Chapter Six: There Is a Lady All in Blue

It is ten o'clock and Danny sits upon the roof of Fenton Works, wondering what excuse he will use this time. His body is aching and badly bruised, and a small cut near his forehead is leaking ectoplasm onto his jumpsuit. Although he can avoid coming up with an excuse for being home after curfew all together if he simply goes inside now, Danny dreads trying to come up with a lie to explain the injury more than he does explaining his tardiness. He also does not wish to see his sister worry when she sees how badly injured he was in his fight with Skulker tonight.

Twirling the thermos around in his hands, he gazes up at the nearly impossible to see stars. The light from the huge Fenton Works sign makes all but the brightest stars and planets impossible to see, and not for the first time Danny secretly wishes for a power outage so that he can see more than a mere handful of those precious pinpricks of light shining down upon the earth. Of course, even then he probably wouldn't get his wish. Knowing his parents they probably have a generator or something ready for just that occasion, and his Dad would no doubt insist that the lights be left on for all to see in case the power outage was caused by ghosts or some other such nonsense.

No matter how hard Danny tries, though, his head is simply aching too much for him to come up with a reasonable explanation for why he's late. Maybe, he thinks, it would just be better if he slipped intangibly into his room and pretended to be there all along. He can say that he was taking a nap when his mom made dinner, or that he got home hours ago and they just missed him.

"It's not going to work," he mumbles, but as the bleeding finally stops he knows that he is just too worn out to care. The ghost attacks are getting to be too much for him to handle, for they come more frequently and his opponents always seem to be getting stronger and smarter. Danny continues to remain a step ahead of them in both respects, but he knows that it won't be long now before he comes up against an opponent he can't handle.

Sighing, he turns intangible and slips into his room, and the instant his feet touch his bedroom floor an alarm begins to blare. The haze in his mind vanishes as lights flash and a loud, ringing tone pierces the air, and shouting he falls to his knees and shoves his hands over his ears instead of transforming into harmless, human Danny Fenton. It should have been a small mistake, yet the consequences make it the biggest one he'll make in his life.

Although he expects his parents to come charging in, neither Maddie nor Jack appear before a half-dozen weapons emerge from the walls, hidden inside panels that Danny never knew existed. He curses himself for not paying more attention to the changes his parents have made to the defense system and the new inventions they've been creating lately, but he's just been so tired and it's been so hard to keep up with the ghost fighting, let alone with what's happening at school or with his family or with the new installations his parents have been busy tucking away inside his house. He knows he ought to change back, but as the first blast fires the thought flies from his mind as rapidly as he dives through the floor of his room.

He expects the kitchen to be no better and he's right, but not for the reasons he expects. A weapon near the ceiling swivels and fires at him, and as Danny dodges it another blast catches him from behind. Instead of the pain he expects, he is paralyzed. He cannot move, cannot speak, cannot scream, and as he loses control over his powers, he falls to the floor like a stone and cannot even catch himself. Danny's head slams against the tiles and the wound that was healing nicely mere moments ago splits open again, and as the alarm continues to ring and destroy his ear drums, Danny believes that he is going to die. There is no escape, no way out now that he cannot move, yet surprisingly the weapons on the walls don't fire at him, as if somehow the system knows that he's been neutralized for now and that there's no need.

Desperately Danny tries to make himself transform back into his human half, hoping that maybe the transformation will dull or eliminate the effects of the paralytic, yet even that part of his power is locked away further than he can touch. He feels like a small child staring at a box of his favorite cookies on top of the fridge, for his human half is within sight even as it's completely out of reach, and inwardly he lets out a small cry of frustration.

'Why aren't my parents coming? Where's Jazz?' he wonders as he lays there. Tears unwillingly leak from his eyes as the light from the alarms continues to blind him, yet the situation is so bad that Danny probably would have cried anyway if it was within his power to actually do so.

It takes Danny a long time to remember why they aren't there, something which he blames the obnoxious alarms for. Jazz is at a college, staying over there for the night with a freshman as part of a welcome weekend for prospective students. As for his parents, the pair of them are having dinner with some paranormal researcher tonight to discuss theories about . . . well, about something Danny forgot since he was never really listening when his mom talked about it this morning, but Danny knows they'll be back soon. He's a bit surprised that his neighbors haven't called the cops by now, though, but then again it's possible that none of his neighbors are home.

Or perhaps they are simply accustomed to their frustratingly noisy neighbors and have developed a habit of sleeping with ear plugs.

When the alarm finally stops, Danny doesn't actually notice. He can still hear the ringing in his head all too clearly, and his first indication that it's been silenced is when a pair of gloved hands roughly pick him up and flip him over. There is no sympathy on his parent's faces, only a kind of disturbing, predatory hunger, and if ever there was a moment for a dramatic, cartoon style gulp, it is now.

Yet Danny is still paralyzed, and his mouth is just slightly open instead, having frozen at the moment that he began to cry out when the weapon hit.

"It's Phantom, Jack!" exclaims Maddie excitedly, and Danny wants to scream. He knows what's coming, what's going to happen, yet there's nothing he can do to stop it. If only he remembered that everyone was out for the night. He never would have hesitated to come home, never would have passed intangibly into his room. The confluence of stupidity, of his foolishness and the mistakes he's made because of his exhaustion and his injuries makes Danny want to slam his head against a wall.

Or at least it would if his head wasn't already in horrible pain. The paralytic that was fired at him, after all, only made it impossible for him to move, not impossible for him to feel, and the realization of the kind of pain that will soon greet him makes him nauseous.

"The ghost boy?" says Jack as he holds out a gun. "He must've gotten hit by one of the new Fenton Ghost Stunners! I wonder what he's doing here, though . . ."

"Probably stealing more inventions," Maddie scoffs as she spots the thermos lying on the floor near the fridge. Danny does not even remember when it fell from his hands, but he suspects it was after he was shot. Numerous ghost fights have made Danny very, very careful about not losing his hold on the precious containment device, after all, and he doubts he would have ever allowed it to leave his fingers so long as they were within his control. "Hmm . . . you should hit him with it again, Jack, just in case. I'm not sure how long he's been here, and it could be wearing off. We've never actually tested it on a ghost before."

"Good idea, Mads," says Jack gleefully, and as poor as his father's aim is, even he can't miss Danny from two feet away with his brand new toy. Like the first time the weapon hit, Danny feels no pain as the blast slams into him, yet he has no doubt that he won't be moving again anytime soon. His parents' inventions have an annoying habit of working even better than anyone expects, even if the reasons why aren't always that clear to Danny, his friends, or his parents. "Are we set up in the lab for a dissection?"

"No . . . !" Danny screams silently, the word blurring in his mind into a nightmarish sounding wail. His parents may be calling it a dissection—after all, ghosts are supposed to be dead already—but it's not. Vivisection. That's what his parents are planning on, that's what they're going to do to him. A god damn vivisection.

And there is no Jazz here to rescue him, no sister or friends to save him from his parents well-meaning yet misguided research. He knows now that he should not have waited to tell them the truth for so long, that he should have been more careful about coming into the house, that he should have listened to his father when he blathered on that morning about his 'latest invention!' before that invention ended up killing him, albeit indirectly.

Yet his wishes, the would-haves and could-haves are all meaningless as his father picks him up and carries him down the laboratory stairs, his footsteps echoing like the pounding of nails being hammered into a coffin. Desperately Danny tries to move, tries to transform, tries to speak or to do anything that might save him, but it's useless. He is completely helpless.

His father lays him on a cool metal table that feels too much like what Danny imagines a mortuary slab to be like, but if this continues, he won't have to imagine it for very long. His mother's footsteps echo through the lab now as she joins Danny's father, and when she steps over and looks down at him, she is wearing her goggles and has the hood of her hazmat suit on. It makes her look like a little blue alien instead of the cliché green, and if he wasn't paralyzed then he might've burst into a fit of mad giggles.

His father, on the other hand, looks like nothing so much as a bright orange sun burning too close to Danny for comfort as he looks down at him, seeing not his son but a ghost. Jack's hand reaches out and curiously touches Danny's cheeks, and although he can't see the surprise there behind the goggles and the hood, the way his father jerks his hand away and mumbles to Maddie reveals his shock. "It feels as if he has an actual bone structure, Mads! Do ya think it's just an ectoplasmic construction that he's configured to more easily maintain his current manifestation?"

If he wasn't frozen in place, then Danny might've expressed the shock he is feeling inside. He's never heard his father sound quite so . . . scientific before. Usually the multiple syllable words come out of his mom's mouth, not his dad's, but then again, he knows he shouldn't be surprised. His father is a scientist and an inventor. He must be smarter than he generally seems to be since his inventions are generally rather successful.

"Perhaps . . . or maybe he's not a pure ectoplasmic manifestation," hypothesizes Maddie. "Perhaps he's using actual remains and using ectoplasm to animate it. It would certainly explain why he appears so remarkably human compared to the vast majority of other spectral entities we've encountered so far. We know that ghosts are capable of overshadowing living humans, so maybe Phantom is actually possessing a human corpse and using it as an anchor to maintain his spectral form. It might explain why he seems to be capable of maintaining his current power levels even though he rarely returns to the Ghost Zone." Is she proposing that he's some sort of creepy zombie? Danny hopes not, for it will make it very, very difficult to convince her otherwise if she learns the truth about him today. The thought of his mom believing that he's a ghost reanimating her son's corpse for his own purposes makes him worry about what will happen if they actually manage to perform the vivisection and it lasts long enough for him to pass out.

"That can't be it, Mads, he can turn intangible. We've seen it."

Keep arguing, Danny pleads silently. The longer they theorize, the more likely the effects of the weapon will wear off, and the more likely it becomes that Danny can escape. Experimentally he tries to blink to see whether or not the paralytic's worn off.

And fails.

"Ghosts have the ability to manipulate their own molecular structure through ectoplasm and that of the entities and objects around them," she objects. "It's possible that he's capable of altering the vibration of the reanimated body's molecules to make it capable of phasing through matter that would then be vibrating on a different frequency. We've seen other ghosts make objects and organic matter that were not originally part of their spectral form intangible."

For the second time he attempts to blink.

And fails.

"Hmm . . . That's true, Mads. Well, I suppose we'll have to find out the old-fashioned way, then," his father chuckles as he pulls out a tool kit, and although Danny expects scalpels and the types of medical tools that are always used on television shows, the bag is full of what looks more like the sort of thing a carpenter or mechanic would carry around. Drills, hammers, saws . . . If he wasn't in ghost form, his heart would beat out of his chest.

Desperately he attempts to blink again, straining harder and harder against the paralytic. He's out of time, and he knows it.

Yet he still fails.

"I wonder if we should sedate him," his mother murmurs.

"Why bother? He can't move and it's not as if he can feel pain. He's a stinkin' ghost, Maddie," his father chuckles, and although it's his father's normal laughter, it sounds demonic to Danny's ears. It's the context, he thinks, that makes it sound horrifying, not the sound itself. His father isn't supposed to be laughing right now. He should be horrified. Of course, Danny knows that his father will be when he learns the truth, but for now, he just wishes his father would stop chuckling.

For the fourth time ('is it the fourth?' he wonders silently, for he's not actually keeping track) he tries to blink.

And fails.

From a nearby table his mother pulls out a pair of seemingly innocent looking scissors, or at least, what would be innocent looking scissors if they weren't glowing green. "I know that, Jack, I just . . . It's unnerving, the way he's staring," she mumbles. "I'm not sure I can do this with his eyes like that. I know that he's just a ghost, but . . . but there's a sentience to him that's almost disturbing. This isn't exactly the same as cutting open a fetal pig in anatomy, Jack."

'So don't!' he screams mentally, and the last of his resistance begins to break down as he senses the inevitable falling upon him, pinning him down to that table in the form of a simple weapon shot. He begs them silently, 'Don't do it! Can't you see the truth now that you're so close? Can't you tell? Can't you realize that I'm your own son?'

His parents, of course, can't hear him at all since it's not as if Danny's developed telepathy, and much to Danny's dismay Jack puts a reassuring hand on Maddie's shoulder. "If it really makes you that uncomfortable, Mads, then I'll handle this part, but you were always better at it than I was. I doubt we have a sedative that would work on a ghost, too. It's not like they have an actual circulatory system."

"I suppose you're right, Jack," she sighs, and Danny wants to scream at them. Of course he has a circulatory system! He has a nervous system, doesn't he? How else would the damn paralytic they shot him with work if he didn't have one? There might be a way, maybe something that works only on ectoplasm, but Danny doubts it. He wants them to sedate him. If this is going to happen, he doesn't want to be awake to see it, and desperately he tries to will himself to pass out at the very least, but it's to no avail.

And so Danny tries to blink again instead, his desperation rising with each new attempt he makes.

Yet he still fails. His will alone cannot overcome this nightmare.

"I'm going to cut open the top of his jumpsuit," she says calmly, and her goggles gleam in the bright lights like stars. Danny wishes he could cry right now. He wishes he could tell them the truth. He wishes that his sister and friends would walk in at any moment and put a stop to this, that some kind of miracle would come and put a stop to this.

He wishes he could just freaking blink.

But as he tries again, not even that last wish comes true.

For he fails.

The cold scissors slice through his jumpsuit, and he knows that they're made of a special material. His jumpsuit is an afterimage, a type of ectoplasmic construct that's a reflection of Danny's moment of death, and it can't be cut or destroyed by ordinary means, unlike his flesh beneath it. The tools his father holds will easily do the job, however, and he can just make out a faint glint to the side and an all-too sharp looking blade. Danny tries to blink as he silently screams for what will not be the last time on this night.

And fails.

His mother finishes her cuts, and a part of the scissor blade accidentally slices into his skin near his bellybutton. It doesn't hurt much, but it's the first time his mother has hurt him and inside of Danny he feels something begin to break. "Oops," she mumbles, hands shaking as she laughs nervously. "It's certainly been a long time since we've done this, hasn't it, dear? Maybe you should handle the first incision."

"Aww, it's just nerves, Mads! This is our first time dissecting a ghost, after all!" proclaims Jack proudly as they change places. "Do you have the program ready to record the data?"

Danny tries to blink.

And fails.

"Of course, sweetie! The audio and visual recorders are ready," his mother replies cheerfully, and if Danny could, he would vomit. How can they use their pet names for each other while they're torturing him? Even if they don't think he's their son, even if they don't think ghosts are remotely human like, isn't there something about cutting open a seemingly innocent looking boy that disturbs them? Or was his mother's momentary qualms about it the only acknowledgement they'll give, the only sign they'll show that even they believe that what they're doing is wrong?

"Excellent, Mads! Now are you sure you want me to do the honors?" he asks, and it's at this point that Danny struggles to continue to see his parents as human beings. It's easier to think of them as monsters, easier to justify the rage and horror that's already growing inside of him if he stops seeing them as his parents or even people.

Once again he tries to blink as his mother holds out a scalpel to his father and smiles at him. It's the only thing Danny can really see—her gloved hand holding the instrument that will rip his flesh and their bond apart in a single sweep—and as his father takes it, he wishes he could close his eyes. He wishes he couldn't feel what is happening right now as that instrument moves delicately down to the top of his chest and his father begins the classic 'Y' incision that Danny has had nightmares about ever since he became part-ghost.

Surprisingly, the first cut hurts less than he expects, but then again, Danny is accustomed to pain and he knows it will only get worse. It's still horrifying enough that he wishes he could cry or beg them to stop, and as his father moves the scalpel down he starts to penetrate deeper into Danny's chest. "Amazing, Mads," his father whispers in awe. "See this? It's just ectoplasm, but the manifestation of muscular tissue and bones it's created is so accurate, so comparable to normal human anatomy . . . maybe these are his actual remains . . . or maybe it's because it's a young ghost? Maybe their initial forms are more accurate representations of their prior human bodies?"

Idly Danny notes that his father shifted from referring to Danny as an object instead of something at least resembling a person as Danny yet again tries to blink.

And fails.

"Perhaps . . ." Maddie murmurs. "I wonder if it'll have manifested organs as well, or if it'll just have an ectoplasmic core . . ." She picks up a saw, then, and starts to hum softly, and Danny wishes he could pass out. It would just be easier if he could pass out.

The instant the saw touches his flesh and bones is the same instant when the pain gets to a point that Danny can no longer just brush it off. The sensation as it cuts through, the sound of it slowly destroying his ribs, the smell of his own ectoplasm as it leaks out of him . . . It's at this moment that he realizes that he won't live through this experience. It's impossible. To feel this pain, to hear it and to smell it and to practically taste the metal cutting through his flesh on his tongue is too much for him to ignore. He will die.

Out of sheer desperation, he tries to blink.

And fails.

He's tuning out their conversations now, his entire body a study in life, death, and pain, although his mom isn't speaking much anymore as she cuts into him. She's humming a song, some gentle tune that he doesn't recognize but that seems strangely familiar, and it definitely doesn't fit the moment at all. He wishes he could shut her up even though it only exists through the pain in brief snippets and partial verses, yet the way she keeps repeating the same part of it over and over is driving him mad as surely as the blades cutting into him. If Jazz was here, then she would probably tell Danny all the psychological reasons why his mother's humming that particular song, but the reason his mother gives and that he happens to catch that is probably the most accurate:

"Jazz has been listening to it a lot lately. It's just stuck in my head, Jack," she explains. "Do you want me to stop?"

YES! Screams Danny silently, and her humming isn't the only thing he's referring to at the moment.

"No, Mads, it's fine if it helps you relax. I forgot you had such a beautiful voice," he teases her.

Danny can feel the ectoplasm leaking out of him, and he hears a scraping sound across the floor and vaguely hears something about turning down the temperature in the lab and a bucket to catch the ectoplasm he's losing so they can study it later. At least the humming covers up most of the tinny, dripping sound of his own lifeblood streaming into a pan beneath him, but it's not much of a comfort in his current hell. Once again he tries to blink, but he's slowly forgetting why he needs to or wants to.

And once again he fails.

The orange and blue blurs consume his vision, monstrosities swarming over him like vultures as they pick at his corpse with drills and saws, and he feels a fog begin to come over him. He has no idea how long he's been lying on this table, how long they've been cutting into him. The pain makes time meaningless even as it makes the seconds on what will soon become his icy death bed endless and unbearable and eternal. Has there ever been a moment when he didn't hurt? He can't remember anymore. He's pretty sure he's never felt anything but pain, never felt anything but the feeling of his bones snapping, of his flesh tearing, and of his life leaving him in a steady flow of green liquid that these vultures continue to catch in their icy bucket beneath him.

He wishes someone would make it stop. He doesn't care who. Just someone. Anyone.

He finds himself trying to blink again, yet he's unable to remember why he's doing it anymore. Maybe it's to make the music go away, for he's not sure where's it coming from any longer. Maybe it's to make the pain finally stop, although wouldn't he have blinked long ago if that was all it took to make this end?

Danny's not sure exactly how long it takes him to realize that this time he's succeeded.

Just in case he's hallucinating from the loss of ectoplasm, he tries again. Danny manages to blink and the tiny success makes hope rise within him for the first time in . . . minutes? Hours? Days? Time has become meaningless to him at this point. But if he can blink, if it's not just a hallucination, then perhaps he can do more, after all. Perhaps he can destroy the orange and blue demons. Half-crazed, Danny can't help but wonder why these demon vultures aren't red. Aren't monsters supposed to be red or black or green or some other evil color?

A small corner of his mind shrieks that these blurs aren't monsters, that they're his stupid, oblivious parents, but the pain is too much and the voice in the back of his head isn't strong enough. Light flashes and consumes his vision, and suddenly a pair of goggles is his world as the blue creature peers into his own now barely glowing eyes.

It mumbles something about his blinking, or maybe he just assumes that's what it is because he's scared they've realized he's regaining control. Danny's own screams are so loud in his head that the blue blur may be saying nothing. He's not sure he can hold on much longer, and a twisted part of him wants to get these creatures back for what they've done. He thinks at first that he ought to destroy them and their lab with a single wail, but a different thought occurs to him as he feels himself coming close to passing out and dying.

"Hey, Jack?" he hears the blur say softly, for it's hard to ignore her voice when she's so close to him, a voice that he once found sweet and reassuring but that now sends him into a blind panic even as it speaks the first sympathetic words it's spoken the entire time he's been locked in this hell.

"I think he's crying . . ."

Reaching inside of himself, he struggles against the haze just long enough to think of his alter ego, of the boring old human Danny Fenton with his plain old black hair and innocent blue eyes, of a boy who stepped through a door and pushed a button that caused an accident that is just now finally bringing about an end to his life. This time he finds his humanity and he clutches to it like a rock climber clinging to a cliff face for salvation when their harness has failed, and he sees a flash of light in the lab as the two rings appear and flow over him. He hears his torturers' gasps and then a horrified scream, the sound of metal crashing to the floor as the blue blur-it's a person, he thinks vaguely through the fog, a lady dressed all in blue-collapses against the table full of tools and the orange blur desperately rushes to assist it.

Much to Danny's surprise, whatever paralytic they used on him as a ghost has no effect on him as a human, but perhaps that's just because it's worn off completely at last and it took him an eternity to realize it. His chest is open and oozing as he slowly climbs to his feet, his own blood spilling into the metal pan that is filled with a horrifying amount of his own ectoplasm beneath his metal bed, yet now it's turning a brackish, brownish color as his blood contaminates it, and he thinks he must look just like the kind of zombie his mom was imagining his ghost half to be. The lab is cold, horrifyingly cold, and all he wants to do is run away but he's just not strong enough.

"D—Danny?" his father stutters as Danny rises like a corpse from a grave. The pain is horrifying, but he's going into complete shock at last. He's barely aware the pain exists, yet he's not so far gone that he has no clue about how rapidly he's dying.

Danny doesn't answer his father as he shuffles over to the portal. Slamming his bloody finger against the DNA scanner as he holds in his guts as best he can with his other hand, he does not glance back at the lab as he plunges into the swirling green mass. He is dead. He knows it. And he's too scared to stay in that lab with his parents and face them.

Yet he knows other things, too, for as death begins to overtake him a strange sort of clarity reaches him. The fog is still there, too, but somehow he knows that he can't remain in the lab this way for his friends and sister to find, or for his parents to clean up after. And he knows that he ought to hate them for how they've destroyed him, that he ought to slaughter the monstrous blurs for ripping him to shreds . . . but he also knows who they are, they the blurs aren't just monsters but his parents as well, and that nothing, not even killing them, will change what's happen.

Yet somehow he still wants to do the right thing and to try and make this better, even though his heart is screaming that there will never, ever be a way to make this better. Even if it's his last act he wants to try and change what's happened, and there's only one person he thinks of that might have the power to do it as he shifts back into ghost form. He's hoping that it will be strong enough to carry him through the zone to his final destination, but as the ectoplasm in the ghost zone swirls around him Danny doesn't actually believe he'll make it to see the only ghost who has any chance of making this all okay again; however, Danny's never been one to give up, and so he plunges forward towards the only light he has left:

Clockwork.

A/N: I honestly tried to keep the gore and the gruesome details during the dissection toned down and by my standards I think I did okay, so I doubt anyone had any real trouble reading it. After all, this story is only rated 'T' and I didn't feel like raising the rating for a scene that didn't have to be more than mildly gory. ;)

So now you know what happened, why he was traumatized so badly, and you know that the song that Maddie used to sing to Danny as a lullaby is the same one that she's humming in this while cutting him to pieces (successfully resists the urge to state the obvious pun!). The answer to the mystery is, of course, the kind of plot that's been done a lot in this particular fandom, but I wanted to do my own take on it. I hope I didn't do too badly.

Umm . . . yeah. I am barely coherent right now. I've spent my Christmas sick and skipped out on most of my plans for the day, so you guys got a much earlier update than I intended to give you because I was tired, sick, and half-crazy with boredom while confined to my apartment. (Did I just say I was sick twice . . . Yup. I totally did...ugh...Too lazy to edit it, too...)

And you can interpret Danny's actions at the end however you want. Either he was doing the hero thing and trying to make things right again, or he was just running away to die and justifying that as he entered the denial phase. I just wanted to do something different, y'know, since most of the time these sorts of fics end in dramatic rescues or with Danny going crazy and hating his parents forever and stuff. Which is logical and all, 'cause seriously, this is some crazy-messed up stuff, but still.

Or, y'know, occasionally there's been a few fics where there's no emotional fallout whatsoever, but in case you haven't noticed, this fic is all about the emotional fallout and crazy psychological damage this kind of experience would result in. My kinda thing.

Make sense? Bah, I hope so. Anyway, maybe one or two chapters after this depending on editing and stuff . . . There should be a wrap-up with Clockwork and then a kind of aftermath/epilogue, and then that'll be that. Hopefully I won't disappoint you guys (and haven't disappointed you guys with this chapter, either).

And as always, please review if you can! It's definitely appreciated. ;)

'Til next time!