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/gah/ I can always tell when I've forgotten to update in awhile when the list gets that long...

I'm Still Here
A Danny Phantom FanFiction by Cordria

Chapter Eight

Danny's brain hurt even before he was fully awake – the light was pounding through his eyelids and his entire body was aching. It eventually crossed his mind that he was lying on something soft, probably a bed, and that there was the annoying sound of typing in the background. Each click of the keys slammed through his brain like sledgehammers.

Why he was lying in a bed with someone typing was beyond him. He couldn't get his mind to do anything other than groan in pain. Eventually he must have made a noise, as the irritating noises suddenly ceased and there was the sound of a chair squeaking.

"There's an aspirin by the bed if you want it."

He winced away from the voice, feeling the ache of the movement through every muscle. He used the wince to grab the pillow under his head and move it over his head, hoping to block out the horrible light and sounds.

There was a sound of a heavy breath being let out and someone moved across the room. Danny felt the presence settle onto the bed next to him, heard the slight clink of a glass being picked up. "Daniel," the voice said, patient frustration obvious.

Danny moaned and attempted to bury himself deeper into the soft bed. Why did his head hurt so much?

The pillow vanished suddenly, the light suddenly burning even through Danny's closed eyes. "Up," the voice commanded, a hand physically grabbing the back of his neck and pulling him upright despite Danny's half-conscious protests. "I know it hurts; I'm trying to help you." Something small and round was pushed past his lips, then the cold of a glass pressed against his mouth. "Swallow, Daniel."

Figuring his best chance of getting to hide again was to simply do as he was asked, Danny took a mouthful of the water and swallowed the small pill. The hand released him, allowing him to sink back to the bed and pull the blanket over his head.

The voice chuckled slightly, somehow introducing a patronizing sound to it, and the presence left his side. "Give it a few minutes. Yell at me when you're ready."

Danny figured that was a great idea. He burrowed himself deeper into the blankets, brushed away the mystery of where he was and why he was there, and allowed himself to drift back into unconsciousness.

Daniel Madel stifled a bit of a yawn as he walked into the restaurant, scanning for his mother. The number of times Daniel received frantic phone calls from Sam could be counted on one hand, so when the worried call had come in that his teenage father/uncle/whatever had disappeared (again), he had found a way to skip out of work for a few hours. He finally found her, sitting stiffly in a booth with Jazz.

"Mom," he greeted, sliding into the seat next to her with a bit of a smile. "Mrs. Carter."

His grin grew a little at the annoyed look his aunt-ish family member gave him. "I've told you before that I will hunt you down if you call me that again," Jazz said, a dark look in her eyes. "Any son of Sam's will not call me 'Mrs. Carter."

Daniel didn't believe a word she said, but he nodded seriously anyways. "What's up?"

"Danny's missing." Sam looked up at him, her violet eyes full of worry. "I was hoping you could help me look for him."

Daniel quirked his eyebrow. "Why would I know where he was hiding? I've met him for a grand total of four hours." His mother shot him a level look and Daniel sighed a little. "Fine, fine," he muttered, pushing himself to his feet and holding out a hand. "I'll drive you around."

Sam's face eased slightly, smiling a little. "I know a few places we can check." Reaching out to take his hand, she slowly got to her feet. "Jazz is going to stay here for a little bit longer to make sure he doesn't come back."

"Excellent plan," Daniel said softly as he lead his mother through the restaurant. He turned back to send his almost-aunt a wave before pushing open the doors and heading out into the sunlight.

"And," Sam added with a conspiratorial wink once the door was safely closed behind them, "you can use your talents to help."

With a little sound in his throat and a slight roll of his eyes, Daniel pointed to his car and followed his eighty-something mother across the parking lot. If his father/uncle was trapped in a dark room and needed a flashlight or if he needed a prescription filled, Daniel was perfect for the job. But when it came to anything else?

He blew some of the hair out of his eyes. "Great," he muttered.

The next time Danny opened his eyes, his body hurt considerably less than it had. He groaned slightly and curled up beneath the warm comforter, then pushed himself up and looked around, blinking.

A hotel room. A fancy one, too, with a flat-screen television and expensive-looking furniture. The curtains over the window, half-drawn to cover the setting sun, looked thick and luxurious.

Danny's eyebrows wrinkled as he examined his surroundings, trying to figure out where he was. A glance at the clock reinforced the information he'd already gotten from the window, that it was late evening, but nothing more than that. He remembered hurting. He remembered being at the diner with Sam…

"Oh yeah," he muttered as the knowledge that he was trapped in the future came slicing back into his mind. Rubbing the grit out of his eyes, he pushed at the depressed feeling that momentarily swamped his heart. The feeling didn't go away, it never went away, but at least he could move it out of the way and ignore it for awhile longer.

The diner. Watching people play that strange computer game. Sam and Jazz talking over his head like he was just a child who couldn't handle himself. His moth-

"Vlad." The word came out as a growl, looking around the hotel with a gleam in his eye. But the fruit loop was nowhere to be seen. "Vlad!" Danny called out.

"Yes, Daniel?"

Danny got to his feet, nearly tripping over a blanket that had gotten trapped around his ankles. His eyes scanned the room, searching for the source of that voice. "Where are you?"

A snort sounded and Danny looked up towards the corner of the room, his gaze catching on a speaker set into the ceiling. "Do you seriously believe I'd be in the room with you when you woke up?"

Hovering for a moment, Danny determined that yes, the sound was coming from the speakers, and dropped back onto the bed with scowl. "Where are you?"

"Elsewhere," the voice said. "But if you calm down and listen for a few minutes, I'll tell you."

"You'll tell me?" Danny repeated sarcastically.

The TV screen flickered on, an image of Vlad Masters – a much-older-than-Danny-was-used-to Vlad Masters – settling into place. He was sitting on a bed much like the one in Danny's hotel room, his legs crossed, an expressionless look on his face. "I will. If you want to beat up an old man later, that would be your prerogative."

"Prerog…" Danny started, but then shook his head and stalked up to the TV, glaring into his archenemy's eyes. "I hate you; why should I listen to you?"

"Because I have the answers to your questions." Something unidentifiable flickered across the old man's face. "And I do… apologize… for the deception."

That got Danny to blink and settle back on his heels a moment. "You apologize?"

"It didn't occur to me that seeing a facsimile of your mother would cause you so much distress. I hadn't meant to upset you like that; I know how much her death hurts." For just a moment, an emotion that looked like grief and true sorrow slid through the older halfa's eyes. But it was gone almost as fast as it had come.

"How'd she die?" The question was wrenched from Danny's lips without thought. It had been a question he'd wanted to ask Jazz or Sam, but hadn't had the courage to actually say it.

"In her sleep," Vlad said softly. "Neither of your parents suffered, Daniel."

Some small muscle in Danny's shoulders that he hadn't known was tensed relaxed at that knowledge. He swallowed and looked down at the floor, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly. Four days, now, since he'd learned of their deaths. Four days since he'd been orphaned.

He wasn't even beginning to process that knowledge or cope with it, but a second breath had the emotions and the information tucked further back into a corner of his brain. He'd think about being alone in this world later.

For now, he needed to deal with one really old enemy. "What do you want?"

Vlad Masters studied the screen in his room as Daniel stared at his feet. As much as Daniel hated having weaknesses, he hated letting someone else know what they were even more. Vlad was well aware of how much Daniel cared for his family and how much it must have hurt to find them gone.

After all these years, Vlad had started to think of Daniel as an adult. Perhaps it was natural progression as the decades went past, Vlad instinctively aging his young protégé in his mind, or perhaps it was just wishful thinking on his part. But it shocked him in many ways to see Daniel like this.

A child. An orphaned child, on top of it all.

It almost tugged at his heart.

When Daniel looked up, there was a blaze in his blue eyes. His shoulders were squared and his jaw was set. Vlad shook his head slightly at how fast Daniel had pushed all those emotions out of the picture. That couldn't be healthy for a child to do. "What do you want?" the boy demanded.

"You spent seventy years in the Fenton Thermos?"

"Yes," Daniel spat back. "Want to know what it's like?"

Vlad smiled and leaned back slightly. "Not particularly. I'd much rather know how much you know about the Ghost Zone."

"It's gone, I know that."

"No it's not," Vlad corrected. "The ghosts are gone. Or, more accurately, the old ghosts are gone. New ghosts are continually forming."

Daniel made a slicing motion with his hand. "Close enough." He hesitated, his forehead creasing. "But I was right, then? New ghosts are still showing up?"

"Yes. The device used to 'reformat' the Ghost Zone was actually a singular pulse that disrupted the ability of the ectoplasm to stick together. The ghosts melted back into the base plasma that had formed them in the first place. But it only worked on ghosts that it touched – any ghost formed after the pulse wouldn't suffer from its effects."

"What's your point?"

Vlad felt his smile twist into something a bit more real. He had really missed Daniel's bluntness and the excitement of the give-and-take of two rivals on opposite sides of a cause. "There are still ghosts out there. There are still natural portals. Those ghosts are still going to find you eventually."

Daniel crossed his arms over his chest and scowled, full of teenage bravado. "So? I could handle them before, I can handle them now."

"I'm sure you can," Vlad murmured.

"None of this answers the question of what you want," Daniel said. "I'm sure you're not chasing me down for my health."

"No, I'm not," Vlad agreed, getting to his feet and gazing into the earnest face of the young half-ghost. There was quite a bit of the story Daniel was missing – a story that Vlad would never tell him – and Vlad already knew the outcome of the question he was about to ask. Without experiencing all those years of loneliness, of living through the deaths of anyone who could be considered a 'friend', of being trapped when everyone else moved on… Daniel couldn't possibly comprehend the correct answer to the question.

And there was no way that the boy would ever know how much this one question meant to an old hermit.

Vlad took a slight breath and tipped his head to the side, making sure to narrow his eyes in the way his younger self would have all those decades earlier. He carried an air of diffidence, of confidence, of being the ruler of the entire universe. None of which was true, not anymore. "I'm offering you a life."

The boy on the screen arched a skeptical eyebrow.

"A new name, a new future, your past erased more completely than your 'friends' could possibly accomplish. The funds to have a life here, the stability of a place to live free of the hang-ups your past." Vlad watched Daniel stiffen, the instantaneous 'never in a billion years' already forming on the boy's lips. "Samantha Madel, Jasmine Carter. They're not the people you remember. They've lived their entire lives, Daniel, and you're not a part of them anymore."

The quiet flicker of pain on Daniel's face told Vlad that he may have hit a bit of a nerve with that one. "How can you possibly rejoin a life that left you behind seven decades ago? It's never going to work."

"If it works or not isn't your problem," Daniel said softly, his body tight and anger on his face. But he didn't leave. He just stood there and stared into the television screen.

Vlad pressed his lips together. Arguments fluttered through his mind like high-speed jets; each of them could be used to convince Daniel to come live with him. Not the least of which were the rumors he'd been hearing about a certain temporally-challenged ghost seen in California or the knowledge that Vlad was the only person in the world who had a chance of finding that strange map of the Ghost Zone – one which could lead Daniel to a portal that opened in a time closer to home.

However, the rumors came from dubious sources that never seemed to pan out and that ghostly map had probably gone the way of everything else in the Ghost Zone. While all of his arguments were true, they would, in all likelihood, lead nowhere. Empty promises. Pipe dreams. A means to the end of having Daniel come live with him.

Vlad, in a show of just how much seventy years had done to him, chose not to say any of them. "The offer's there, Daniel."

"Yeah, and what do you want in return?" Daniel shot back.

"Nothing," Vlad said honestly. "Come and live a new life with me, and that's it. No repayment. No doing anything for me, no experiments, no nothing."

Daniel waited a beat, seeming to stare him right in the eyes. Distrust and anger burned brightly enough inside the young teenager for Vlad to see it through the camera. "I think I'll pass."

Vlad nodded. "You can go, but my offer stays open."

There was a long moment of tense silence. "I thought you were going to tell me where you were," Daniel said, cocking an eyebrow at the screen, his fists tight against his sides.

Settling down on the bed, Vlad sighed and picked up the remote control. "I'm across the hall. Room 135." Simultaneously shutting off the TV, camera, and sound feeds, Vlad quietly waited for his young rival to arrive. After seventy years, Vlad wasn't at all confident he could win a straight-out fight against the teenager.

But Daniel never showed up.

Somewhere, a few miles outside of Amity Park, a streak of green cut through the air. Ectoplasm started to leak out of the rend in the fabric of reality, hissing into a noxious vapor the second it contact the rest world. Red eyes gleamed from beyond the portal, the glint of the battered Fenton Thermos being carried in clawed hands.

As a laugh of pure evilness echoed through the clearing, everything went silent.

It was into the stillness of death that Dark Dan Phantom stepped into the real world for the first time in nearly forty years.

To be continued...