Author's Note: The Brod Rod, I had intended to post Kitty's tale after Ember because of the way they were connected by Johnny, but I had a flash of inspiration for a Dan chapter and wanted to get it out there before I forgot anything. And now the Kitty chapter has been delayed even more because I've constructed yet another headcanon – one about Danny's origins and how he may be related to Timmy Turner. Please read and review!

Maddie Fenton

What a ridiculous question to ask a mother! I love all my children more than anyone else! What other answer can I give?

All right, I suppose Jack's on the same level, but that's a different kind of love. Ahem.

The love I have for Danny is usually best expressed by worrying about him. He was a pretty sensitive kid, nothing like those rowdy boys at elementary school. I'm sure he cried more than Jazz did when she was a baby. It also took him much longer to get over his fear of the dark. If I had to count the number of times he's woken us all up by yelling that the monsters were going to get him unless somebody turned the light back on, I'd run out of fingers and toes.

But I really shouldn't stress anymore. While I was too busy brooding over the slipping grades and missed curfews, he was secretly growing and maturing. I know now that he's mastered his powers, he carries the Fenton Thermos wherever he goes, and Jazz and Danielle and Sam and Tucker will always have his back. He's got this.

Even if he wasn't a universally-adored superhero, I wouldn't change him for the world.

I don't think he understands that. Why would he? Before the Accident, Jazz got all the attention for her academic promise, while Danny seemed to drift along behind us doing nothing remarkable. After the Accident, Jack and I gave him more attention – by chasing him through the streets trying to tear him apart. What kind of message does that send to a kid? "Unless you're gifted with intelligence (like the sister who is superior to you in every way), we might not love you. But don't have a freak lab accident you couldn't have foreseen and then try to make the best of it by being a hero. Then we definitely won't love you."

He may be more confident in himself, but it's come at the cost of the confidence in his parents.

The euphoria from stopping the Disasteroid has faded. I've noticed that Danny flinches whenever I walk past him or brush against his skin, even if I'm not wearing a Spectre Deflector. Every time he twitches, it's like he's stabbing me in the heart. It hurts because it's all my fault.

We came too close to killing our own son. I remember the sick glee with which I aimed our blasters at Danny's head and I shudder. We may not have succeeded in hacking him to bits, but we've destroyed something else. A gentle bond of love has been severed, leaving a chasm buffeted by winds of distrust and regret, and Jack and I can't blame anyone except ourselves.

No-one has broached the subject yet. We're all walking around as if the floor is made of glass and ready to shatter when we least expect it. We can't carry on like this. We ought to sit down with Danny and remind him how precious he is to us. We ought to tell him the truth.

And the truth is that Danielle isn't the first child we've adopted.

Our son had been an accident. We'd saved up enough money to quit our jobs at Axion Labs and work from home. We were going to have more time with our daughter and more freedom to concentrate on ghost-hunting inventions. But the celebrations … got out of hand. The next thing I knew, I was throwing up every morning.

He may not have been planned in the same way Jazz was, but we weren't going to say "No" to another kid. We filled the spare bedroom with baby stuff, we warned Jazz that she'd have to share our attention, and we dealt with my weird nightly cravings for Nasty Sauce. (I never wanted a burger, just the sauce.) I carried on at Axion for as long as I could until Damon Gray told me to get some rest.

It was all going so well – and then it fell to pieces.

Even now, after so many years, my heart can still be ripped to shreds. None of it makes sense. An umbilical cord is supposed to connect a mother to her child. It passes on the food she's eaten and helps the baby to grow. It's not supposed to be a murder weapon. It's not supposed to strangle someone who can't even breathe.

Not once did he open his mouth to gasp for air. Daniel had died before he could be born.

They gave him to me anyway. His lips were blue. His skin was grey. He was so cold and still, with not even a heartbeat disturbing his peace. It wasn't right. I wanted the warmth and the movement and the beautiful chaos that Jazz had introduced when she was born. Most of all, I wanted noise. I wanted to watch the rise and fall of Daniel's chest as he experimented with his vocal chords. It never happened.

I wish I'd never held him. It just made it harder to let him go.

When Jack drove us both home, his eyes were so watery that he had to pull over. We'd stopped right next to an abortion clinic. How ironic. All those women were marching through the gates hoping to get rid of their children, when all I wanted was to hear my son wailing in the backseat and know that he was alive and well.

Without really registering anything, I got out of the RV, grabbed a random lady's arm and asked if we could have her baby.

Her name was Sophia Turner. If you stood her next to Danny now, you'd definitely see the resemblance. They have the same bright blue eyes and the same black hair, except her hair was longer and scraped back into a tangled ponytail. And her eyes gave away her surprise.

Once Sophia (and Jack) got over the shock of what I'd done, we came to her home, a minimalist apartment, and she told us what she was doing at the clinic. A few months before, her work took her from Dimmsdale to Amity Park. Her ex-boyfriend, a surly redhead called Vic, chased her down because he couldn't accept that she wanted to break up with him. He certainly gave her something to remember him by: an evening of violence, a procession of nightmares and a child she wasn't ready for.

She couldn't bear to tell her brother … what was his name? Something long and complicated. Apparently, everyone just called him "Dad". As the name suggests, he could be pretty overprotective. She'd been hoping to have an abortion before he or anyone else found out. We persuaded her to keep the kid and then give it to us after it was born.

Getting a legally binding arrangement figured out wasn't easy at first, but after Jack chased a spooky secretary from City Hall, the adoption process suddenly went much more smoothly. Funny, isn't it?

Sophia and I became, if not friends, then at least close acquaintances. We butted heads only once. I wanted to know if it would be a boy or a girl. Sophia didn't. She would have preferred a daughter. She threatened to go back to the abortion clinic if she found out she was having a son. She told me, "Boys turn into men, and men turn into beasts, and beasts have a taste for women. Just like the ones in the movies." In the end, it was kept a surprise.

Her waters broke nearly a month early. My sister Alicia had come to stay, so we left Jazz with her and rushed to the hospital. My heart was in my mouth throughout the labour. I chewed my lip so much it started bleeding. We'd spent months getting to know the mother. We'd felt the baby kicking through her skin. Would it all be in vain?

When the second Daniel's screams rang out through the ward, I burst into tears.

The next few weeks were a torturous waiting game. On the few occasions when they took Danny out of the incubator, they made Sophia feed him. She grimaced throughout. In time, though, I was allowed to rest him on my chest, and that was when the magic happened. I looked down on him as his little fists clung to my shirt, and I knew without a doubt that I would love him forever and ever.

I shouldn't be so surprised. It's been scientifically proven that skin-on-skin contact helps parents and children to bond. (But try telling that to Grumpy Mr Don't-Hug-Me-In-Public-Because-It's-Embarrassing.)

Sophia and I stayed in touch for a while; I called her and told her when Danny started walking and talking, even though I knew from her monotonous voice that she wasn't interested. Then her brother had a child of his own, and she dutifully moved back to California to be closer to her nephew – Timothy, I think they named him – and we drifted apart.

Danny doesn't know about his origins yet. I'm pretty good at pretending he's ours and briefly forgetting the tragedy ever happened, but I can't keep it a secret for much longer. Sophia must have seen the news by now. She must know about Danny Phantom's identity. Is she proud of him? Will she want to meet him? Would they get along?

She may have been blind to my boy's double life, but I wasn't. I didn't see it until a couple of months before the Phantom Planet fiasco. I had a suspicion that there was more to Danny Phantom than the public saw. His name had always been too similar to Danny Fenton's to be a coincidence. He'd been taunting us. And those eyes – they weren't the same colour as my son's eyes, but there was something about the way they stared down the barrel of my gun that sent chills down my spine. They were soft but wide open, with black eyebrows knitting together, a look of familiarity and fear mixed together with a plea for mercy.

What was he afraid of? I know we've attacked him plenty of times, but that was before we knew the truth. If he told us about his alter ego sooner, we wouldn't have destroyed him. We wouldn't. I don't hate him for being a ghost. I love him for being my son. That's why I want to help him now. That's why I'm trying to understand exactly what happened in the Accident.

Danny claims he's half-ghost. That means he's half-dead. Doesn't it? How is that even possible? Is he really half of one thing and half of another? Is he a human borrowing ghost powers from someone else? Could he even be a ghostly imposter pretending to be human?

Is it bad that a part of me still wants to open up Danny Phantom and see what's going on in there?

Yes, it's sick. Yes, he would hate us if we went through with it. But what other choice do we have? I need to know how these so-called halfas work. I need to know that Danny won't waste away and die on us. I've already buried one son. I can't lose another.

No. Forget it, Maddie. It's never going to happen. Danny would never willingly go under the knife. We could promise not to pull out his organs, but he wouldn't believe us. The trust he used to have in us won't come back overnight. We'll have to take things one day at a time.

When the moment is right, I'll tell Danny about Sophia and Vic. Once he's registered that revelation, everything else should come more easily. I'm going to ignore all thoughts of vivisection. Right now, it doesn't matter what he's like on the inside. What matters is what we're doing together on the outside.

Wherever he is, whichever town he's defending, his father and I will be waiting on the side-lines, armed with the Fenton Foamer and the Jack o' Nine Tails and everything else he needs. Those ghouls won't lay a finger on him if I can help it.