I'm Still Here
A Danny Phantom FanFiction by Cordria
Chapter Five
"Danielle?!" Danny sputtered. "She's…"
"She died almost forty years ago," Sam said softly as she handed her son a pot full of water and directed her attention to him. "You're just in time to make the spaghetti noodles."
The man arched an eyebrow. "I just show up and you're going to put me to work without even a 'how are you doing?' or an 'anything new?'" When Sam just blinked at him and put a hand on her hip, he silently took the pot and dropped it onto the stove. Catching Danny's eye, Sam's son winked and grinned at him. "Danielle died when I was just a few months old," he said after a moment. "Destabilized, we think. Sam took me in and made me call her 'mom'."
"I did not," Sam grumbled with a roll of her eyes.
"Oh," Danny said softly, turning his attention back to the pepper he'd been cutting up. The news that Danielle was gone was a little disturbing. Based on how they referred to her so casually, the other two had apparently gotten over her death a long time ago.
"It worked out wonderfully, actually," Sam was saying. "I'd just divorced Eric when I heard about Danielle and I had no problem taking him in. Especially since I knew about Danielle's special abilities and the fact that Dan might have inherited them."
Danny looked up at Sam's son. "Did you?"
"I'm 'Dan' now?" the man said with an arched eyebrow, dumping a handful of spaghetti noodles into the now-boiling water. "And yes, I did. Kind of."
"Kind of?"
Dan held up a hand and focused on it, making it glow faintly. "That's about the best I can do." He grinned. "I still set off all of Matthew's little sensors though."
Blinking a few times, Danny shrugged and set down his knife. His brain felt a bit like it was about to explode with everything that he was learning, but there wasn't much he could do about it. "Oh." He stared down at the chopped up pepper for a moment. "The pepper's done," he said.
"Thanks Danny," Sam said, reaching over his shoulder and grabbing the cutting board. Then she hesitated, turning back and touching Danny's shoulder. "You okay?"
"I'm fine," Danny said, setting a small smile on his face.
She waited a beat, but returned the smile. "So… neither of us have gotten the whole story of what's happened." She arched an eyebrow, the unasked question perfectly obvious.
Danny bit his lip for a moment before opening his mouth to tell them everything he'd been through thus far.
--
Supernatural eyes gleamed in the unending nothingness that was all that remained of the Ghost Zone. Alone, the ghost ruled the endless abyss. "Well, well, well…" a cold voice muttered, the ghost drifting closer to a small picture that formed in the air. "What have we here?"
He studied the images before him, watching the young ghost-boy tell the two humans seated at the table about his plight. The boy was everything he'd remembered from so long ago – strong and cocky and overly confident. Seventy years trapped in a Fenton Thermos had done nothing to change that.
Of course, this ghost knew all about being trapped in a Fenton Thermos.
"I couldn't beat you in a hundred years… that's what you gloated as you sucked me into that infernal device, wasn't it?" A snarl entered the ghost's voice, invisible fingers clenching tightly. "I wasn't strong enough to beat you back then. Seventy years isn't nearly as long as I'd planned for you to stay trapped, but we shall see if it's enough."
"Daniel Phantom," he hissed. Freezing tendrils of energy swirled out of the emptiness and gently caressed the image, small coils twisting so that they would have been wrapped around the boy's throat if he'd been really there. "Welcome home."
--
"Everything is just so… different," Danny said softly, swirling his spaghetti with his fork. Although he'd originally been a bit dubious about how many vegetables went into the sauce, it had actually turned out to be quite delicious. "I dunno. I keep looking around, thinking I'll see something that looked the way it was before."
He was almost talked-out by this point. He'd told them all about being freed, meeting Jazz in the cemetery, and that whole day of nothingness. He'd glossed over most of the terror and confusion that had reigned in his mind those few days since he'd been let out of the Thermos, but he was pretty sure Sam picked up on it anyways. Even though she hadn't seen him for seventy years, she still seemed to know him perfectly.
"A thermos in the backyard," Sam whispered, shaking her head. "That's…"
"…typical?" Danny filled in, smiling faintly. "That's my life, passing secretly by right under people's noses."
Sam caught his gaze. "I was looking for a word more along the lines of 'horrible'. We were always so close… Danny… I'm so sorry…"
"It's not your fault," Danny said with a shrug. "I know you guys looked for me."
"I wonder how you ended up back there," Sam's son murmured.
"Ghost probably." Danny pushed his spaghetti around for a moment before taking a bite. "I can't count the number of ghosts that want… wanted… me out of the way. It could have been any of them."
"It wouldn't take long to steal a Thermos and bury it in the backyard when you've got ghost powers," Sam agreed.
Silence fell. Danny quietly chewed on his spaghetti glancing around Sam's kitchen while he tried to figure out what to say next. Finally, his gaze fell on Dan – Danielle's son. He didn't like the thought that it somehow made Dan his son as well. The concept of having a female clone was hard enough to swallow most days. The idea that the man sitting at the table who was nearly twice his age was someone his son was too bizarre to even contemplate.
Dan looked up, catching Danny looking at him. Identical blue eyes fixed on each other, hair flopping messily over their foreheads in a distressingly similar fashion. "So what's on the plan next?" Dan asked, cocking an eyebrow.
"We erase Danny Fenton from history." Sam's voice was soft, but her gaze was fierce. "We set Danny up to exist here, pick a new name, and get him back on track."
"And track down Vlad," Danny added. "See if he knows a way to fix this."
Nodding in agreement, Sam stuck the last piece of spaghetti into her mouth and pushed her plate away. She propped her elbows on the table and laced her fingers under chin, a grin drifting onto her face. "But first and foremost," she said, "we need to go shopping. I've wanted to make you go 'Goth' you since I was twelve."
--
"A glass of spring water and a roast chicken salad please," the holographic program ordered for its master, smiling at the waiter and folding its hands in its lap. When Matthew opened his mouth to argue, it merely glared at him. "You need to watch your cholesterol intake, Honey."
Matthew grumbled silently after he nodded his agreement to the waiter, momentarily debating turning off the hologram. But whenever he looked into its violet eyes and listened to its sophisticatedly programmed laugh, he always found an excuse to leave it on. The woman it was modeled on was long dead and buried, but his emotions were still alive in his ancient heart.
It was just a hologram… but it wasn't in so many ways.
"Are you going to search for the new halfa?" the hologram asked, its eyes twinkling in the light.
Matthew shook his head. Although he couldn't find a single problem with the small sensor that had detected another halfa in Amity Park, he couldn't bring himself to actually believe it. Since Daniel's disappearance and Danielle's death, he'd been alone and he fully planned on being alone for the rest of his life. There was no new halfa in Amity Park. There couldn't be. "No," he grunted.
"Do you want to visit the cemetery again?"
"No." Matthew's eyes drifted to the other patrons of the small café, watching them chat with each other.
"Isn't that Mrs. Madel?"
Matthew's head jerked around, his eyes fixing on the woman walking past the café's window. He'd kept an eye on Daniel's best friend over the years, always assuming when Daniel reappeared from his mysterious vanishing act, she would be the first he would visit. Even though he hadn't seen her in decades, he easily recognized her vivid eyes. "Yes it is," he murmured, ignoring the waiter that appeared over his shoulder to place a glass of water on his table.
Taking a small sip, his eyes drifted to the man escorting her around town. "And there's her son," he continued, almost talking to himself. "Why she chose to adopt a boy named 'Daniel' I will never understand. That's got to do nothing but bring back memories." Which is why I will never again get a cat named Maddie, Matthew thought to himself.
"Who's the last one?" the hologram asked, cocking its head to the side as a teenager dressed in black clothes followed the two adults, arms loaded with bags. "Based on similarities of appearance, I assume that Daniel had a son?"
Matthew stared out the window for a long moment, remaining completely silent even after the trio had passed the café. Disregarding the hologram's question completely, Matthew felt a very Vlad-like smile cross his face. "Now that's interesting."
To be continued...