Danny climbed out from the backseat of the shiny black sedan, and gazed mournfully at the towering castle looming over him. He sighed as its owner strolled out of the foreboding doorway, stark white hair blinding in the sunlight. Stark white teeth flashing a fake smile that never warmed those frozen blue eyes.
Before Vlad had a chance to speak Danny turned way and pretended to be distracted by the men roughly unloading his obscene amount of luggage.
The social worker in the car gave him an encouraging smile and an over enthusiastic thumbs up, which he pointedly ignored. However, he didn't miss the disapproving glance the woman gave to his abundant luggage.
What did they expect?
He wasn't going to leave it behind…
After the decision was made for him to be shipped off to his "godfather" Danny had packed the minimum of his belongings and then over the course of three days, he painstakingly packed every single earthly possession of his parents and his sister Jazz. He'd even broken into Sam and Tucker's bedrooms and stolen some of their own personal effects. He had tried to be discreet, since in those households, he wasn't the only one left mourning.
He'd also stolen several books and various memorabilia from Lancer's library and office.
He figured "Uncle Vlad" had plenty of rooms, he could have one room for each of them, and then he could visit them every day, it would be like they had never died…
At least, that was his preferred delusion.
But he wouldn't let himself get caught up. After a few minutes of suffering as the workers disrespected his friend's possessions, Danny finally turned back to the awaiting Vlad Masters.
After all, he had other things to do first.
Then…
They wouldn't be delusions anymore.
Flicker
As the black cars pulled up Vlad felt the triumph finally swell within his chest, but the feeling was short lived as he watched the pathetically wasted form of Daniel Fenton climb from the back seat.
The boy was scrawnier than he'd last seen him and his eyes were bloodshot and puffy. Dark circles underscored and hollowed the sockets. He looked deathly pale. A drowned corpse, bloated from a week's submergence would have seemed more alive than this skeletal husk of boy.
He watched as Danny seemed to stumble about in a daze, his blue eyes were lost as he watched the men unload his various belongings. The boy was very much a… ghost… of his former self. Vlad caught the tiniest glimmer of something when Danny's eyes settled on him for just a moment,
Just an instant, before drifting away once more. Perhaps just a tiny fleeting moment of disbelief or hate still lingered.
No, triumph was not the badge he would bear. More likely he would summon his mercy. That would seem more fitting perhaps, as now was not the time for… arrogance… The loss of Maddie had wounded him greatly, and he felt that even his cold, villainous heart would soften for this boy who shared both his curse and his pain.
As the last suitcase was unloaded onto the cobblestones, and the cars sped away, Vlad approached Danny and placed a comforting hand on his shoulder.
"I cannot tell you how sorry I am my dear boy."
Danny's fists clenched and his shoulders trembled beneath Vlad's palm.
"I didn't come here for your pity." He whispered, his voice cracking from disuse.
"I came to ask a favor."
Flicker
"I can't take it anymore. All of the pain, I just want it to go away."
Vlad tightened the straps around Danny's wrists on the cold steel table.
"Now Daniel this really isn't the answer…"
"I don't care! I want it out of me! I want it gone!"
He flipped a switch on the monitor.
"There are other ways of dealing with pain than ripping out your soul. Would your mother have wanted…"
"He's not my soul! He's my ghost! My mother died because of my ghost! Besides, she wouldn't want a son whose half-ghost…" The respirator began administering anesthetic.
He slipped on the gauntlets, the artificial adaptions of the claws of a ghost capable of tearing rifts in the very fabric of reality.
And of tearing the ghost out of a human.
"… As you wish my dear boy…"
Will a violent, stomach churning thrust, he stabbed the claws into young Daniel's chest, and ripped his soul from his body.
Flicker
No anesthetic can dull the pain of rending one's own soul from the corporeal tether that holds it to the living realm. From tearing one's soul from one's very own wounded body, and for Danny… there was no greater pain.
The claws slid into his chest like icy knives and then as they hooked into his ghost he felt every molecule of his being tearing in half as Phantom was ripped away.
He gasped as the pain suddenly vanished. As his ghost came completely detached from him. Then he was only empty, and cold…
Horribly, horribly cold.
He felt thin and weak, as though all his substance had left him, all of his courage, his very pulsating force of life.
He felt like the lingering wisp of smoke after the candle flame is extinguished.
Every breath he drew trembled and his lunges felt like lead weights trying to collapse in on themselves. Groping with his right hand, strapped tightly down, he found the panic button just a few centimeters from his fingers. With a hiss the straps popped open, and he slid from the inclined operating table.
His knees crumpled as his feet hit the floor; his joints may as well have been filled with dust for all the support they gave him.
There was only one force that sustained his wasted husk of body, and that was hope.
The first time he failed because he hadn't been strong enough to stop the darkness from taking him.
But things were different now, he was stronger than him he'd beaten him. He'd already changed the future once; he'd gotten his ghostly wail ten years before…
He…
He was stronger now, they didn't have to die. He just needed more power. Then he could find Clockwork, and stop all of this from ever happening.
He just needed more power.
More…
Flicker
The claws were searing into his very existence, it was all he could do not to scream, the searing heat of the knives and the bear raw nakedness he felt torn away from his human half. He felt like a rotted fruit whose skin had been peeled off, leaving his innards exposed to the blazing sunlight.
The claws felt like an infection. In desperation he seized the gauntlets and ripped the claws from his chest with a cry of pain. With a violent swing he threw Vald against the laboratory wall and pulled the gauntlets off of the older man's hands in doing so.
The phantom panted heavily from the exertion. Fear was writhing across the void of his scattered thoughts. The gloves in his hands called for him. A ghostly echo crying for him. He slipped on the gloves, but they felt wrong. When he was done he needed to get back to Danny.
The separation was sickening, his stomach churned, his entire existence felt wrong, it felt human.
A cold sweat exploded across his body and the room swam around him. He trembled, but with his last once of coherent determination, the young ghost lunged for the dazed millionaire and impaled him with the claws as they glowed and pulsed a malevolent fuchsia.
In one fluid motion, he ripped the man in half, splitting his human self from his malignant ghost.
As the room began to spin, Phantom let the gauntlets slip through his hand then he dove into the unconscious Plasmius.
Flicker
He was wrong, he wasn't strong enough.
The darkness was closing in on him, there were things…
Things crawling through the dark, they were coming after him, the faces wouldn't go away.
There was blood everywhere.
On the walls, on his hands on, his face. He could taste it in his mouth. He gagged on the thick coppery liquid.
Then he saw them. First Jazz…
But it was just her head… her bodiless head. Her eyes were wide open and her mouth was frozen in gaping horror.
He stumbled away and tripped over Lancer's arm.
Phantom cried out and kicked away from the bloodied limb. He looked around wildly.
Tucker's leg, Sam's limbless torso, his parent's charred skeletons.
"No, no, no, no, no. Just go away, this isn't… what's going on?"
The Jazz's jaw moved.
"Danny?"
Cracks.
The cracks split across his mind and Phantom screamed as all of the horrors; greed, rage, vengeance, and jealousy, poured into his head and seared into his molecules, as he and Plasmius merged into one single being.
His hope wasn't enough.
Flicker
He was so afraid. He was trembling and shaking uncontrollably as the sheer terror racked his entire body, his lunges screamed as he hyperventilated, forcing the sacks of steel to bend and twist as he sucked in and expelled air.
His wasted muscles shrieked as he scrambled away from the phantom writhing in agony. He reached the wall and huddled there. His heart was beating out of his chest, as if the muscle itself were trying to burst from his ribs and flee.
The screaming stopped and the silence in the lab was suffocating.
Then the laughing came, the cold, emotionless laugh.
The tears started to run down his face. He squeezed his eyes shut and prayed to every god and deity he'd ever learned about in school or on TV.
Then the shadow fell over him. His heart almost stopped. Slowly he raised his head, and locked eyes with his death.
The hands shot forward, Danny flinched expecting to feel pain as they stabbed into him, instead he felt the icy cold as they phased into his chest.
Then his hands turned tangible again… inside of Danny's lunges.
He gasped as the sudden weights in his chest ripped his fragile lunges to shreds.
Phantom smiled and pulled Danny to his feet, then with a great heave he smashed his former human self against the wall, causing the weakened boy to emit a straggled cry.
He felt absolutely giddy when he'd heard the sounds of fear, when he saw Danny trembling in the corner.
He giggled at first then slowly escalated to a painful, side-splitting fit of laughter as he watched his human-self struggling to breathe.
As his laughter subsided he pulled his hands back through Danny's chest.
He held him to the wall with a hand to his throat and smiled again.
"You wanted the pain to go away." he cooed, Plasmius was showing through "So you wanted to rip your soul out. You moron, if you want the pain to go away you have to rip your heart out!"
His hand shot back into Danny's chest cavity, phasing through the sternum and closing around his racing heart.
His hand turned tangible again.
Danny screamed. He could feel his heart shuddering inside chest, struggling against the pressure of the hand wrapped around it.
His heart was going to burst, he was going to die! His heart was going to explode!
But with a sickening sound of tearing flesh and bone, his phantom pulled his hand back out with a sickening spray of hot blood.
Danny screamed until his lunges completely collapsed, but his crippled heart kept beating, refusing to let him die. The blood filled his deflated lungs and Danny was drowning. He choked.
His own heart was letting him suffer.
Phantom cackled "That way's just too quick, and using my ghost powers is cheating, isn't it… Daniel."
His second hand, stand red with blood, closed around Danny's neck.
"This way's more fun and you appreciate the classics don't you?"
He wrenched Danny from the wall and slammed him to the floor, both hands on his neck. Danny clawed at them, but his weak fingers slipped on his own blood. His feet kicked and his sneakers scuffed the linoleum floor. Phantom's grip steadily increased. His air way closed, he vision blurred.
Then his windpipe collapsed and he let out a stranggled squeak.
Phantom's grin grew wider and wider.
Danny's feet stopped kicking. His hand fell to his side. He held Phantom's wrist with the other as the light slowly faded from his eyes.
Crack!