Ten Thousand Promises, Ten Thousand Ways To Lose
Theme #14: Inevitable | PMd2: Fav. Episode | Angst/Dark | 768 words | Danny F., Dan P.
He is inevitable.
-x-
Those words, those three simple words, they haunted him for years. Not even the Box Ghost could top their resilience - where he would only appear a half-dozen times per week, those words lingered always in his mind, just waiting for the moment when he exhausted all distractions. They conjured up sights and smells that only a seasoned veteran should be able to name, not some pathetic fourteen-year-old like him.
He spends his nights locked in terror, watching the gentle flow of red rivers over cobblestone on repeat like in some stupid horror movie, the scent of burning flesh filling his nose and an acrid taste to the air that swirls around him, almost tangible in its pungency. He hears his own voice - twisted and warped and older, but his - hiss through the roaring flames and distant screams, the three words weighted so much more heavily than 'I love you'. Those are an admission, a reassurance, spoken with a sunset backdrop. These, oh, these are a promise - complete and arrogant assurance that all these broken buildings will one day come to be, and that there is nothing - nothing! - that could possibly stop it.
Clockwork has guaranteed him that the future is wrong, and that that timeline has been averted, but there's something in the old ghost's voice and in the way he keeps his distance that sets the younger on edge. He is being lied to, and he knows it.
Years pass, and life does not get much better for the Phantom of Amity Park. His insomnia is finally catching up with him - all those nights he spent awake, trying to keep the nightmares - the memories - at bay. He drops out of school, but he is not much the better for it - it only gives him more opportunities to observe the looks of disappointment on his parents' faces.
He misses them, though, when they are gone, though perhaps that is an understatement. There is a hole in his heart that they once occupied, and not even destroying the ghostly culprit could refill it.
And as if that wasn't bad enough, Casper High fell victim to a school shooting - fourteen injured, but only three dead. Thank god it wasn't worse, people whispered to each other, but to him there could have been no greater tragedy. The Phantom never arrived - he had no early warning for dangerous humans, and the first he learned of it was a chance phonecall to Sam, answered by the wrong person
And suddenly, his life felt empty. There were no more mad inventions, no more movie marathons or game nights. It was just him and his sister, and he knew it pained her to stay - she was wasting time, wasting her life here in Amity Park, when she should have been at Yale or Harvard or wherever she would be best. No matter how many times she told him that it would pain her more to leave, he would not believe her. His world and future had crumbled, yes, but that did not mean that hers had to as well. They came to a compromise; when he turned eighteen, she would leave.
And then, abruptly, her future was gone. A routine kind of accident, they said. You see 'em, oh, a hundred times a year in these parts, just on this stretch of road alone.
He threw himself into his self-appointed duty; it was all he had left, and he couldn't face the ghosts of home. Reporters commented anxiously on their saviour's sudden aggression and violence, and postulated its provenance. No answer ever presented itself, and soon it was the least of their worries. Phantom's surgical precision in taking out ghosts became messier and messier, until one day he forgot to care about the collateral damage.
And now, long after that so unfortunate a string of deaths, he finds himself watching from above an all too familiar scene. There is Valerie - dear Valerie, who not once has given up on eradicating him; her obsession is almost flattering - aiming a large gun at a black and white figure in a glowing net while two others leap to his defence.
A manic grin spreads across his face, and he realises that it does not take a stint with the ghost gauntlets to make a monster of a broken boy. Only time.
He blasts the Red Huntress away, and says, "Actually, that was me."
He'll play his part for now, but in the end, he will win. It is inevitable.
(And if killing his past self has the side effect of destroying this whole timeline, well, all the better.)
-x-
A/N: ...and then the timeline is reset, and Danny suffers the grief of a series of unrelated deaths, and starts destroying things, and Clockwork sends for a past!Danny to defeat him, and that Danny dies, and then the timeline is reset…