Day 21 - Shatter
Summary: What if losing his powers had never been Danny's choice? (Phantom Planet AU)
Tucker glanced anxiously at Sam. "Are you gonna knock?"
She scoffed, but it was half-hearted at best. "It's Danny, when have we ever knocked to come in?"
"Then, why aren't you going in?" he retorted, raising an eyebrow. He could call her bluff far too easily like this, when she donned her bravado to hide her own anxiety.
Still, he couldn't blame her. These waters were treacherous, and they were some that the three of them had never thought they would cross. He knew perfectly well that she didn't know how to approach the situation (a rarity for someone as confident as Sam Manson), but it was because he felt the exact same way.
After knowing Danny for more than a decade, he figured he was prepared to help his best friend through anything. Really, the three of them knew each other backwards and forwards; usually so well to the point where they would absolutely blow everyone out of the water during those "dating game" ice-breaker things they would do at camps and such. So it wasn't normal for him - for either of them - to feel so far out of their depth that they didn't know what to do or say.
As far as he could remember, he and Sam had only found themselves in this same situation once - back during the first couple of weeks after Danny had the accident that made him half-ghost. After all, what are you supposed to say to comfort your friend when they die? It's not like either of them could relate.
It's not like either of us can relate now, he thought quietly. He had no idea how to put himself in Danny's shoes, especially after going through this most recent situation.
He exhaled shakily and, without thinking, grabbed Sam's hand. Normally, she'd recoil from the physical contact, but she gripped his hand back like it was her lifeline. Their eyes met, and the unspoken message was there. We do it together.
They both gave a curt nod, and then Sam carefully edged Danny's door open.
"Danny?" she called quietly into the dark room. "You in here?"
"Jazz said you'd be here, and I don't think she'd lie to us," Tucker joked nervously. He couldn't help it; he was the kind of guy that needed any humor he could get when dealing with a heavy situation.
Danny was, in fact, in his room, sitting at his desk with the curtains drawn and the lights off. He had his star-studded comforter draped over his head and wrapped tightly around his shoulders. A couple of half-eaten Chinese takeout containers and empty Mountain Dew bottles cluttered his desk, though his laptop still sat open in front of him with some Nat Geo documentary on Saturn playing quietly.
Tucker did his best to avoid cringing as he remembered the encounter with Vlad a week or two ago that Danny had told them about - some sort of fight over the Infi-Map on the outer rings of Saturn. Naturally, he and Sam hadn't been able to go, what with their human needs like warmth and oxygen. He wondered if it was really the best idea for him to be wallowing in things that would remind him of Vlad, considering what had happened.
When Danny heard them enter, he turned. Dark, heavy bags weighed under his eyes, and his skin looked chalkier than normal. Still, he managed to muster a frail smile for his friends. "Hey guys," he said hoarsely.
"Hey Danny," Sam replied. "We just - well, we haven't heard from you since… you know…"
"We just wanted to check in on you," Tucker picked up when Sam trailed off.
Danny's eyes pierced through them like knives, but the look wasn't one of anger or accusation. Slowly, he nodded and flicked his eyes to the side. "Jazz told you what happened then…" he said, his voice quiet.
"And we're glad she did," Sam said as she sat on the edge of Danny's bed. Tucker took a seat beside her. "We're worried about you. We had no idea Vlad had figured out how to do something like that."
"Me neither," Danny muttered. He pulled his knees up to his chest, making him look even smaller. "I just… it's…"
The room fell into an uneasy silence. As Tucker kept careful eyes on both Sam and Danny, he chewed his lip. Frankly, he'd expected more pushback from Danny. He loved his best friend to death, but he knew he could be a bit of a stubborn jerk sometimes. And sometimes, Stubborn Jerk Danny liked to try and put up walls of defense between himself and the people worried about him.
This was an entirely different Danny, though. This Danny was devoid of hope and life, as though someone had come in and sucked all his vitality away.
(It wasn't too far off from what had really happened, all things considered.)
Danny sighed and buried his chin into his knees. "I don't have some sort of plan to fix it, if that's what you wanted to hear," he said. "It's just… It's over guys."
"Don't say that!" Sam insisted. "There's no way… I mean, he can't have actually done it, can he?"
Danny only held one of his hands in front of his face and stared at it intently. Tucker got the feeling something was supposed to be happening - invisibility, intangibility, anything - but the hand stubbornly refused to change.
As the seconds ticked by, Danny's face grew stormier until he finally shouted in exasperation and let his hand fall. "See? It's like I said. I've been trying to get it to do something, anything for days now and nothing. It's all gone. I can't even feel -" he stopped abruptly and swallowed thickly, holding a fist over his sternum. Tucker couldn't hide the wince this time; he knew what Danny was referring to, and if he wasn't feeling it at all…
"There has to be something left," Sam said. Desperation was starting to creep into her voice, and the blankets on Danny's bed began to bunch up under her grip. "Even when you split yourself, it was never a clean split! There was always something left!"
Danny's eyes were fixed on a pair of jeans lying haphazardly on the floor, but they were distant. He shook his head absently. "We tried, me and Jazz," he whispered. "We even looked at a bit of my blood, and it's… normal. No ectoplasm or anything."
At this point, Sam looked like she was about to cry, which shook Tucker almost as much as Danny's news. "Dude, I… I'm so sorry," he said, not sure what else to say. He'd been at a similar loss for words more than a year ago, when part of Danny had died in that portal.
What could he say now that Danny had un-died?
"And because the portal was shut down, he was able to destroy it," Danny was saying. "I've been trying to figure out how to get to Frostbite, or Clockwork, or someone, I don't care if it's the freaking Box Ghost. I need…"
"I'm gonna kill him," Sam growled. "He's a sick, twisted little -"
"Whatever you're gonna say," Danny interrupted, "Jazz has probably already said it for you. The only reason she didn't try to tear Vlad apart when he did it is because she didn't know if he'd just actually killed me or not."
"Then I'll tell everyone! What's he gonna do, spill your secret? I could call down to Station 7 right now and -"
"Tell them what? What proof do we have?" Tucker surprised himself with his interruption. Judging by Sam and Danny's wide eyes, they'd been caught off guard too. "He can just deny it, and he still has other ways to get back at Danny."
"I don't care! He'll have to get through me first!" Sam shouted. "I can't believe you're saying we should just lie down and take this!"
Tucker frowned. "Do not start with that. I didn't say anything like that; you're putting words in my mouth again! I'm just… trying to be realistic."
"Okay, fine, but 'realistic' doesn't mean there's nothing we can do!" Sam jumped to her feet and pointed an accusatory finger at Tucker. "I get that you're trying to temper expectations or whatever, but you can't just shut things down like that!"
"Like what? I said one thing! And you just started jumping down my throat!"
"Well maybe if you'd let me finish my sentence, you -"
"Enough!" Danny thundered, startling his two arguing friends into silence.
Well, it was part of the reason they fell so immediately quiet.
In his anger and desperation to stop them arguing, Danny had sprung out of his seat when he shouted, and in the process, the comforter which had been so tightly wrapped around his head and shoulders fell in a heap at his feet. Without the blanket, Tucker and Sam could see where his head had originally been covered, and what they saw stunned them just as much as his outburst.
A pure, jagged bolt of white streaked through his black hair. It started somewhere towards the back of his skull, where the hair began to sweep forward instead of down, emerging like a shooting star through a night sky. It followed the contour of his hair and into his bangs, falling just to the side of his left eye.
Sam was the first to react. She gingerly reached forward and laid a gentle touch to the white streak. Danny flinched when he realized what the two of them had seen, but he still allowed her to get close.
"Oh Danny…" she whispered, her voice thick and devoid of all the heat it'd held just moments before.
"Oh my God," Tucker muttered. A wave of dizziness and nausea swept over him. For some reason, Danny's loss, his trauma hadn't truly hit him until he saw the awful reminder of what had once been. Now, seeing the aftermath of Vlad's cruelty, the impacts nearly overwhelmed him.
Danny Phantom was gone. Danny Fenton was left, broken beyond recognition.
Danny wrapped his arms around himself. "I'm sorry," he whispered, his voice cracking. Tears prickled in the corners of his eyes. "I can't… I-I'm just…"
In one motion, Sam swept him into a tight hug. Tucker was an instant behind her. Danny started, but then sniffed and leaned into their embrace. Seconds later, he broke down entirely and sobbed into Sam's shoulder. The sound broke Tucker's heart clean in half.
He didn't know how long they stood like that, him and Sam holding onto Danny's weeping form like they'd lose him if they let go. At some point, he didn't know when, they'd moved to their knees, and Tucker draped the comforter around the three of them. Eventually, as Danny's cries tapered off, they found themselves in some sort of three-person pile. Danny had his head in Sam's lap, and she combed her fingers through his hair gently. Tucker pressed himself against Danny's back and rested his cheek against Sam's shoulder.
As they laid there, Tucker couldn't tear his eyes away from that cursed streak. The way it rippled and parted around Sam's fingers only reinforced the fact that this wasn't some nightmare they would just wake up from. Vlad really had found a way to forcibly revert Danny's half-ghost status. And now…
Danny's cries died into hiccups and sniffles. A heavy silence fell around the three of them, only broken when Sam placed a hand against his cheek and whispered, "Hey." Watery blue eyes looked up and backwards to meet her own; she made eye contact with Tucker too before speaking again.
"We're right here, Danny. We're not going anywhere." Her voice was tender yet firm with the sincerity of her words. Tucker reinforced them by taking Danny's hand and squeezing it. "We're gonna get through this, Phantom or not. We don't care what it takes or how long."
Tucker could tell by the look in Danny's eyes that he wanted to smile back and thank them, but he couldn't muster enough to do so. Instead, he closed his eyes and relaxed further into their loving touch. "I don't know what I'd do without you guys," he whispered.
The moment was interrupted by the harsh jangle of Tucker's PDA ringtone. Cursing under his breath, he pulled it out of his pocket. "I forgot I still have news alerts turned on," he said as he swiped to open the notification. Both Danny and Sam craned their necks to see as Tiffany Snow's face loaded onto the screen.
"We interrupt this broadcast to bring you breaking news from NASA and the Department of Defense. A major asteroid, originating from Saturn's orbit, has been forecasted to make direct impact with Earth…"
I'll catch up eventually lol