A/N: I'm baaacck! For your viewing and reading entertainment this evening/morning/day/whatever it is while you're reading this, it gives me great pleasure to introduce the newest addition to my stream of pointless ramblings! For the purposes of this ficlet, Phantom Planet never happened and Danny's parents don't find out his secret until they die and become ghosts themselves. I'm well aware that, as ghost hunters, existence as a spirit is probably not what they'd choose, but bear with me here. Anyway, now that that's done with, on to the mindless rambling!
Disclaimer: I own nothing you recognize.
Maddie's POV
I don't know what I was expecting death to be like, a flash of light and a long tunnel, something like that. But there wasn't. Death wasn't nearly as traumatic as I thought it would be. One minute I was laying alone in my bed, and the next I was somewhere else and Jack was beside me. He had died a few years before. For a split second I was confused, but it's not like my death came out of the blue. I had lived a good long life, I was old and it was my time. I figured out pretty quickly that I was no longer among the living.
I had been thinking about death a lot since Jack passed. I suppose it's something that every ghost hunter has to face at some point. We're mortal beings, death is inevitable, and I had spent most of my adult life pursuing things that were dead. It's easier to ignore in your youth, but after being confronted with the physical manifestations of death for years untold, you start to wonder about your own fate. Will you become the very thing you hunt? That must be the nightmare of every ghost hunter in existence, to loose your humanity upon death and become a ghost; the hunter becomes the hunted. There's a kind of ironic justice to that, I suppose. After Jack died, I waited with dread for his ghost to start terrorizing the town. I kept expecting to see a pale and translucent version of the man I loved floating around. I don't know if I could've handled that.
I was so relieved that death did not necessarily mean the manifestation of malevolence. My thinking feels just as human as it did when I was alive, and so does Jack's. I admit the fact that a few of Jack's and mine theories on ghosts, or even the majority of them, weren't correct was hard to swallow at first, but it didn't take us long to accept that we were wrong about several things. For one thing, not all ghosts are evil, most are just looking for a quiet way to spend eternity and seem friendly enough. The other major correction I discovered was a little more personal in nature.
It's amazing the revelations that death can bring. It was so obvious; I'm not sure how I missed it. Danny's troubles in school, the mysterious injuries and lame curfew excuses. It was like a riddle, blindingly obvious once you're told the answer. My son is half ghost.
I suppose the truth never clicked because Jack and I never allowed ourselves to entertain the notion that such a thing could happen. You were either dead, or you were alive; you couldn't be both. Needless to say, considering what our son is, that hypothesis is blown out of the water.
I have to give him credit, after the first few blundering years he did an excellent job of covering up the truth. By that time, Tucker, Sam, and he had a working and reliable system of excuses, alibis, and non-existent activity plans. They seemed to read each other's minds and their teamwork was incredible. They were and are a seamless team in all aspects of their lives, whether they are ghost hunting, relaxing, or covering for each other. Most people in the world would cut off their right arm to have the kind of camaraderie that my son has found seemingly without effort.
It took a lot of time before my mind fully adjusted to the idea that my son is a halfa. Not only because I used to believe it was a scientific impossibility, but because it really drove home the fact that my little boy doesn't need me anymore, and hasn't needed me for a long time. Perhaps it was because of the bully magnet façade that he put on all through high school, but I became accustomed to the idea that Danny needed to be protected. Jack and I always saw Jazz as the independent one, we never doubted that she was anything but self-sufficient, but Danny was our baby boy. It was quite an adjustment from that mindset to one acknowledging how powerful my son really is. Not only can he look after himself, he can and does protect everyone in Amity Park. I might be there for emotional support and such, but Danny doesn't need me to protect him anymore. I suppose every mother has that revelation at some time or another, mine just came a little later than most.
Another shocker (though more for Jack than for me) was the truth about Vlad. I mean, I always knew he was a creep, but the truth was even more strange than I could've possibly imagined. Our old college friend, a megalomaniac half-ghost with an unhealthy fixation with my son (and with me, come to think of it). Some of the stories that Danny has told me send shivers up my spine, how Vlad kidnapped, cloned, and tortured him, how he sent his ghostly minions to make Danny's life even more difficult than it already was, and I don't think I'll ever forgive him for waking up Pariah Dark and putting Danny in such danger. I know Danny does a bang up job of getting into trouble on his own, but that's beside the point. Vlad recklessly risked not only my son's life, but the existence of every creature and person on this planet. I can't believe I let that jerk inside my house.
It's hard to believe that anyone so evil could create someone as sweet as my son's little 'cousin'. Dani is a wonderful woman and a beautiful soul. Although, I suppose it makes sense in a way; there's more of Danny in her than there could ever be of Vlad. Vlad might have created her and raised her through those first few weeks of life, but she shares her DNA with Danny, and he has one of the purest souls that I have ever known. I've always seen inherent good in Danny; his clone's behavior (against all efforts to make her otherwise) just proves what I've always thought.
I do wish that Danny would've felt comfortable enough to tell us his secret. We shouldn't have had to wait until we died to find out the truth. Rationally, I don't blame him; Jack made enough comments about how he was going to 'rip Phantom apart molecule be molecule' to make Danny wary about us finding out the truth, but it still hurts.
Everything worked out in the end though, Danny moved past those difficult few years when he first got his powers and went on to have a happy and productive life. He found a good career, married a good woman, and had a family. There are obviously some variations to the American dream in his case (quality family time consists of helping his children master their own ghost powers), but for all the strangeness in my son's life, he's managed to find some form of normality and he's happy. For all his adolescent trials, he turned out all right.
That doesn't me feel like any less of an incompetent parent though. It's long over and done with, but I still feel guilty that I wasn't there for him during those years. I love him and promised to always be there for him, but when he most needed me, I wasn't. It's a good thing that ghosts last a long time. It's probably going to take at least a few centuries before I get over how I failed him.
A/N: I thought I'd try something different, so I decided to give Maddie POV a shot. I thought it turned out pretty well. Tell me what you think.