Unfortunately, like it seemed to happen again and again with the nuts, they were smarter than he gave them credit for. The outer door opened, but instead of the inner one following suit a moment later a body phased through it and dropped to the floor like it had been shoved forward and couldn't catch itself before it fell. But Danny for that moment didn't pay it much mind, flying forward as fast as he could to try getting through that door. The prospect of getting snipped straight in half stopped mattering so much when it might be the only chance for escape he got in who knew how long.
But fast though he was, it didn't matter. Slamming a door shut would be quicker than crossing a room any time, and he slammed into the barrier with a bruising force that sent bursts of pain all through him. The only upside was that at least he'd been smart enough to take the impact on his shoulder just in case that happened, and hadn't cracked his skull open in his haste to try getting out.
"You. Suck," he spat out through clenched teeth as soon as the pain had dulled enough for him to think of talking, glaring at the leader of the ghosts through the barred windows in the cell doors. As far as one-liners went it was far from his wittiest, he'd come up with better ones even back when he was a dumb fourteen-year-old kid, but he thought the force of his conviction behind it more than made up for that. She sucked worse than a black hole, they all did, he didn't think he'd ever said anything more true.
"Such disrespect. You should be grateful to us, Abomination," she told him, not acting the slightest bit fazed by his display. Not that that was unexpected, if he magically transformed into a dancing pink rhino in a bikini right in front of her it probably still wouldn't even be enough to make her blink. "We have provided you with company which you may find preferable to us, for all that we have never done anything save try to help you."
"Riiiiight. Help," Danny said, rolling his eyes at her. "Only by the crazy cult definition of the word, Lady."
"Do you truly think that we are the mad ones, Abomination? From the day that you began your unseemly mockery of death you have lived a half-life. Even with your identity known to the world that remains true; your human life comes to a standstill the moment an enemy appears that you feel you must fight, yet you cling to your mortality too tightly to ever fully embrace your unlife." She curled her fingers through the bars of the window, leaning forward so she could peek down at the body on the floor through it. "The Other suffers as well for how tightly he has clung to his human life. Had he only been willing to relinquish it then ten years spent in solitude would have seemed nothing compared to the great stretch of infinity. Instead he clung to our form without one of our eternal minds to support it, using the sanctity of death to guard his mortal existence, and look what has become of him for his sin."
Danny hadn't really looked at Vlad since the moment he'd fallen into the cell, in part because trying to get out had been more important and he'd gotten caught up in the conversation after that, and in part-truthfully, for the most part-because he didn't want to look. He could tell that he was being unusually quiet, not making as single sound while Danny and the woman talked, and from the corner of his eye he could see that he was staying much too still, and that was enough to make him afraid of what he would see. After years of wondering if his dad had gone too far that day in space, if Vlad, for all that he was an evil bastard, really deserved a punishment that severe, part of him dreaded finally seeing the full extent of what Jack had done.
But it wasn't like he could just avoid looking at Vlad for however long it took him to finally escape. He just needed to get it over with, and to keep faith in his father no matter what he saw.
His first reaction was surprise at just how little Vlad had changed. Danny could only see half his face, but comparing it to the Vlad in his memories it didn't look like he'd aged a day in the ten years he'd been gone. But he guessed that made sense, none of the ghosts that he'd known since he was fourteen had ever aged-changed their styles in some cases, Technus for one updating himself every year or two, but not aged-so if Vlad had stayed in ghost-form all that time to stay alive why would he have gotten older?
But aside from that, he looked like hell. No, worse, he looked like a corpse, a ghost somehow made deader, lying too still for life and staring blankly and unblinkingly at the wall that he'd happened to land facing with his one visible eye. And the creepiest thing of all was just why only one half of his face was visible; his ghostly body was half-sunken through the floor until it reached the ghost cell below, just like Danny's had briefly been the first time he'd tried getting out, but instead of moving he just stayed there looking for all the world like his body had been embedded in the stone.
Danny whirled back to the door, staring at the ghostly woman with wide eyes. "What the hell did you do to him?" he asked, though the sinking feeling in his stomach told him that he already knew.
"We already told you, Abomination. He did this to himself; at any time he could have freed himself of suffering had he only the courage to give his mortal body to the void." She stepped away from the door, turning to glide away, but left him with one last line to think on, "We hope that you will find it in you to be brave much sooner, seeing what has become of him."
"Hey, wait, I wanted to talk to you about a toilet!" he called after her as she drifted off, but he'd remembered too late; by the time he'd finished talking she was already out of the small stretch of the hall outside he could make out through the window, and apparently she didn't feel inclined to come back.
Danny spent the next fifteen minutes prowling around the edges of the cell, keeping Vlad constantly visible in the corner of his eye. He didn't know what to do. If Vlad had been enraged when he showed up, full of ten years of built-up anger ready to explode at Danny as the best substitute for Jack the minute he saw him, Danny could have handled it. If he'd been depressed at the time he'd lost, or if he'd been overjoyed at getting back to the world-well, the Ghost Zone-if would have been weird, but Danny still thought he could deal. But what did you do with somebody who just seemed empty?
Finally he couldn't stand it anymore and hunched down beside him. "Hey. Hey, Vlad," he said, nudging him. It only had the effect of making him roll onto his back, though at least he was a little easier to look at when his whole face was visible. "C'mon, Fruitcake, it's me, Danny. Don't you want to blast me or something? Or... or taunt me for being stupid enough to think I'd seen the last of you? You know you like your villainous speeches."
For a long still moment there was nothing, then Vlad's eyes slowly drifted over to look at Danny. Danny found himself holding his breath from anticipation when Vlad's mouth started to open, just waiting to see if this was about to turn into a fight, or one of those uncomfortable times when they worked together, or what.
But he wasn't at all prepared for what he got. "Don't be ridiculous," Vlad said, his cultured voice gone hoarse with disuse. "Daniel Fenton is a fourteen-year-old boy."
Then he closed his eyes and would respond no longer.