Chapter 6: Nightmare

Danny was sitting on his bed, staring numbly at his hands when Sam and Tucker found him.

He couldn't believe how stupid he had been. He had been willing to do anything to have things go back to normal, well, as normal as they had been. Instead, he had destroyed the one thing that had helped make his life more bearable. Why did he have to be such a selfish idiot?

"Danny, we came to check up on you-" Sam opened the door to his room. Immediately, the guilt poured on him. He had broken his promise to Sam. His friends had wanted to help him but he didn't even give them a chance, just went straight for the easy way out; the loser's way. Some hero he was.

"Hey! You're hair's back to normal and I'm not sorry to say that it looks like you've lost your glow too." Tucker smiled faltered when Danny failed to even look at him. He wasn't smiling either.

Danny lifted his shirt, showing them the bare skin where there used to be his suit. When it had first started appearing, they thought that it was a bruise, until it began to spread. Now, there was no evidence that it had ever been there and that relieved his friends.

"It's gone, all gone," He shook his head in disbelief and misery.

"Are your powers back to normal? Did it all just fix itself?" asked Sam, confused at Danny's behaviour. Shouldn't he be happy? Danny hesitated before giving a big sigh and shaking his head.

"No. They're gone. Everything's gone. I... I tried to fix the problem myself." An uncomfortable silence fell and Sam resisted the urge to strangle him.

"You used the Fenton Ghost Catcher!" Sam said angrily, crossing her arms. 'He used it even after he promised...'

"I thought you trusted us, man," Tucker voiced. Danny held his arms up in exasperation.

"I do! You guys don't know what it was like. You would've done the same," he defended himself.

"But," Tucker added, hurt. "we would've given our friends a chance."

"Tell us exactly what happened, Danny," Sam demanded. Danny sighed, running his hand through

his black hair. He always seemed to do that when he was nervous.

"It worked, sort of." he admitted. "It took out my ghost half but whatever was wrong with me... it affected him worse." Danny paused, gathering the will to go on. "Much worse."

(Flashback)

"Alright, it worked!" Danny and his phantom half high-fived each other. He had gone through the Ghostcatcher and everything looked just the way it should be.

"Of course it did. It was our idea," Phantom said with a grin.

"Now about rebooting that computer..." Danny grinned. Phantom nodded and became intangible. His human half braced himself and waited. Thump. Danny opened his eyes after hearing that thump, only to see Phantom sprawled out on the floor. He rushed over to him.

"Wha-?" came Phantom's surprised voice. He tried getting up but the room wouldn't stop spinning. He put a hand to his head, hoping to steady it.

"What happened?" Danny asked, helping Phantom to sit up. This wasn't going according to plan. His other self just sat there, silent, in his arms. "Phantom!" he yelled. 'Whoa. That feels weird. I'm talking to myself.'

Phantom lifted his head, staring at him with half-open eyes. His ghostly aura, Danny noticed, was growing faint. They both seemed to realize what was happening.

"I-I can't..." whispered Phantom. Danny violently shook his head, refusing to listen.

"No! Don't go!" he cried. Phantom's gaze never left his, even as his body faded away, leaving a shocked 14 year old boy behind, staring at nothing; his arms empty.

(End flashback)

Tucker's face paled. Sam covered her mouth with her hand.

"Oh my gosh," she said softly, unable to believe what her best friend had just told her.

"I'm not a hero anymore, I'm not anything. You'd think that I'd feel incomplete or empty, but I feel... completely normal," Danny finished lamely, unable to look them in the eye. "I need some time to adjust guys."

"What about all the ghosts?" Tucker asked. "Who's going to do something about them?"

"Tucker," growled Danny. "I can't do anything! I don't have superpowers! I'm just an ordinary kid. What am I going to do? Scare them by getting stuffed into a locker by Dash? Ooo, that'll strike fear into them for sure!" He turned to the window. "Just...leave me alone." Sam left. Tucker reluctantly followed.

"Where are you going? We've got to talk some sense into him," he insisted. Sam shrugged, indifferent.

"Yeah, as if he'll listen to us; all he's concerned with is how this affects him," she replied, 'calmly' clenching her fists. Danny had broken his promise again. If he wanted to have a pity party, fine. Go right ahead. There were many things she had wanted to say, and probably all of them wouldn't have ended so nicely.

Tucker hung behind Sam, disheartened. His curiosity piqued when they ended up in the lab instead of outside.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

"Leave my family alone!" Danny Phantom yelled as he punched his arch nemesis. His eyes widened when his fist was caught and lifted above him, leaving him dangling in the air. The laugh he hated most rang around him. Vlad grinned, his fangs gleaming in the low light of the lab.

"My dear boy, what is it that makes you think you can stop me?" The older man gestured to the scene far below them. Danny gasped. Ghosts had surrounded his parents and more were appearing from the portal. They were horribly outnumbered, but they kept fighting, oblivious to the half-ghosts floating above them. They couldn't last much longer.

"Mom! Dad!" he yelled, and then gave a wordless cry of pain as Vlad tightened his dark gloved grip around his hand.

"There's no point Daniel. There's nothing you can do. After all, you're only human." And with that, he let go. It was then, Danny noticed his bare hands and regular clothes as gravity pulled him down.

He frantically tried to transform, to no avail. The beakers and boxes leaped up to greet him and he faintly wished he had cleaned up the lab like his parents told him to.

An eerily familiar voice whispered smugly in his ear and to his shock, Danny recognized it as his own.

"It's all your fault."

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

"Ahhhhhhhhhh!" Danny screamed in terror. Thrashing, he found himself on the floor, caught in a blanket. It took him a few seconds to recognize his own room. The door burst open and he saw his parents carrying ghost weapons.

"Where's the ghost?" Jack yelled, scanning the room for what he was sure was terrorizing his son. Jazz peeked into the doorway.

"Sweetie, are you alright? You're trembling!" Maddie helped him back into bed and held him to calm him down.

"I-I had a nightmare," Danny said, wiping his sweat off his face. His mom rubbed his back in sympathy. "I'm fine, really."

"We're all here for you Danny. No ghost messes with a Fenton and gets away with it," assured Jack. His son smiled at his dad's enthusiasm.

"I'm lucky to have you guys," Danny said as he gave his mom a hug.

~phantom130 5 (October 2013)