Blink… Awkward pause…Blink again.

Sigh.

'Okay, this is getting us nowhere.'

Valerie Gray sighed once more and slowly rose from her position on the forest floor. She was at her wit's end. What the HELL was one supposed to do in a situation like this? Something was obviously up with Danny and the ghost kid, but how in the world was she supposed to figure it out?

Staring a hole through Danny Fenton's head yielding rather disappointing results. He just sat there, shifting awkwardly every few seconds, looking…well, Human. There was really no other way to put it. She'd read that when a person was overshadowed, their eyes always gave them away by glowing or changing color, but his eyes…they looked the same. No difference from any other time she'd seen him.

Valerie started pacing, biting her bottom lip while she let her red leather clad feet shuffle through the brush and fallen leaves that created a carpet on the ground.

Maybe…maybe they were working together? Perhaps Danny had been helping the ghost boy, and then when Phantom had been injured, he'd somehow fallen through the trees and landed on Fenton?

…

That sounded rather stupid, but it was better than nothing. Now that she thought about it, Danny did seem to disappear around the time the Ghost kid showed up, and the Goth and Tucker were often at the scene…and Danny always seemed to show up wherever the ghost kid had been causing havoc…but that didn't really make sense. Why would she only see Sam and Tucker around while Phantom was actually rampaging? Unless-

Valerie suddenly had the urge to hit herself in the forehead, but she refrained, only letting the tiniest hint of a smile show around the edges of her mouth. Danny had to keep hidden because of his parents! What would the town's most well known Ghost hunters do if they discovered their son had been off helping a ghost? The poor kid would be dead meat. She shook her head ruefully. Those parents of his would give him a whole heck of a lot of trouble when they found out, that was for sure. And they would find out if she had anything to do with it. He'd deserve whatever punishment they gave him. Honestly, helping a ghost? And Phantom no less. It didn't matter if he was her ex-boyfriend. IT didn't even matter that he was giving her soulful pleading adorable look from the tree he was bound to. Nope. Cute eyes and adorably messy hair would not sway her!

Danny tilted his head.

Valeries heart leapt all the way into her throat and she almost choked.

'Damn it.' She swore, turning away to hide her red face. 'Okay, maybe they'll sway me a little bit.'

Heck, for all she knew, he'd actually been hunting Phantom, not helping him. Although…why would he have to hide from his parents then? 'You'd think they'd be ecstatic to see their own kid following in their footsteps.'

She paused in her pacing, letting her arms fall to her sides. Suddenly her eyes lit up. 'Of course! Those wackos, they rush over to the school at the slightest hint of ghostly activity.' she shuddered, reliving the time they'd responded to the newly installed ghost alarm and blasted Mr. Lancers clothes clean off, scaring half the school with the sight of his Shakespearian boxers. Gross. 'They're already insanely protective, no way would they actually allow him to hunt phantom without them being there to screw everything up.'

Suddenly, Valerie felt rather pissed. She'd broken up with him so he wouldn't get hurt because of her ghost hunting! If it turned out he'd been putting himself in danger the whole time, his parents wouldn't be the only thing he'd have to worry about. She huffed.

'Okay. So, I've established that this could be Danny. Seems human, blinked when I poked him, I can see his chest moving so he's most likely breathing…but if he is Danny there is no way he ended up here by chance. Either he walked or someone brought him here, and since I'm the only other person within a ..' she paused to check the tracking device on the arm of her suit, 'three mile radius, that means the only way he could have gotten out here was with Phantom. OR some other ghost that left really fast.'

She stopped walking back and forth and took a deep breath before sinking to the ground once more. This really was going nowhere. Valerie knew with certainty that there was a snowball's chance in hell of Danny answering her questions truthfully, but how else was she supposed to get any answers out of him?

If she didn't say anything, he'd just lie or stay quiet. But if she did, if she told him what she thought and she was wrong, there was always the chance that he'd just go with it, let her think she was right in the hopes of her accepting it and leaving him alone.

She hissed out a breath of air in frustration and tried to calm down. Let the creative juices start flowing. Just how could she make him spill?

Birds chirped, cicadas hummed, and a delicate brown eyebrow twitched, before a piercing shriek of frustration, curtsey of one Valerie Gray, sliced sharply through the silence, spurring the birds to flight and the cicadas to silence.

There was nothing she could do. Nothing! More than twenty minutes had passed as she sifted through theory after theory, each time poking hole after hole into a possible plan until there was nothing left. She let her head fall into her hands, thick clumps of her frizzy hair falling forward and shrouding her shoulders. Why did this have to happen? Why did Danny Fenton have stick his stupidly cute face in this mess? A frustrated growl escaped her lips and she shot up off the ground where she had been sitting. Blazing brown eyes took a moment to glare at Danny, who appeared to be attempting to melt into the tree behind him, before Valerie turned away and started pacing, her sharp steps crunching through the leaves on the forest floor.

"I can't do anything to him. I can't hurt him, he might be human. I can't let him go, he might be a ghost!'

Taking a deep breath she whirled around again, and the terrifyingly fierce look in her eyes made Danny cringe. She stalked forwards, and before he could say a word she had knelt in front of him and her cool hand was pressed oddly gentle way against his neck, her eyes boring into his.

The forest was silent, the only sound coming from the gentle breeze ruffling their hair and making the leaves on the trees slowly dance.

Danny was frozen, staring into her eyes, afraid that moving might break the strange stillness that had oh-so-suddenly settled upon them. As he watched, the spark of anger in her eyes slowly died, replaced by confusion, and as her face fell, a strange kind of hopelessness.

"You.." she choked out, her hand slowly stroking the side of his face in an unconscious movement, "you have a pulse." Her throat was burning, and it hurt as she swallowed. "You can't fake that. I can feel it. You have to be human." Her hand fell from his face to land heavily in her lap.

"Danny, how did you get out here? I mean really, don't lie to me. Not now." She stared earnestly into his wide eyes, blinking hard to hold the tears back. 'Stupid teenaged hormones. It should take a lot more than this to make me cry. Gotta be the stress. I'm not even sad.' A bitter chuckle tried to force its way out of her chest, but she held it back. 'I've eliminated a pretty big chunk of my theories,' she thought ruefully, 'I should be relieved,'

'But I'm not.'

Ch 4 finally got here! woot~

yeah. She's hormonal, forgive the mood-swings, por favor~

Like always, reviews are appreciated. BE they those lovely ones that tell me what I'm doing right, those equally lovely ones that tell me what I'm doing wrong, or those not so lovely ones that burn, I treasure them all.

...seriously, guys. feedback necessary. you guys all want funny? ya want angst? TELL ME.