lmao - it's been awhile since I started crying while writing something. Beware the ending of this one.

Thanks to Captain Deadpool, star1095, dannahfenton, Super-Berry, FreezeFlame666, Donteatacowman, Garnet Sky, Night's Fire, Pii, Amazing Bluie, dragondancer123, YumeTakato Miriam1, Random Flyer, Anemone-the-Bored, irezel, Teribane, Kitty Ghost, The Feral Candy Cane, prophetofgreed, Echoheart, Angelus-alvus, PinkPanther123, stick fight3, Biisaiyowaq, Shadeslayer35, AnneriaWings, Invader Johnny, Salamander Hanzo, Lady Canu, and Nylah for the reviews!

I'm Still Here
A Danny Phantom Fanfiction by Cordria

Chapter Nine

Sam scowled when the headlights illuminated a familiar shape slouching down the sidewalk. His hands were stuffed into his pockets and his focus was clearly on his feet. "There he is," she said, pointing, her frustration boiling to the surface in her voice.

"He looks like he's been having a great day," her son muttered, pulling the car over. "Kinda like mine."

A light punch to his arm caused him to roll his eyes, but Sam barely noticed. Her window lowered and she stuck her head out to grill her newly-located target. "Where have you been?"

The boy flinched visibly before glancing over his shoulder to take in his pursuers. "Hey, Sam."

"It's been," she hesitated long enough to check the clock, "seven and a half hours! We're sick of driving around."

Danny shrugged and gazed at them, apparently not catching onto her unspoken desire for him to get in the car so she could go home. "So?"

Sam's teeth clenched a bit tighter. "Where've you been?"

"Don't want to talk about it," he said softly, his head dropping to stare at the ground again.

"You don't want to talk about it," Sam repeated, startled. A momentary flicker of pain went through her at that simple statement – Danny used to say that a lot, but never to her. Leaning out the window, she managed to snag the edge of his sleeve. "Come on, Danny, get in the car."

He shuffled a bit further away from her, releasing his shirt from her grasp. "I wanna walk," he said, turning around and continuing his way up the street.

Sam blinked in surprise at his distant manner, managing to lean a bit more out the window as she stared at her long-lost best friend. Something was very definitely up with him and a worm of worry worked its way into Sam's almost-ninety-year-old heart. "Danny?"

Without another word, Danny vanished from view.

"Mom," came the voice of her son after a moment when Sam didn't pull herself back into the car. She was staring at the empty sidewalk in dismay, waiting for Danny to reappear.

Finally she rearranged herself in her seat and refastened her seatbelt, a sad look on her face. "Time really does change things," she said softly, feeling the weight of their years apart settling onto her shoulders for the first time since they'd been reunited. Somewhere inside she'd known this was coming, but it saddened her that it was happening already.

"What do you mean?" Daniel asked, putting the car into drive and whirring back into the street.

She swallowed heavily, staring blankly out the window. "He's never said that to me before," she finally whispered. "And," she continued with a morose chuckle, "I always used to have this sense about where he was. Invisible or not, I could always find him – I could see him in a way most people couldn't."

"You just did it again. You're the one who said to turn down this street."

"No." Sam shook her head, her eyes glistening with unshed tears. "That was random chance. I can't see him anymore." She sighed. "He's pulling away from me, just like he used to hide from everyone else when we were kids."

The silence from the driver's seat did nothing to assuage the pain that was eating into the old woman's heart. "He's sixteen," the blue-eyed man finally said, as if pointing out how young and inexperienced Danny was would somehow make everything better.

"Exactly," Sam said softly.

Danny made it to Sam's house in the darkest part of the night, long after Sam had been dropped off by her son. She was asleep in a chair in the living room, a quilt thrown over her body, her wrinkled face looking much older in the deep shadows caused by the moonlight. Danny hesitated on his way up the stairs, watching her for a long few moments with his hands stuffed into his pockets and a morose set to his body.

Finally he wrenched his eyes away and quietly went up the stairs to the room Sam had let him borrow. Bags from their shopping trip the day before were still on the ground, most of it still folded and packed with tags on it. "This isn't home either," he whispered, stepping past the bags to sink onto the unfamiliar bed. "And Vlad's right. That's not my Sam… or Jazz either."

He curled up around one of the pillows and lay there for the longest time, staring out the half-opened window at the moon. "I want to go home."

Tears leaked out of his eyes even though he wasn't truly crying. Homesickness was stirring so strongly in his stomach it was almost painful. Perhaps it said something about how hurt he was that he risked saying his next words aloud: "I wish I could go home."

But there was no Desiree and there were no wishes. There was no home anymore to go to. The slight buzz of happiness from finding Sam and Jazz was wearing off now that he saw the truth: they weren't really there either. It was just two strangers with seventy-year-old faded memories.

Eventually, he drifted into a lonely sleep by the light of the moon.

He woke up before Sam the next morning, his stomach complaining loudly enough to chase away any thought other than 'locate food'. After having skipped out on the lunch the day before and having spent supper unconscious in Vlad's hotel room, Danny figured it had every reason to grumble. He ended up in the spider-decorated kitchen, scanning the shelves for something that looked remotely interesting.

"Awesome," he whispered when he found the cereal he'd eaten yesterday – which wasn't his favorite ever but it was better than the oatmeal that populated the rest of Sam's breakfast food – and poured himself a large bowl. Milk went on top of the nearly overflowing cereal and a spoon was gently added before the entire, heaping creation was carried carefully to the table.

Settling down into the hard seat, Danny spooned the cereal greedily into his mouth, licking his lips and wiping off the occasional dribble of milk off his chin with his arm. He was most of the way through the bowl before his mind was finally able to settle onto something other than 'feed me'.

This was officially his sixth day in his new time period. Less than a week since he'd found himself orphaned, friendless, and lost. His hand hesitated on its way towards his mouth, the spoonful of milk dripping onto the table. He shook his head and banished the thought, forcing the cereal into his mouth and chewing. It didn't do any good to dwell on what couldn't be changed.

Instead, his mind sent him a picture of Vlad and startlingly clear memories of what the fruitloop had said to him the previous evening. Danny gritted his teeth, rolling his eyes a bit when he heard Vlad's voice whisper, "How can you possibly rejoin a life that left you behind seven decades ago?"

"Leave me alone," he muttered darkly, fully aware that he was completely alone in the kitchen and that Vlad was miles away.

The thought wouldn't leave him alone, despite his demand. Danny's gaze swept the kitchen, hanging up on a few pictures of the life Sam had lived – and he hadn't. His old life was gone just as surely as Sam's teenage life wasn't going to come back.

He dropped his spoon into the almost-empty bowl and crossed his arms, sitting back in his chair with a faint scowl. "I hate it when Vlad's right." The sarcastic and angry set to his words belied just how much that admittance still stung.

His old life was over. He needed to find a new one and, more and more, Danny was coming to realize that new life wouldn't – couldn't – have anything to do with Sam and Jazz.

Dumping his bowl into the sink, he slunk through the living room, pausing to glance at the old woman who used to be his best friend, then continued on up the stairs and into the room he'd been given. He'd located what looked like a TV remote earlier and he was determined to lose his troubles in some brainless television show. Now he only needed to find the TV.

Vlad Masters had no such trouble with televisions. Not only was the one in his hotel room one of the older, cheaper styles – one that actually had a physical screen rather than holograms over a projector – but he'd spent the greater part of two decades owning the business that had invented and marketed the latest holographic televisions. He seemed just as determined to lose himself in a TV show as Daniel that morning, but there was apparently nothing on that fit the bill.

"News, news, infomercial," he muttered, flipping through the channels with an annoyed growl, pausing to watch the 'greatest invention in vacuums since cyclone technology'. "You'd think they'd eventually pass a law to ban those things from the air."

"Yes, Sweetie," his personal hologram agreed, appearing to be lounging on the bed next to him. "Perhaps you could order a movie?"

Vlad scowled at the TV, flipping quickly through the next ten channels. "You need to watch a movie and I'm not in the mood to watch something."

The hologram arched an eyebrow. "I don't understand. If you don't want to watch something, why don't you turn off the television?"

"I don't want to," he said darkly, settling on a channel lost in commercials, waiting to see what the show as about. "There's got to be something on to watch."

Shaking its head, the hologram turned its head towards the TV screen in order to appear to be 'watching' and quietly set its system to start a daily diagnostic check and system backup. It didn't understand a lot of things Vlad did and it had long since determined that it wasn't worth trying to figure out. Its processors were better used in other ways.

"Daniel's still an idiot," Vlad suddenly said, the TV shutting off with a small blip. "After seventy years, he still acts just like his father."

"Didn't he spend those seventy years essentially stuck in stasis?" the hologram put in. "How was he supposed to change during that time?"

Vlad glowered at his hologram, a snarl in the back of his throat. "Why can't he see that he can't be who he used to be?"

The hologram, who didn't have the programming to predict how adult humans would act – much less teenage ones – stayed quiet.

"I'm offering him everything, Maddie, and he doesn't want it. He doesn't appreciate anything that I want to do for him." Vlad's fingers gripped tightly at the covers on the bed, anger and frustration warring in his mind. "Just like he used to."

"Then let's just go home," the hologram interjected, tipping its head and smiling. "Matthew has seventy-three messages on his voicemail. One of which is that author trying to write that new biography on Vlad Masters – didn't you want to do that?"

Vlad ran a hand through his hair and sighed. "After all these years, Maddie…"

The hologram made a small leap in logic and determined that Vlad didn't want to leave, despite his frustration at the only thing keeping him in Amity Park. "Then shall I inform the hotel we'll be staying an extra few nights?"

Danny quietly looked up from the electronic device he'd been reading, glancing up at Sam. She'd insisted that he learn a bit of recent history and had handed him this thing she'd called a book – Danny figured it was more of a computer than a book – and had watched him read with a sad look on her face. That was, until she fell asleep.

A quick peek at the clock informed him that it was only two in the afternoon and he bit his lip. Gently setting down the computer, Danny studied his old friend for a long few seconds. Confident that she was asleep and not just faking it, he floated into the air and vanished through the ceiling, leaving her to take a nap in her chair.

It took only a moment for him to be something other than human and he burst through the roof, shooting up into the sky and twirling a few times. "Finally!" he said, stretching and feeling the warm sun beating down on his face. Setting a course towards downtown, Danny worked his way into the heart of his old town.

He drifted over Lancer Middle School – the name causing him to stop and read the plaque that told how the new school was named after one William Lancer, a teacher who had died defending his students in 2014 from an invasion of ghosts. Danny felt a brief spurt of guilt at not being there to save the old teacher, but then a small smile appeared on his face. "Not forgotten this time," he said, remembering the rather sad memorial Lancer had received during that first, fateful trip into the future.

The new mall was his next stop, wandering through the endless variety of stores with a curious eye. The technology stores were his favorites, trying out the holographic demo games and listening to the odd, screeching music the other teenagers in the store seemed to be enjoying. He even got to watch a demo of the latest in television technology in one of the hallway kiosks – a three dimensional holographic thing with strange, motion-activated controls that Danny thought made the demonstrator look stupid.

"It's not so bad," he muttered, licking an ice cream cone he'd purchased from one of the vendors. He'd worried a little that things would be so different that he'd be completely lost when he was on his own, but things weren't nearly as different as he'd thought they'd be. Sure, the technology had changed and some of the fashions were a little different, but the people were generally the same. Nobody had screamed and pointed at him, demanding to know what decade he was from.

When the ice cream was gone, so was he. The mall vanished behind him as he scouted out the rest of the city, marking down the locations of fast food restaurants and the movie theater in his mind. He flew past his old house, which still caused a flash of pain in his heart, and over the deserted lot that Sam used to call hers. Hesitating just a moment near the tree that he'd spent that awful night perched in, Danny knew where he was headed next.

There were two people he needed to talk to before he could even start putting his old life behind him.

It was a bit more crowded than usual – perhaps due to the fact that it was a Saturday and sunny. He was invisible as he dropped to the ground, his ghost side vanishing before he let himself drift into the visible realm, crouched in front of his parents' gravestones.

"Hey," he said, shifting into a sitting position and tracing their names with his eyes.

The warm, gently curving stones didn't answer.

"I know you can't hear me," he said, flushing a little at the thought of being seen talking to rocks, "but you remember how Dad used to come here and talk to his parents all the time? He told me once that it helped and…"

Danny shrugged and looked up at the sky, letting out a long breath. "I always thought it was kinda stupid and I know I made fun of you for it, but I… Look, it's not like I can talk to you, can I?" He crossed his arms and glanced around.

"Jazz told me about what happened after I disappeared," he said softly, "and how you guys acted. It wasn't your fault, you know, and I don't blame you for it. It's more my fault than anything. I never told you what happened to me and I know I should have." He snorted out a sigh. "If I would have known this was going to happen, trust me, I would've told you."

He was silent for a second, thinking back on the hundreds of chances he'd had to tell his parents and stop this from happening. "I just wanted you to know I was out of the Thermos." He leaned forwards and lightly traced his mother's name, brushing a few pieces of grit away. "And you can stop worrying – if you were, anyways. I'm free and I found Jazz and Sam…"

He trailed off, feeling a rush of sadness and frustration. "Not that it really helps that I found them. They're really different from who they used to be and I'm the same. It's… just… not working." His hand fell from the gravestone and into his lap, his shoulders dropping.

"Mom, Dad, if I could, I'd go home in a heartbeat. There isn't anything in the universe that could stop me from walking up the steps and letting you know that I was okay. You had to live your whole lives not knowing what happened to me and now you'll never know, will you? I can't go back and fix it."

Silence stretched in the graveyard as Danny stared at the headstones with his parents' names cared into them. His mother's was slightly darker than his father's, little flecks of black rock sparkling in the sunlight like tiny black diamonds.

"Vlad told me," he said after a moment, "that the Ghost Zone's still there and those natural portals are still appearing." Eyes flickered towards his hands, then back up. "Did they tell you about Vlad? That he's like me? Apparently we age slower than normal – Vlad's still around." He laughed sourly. "The only person in the world who is still here just like I remember is Vlad Masters. It's like a nightmare."

"He did seem different though," Danny added softly. "Maybe…"

He shook his head, cutting off whatever he'd been thinking. Going down the line of 'maybe Vlad Masters isn't such a bad guy after all' wasn't a healthy way to be thinking. "Portals. I know they travel through space and time," his gaze trained down on his fingers, "and I know that it's entirely possible that there's a portal out there that starts in this time and opens in past."

"But without the Infimap, chances are I'm never going to find it – if it's even there."

The gravestones stood quietly, reassuringly waiting for Danny to continue. A bird sang from a nearby tree, reveling in the warm spring day, but Danny didn't look up.

"I'm not going to look for a portal." The view of his fingers was becoming more and more blurry. "The Infimap doesn't exist anymore and finding that portal – if I ever do – will take my whole life. Besides, if I ever got home, I'd be who-knows-how old." He let out a sad chuckle. "And trust me, the changing of age thing? It matters."

"I can spend my whole life desperately searching for something I probably won't ever find, or I can find a new life and maybe be happy someday." He blinked, looking up at his parents' headstones, his voice raspy. "Believe me, Mom, Dad, if I had a real chance I'd take it an instant. I'd be there."

He swallowed heavily. "I'm sorry," he whispered. "I'm not coming home. I'm never going to be able to tell you I'm okay. This is the best I can do."

"I'm not going to be Danny Fenton anymore. I can't be – not after all this time. I don't know who I'm going to be or where I'm going to end up or what I'm going to do, but I'm not going to forget you. I promise. You'll always be my parents, no matter what."

Tears tried to appear in his eyes, but Danny swiped them away and swallowed past the thickness in his throat. "I love you guys," he whispered, "and I hope, wherever you are, that you know that."

His hands came out to quietly touch both of the headstones, then pushed himself to his feet. "Bye, Mom. Bye, Dad."

Turning around to leave, he could have sworn he heard someone whisper, "It'll all be okay, Sweetheart," but when he turned around there was nothing there. But perhaps it was just the wind.

To be continued...