Catalyst: A Story about Change

Author's Note: I skipped the funny chapter. Not enough ideas. Sorry if anyone was expecting it! Also, sorry for the wait. This week was strangely busy with lots of...strange things, what can I say?

Chapter 9: Interlude

September 23, 9 months, 6 days after

Danny was once again staring out the window of the Fenton RV. It was Sunday afternoon, and they'd taken off from Vlad's about an hour ago. Everyone had fallen into a sleepy silence, which suited him just fine. He'd rather be alone with his thoughts.

Watching that video had been a strange experience. Danny hadn't seen Sam in months, so hearing her voice, seeing her face…it had been really good. He'd wanted, for a few minutes, to just play the video over and over for the sound of her voice, the quirk of an eyebrow, and all the other little gestures that belonged to Sam. That hadn't lasted long, though. Watching that video wouldn't get her back.

At least he could be somewhat certain Vlad wasn't involved. It was incredible, actually, but judging from the video, it was pretty clear that Sam went to him for ghost hunting equipment, nothing more. It was also obvious that she had been running away, and didn't want Vlad to know. Even though her excuse for coming to him for equipment was incredibly flimsy, it did the job of getting him off her back right then, which was all she really needed. Of course, he'd been tracking her…

Danny's eyes widened. Wait! If Vlad was tracking her, he would've known she hadn't gone back to Amity Park almost immediately, the bastard! Why hadn't he called her parents, or his parents or something?

Danny paused, and scowled to himself. Of course he wouldn't; what was he thinking? This was Vlad, after all. Unless there was something to be gained, he wouldn't have bothered. And actually, that's probably why he'd attempted to track her in the first place. If Vlad had known where Sam was when no one else did, that would've put him in a position of power. He could've used that information to force Danny into some sort of deal, or trade, and surely would've months ago. That, he supposed, was the real proof that Vlad didn't know where she was.

That didn't mean she wasn't in trouble, however. The fact that she was arming herself with ghost hunting equipment only confirmed Danny's theory that she was running from a ghost for some reason. Which one, though? He was running out of people to question fast.

In fact, Vlad had been the last ghost on his list with any substantial power. The rest were all small fries, like Aragon and the Ghost Writer. If they were causing trouble, Sam would've come to him, and he would've beaten their tales; end of story.

No, this ghost had to be strong, presumably stronger than him. That, or they had to have some sort of power over Sam. Like blackmail. But he couldn't see that happening! What did someone have to blackmail her with, except…

Danny's brows drew together in frustration. Except for his identity, of course, and he hated that idea with a passion. He took a deep breath, making himself relax, and went back to looking out the window, his mind wandering.

He'd been building up tension for weeks and weeks, ever since he'd realized that Sam wasn't coming back, and that if he wanted to see her again he'd have to find her himself. That knowledge coupled with the fact that she didn't want to leave, that she had to have been forced in some way, had slowly made him more upset over time.

And he had already been upset, ever since she'd left. The shock and worry he'd already been feeling were not helping him to be a chipper person, so this added stress was only serving to put him in a perpetually bad mood.

He'd been almost calm for the last few days, though; almost excited in a good way. That video had really helped him for a little while to feel hope, and to relax. She was still out there, hopefully still healthy and reasonably happy, and hopefully still Sam. She was still the girl he knew and…the girl he knew and…liked a lot.

Oh boy… Danny looked down at his hands. When, or if…no. Definitely when he finally had the opportunity to tell her his feelings…it was definitely going to be interesting. He still had trouble even thinking about how he felt about her, let alone vocalizing it!

Not that he had to worry about that right now anyway. All he really knew at this point was that she'd headed west, south west, from Wisconsin.

But that was all he knew. Now that this fact was sinking in, and the initial joy of just seeing her face had worn off, he was realizing he had no clue as to how to find her. She could've changed direction drastically after breaking Vlad's tracking device, after all. In fact, she almost certainly did, since she'd have known she was being tracked.

Still, his determination to find her had been rekindled, and he almost had to thank Vlad for that, the cheese head. And the niggling doubt that she might have been kidnapped, or overshadowed, or even killed had been put to rest. She'd left, something was wrong, but at least she wasn't physically hurt.

That could've changed between then and now, however. She had been arming herself for ghost fighting, after all.

Danny drew one of his knees up, hugging it to his chest with one arm, and rested his head on his other hand. He turned his glum gaze inside the RV, absentmindedly checking up on the others. He knew it was bad to worry or speculate overly on all the horrible things that could've happened to Sam over the long months. He'd done just that before, and it always led somewhere bad; to him doing something violent, or to long stretches of semi depression. He knew not to let himself go there anymore.

Danny found his gaze resting on Tucker, who had fallen asleep with a comic book in his lap. He was snoring lightly, his head having fallen back between the window and the edge of his seat. He was sitting opposite Danny, occupying the other window seat.

A pang of regret welled up in him, and he looked away. He really owed Tucker big time for blowing up at him like he did. His behavior had crossed a line, and he wished it could be taken back. Clearly he wasn't very good at dealing with his emotions as he should be. Amazingly, it seemed like Tucker had almost completely forgiven him, and for that Danny was grateful.

Tucker wouldn't be if he'd known. If he'd known what was going through Danny's head down in that lab, he probably wouldn't be talking to him right now. After calming down, even Danny had been appalled at his own thoughts, frankly. And he'd been dangerously close to chucking Tucker across the room, just because he couldn't work a miracle for him!

Danny knew in part why things had gotten out of control, though Tucker was probably clueless. He hadn't been thinking of Tucker as a friend. Danny had guessed that Tucker's computer knowledge and PDA would be needed to hack into Vlad's computer. He hadn't been asking Tucker along for his company so much as for his brains.

In short, he'd been so single mindedly focused on his goal of obtaining information on Sam that he'd neglected his other friendship completely, and had sunk to using Tucker like some sort of glorified tool. When that tool ceased being useful to him, he'd been tempted to take his anger out on it by literally throwing it away, or even breaking it. Though he didn't think he would ever have gone that far. He cringed at his own thoughts. Right?

But it had been worse than that, in a way. He'd still known Tucker was a human being, of course, but he'd only acknowledged that in a completely twisted way. He'd taken Tucker's personality and drained all the good qualities and morality out of it for those few tense, angry minutes, and had been left with some self centered, horribly warped version of his friend. The tool was human in that it was selfish, vain, and all the little things that weren't really a major part of Tucker's personality but when magnified and separated from all that was good about him resulted in an ugly parody of his friend. That had been what Danny was seeing in the other boy for those intense moments down in the lab.

Things had come back into focus when he'd calmed down, however. Now, looking back, he found himself comparing the incident to the fight with Walker. After snapping out of his attack on the ghost, it had been like coming out of a trance. Everything he'd been doing and thinking a moment ago almost seemed alien to him, in retrospect, and he'd immediately realized that all (well, most) of the condemnation he'd been throwing on Walker was misplaced.

The similar loss of control over his thoughts and actions in both situations was what brought the confrontation with Walker to mind, however. Danny had promised himself that something like that wouldn't happen again, and it hadn't in that he hadn't beaten anyone else black and blue.

But…part of that was stopping himself from getting that angry, that irrational, in the first place, which was what had led to the beating. By promising to avoid that situation in the future, he realized, he'd actually been promising to reign in that part of himself that seemed to have been growing in him ever since Sam's disappearance.

The part that held irrational anger. The part that held an emotional, almost instinctual urge towards lashing out violently. It was…a loss of control over his own self. He didn't like these changes, and now that he was noticing them, he was more than a little unsettled by them. Any state in which he didn't really have control over himself was frightening to him. Yet how did he stop himself from going further down that path, or turning back? He almost wished he could ask someone, like Jazz, for advice.

Danny let out a silent sigh. He would find Sam, and things would go back to the way they'd been. Then all this madness would stop. And…he glanced back over at Tucker. He'd buy Tucker a new PDA when they got back. He deserved it.

A few hours later, back in Wisconsin

Vlad sat staring into space, absorbed in his own thoughts. He'd spent the last few hours in front of his computer down in the lab, testing a theory.

Something had been preying on his mind the last few days, but he'd suppressed his curiosity until after Daniel and company had left. If the boy had been snooping at the time, things would've gone to hell in a hand basket in short order.

Vlad hadn't wasted time after he was certain that they were gone, however. First he had located the recording he'd made of Daniel down in the lab two nights ago. Then he'd extracted a clip of his voice into a voice recognition program. Then he'd done the same with "Double D's" voice, using the clip of his brief confrontation with Daniel in Jack's laboratory.

Vlad was still digesting the results. Daniel's voice was an exact match to "Double D's", the ghost who had attacked Samantha Manson. It wasn't just a close match; it was the same voice. On some deep level, Vlad couldn't help feeling very disturbed. The girl loved him, after all. She loved Daniel, even now, when she hadn't seen him for months. It was clear as day. Yet, if she ever met him again…how would she react? He'd changed; he'd grown into this carbon copy of himself. Had she known he would? Daniel had recognized Double D, after all. Did Samantha know him as well?

Perhaps she had left because of this? She'd known Daniel would grow into this ghost, and couldn't stand to watch that happen? But she still loved him, Vlad was certain. If this was the case, and she knew he would turn into her attacker, at least physically, hadn't she already been successful in separating the two in her mind?

She'd brought ghost hunting equipment with her, presumably for protection against this man. Yet if she'd stayed in Amity, she would've been surrounded by ghost hunters, so clearly she hadn't left out of self preservation.

This had to be about Daniel. She was protecting him. Vlad couldn't miss the logic of it. If Daniel found out that she'd been attacked by his doppelganger, it would be worse, much worse, than if she'd been attacked by someone else. Even if she could look beyond that, Vlad wasn't sure he would be able to.

Foolish boy. There was nothing to forgive; he wasn't the culprit. And yet Vlad had the feeling he would, indeed, blame himself. And if he knew Daniel would react this way, Samantha Manson, who had grown up with the boy, would know it too.

Oh well. None of this was really his concern. He still needed to figure out why Daniel had a doppelganger running around, who appeared to be at least a few years older than himself. It would be good to know what sort of threat Double D might pose in the future, where he was right now, what his goals were; things like that. But beyond that, and specifically how this might effect Samantha and her son, Vlad didn't really care. The issues Daniel might or might not have should he ever find out what had happened between his doppelganger and Samantha were pointless to speculate on. Besides, if things went his way, the boy would never find out.

Vlad crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back in his chair. Issues Samantha might be having in the near future, however, deserved his full attention. The poor girl was in over her head. She had a half ghost child but was herself only human. She needed help. Yet he didn't want to expose himself to her. It was a catch-22.

He'd thought about using Dr. Evans again. The doctor already possessed an item for holding the child, in fact. Before the birth, Vlad had had another 'little chat' with him, and had given him what was probably the only halfa baby proof crib in existence.

How to get it home with Samantha, however? If she found out the doctor had it, questions were bound to be asked, so getting Dr. Evans to give it to her really wasn't a solution. Suspicions about everything in her life over the last several months would rise in her mind, and she'd probably come to one conclusion. The right one. In short, his cover would be blown.

Yet she couldn't look after the child every minute of every day. Vlad leaned forward, and started closing all the audio and video files he had open. Perhaps he would watch her and see how she handled things? Then he could go from there, and decide if stepping in was really necessary. If his hand was forced, he could at least reveal himself at a time that best served his purposes.

After closing up the unwanted files, Vlad clicked on another folder, labeled "SMaptmnt". Inside were individual files, continually streamed from a remote location. They were labeled "living", "dining", "bed", and so on.

Sam's Apartment

Sam sat on her bed in a daze, Nathaniel in her lap. Actually, she was in more of a slump, legs stretched out in front of her, head propped up by a pillow. She had been reading, the book still propped up, but had given up after zoning out for the third time in the last ten minutes.

A nasty little fear had been growing in the back of her mind as she sat trying to stave off sleep for the next few minutes. Why hadn't it concerned her before? Probably she'd been too tired, she supposed. Not that she wasn't tired now.

She had only come home from the hospital earlier that day, even though it was Sunday and she'd had the baby very early Friday morning. She'd been strongly encouraged by Dr. Evans to stay at the hospital a few days since she didn't have anyone at home to help her with the baby yet. (Her husband was supposedly due back in a week's time.)

There was no husband coming, however, and her baby could, well…take off way too easily. Dr. Evans had assured her nothing like that had happened over the past few days, when she'd been resting. But how could she know it wouldn't happen tonight? Yet she couldn't stay at the hospital to have Nathaniel looked after 24/7, nor would she want to.

The problem was Dr. Evans. He'd taken a special interest in this birth due to its unusual nature, and had hardly left the baby's side. She'd gotten more sleep than him over the past few days.

It creeped her out more than a little bit, to be frank. He seemed a little too interested in Nathaniel. Staying there any longer hadn't appealed after she'd gotten her strength back enough to pack up and head home. How could she stay when the thought was running through her head that…maybe he had been doing tests on Nathaniel when she was asleep? Nothing invasive, of course, but…maybe taking pictures, waiting to see if he would transform, something like that. But then again, maybe he had gone further? He could've taken DNA, which was a frightening thought.

Sam didn't think she was being paranoid about this, either. There wasn't a time she could recall when Dr. Evans hadn't been there. Even in the early morning the night before, around 2:00 a.m. when she'd gotten up to use the restroom, he'd been sitting next to Nathaniel's crib, which had been moved to the foot of her bed. He'd looked dead on his feet, and slightly nervous. It had put her on edge.

She'd decided she was leaving the next day. Doctors weren't supposed to be like that; they let the nurses handle the grunt work. She'd like to give him the benefit of the doubt, but she could tell something wasn't right. Why the nervousness, for one?

In fact, all of his behaviors had been off, from his smile to the way he moved. He was too on edge, and because of that she couldn't help thinking he was up to no good. The only thing that didn't add up was how happy he'd seemed to see her go earlier that day. Relieved, almost.

Sam blinked blearily, trying to focus on the book she still wasn't reading, then put it to the side in disgust. Whatever. She hadn't been comfortable at the hospital, so she'd left, decision made. She was done with speculating.

Sam slumped onto her side, taking Nathaniel with her. The problem was, she was getting sleepy, but was scared to put Nathaniel down in order to get rest. What if he simply floated away while she slept?

She felt her eye lids falling closed, like unstoppable marble slabs descending. Maybe just a few minutes rest…surely she'd know if he transformed while in her arms. That was it…she'd just have to keep him with her…all the time. She could…do…that…

Sam was snoring softly a few moments later.

Sam was outdoors with a beautiful blue sky above, lush green grass below, and tall graceful trees dotting the landscape all around. There weren't any houses, or telephone poles, or anything else obstructing nature nearby. She was floating, rather comfortably, in midair.

Someone was calling her, up above, and when she turned to look she saw Nathaniel, his cherubic face smiling down at her.

Except that he was blue. His eyes, also, were red, and his ears were pointed. The tuft of black hair had turned ghostly white. She only stared for a second before gliding towards him, however. He was her baby, whatever he looked like. Besides, she was hardly a stranger to freaky looks, and the white hair was kinda cool.

As she swam towards him, she heard a clicking sound coming from below. Glancing down, she saw Dr. Evans, camera in his hands. He was taking pictures of them. The jerk! She was tempted to fly down and do something nasty with that camera, but suddenly someone was screaming…in her ear…

Sam woke, feeling groggy, and immediately began trying to hush Nathaniel, who was in fact screaming in her ear. Was he hungry, needed to be burped, what…? Dang. That smell was a dead give away. He needed a change. Sam groaned, holding him at a distance, and got up off the bed. Her back cracked loudly, and she realized that falling asleep on her side with her legs hanging off the bed hadn't been the smartest move. Urg, and her arms were already getting tired from holding Nathaniel away from her. She hobbled over to the bathroom as quickly as she could, arms starting to wobble, legs and back aching.

At least she was prepared for this, even though she'd only done it once before. Nurse Kelly had given her a lesson! The woman's sickly sweet smile was still fresh in Sam's memory, and a sarcastic imitation of it found its way to her lips. It turned to a scowl as soon as the diaper came off. Oh, gross, the smell, I'm gonna gag! Changing diapers was not supposed to be a chipper experience. She got down to business, getting the job over and done with in record time.

What a wake-up call. Sam exited the bathroom a few minutes later, heading back to bed, and glanced at her alarm clock. 8:30 p.m. She'd only dropped off about an hour ago, then. No wonder she still felt so tired. It was a good thing she'd left the hospital, though. That dream was proof she wouldn't have slept well there.

Realizing she was thirsty, she got back up again, Nathaniel still in her arms, and headed to the kitchen for a glass of water, thinking back on the dream as she went.

She'd had such a strong feeling of being watched in that dream. When she'd turned away to look at the doctor, she'd felt it. And when she'd been paying attention to Nathaniel, she'd felt the doctor's presence behind her as he continued taking pictures.

Feeling unsettled, Sam finished up chugging a glass of water, refilled it, and wandered into the tiny dining room to sit at her table. She looked down when she felt tiny hands prodding her, and smiled. One cherubic face, sans the white hair and pointy ears, was staring up at her. Nathaniel was wide awake now and ready for breakfast. She leaned back and got him started, the recent dream floating away like so much fog, and felt herself fall into a warm haze. You're confused, little guy. This is dinner. Or maybe I'm the one who's confused…

After a few minutes of zoning out while she slowly finished her second glass of water, she wandered back into the bedroom, being careful not to jostle Nathaniel, and propped herself up on the bed, watching him. He was so tiny! He was also utterly dependant on her, and completely trusting. She slipped her forefinger into one of his teensy hands, studying him. What would he look like when transformed? How many features of…

Sam sighed to herself, and let the name come. Danny. How many of his features would he have? Somehow she couldn't help hoping that he'd look more like, well, like her Danny looked as a ghost. Danny could almost pass for human, after all. No fangs or red eyes, or pointy ears. And once in a blue moon people were born with white hair. Speaking of blue, though…blue skin would be the biggest problem if he were to transform in a public place.

She began running her hand through his tiny tuft of black hair, wondering how to prepare for that. She was only now realizing how many things she hadn't planned for. She had to go shopping soon, for one. She didn't have hardly any baby clothes for him, and she needed to buy stuff for cleaning him (lots of stuff for cleaning him). She also needed to research what to feed him, and when. She needed a way to carry him so her arms wouldn't fall off. The list went on and on. This was going to be a really busy time for her.

Yet right now, as she studied her child, Sam couldn't concentrate on all that stuff too much. Really, whatever she had to do, it was worth it. For him, she could handle weird sleeping patterns. For him, she could change diapers for a while.

She stopped running her hand through his hair as he started showing signs of getting sleepy, and after a few moments he finished his meal, letting out a contented grunt. With the tiniest of sighs he curled up slightly, falling asleep where he lay. Sam's heart melted at the tiny sounds he'd made, and a huge smile plastered itself across her face. For a moment, she was so…happy, so grateful everything had gone right with him up to this point that she could almost cry.

After waiting a few minutes to make sure he was asleep, Sam repositioned herself so that she could get some more shut-eye herself, and soon she was drifting off again, feeling warm and content. Life wasn't going to be easy, she knew, but moments like these made it all worthwhile.

Author's note: Okay, now you know why it's called "Interlude". Nothing much really happened. But I've got to set things up, and...stuff. Anyay, this probably needs a beta reader, or something. In any case this feels like one of those chapters, when I go back over the whole story, that I'll most definitely edit heavily, or just re-write.

Erg. As such, comments and suggestions would be really, really wonderful! Thanks! (chipper, creepy smile)