Dani ran her fingers over the sides of the red velvet armchair. It felt soft enough under her fingers, but when she pressed into the padding underneath it lacked the worn-down feel of the less-expensive-but-infinitely-more-comfortable couches at Fentonworks. This felt. . . untouched. Pristine. And of corse it was. There had been no three-year-old Jazzes to jump up and down on it, no toddler Dannys to use it as a launching pad when he played astronaut, no Jack to sit and play with his ghosthunting dolls and no Maddie to tinker with her inventions while they watched TV. And Dani had never come into this room, she'd been too busy trying to escape the mansion and its suffocating, abandoned atmosphere.

Come to think of it, that was what Vlad had been trying to do as well. Only his escape plan involved trapping other people there with him.

"It's such a shame." Dani whispered to herself. "This place would be great to live in if it wasn't so empty."

"Sorry, what?" Vlad said from his seat on the other side of the fireplace. "I didn't quite catch that."

It was so strange, sitting next to him like this. It was something out of the years past when they'd still been on good terms, when she'd sit in front of one of the mansions many fireplaces and, suddenly, Vlad would be there with some marshmallows. He was the one who'd taught her how to make s'mores, the one who'd first been there for her, before Danny and everybody else. . .

"Nothing." Dani said quietly. "I didn't say anything."

Vlad gave her a long, heavy look at her over his shoulder, firelight reflecting in his pale blue eyes and spraying sparkles through his long silver hair. He'd let it out of his ever-present ponytail, and Dani couldn't stop herself from imagining him flying through the sky, tangling his hair in the same windswept way that Danny's ghost form always sported. She wondered what his ghost form had originally looked like, before years of envy and pointless revenge had started to taint it.

Had he looked like Danny?

Dani looked away. She didn't want to see Danny reflected in Vlad, and she certainly didn't want to see Danny standing behind her either. As if he had read her mind, Dani felt Vlad's gaze travel from her face to her older brother's. As he did so he let the black rings that contained his ghost form spread across his body, turning his flowing white hair to the darkest midnight black and his tan skin to a sickly gray-blue-green. He always preferred to deal with things like this in his ghost form, and Dani wondered if it was his way of separating himself from the criminal acts he committed. Like, 'It wasn't me, it was the ghostly energy I was infected with!'

Whatever you have to tell yourself to sleep at night, Vlad.

"You can leave now, Daniel." Vlad said, and Danny smiled and nodded.

"Kay, father." He said, then turned to Sam and Tucker as he left. "Come on, let's go watch the new Cyber-Zombie movie."

Dani watched the door click shut behind them and then pictured the way that Danny always burst in and out of the screen door at Fentonworks, banging it so loud that the neighbors two blocks over could hear it. Dani was even worse about it- they'd sometimes get calls from the police telling them to 'Stop setting off those fireworks in your backyard!' when she followed Danny for a game of soccer.

"I take it by your silence that you're wondering what I want to talk to you about." Vlad guessed.

Actually, I was wondering if your house feel any less empty if it was filled with the sound of slamming doors. Dani thought. Out loud she said, "Yeah. Sure. Whatever."

Vlad leaned his hands on his knees, regarding Dani with an unreadable expression. "That apathy is probably an aftereffect of the sedative. It'll go away in a little while."

"Mm-kay." Dani thought for a while, then thought of another question that had been bugging her. "And the paranoia?"

"Ah." Vlad's expression changed to something more akin to pride. Dani wondered if he was proud of her for noticing that the feeling wasn't hers. . . or proud of himself for however he'd achieved making her feel that. "Sorry about that, my dear. As you've no doubt noticed, I've been tapping into your thoughts and memories and the tampering triggered intense paranoia as well as wild mood swings. I wouldn't have done it if it wasn't necessary to keep the hologram acting close enough to your personality to frame you." Vlad's face twisted into a more sour expression at that, probably thing about how it hadn't really made a difference when it came right down to it. Dani had gotten out of his trap anyway.

"And you needed to make that thing act like Danny." Dani mumbled into her arm as she rested her chin on her knees and hugged them close.

Vlad smiled condescendingly at her. "What are you talking about? Just because you were imagining the paranoia doesn't mean they weren't really out to get you."

"If they were really out to get me it wasn't paranoia. But I'm smarter than that, Vlad." Dani couldn't even find it in her to care about what she was saying. Even if the apathy wasn't real, even if it really was just a side effect of the sedative, it was so much easier than struggling against the inevitable like a salmon swimming upstream. Fighting like they did just made them easier for fishermen to catch.

Oh, and it's better to just sit here and wait for them to get you? Fight it Danielle!

"That's not Danny. . ." Dani whispered.

"Well, I can understand why you want to deny it. Betrayal is hard to accept. I know that better than anybody-"

"Nobody's ever betrayed you!" Dani snapped, anger starting to burn away the cold nothingness that had seeped into her soul.

Yes. Hold onto that anger. Hold onto any feeling you can!

"Actually, you have." Vlad said softly.

"You betrayed me first!" Dani growled. "That's not betrayal, that's retaliation!"

Is this all we are? Spite? Vindictiveness? Are we just trying to hurt the other person more than they've hurt us?

"God, I don't even care who I hurt anymore!" Dani snapped. The raging fire filled her body now, turning the ice to white steam that flowed over her body and called out her ghost half. She closed her eyes and snapped them open a second later, feeling them glow with an acidic flare of power. "You know what? Fine! You wanna fight?" She leapt from her chair and summoned up a sphere of crackling green energy the size of her head. "You destroy what I love and I'll destroy what you love!"

Vlad stood suddenly, eyes going wide as he knocked over his chair in his haste. "What. . ?! You can't. . ! You shouldn't even be able to stand up after a dose that strong! How are you-"

"Father!" Danny burst into the room, flanked by his best friends. "I heard a crash!" Dani spun on them, eyes and aura blazing with green, and she growled as she built up the blast in her hand. The anger was running wild through her, taking away all sense and reason, and she moved without thinking as she sent the charge flying straight at her older brother.

"I'm! So! Sick! Of! Being! Betrayed!" Dani yelled.

Danny didn't even have time to dodge as her shot slammed into him and destroyed him completely. One second he was there and the next he was gone.

Dani didn't even slow down, sending shots tearing into Sam and Tucker, feeling the last fragments of ice between her and her anger melt away and leave her completely exposed in front of the blazing heat. The fire kept going, starting to consume her now that it was out of ice. She felt it tearing away at her personality, her feelings, and every little inconsequential memory. . .