through this already, they explained to Danny that it didn't mean he wasn't alive or still human. But there was no denying it made him different, and she supposed from his perspective, neither she nor Jack were terribly tolerant when it came to anything remotely supernatural. And maybe that's all there was at the root of this, just a fear that their own biases would end with them rejecting him or hurting him. Somehow, they needed to do better, to get him to understand that they wouldn't hurt him simply because he was a liminal.

Maddie really, really wished he would see a therapist, someone neutral he could talk to about his concerns, someone who might be able to help him work through this. Yet despite scheduling him another appointment, she knew there was no way he would attend. It took nearly two years for him to admit to them that he was a liminal and explain what he was doing with the ghosts, and he only did that when he felt like he didn't have another option. Would he ever be willing to open up to a stranger?

"Morning, Mom," said Jazz, interrupting her thoughts as she walked in and grabbed some milk and cereal. "Are Dad and Danny still asleep?"

"Your father's meeting with our colleague Alyce this morning," said Maddie. It had taken a lot of work to get her to meet with him, and despite the attack, they didn't dare reschedule with how much worse Danny seemed to be. "Danny was up before me, but he's gone back to bed. He didn't sleep well last night." She didn't want to talk about his nightmares with her daughter. No doubt Jazz would try to analyze it and try to fix it, but she suspected Danny wouldn't want Jazz to know.

"The one who did research on liminals?" Maddie nodded as Jazz sat down across from her. "I read some of her papers after Danny told us everything a couple of weeks ago. There's some unsettling things in there."

"Such as?"

"Her note about their reduced lifespans," said Jazz, and Maddie felt her stomach twist into knots. Of course she picked up on that. "She said most of them don't live past their thirties. I hoped that there would be some other research out there that said something else, that didn't show that kind of correlation, but she was the only one that really appeared to have actually studied them. Did you and Dad know?"

"We did," she admitted. "It's part of what your father wants to discuss with her."

"Have you told Danny yet?" asked Jazz as she took a bite.

"No. We wanted to get more information first," said Maddie. "We didn't want to scare him needlessly, not when he still seems so depressed."

"And if it's true? If we think he might, um, y'know," she said, waving a hand uncomfortably, not willing to say the word that Maddie knew was on all of their minds lately whenever they thought about Danny.

"Then we'll try to see if we can do something about it," said Maddie. "We're not going to let your brother go without a fight." She would not lose her son, not like this. She wouldn't let him die for their mistakes, and not for the first time, she wished they never built the portal, that he never had his accident, that he didn't have to suffer so much because of what she and Jack did. But she wouldn't make a wish - Desiree would only twist it into something horrifying if she heard it - and she wouldn't let herself dwell on their mistakes endlessly. She could only try to do better, to make things right somehow, in whatever way she could.

Jazz nodded, eating in silence for a few minutes before she looked up at her again. "I'm going to stick around for college," she announced.

"Sweetie, you don't need to do that. Your father and I can figure out the cost for Harvard, and–"

"-if Danny only has a little bit of time left, I want to be here for him," she interrupted. "I won't stop going to school, but I'm not going to fly off to New England if these might be the last few years of his life. Amity Park Community College has a good psych program, and I've been talking to them already about also majoring in ecto biology and doing an undergraduate thesis on ecto psychology."

Madde blinked at her. "You're interested in hunting ghosts, then? Or just studying them?"

"I'm interested in helping them," said Jazz. "The way that Danny does. I want to make sure there's someone who can do it even if he can't. And if he can keep doing it, well, maybe I'll create a new field or path he can study, too, since he's probably right that being an astronaut isn't going to happen. Although he probably doesn't want to be a ghost therapist even if he might be good at it."

"Does Danny know?" she asked.

"I was going to talk to him about it later," she said, and Jazz frowned at her. "You're not mad, are you?"

"I–what? No, sweetie, of course not. Just surprised, that's all," she said, and she meant it. She loved that her children were showing some interest in their life's work, even if the path they were taking was a different one than what she and Jack chose. And while she still wasn't entirely convinced that Danny's approach was best, she was at least open to the possibility, having seen him resolve a few conflicts peacefully. They would always need people like her and Jack that could hunt ghosts–the sleepwalker attack was proof of that–but she was beginning to believe that if Amity Park was going to avoid becoming a literal ghost town, then something needed to change so that the frequent ghost attacks became an oddity rather than an almost daily occurrence.

Jazz cocked an eyebrow at her. "You sure?"

"Yes, hon," she laughed, smiling at her. "You know your father and I have started to reconsider a lot of the early research and work we did that was the basis for most of our current theories about ghosts. The ghosts in the world outside of Amity Park still seem to very much resemble the ones we've written dozens of journal articles about, but the ones here are genuinely different. Perhaps it's the proximity of the portal, their increased physicality, the higher percentage of ambient ectoplasm in the air . . . honestly, there are dozens of potential reasons why. But they're going to be here for a long time, regardless of what happens to our portal at this point, and if the people here can understand them a little better, whether psychologically or otherwise, they'll be safer. Even if it's not what I would do, I'm glad that there will still be a Fenton carrying on our family's legacy."

"Jeez, Mom, that's so dramatic," Jazz laughed, rolling her eyes, and the two of them sat there and chatted about possible classes until she finished up her breakfast.

Heading upstairs afterward, Maddie checked on Danny briefly. He was in bed, his covers wrapped tightly around him, the star stickers on his ceiling faintly glowing in the semi-darkness. His room was always so chilly, even now despite the warm spring day. They tried to fix the issue a dozen times, calling the heating company and even running a couple of space heaters at one point, but none of it seemed to make a difference. Knowing what she did now, she suspected it had something to do with him being a liminal somehow, perhaps the ghosts leaving a mark on his space if they were spending time with him here in his room when she and Jack and Jazz weren't home. Although they couldn't fix it, Maddie took solace in the fact that it usually didn't seem to bother him much.

His skin looked pale in the dim room, an icy sweat on his forehead, and he was mumbling something under his breath as he tossed and turned. More nightmares, no doubt. She wished there was something she could do to help him, and for a moment she considered going in and sitting next to him but decided against it. If he was having nightmares about her and Jack, waking up to her in his room might frighten him more than help, a thought that made her queasy. That any of her children might ever be scared of her wasn't something she imagined might be possible, and it stung, knowing that they'd inadvertently hurt him so much despite their best efforts to help him feel safe and loved and protected.

She tried to distract herself, throwing on a load of laundry and cleaning a little downstairs before heading into the basement. One of the ecto blasters was broken, and she put her goggles on and set to work. Nearby, the thermos with the ghost that caused the disaster the other day sat within an additional containment field, one she found herself double and triple checking every few hours. Valerie gave them what information she could, but it was limited since Phantom told her to flee, to try to wake up as many people as she could, and she hadn't gotten very far when she heard the scream and saw the factory collapse. If Tucker hadn't seen Phantom afterward, she would have assumed the ghost destabilized based on the odd readings they picked up again, his power fluctuating chaotically. She and Jack would need to analyze it, but right now, she didn't have the heart to go through the data.

There was a loud thumping as Jack came bounding down the stairs about an hour later, and glancing up she saw him looking distressed as she put down her tools and moved her goggles onto the top of her head. "How'd it go?" she asked, dreading the answer.

"She won't help us," he said as he sat down, "at least not more than she already did. The only reason she met with me at all was because I eventually mentioned that we were doing it for Danny, and she felt like she owed it to us as friends."

Maddie's head spun and she stared at him. "What?"

"Most of the liminals she researched are dead," he said, his fists clenched tightly and trembling, though whether with anger or fear she wasn't sure. "And despite what her journal articles suggested, she doesn't think most of those deaths were accidents. Although there seems to be something about them that draws death to them at a younger age, it's gotten much worse in the last twenty years than it was in the past."

"Any idea what happened?" she asked, shivering and rubbing her arms.

"Potentially. She said she received a few death threats from someone powerful, although she wouldn't say who. She didn't take it seriously at first, thinking that maybe it was one of those super popular, fake mediums on TV or something that didn't want her to expose them as a fraud, but it got worse. They managed to get her funding cut for her research and eventually she lost her job at the university. She lost her apartment, too."

"Did she call the police?" asked Maddie.

"She did, but they wouldn't or maybe couldn't do much without knowing more. Eventually she abandoned her research on liminals and it seemed to stop, but she says she still sees these weird ghost birds watching her from time to time, along with a ghost that matches the description of Skulker and another that sounds like it might be the Wisconsin Ghost."

"The one we saw at Vlad's mansion?" Maddie bit her lip, considering. "You don't think Vlad knows something about it, do you?"

"Don't know. Probably not. He's a good guy. If anything, he could be at risk, too, if anyone found out about his accident," said Jack, and Maddie bit her lip, considering. Vlad had an accident with the proto portal back in college, but aside from a brief hospital stay and a nasty bout of ecto acne from the contamination, he had no long term side effects that they were aware of. It was possible he hid it from them somehow, but Maddie doubted it. Danny's own liminal state was obvious in retrospect, and Vlad had none of the same signs. There was no death mark, no chill that hung in the air around him the way it always did with Danny, no occasionally glowing eyes or oddly cold hands. While he might manage to hide some of those things, she couldn't imagine him being able to hide all of it. "But maybe the ghost overshadowed him, used his access to get her funding revoked. He only started taking precautions against ghosts after our reunion. We'll have to talk to him about it, but Alyce asked me not to mention her name to anyone else."

That, at least, was true. Even if Vlad wasn't a liminal, that didn't mean he wouldn't be a target given his wealth and connections, and his current precautions against ghosts might not be sufficient. They definitely wouldn't have been prior to their portal opening, either, although the thought of the Wisconsin Ghost being around for so much longer than they thought unnerved her given the ghost's power. "Does she have any idea how the ghost found out about the liminals? Why it's targeting them and her? I doubt a ghost would work for some kind of fake psychic worried about being recognized as a fraud because of her research."

"No clue," said Jack. "She stopped pretty quickly once the threats started to become a reality. She's back to teaching ecto science, but she's no longer doing research on liminals, and she's scrubbed what data she had access to in the hopes that it'll keep the handful she still knows are alive a bit safer. But we're going to need Danny and the kids to stay real quiet about everything. If anyone finds out, then he might become a target, too."

"Right. Maybe we can see about modifying his specter deflector. I know the residual ecto contamination in his system caused it to shock him, but we might be able to figure out a way around that," said Maddie. "I'm sure he'll hate wearing it since he won't want to harm some of the ghosts he's trying to help, but we have to keep him safe, too."

"It's too bad we gave that thermos back to Ember," he sighed as he stared at the portal for a moment. "The kids mentioned Skulker was in there. We might have been able to question him about it."

"We should ask Val to keep an eye out for him. Phantom, too, if we see him," said Maddie. "But we'll have to be careful about not letting the Skulker learn about Danny's secret." There was a chance he might already know, though. After all, they were aware of at least one ghost that did, and they might have a way to sense liminals when ordinary humans couldn't. "Do you think Phantom may have told anyone about Danny?"

"Don't know," said Jack. "Hopefully not."

"We're going to have to tell Danny about this," she said, thinking about her conversation with him earlier. "I'm really worried about him, Jack."

"Still not eating?"

"Not really. He did after I pushed him a little at breakfast this morning and complained that food just doesn't taste very good right now. I know he's depressed, but I thought it would get better after we talked to him a couple of weeks ago and instead it seems like it's getting worse,," she said, her voice shaking, and Jack put his hand in hers, gripping it tightly. "He also said he's been having nightmares about us."

"Like something happening to us?" asked Jack. "I know that our work is dangerous and it's put some stress on the kids–"

"-no," she interrupted. "He's a ghost, in these nightmares."

Jack's eyes widened slightly, his mouth forming a small 'oh' as it dawned on him. "We're hurting him?" She nodded. "But he has to know we'd never do anything to hurt him, right?"

"I said as much, but it didn't seem to matter. I'm not sure what made him think this–maybe it's just his friendship with Phantom, since we've said some rather unkind things over the years–but I don't know what to do about it. I want to help him, but at this point, I feel like we're running out of options. Every time I mention therapy he withdraws more," she said. "I don't want to force it, but I think we might have to consider hospitalizing him soon if we don't want to lose him."

"We'll figure it out," Jack promised with a level of confidence she wished she could have. "We always do. And while I don't want to put more on his plate, I think we still have to tell him about this. Danny and his friends need to understand how serious this is, how much they could get hurt if too many people learn the truth."

"Let's do it tonight," she agreed as she picked her tools back up, knowing she needed a little time to steady herself and that Danny was currently resting. "I'm going to keep working on this for a bit."

A/N: Thanks for the kudos, comments, etc. I very much appreciate it. And if you somehow missed or have not seen this absolutely amazing artwork that Abriel Arnold did on tumblr for the scene from Chapter 7 of this fic, then please please please check it out. It is so incredibly good. I'd link it, but I think links don't work on this site and I've had stuff end up weird in the past sometimes when I do any level of formatting beyond basic stuff, so I don't dare try even if it's possible. (This story is cross-posted to AO3, though, and you can find a link there).

These later chapters all require slightly heavier levels of editing than my earlier ones and work is still super busy for me for the next couple of months, so next chapter might be two weeks again instead of one.