Author's Note: The Brod Road, I like the project you suggest! I've tried to keep these oneshots focused on the question in the title, but I can't help sneaking in ideas for deeper stories. I suppose I'm testing the waters to see if people like them. But I'm also sating my craving to write without worrying about how I'm going to complete a multi-chapter story if life gets in the way. I've already left too many fanfics unfinished and I try to avoid that as much as possible. I don't want to start something unless I'm sure I can end it.

Anyway, here's another platonic chapter, from the point of view of a clone. Enjoy!

Dani Fenton

Uh, well … I don't know. I haven't spoken to him that much. I mean, he seems really nice, but that's not enough to say I love him. Is it? We call each other "cousin," but cousins are pretty distant relations. Some people go their whole lives without seeing their cousins. I don't feel comfortable calling him anything else at the moment. "Brother" is too intimate, and "Dad," while technically correct because I share most of his DNA, is just too weird.

Why didn't I stick around to get to know him? Why did I keep running away?

Half of me – the ghost half, I think, the cool and rational half – knows I can trust him. We have a lot in common besides genetics. We both like Dumpty Humpty's music. We both know nearly everything about NASA. We're both unique, both too ghostly for the human world, both too human for the Ghost Zone. We both try to do the right thing even when it's tough. And then there's the whole adoption thing… Maybe he is a dad to me. He's caring, he looks out for me and he's ridiculously overprotective. And I like it.

But for all that, the other half of me – the human half, the emotional half, the half that still feels pain – isn't ready to let anybody else into my heart again. Not after I lost everyone I loved.

We used to be a family of seven: a mother, a father and five clone children. Our mom was called Maddie. She was fuzzy and sweet and lived in a computer. Our dad was a half-ghost called Vlad. I had three brothers who were awake and one who was asleep. Dad called the sleeping brother Daniel. He didn't call the rest of us anything, so I named my brothers myself. The skeleton was Michael, and his nickname was Skinny Minnie. (I thought I was so funny back then.) The big grey guy was Rocky because he had rock-solid muscles. The slippery one was Storm because he was wet like rainwater and had a short temper.

When I told Dad what I'd done, he smiled and said, "Interesting. You might just be the greatest clone … Danielle." He named me because I was smart. That made me happy.

We had big plans, the seven of us. (Well, the six of us. Daniel never said much because he was dreaming.) We were sickly kids, prone to melting, but Dad was going to heal us. I just needed to find our – uh – the first one, the one we were clones of. I don't know if there's an official name for it. Anyway, we'd get his DNA, and then we'd be better, and Daniel would wake up, and we'd be able to play together without disintegrating. The family would be complete.

What actually happened after I made contact with Danny Phantom? The family started falling apart.

Skinny Minnie ran away but never came back. We found out later that he'd died on a golf course. I tried not to let it get to me. There was nothing I could have done to help him. Sadly, I couldn't say that about the other two. I had to stop Rocky when he went mad and started threatening our last hope, but I may have sort of accidentally killed him. Not long after that, I watched Storm melt right in front of me. There was no time to react. I just floated there while he sank into a puddle, weak and whimpering, nothing like his namesake.

Three of my brothers died. They died. And poor Sleeping Daniel never got the chance to live. All he did was look around the lab, stretch out a hand to his father, and watch his own flesh bubble away.

I lost Mom in the chaos that followed, when the computers crashed and she started glitching. I lost Dad, too. Or maybe he was never really there. He wasn't a good man. He was full of contradictions. He ordered me never to lie to him; at the same time, he taught me how to lie to other people. He talked a lot about the importance of loving yourself, scary ghost powers and all; at the same time, he praised me for pretending to be someone I wasn't. He had two faces, a smiley face and a frowny face, and he wore whichever one he needed to get what he wanted. When push came to shove, his frowny face won out. He made it pretty clear that I was just a tool to him, a pawn in his giant chess game.

I had to disappear.

A lot of people may have suffered, but I'm glad that Danny could fight with me and get me away from that fruit loop. I told my cousin, "You'll see me again soon," and I wanted to keep that promise, at least initially. I just needed some time alone to cry and rage. I needed to scream where nobody could hear me. I needed to sob where nobody could see me. I needed to let it all out.

But then I needed to move forward. I told myself that Danny was part of my past, not my future. I told myself that he would only hurt me again and force me to be what he wanted me to be. I hoped I could become more than the clone of a Dumpty Humpty-loving future astronaut. I hoped I could be myself and carve out my own path.

Living on the streets was tough. The nights were cold and the ground was filthy. I had to steal to survive, even as the little voice in my head kept telling me that stealing was wrong. I had to force my body to stay in place and not turn into goo.

But it was better than being with Dad – I mean, Vlad. We didn't exactly end on a high. The last thing I did before I left was attack him. I didn't know how mad he would be with me for doing that and for ruining his plans.

I found out soon enough. He caught me, strapped me to an examination table and tried to melt me down to build someone better, someone who didn't wreck his lab and punch him in the face and kill his loved ones.

He didn't just threaten my body, though. My mind was all over the place.

I think a part of me still wanted him to love me, however unlikely it was given our history.

I think a part of me still loved him despite everything he put me through.

I think I died for a couple of seconds.

Looking back, it was actually nice to be dead – dark and quiet and peaceful. I didn't have any bad thoughts, and no-one else bothered me. The pain only came when the ectoplasm put itself back together again, when the molecules burned and fused and stung.

I flew away from Danny again, not to cry and rage this time, but to think – not to indulge my human half, but to use my ghost half. What was I doing? What was my purpose? What was I living for? My dad had tried to destroy me, my brothers were long gone, and I was pretty sure my cousin would soon get sick of having to clean up after me. In short, my life sucked.

I almost longed to be back in the dark and the quiet and the peace.

The only thing stopping me getting there was the news channel.

The TVs in the shop window displayed picture after picture of the Disasteroid. I watched my cousin stand outside Amity Park's Town Hall and ask everybody in the Ghost Zone to help him put his plan into action. I flew to Antarctica as soon as I could find where it was on a map. After all, I was at least half-ghost, so I had to do my bit for the planet.

When the time came, my throat was dry and my ears were ringing. I was suddenly scared it wouldn't work. But then I actually felt the Disasteroid slip through Planet Earth. It made the whole world shudder. My hands and feet started vibrating. A chill shot up my spine.

After about ten seconds, it was over. It felt like much longer.

I didn't fly through the portal like the other ghosts. I didn't belong with them. They isolated themselves and were proud of it. I couldn't live like that. I craved that sense of belonging. So I stayed among the human beings, hovering on the edge of the crowd.

I was there in the background when Danny transformed. I gasped and clapped along with the rest of the audience. Yet my stomach was churning. What if he found me? Would he expect me to do a big reveal as well? I started to float upwards to see if the portal was still open. He noticed, changed back, caught up with me and grabbed my ankle. He wouldn't let me get away that easily.

The next day was a day of sitting around his kitchen table chronicling every ghost attack to his parents. I didn't say much because I hadn't been there. I just listened to all the gory details and watched his dad scribbling furiously into a notebook.

And then it happened. We got to the part where Danny saved me for the second time, and out of nowhere, he asked his mom, "Is there some way we could adopt her?"

I didn't want to go to sleep that night in case this happiness was all a dream, in case I woke up in some gloomy alleyway surrounded by trash cans and broken bottles. Luckily, that didn't happen. The Fentons are still here, and so is the good feeling.

I'm going to get a new family! The kids will have their own personalities instead of being clones, and the mom will be real instead of a flickering hologram, and the dad will be big and jolly instead of a lean, mean, manipulation machine. It's going to be great!

Hopefully.

I'm going to get a new name, too. Mr Fenton – I mean, Jack – I mean, Dad – thought it would be less confusing if we didn't have a Danny and a Dani in the same family. I don't know who I'll become yet. Elle would be the obvious choice, but it doesn't feel like me. It's too soft and girly. I think I'd like a name that means something, like Joy or Harmony or Liberty or Hope.

Hope Fenton. Hmmm…

Well, there'll be plenty of time for that later. The important name right now is the surname. I'm a Fenton now. Not a Masters or even a Phantom. A Fenton.

Maybe one day I'll be able to say I love my family and not be afraid that they won't say it back. For the first time in forever, I'm daring to hope that that day will come.