He didn't seem to hear anything after that one short worrying response he'd given the first time Danny tried talking to him. He seemed so disconnected from the world that he might as well still be out in space. There was something wrong in his head, Danny was sure of it, but he didn't know what it was or if there was anything he could do to fix it. He wished that Jazz were there-then quickly corrected himself that he wished that they were wherever she was-psychology was her thing, not his.
If she'd even be willing to try helping Vlad. Danny knew he couldn't count on that; he wasn't entirely sure why he wanted to help him, except that being stuck in a small cell with nothing to do would be easier if he was with someone he could have a conversation with, even if that someone was Vlad.
Then he quickly stopped thinking that, because with it came a disturbed voice in the back of his head wondering what it must have been like for Vlad if he was starting to crave someone to talk to after only a couple of days locked up.
The second day he gave up on getting Vlad to do anything and turned to the guards for something to get him above the level of the floor instead. One of them took the message for Danny when he changed shift, and a few hours later a folded up pool-float was shoved through the food slot in the door. He wondered where they'd found something so normal-looking in the Ghost Zone; even though he had met plenty of ghosts who were actually pretty normal people if you ignored the fact that they floated and glowed he still had trouble imagining them lounging around in a ghostly pool. It got even harder when he tried switching them out for his creepy captors in his imagination.
But he didn't waste much time thinking about it; they hadn't given him an air pump to go with the air raft, and he had a lot of blowing to do. He switched back to ghost form to do it-"Hey, Fruitcake," he said, nudging Vlad with his foot when he settled down with the float though he didn't really expect him to pay attention, "notice how I can be a ghost and sit on the floor instead of through it? How about playing Follow the Leader?"-and got going.
He thought that the best thing about being a ghost, at least for as long as he was working on the float, was that since his body didn't need to breathe he didn't start feeling winded over huffing and puffing away trying to fill it up. He was already putting more effort into something for Vlad's sake than he'd like, he didn't want to end up lightheaded and dizzy to.
For the small about of credit he was willing to give the cultists, and even giving that much goaded at him, they'd found a float thick enough that it would get Vlad totally above the floor aside from a few places where a centimeter or two of his back dipped below it where most normal-sized ones would be too thin. It was tempting, very tempting, to keep it for himself when he was done-why should he be the one sleeping on the cold floor while Vlad got what was more-or-less an air mattress?-but he didn't give into it. He preferred sleeping as a human anyway, and he'd feel more comfortable if he no longer needed to worry about being freaked out by the sight of a person stuck in the floor when he woke up and was still too muzzy-headed to remember what was going on.
Lifting Vlad onto the mattress was easy work, Danny had spent years getting his body into the peak physical condition required by astronauts, and picking up one man the few seconds required to move him a couple of inches wasn't even enough to make him break a sweat. But it did make him remember that it wouldn't be able to keep himself in that type of shape if he was stuck there long; one more reason to find a way to escape ASAP.
It wasn't until the third day that he finally decided to take a different tack with Vlad, if only to entertain himself.
He inched slowly closer until he was sitting by the head of the float. Vlad's eyes were open again, the only sign that he was awake. Danny sighed, then started talking.
"...You'll be happy to hear the Packers had a great decade," he began hesitantly, not even sure where to start talking to Vlad like a normal person instead of an enemy. "They won the Super Bowl once, and made it really close a few more time. You can probably get a highlights reel on blu-ray when we get back to Earth- Wait, do you even know what blu-ray is, or did it first come out after you were gone? Well, it's pretty much like a DVD, you could probably have figured that out yourself.
"You'll never guess what Jazz ended up doing. Seriously, try. There's no chance you'll get it right." Danny waited for a second, just in case Vlad took him up on the opportunity to guess, but wasn't really surprised when there was nothing. Or maybe not nothing; were his eyes starting to look a little less glazed? "She's a psychologist for ghosts. Really. It's like this whole brand-new market she has all to herself; now that people have finally pulled their heads out of their butts about ghosts being real she helps the ones who want to live peacefully with humans... geeze, how does she put this? She helps them, uh, 'work past the compulsions that hold them apart from humanity.' Like, getting the Lunchlady Ghost to stop freaking out whenever she sees someone eating vegan. And then she met Box Ghost in Jazz's waiting room, so I guess Boxed Lunch being born is some gross kind of fate. But... you have no idea who I'm talking about because you were in Wisconsin during that one, weren't you?
"And it gets even weirder. You know who she ended up getting married to? Tucker. There's something really wrong about your big sister hooking up with your best friend, but it's been a few years now so I've gotten used to it. They've got the cutest daughter in the world; I'm her favorite uncle, which might not seem like a big deal when I'm her only uncle, but I'm taking it.
"Dani's good. I don't know if you even care after what a giant bastard you were to her, but you know what the sad thing it? Even after all that, and all this time, I think part of her would like it if you did. She hasn't changed much since the last time you saw her, a little more street smart after all the time she spent fending for herself, but that's it. She's trying to get a normal life for herself now, and mom and dad have been helping her with it. Even if 'normal' isn't really the first word you think of when it comes to them.
"As for them, they're..." Danny paused, thinking it over. His parents were the hardest ones to talk to Vlad about; part of him thought maybe he should just avoid the subject all together, except he knew he gap would be noticeable and obvious. Finally he just tried staying as casual about them as he had with all the other information. "They're still happily married, I'm sure you're sorry to hear. They still spend their days chasing ghosts, though they've finally learned to be a little more choosey about their targets instead of blasting at everyone who can float through walls even if they aren't doing anything wrong; it helps that Jazz would ban them from seeing their granddaughter for a month if she found out they'd shot at one of her clients.
"Maybe you'll be glad to know that whatever you did up in space finally broke dad of thinking you're his best friend. He hasn't talked about you at all since then. I'm not going to try getting on your case about whatever you did or anything; it was years ago, and," Danny glanced over Vlad's still form. The only change to it was that he was definitely looking at him now, "God, you've definitely paid for it."
He was trying to decided where to go from there when a noise almost made him jump out of his skin. He looked down and saw Vlad's mouth moving and realized that the rough sound was him talking for the second time in three days. "Maddie?"
"She's good. She's great. Now that paranormal science is actually being recognized as a reputable field she's finally getting the recognition she deserves; we've got a whole scrapbook full of articles about her and magazine covers she's been on. It's a good thing dad's always known that she was the brains of the family, or there might have been trouble over how much more attention she gets." He suddenly remembered just who he was saying that to and glared at Vlad, "Which means that there wasn't, it isn't something you can try making trouble between them about, and if you're thinking about starting that sort of thing up again once we're out of here I swear to God I'll leave you behind when I finally escape." Then he winced and shook his head, "No, sorry, I won't do that. I promise I'll get you back to Earth from here, Vlad, even if I have no clue what to do with you when we get there."
There wasn't anything else he could do. He couldn't just leave him alone again after seeing the state solitude had left him in. It wouldn't just be unheroic, it would be an outright evil thing to do.
He'd assumed that would be the only thing he'd get out of Vlad, the only thing that would matter enough to him to make the effort to say even one word, but again Vlad surprised him. "And you? If I'm really to believe you're Daniel, all grown up..."
"Me? Not as much has changed as you'd think. School, ghost fighting, all that stuff's still the same. You really want to hear all the boring things you need to do if you want to join NASA someday?" He leaned back against the wall, getting himself comfortable. "Well, it's not like I've got anything better to do. Let's see, where to start..."