Last Thing I Remembered
By: Wilona Riva
Disclaimer: Butch Hartman does; I don't.
Sucking Light
Madame De Roche left the room with a smug smirk on her bluish face. Danny grimaced and looked down at his outfit for the ball. Plucking at the strange fabric, he looked up with terrified eyes at Bullet and whispered, "Is this necessary?"
"Yes," came the strained reply. Bullet had answered this question about 50 times already. "You have recently attained the rank of a knight, in Aragon's eyes, and as a knight you shall appear."
"But I'm too young to be a knight!" Danny protested. "Shouldn't I be a page or a squire or something?"
Bullet pinched his nose. "Your skills are still growing, Phantom, but this is the rank Walker wishes for you to appear. Medieval fashions stink at times, so just deal with it."
"Fine," Danny said, looking at himself in the mirror and made a face of disgust at his reflection. If going to a fancy dress party wearing dark green hose, and a white bliaut with full skirts and wide sleeves. His under tunic was green-and-white striped. A leather belt with silver and gold Celtic knotwork held it close. He wasn't going to get started on the itchy undergarments he was wearing, but was very glad Walker hadn't insisted on chain mail or armor.
"Ah, here, this is what is missing!" Madame De Roche's Italian lilt stopped Bullet from biting back a sarcastic answer. She held out to Danny a pair of dark leather laced ankle boots.
"Um, Bullet...?"
"Just put it on, Phantom," came the exasperated reply.
The lights flickered on in the lab when Danny emerged from the Fenton Portal an hour after midnight; the periwinkle eyes of his mother flicker to the parcels in his hands.
"Do I want to know?" she asked.
"Fancy medieval costume party that Walker is making me get dressed up for," Danny growled in reply. "It's on the night of the school dance, so I can't go to that."
"You could go for a little while," Maddie reassured him. "It would mean a lot to Sam, and your father. It is your first high school dance, Danny."
"I should have just overshadowed Mr. Lancer," Danny muttered.
Danny, of course, forgot his mother had very sharp hearing. "Overshadow?" She grabbed Danny and yanked him over to the steel work table in the corner where a lot of strange instruments in various stages of completion were stacked in a neat, disorderly heap.
Grabbing a long steel rod, she adjusted a few knobs and then scanned him head-to-toe. Danny paled as the humming increased, and then followed a period of silence with an affirmative chiming sound.
"A ghost?" she looked in confusion from the instrument in her hand to her son and back again. She released Danny and backed up slowly from him, fear in her eyes.
"Daniel, explain."
Her son closed his eyes and bowed his head. "I'm sorry, Mom." Without any further words, he turned, grabbed the parcels and ran back through the portal.
Footsteps on the stairs followed a minute later, shadows revealing her husband in a bright orange-and-black spandex suit with a white-and-pink nightshirt over it. "Maddie, what are you doing up this late at night? It's after midnight."
"Danny," she whispered, voice harsh in the still quiet of the lab.
"What about Danny?" Jack demanded, blue eyes flickering to the rolling swirls of the portal's entrance. "He went into the portal, didn't he?"
His wife nodded.
"Evil ghosties aren't allowed to kidnap Jack Fenton's son!" Jack shouted, reaching for the Fenton Fisher.
"Jack, wait!" Maddie exclaimed.
"Aww, Mads!"
"There's something you need to know about Danny."
Jack froze, staring at his wife. "What?"
"Danny wasn't kidnapped by ghosts. He is a ghost; I think he's been a ghost since he got the portal running."
"The accident," Jack whispered, dropping his arms to his side, weariness overcoming him. "So now what are we going to do?"
"I don't know," Maddie told him. "We just have to wait until he comes home."
"Ghost, human, or something in between, " Jack told her, pulling her tenderly close. "He is our son."
"Thank you, Jack."
A shadow at the top of the stairs retreated silently back to her room.
Author's Note:
Sorry about not updating and/or answering reviews as often as I should have been. I've been lax about checking email for various reason, not necessarily including the following: family visiting, trying to book the reception hall for my wedding next spring, the neverending crochet projects, etc. I'll be working on the back log of email over the next week, so hopefully I'll have another update for you soon.