Ch. 2
He wondered. And he thought, and pondered and puzzled. All sorts of musings went through his head, but, never had he paid much mind to them before. In truth, he still didn't and why should he? Most of the time it was useless thoughts, the kind one thinks up in the middle of the night for no reason, just because the brain can and will, to annoy you. And as the Phantom boy sat on the ledge overlooking the great expanse of canyon land that had become his home, he did just that; let those pesky didn't-even-have-substance-thoughts run through his mind as he waited for his father to return.
Danny thought about his day and of what an utter failure it had been. He mused lightly over what he could have done differently to make it better, but only for a moment. Vlad always said that to dwell on the mistakes of the past other than to learn from them is a fool's meditation. And, Danny agreed. What was done was done, and it wasn't like he could go back and change time anyway. Leaning back so that only his legs dangled over the edge, he gazed up. And up and up into the ever swirling ever shifting and changing seemingly endless abbeys of the ghost zone sky. Little specks of twirling toxic green, a very close color to his eyes at that, danced about each other in some crude rendition of the human world's stars. Not that he minded the difference. Honestly, he actually thought the human stars were...how he could describe it...duller. Less, forgive the pun, full of life. The human stars were not ageless, and he supposed that was the reason they never caught his interest like his own worlds did. These stars did not die, did not fade, and did not flaunter in their everlasting celestial waltz. He could trust them, Danny knew. These stars would be here for him forever.
Great, the little white hair thought, sitting up with a groan when the bashed muscles in his back started cursing at him for lying down on such a hard surface for such a time, now he was starting to get all angst-y and way too dark for his own good. Leave the brooding to Vlad, he thought, the old wraith is always contemplating something deep and mysterious, especially when he believed Danny wasn't looking. Sometimes Danny would ask his father what he was thinking, but it was very few times he got more than an "Oh, nothing of importance," or "not something someone as small as you should be worrying their heads over." Most of the time he was just waved off, told to go play, or given some chore to do. Naturally, being the spark Danny was, he couldn't help but press about it, or make some remark (the remarks would more often than not leave Danny with an oft used boot up the butt for his mouth).
However, it wasn't the fact that the man didn't tell him what he was contemplating about so much that got him riled up, it was just the fact that Danny wanted to know, but lately, it was like Danny already knew what his father was thinking.
He was under no delusions, Danny. His father had made sure that since the time he was old enough to understand, that he and Vlad were very different. He knew he was a Phantom, and his father was a Wraith. Two completely different kinds of spectral entities that under no normal circumstances should be able to coexist within miles of each other, yet here they were. A wraith, raising a Phantom, a species of specter thought to be nearly extinct. If fact, Danny thought with a shudder, if things had gone on as nature intended, he bet Vlad would have eaten him when the wraith had found him like he told the phantom he did. Danny wondered if he DID almost eat him. Hah, bet that was fun for him. Just going about his business one evening, then coming across the likes of him.
The white haired boy remembered hardly anything from that time. Just brief flashes of trees, glowing green, quite a bit of that, and then, all of a sudden, Vlad. It was like one moment he never knew the man, and the next moment, he was there, always there.
It was a bit disconcerting, Danny realized. The little not complete memories and all. Normally, his memory was fantastic, even his father was surprised at first how much Danny could remember about even the smallest of details. (The fact that Danny often missed large chunks of sometimes important information Vlad told him was simply because he just chose to not listen, not that he couldn't remember.) It left him wondering why he could not remember that time he felt was so small before the blue skinned Wraith had come into his life, why he felt like there was one big hole in not only his mind but his heart where what Vlad represented and provided had taken up residence as. Why was there something missing Danny desperately thought? But, perhaps, that was not the most important thing here. Not why was it missing, but WHAT? What was wrong, what had gone, what had fled the little phantom boy at such a young age he was truly to small to even retain a single memory? It plagued his head, sometimes for hours on end, just tossing and turning the phantom's thoughts until it felt like he could no longer form a coherent train of thought without feeling like he was going to throw up. He...he felt like he NEEDED that something he was missing, NEEDED it with such a force, that the need eventually drove him, often without his own consent to the one person who seemed to drive all the bad thoughts and feeling of utter emptiness away.
Vlad, his father. Vlad, the one person who never left. Vlad, who against all social, emotional, and even natural laws had taken in a small hurting boy and given him...that something the boy had needed most, whether the boy had known it at the time.
Admittedly, Danny knew he HAD to stop thinking like this, he would make himself upset, and he didn't want Vlad to come home to Danny bawling like a baby. Danny straightened his back at the very thought of his no-nonsense father seeing him crying at his age of almost-nearly-eight. He was just about a grown adult, and darn it, a grown Phantom male, does not cry Danny thought with a firm face. A pause, then the boy slumped back down in his seat on the rock, a rather grumpily resigned expression taking up residence on the young face. Ah, who was he kidding? He wasn't a grown up yet, no matter how much of a tough-boy act he put on for others. He didn't even know what a full grown phantom WOULD act like; it wasn't like he had ever met one. Heck, even when he DID turn eight, he would still have at least a couple more years until his mental and full physical prowess reached their peak. The way Vlad had explained it to him, (and what an awkward conversation THAT had been) his body at the age of eight human years old was not necessarily mature, but more like his physiology was done growing. Like a deer actually. A full grown male deer didn't necessarily have antlers, those one had to wait for, even if the buck was done growing. His mind still had to be shaped, to be taught in ways that the both of them knew Vlad could never fully give, no matter how hard he tried.
And Danny couldn't help but wonder... would he always need his father? What had conspired between the two of them before was true, Danny being a phantom, matured far quicker then most species of specters. He was seven now in human years, and still fairly young looking; more like a thirteen or fourteen year old human and he would continue to look that way for a while yet but according to Vlad's daily measurements and the sheer amount of ectoplasmic calories the boy had been consuming as of late, the young looking boy would grow almost unnaturally quickly into his adult form in the course of one year, and then...well, neither Danny nor Vlad was sure what would come after that. Only one thing was for certain though: as soon as Danny was full grown, he could no longer stay with Vlad. As a fully grown phantom, Danny would start to send out core pulses as a form of subconscious communication, and those pulses were not felt by other phantoms alone. All sorts of nasty things were drawn to those pulses, and Danny didn't want to put the old wraith in any more danger then he already had, just by living with him.
.
Letting out a great length of breath, the juvenile phantom decided that he didn't want to think anymore tonight. He was tired, sore, and if Vlad didn't return home soon, he would just go to bed without eating. He didn't mind, not really. An inconvenience? Yes. Totally life destroying? Not even close. (Well, unless you didn't eat ever again, but that was a given.) It just wasn't worth it to get oneself worked up about something you couldn't do anything about. I was inevitable, like the sun rising and falling every day. Danny would grow up, would out grow his need for an adult in his life, and no amount of pondering or wishing it wasn't so would remedy that.
Groaning softly out into the quiet of the night, Danny just wished Vlad got home sooner. For what reason, he wasn't sure. He didn't really want to talk, but he just wanted the other around. He hated being left alone to think, it never ended well.
"Daniel."
In all reality, Danny thought his reflexes where rather good, even if he father sometimes made comments about reaction time not being the same thing as reflexes, but all things considered, Danny really didn't scare that easily anymore. However, as most know, there is a difference between being startled, and getting scared. The calling of his name certainly didn't scare him so much as...startle him. Danny in response to the sudden voice whipped his head up and glanced behind him to the rest of the ledge in front of the home cave, fully expecting to see Vlad there, the ever present stoic look about him, but there was no one.
The Phantom boy was now a bit concerned, and more than a mite confused. He had heard his name being called, clear as day. But there was no one about?
"Daniel."
He gasped, his breaths coming in shorter gasps as his lungs constricted; where was it coming from? He didn't like this, it set his instincts on edge when he was trying desperately to be calm. Was his father playing some form of trick on him? True, there had been tests before. Vlad liked it when Danny kept on his toes, and those little surprises he gave helped, but the wraith had stopped doing that a while ago, after he had deemed Danny fit to hunt for himself. This situation left Danny with the sensation of ice water being trickled down his back. With all the caution of prey being stalked, the phantom slunk to the edge of the rocky crag he had been perched on previously. The...voice, (his father?) sounded like it was coming from the edge, rebounding up from the shadows below on the very floor of the canyon. Danny let out a shaky breath. It was ok, he told himself. There is no reason to get all riled up like that, it's just...Vlad... His father was asking for him, but, there was something wrong... or was there? Ugh, what was it? Why was he even still up here? Fly down to your father, its fine.
The phantom boy paused, his white boots teetering on the very brink of the precipice, with naught but gravity holding him to the earth. Something stopped his from making a decent, from gliding down to where his father was obviously calling him and would be quite irate were he to not comply. One final time a voice split the air, echoing through the rocky gorges and into the ears of the fledgling phantom, only this time, Danny was alert to everything. The wind current, the light...the voice. There was something about the voice that sent the hair on the back of his neck shooting straight up, though it was familiar enough. The voice should calm him, sooth hi tensed nerves but this one didn't and the phantom wanted to know why.
"Daniel."
No. A click. A scratch. A jump in the voice, where it should be flawless, the word flowing off the tongue which had spoken it a thousand times before and was prepared to say it a thousand times more. A tiny, minute, only-able-to-be-heard-by-the-most-keen-ears-in-the-world-squeak, was heard by those same keener then most ears. And it would pay dearly. The voice was not correct.
A set of barred teeth shone in the night, whiter then the pearls gathered from the depths of the oceans; two eyes, glowing a brilliant a green as sunlight through tree leaves on the hottest of summer days.
Barely a whisper of sound, cutting through the air, like wind over still water; soft, silent, but this whisper carried death in its hands, and a hunter's instinct in it's mind. This was no mere bit of breeze. This was an angered Phantom slicing through the darkness with speed no human could conjure with any of their inventions and knowledge, and this Phantom was on the move to irradiate whatever man, ghost, or anything in between that had DARED to try and impersonate his father in his own territory.