Part Two: Liminal Child

Chapter Ten

For the first few days, Jazz basked in the triumph.

They actually did it. She and the others saved Danny, and though he spent the next few days mostly sleeping and feeling a bit out of sorts, her brother was back. Her parents told her it would take time to fully recover physically. They didn't know if the heart problems and other issues were related to the portal, the possession, or both, but if it was the possession, then maybe Danny still had a chance at being an astronaut, after all. A tiny, unexpected miracle.

She thought he would be thrilled when she brought it up, but instead, his expression remained neutral as he half-shrugged, a bowl of mac and cheese in his lap as he stared blankly at the TV. He was watching some home renovation show on HGTV, and the people on screen were arguing over the color of the walls in the master bedroom. "Doesn't matter. My grades are shit."

"Language, Danny," she admonished. "And you still have two years left. Mom and Dad are planning to talk to the school, too, about what happened to you–"

"-they're what?" he snapped, and she shivered as the temperature seemed to drop. Just a coincidence, probably, or maybe it was related to Danny's ecto contamination. It couldn't be anything else. They would know if Phantom tried to possess Danny again since her parents kept checking. "I don't want them to talk to the school. I don't want anyone to know, okay? It's–please, Jazz. Convince them not to?"

"But–

"-if they know I've been–y'know–for the last two years," he said, waving a hand but refusing to say the actual word still - "then they'll probably make me start high school all over again. I don't–I don't want to be separated from my friends. Please? It's not like I was doing well, anyway, and I can figure it out somehow."

She hadn't considered that the school might require him to repeat a couple of grades, but what he said made sense. It was an unprecedented situation. None of the marks he earned were his, after all, but were instead what Phantom managed to scrape together while posing as Danny. "Do you remember anything since your accident?" she said, not willing to promise him anything yet. Socialization was important, but it wouldn't be right to force him into his junior year if he couldn't handle the work. And they could probably try to arrange it so he shared a lunch period or gym with his friends. Mr. Lancer would definitely be sympathetic.

"Yes." Oh. Jazz hoped he didn't, honestly. She couldn't imagine being in her own body and not being in control, watching as someone else lived her life while her friends and family remained oblivious to her plight. The guilt hit her powerfully, and she bit her lip, trying not to make this about her. Danny had enough trouble to deal with without being forced to manage her feelings, too.

"What–what was it like?" she asked, trying to keep her tone and posture neutral, but he would not look at her.

"About what you might expect." His eyes drifted down to the mostly full bowl of food. His appetite hadn't returned yet. Mom kept making toast and oatmeal and other bland foods that would go easy on his stomach, but even those seemed to be too much for him. With a sigh, he put the bowl down and lay down on the couch as he pulled a blanket up to his chin, clearly not willing to continue the conversation.

"I'll talk to Mom and Dad." His eyes flitted to her, then, for just a moment before going back to the TV. A shiver ran through him, and he coughed into his shoulder, his hand going to his chest as he curled in on himself. "You okay?"

He chuckled bitterly. "Of course not. But thanks. For talking to them, I mean."

"Danny, should I–I can get Mom," she offered, seeing him wince as he continued to clutch at his chest and grit his teeth, but he shook his head. "You don't have to be stubborn, it's obvious–"

"-what's obvious?" he interrupted, his voice strained. "There's never been a case like mine before, right? I'll be fine, Jazz. Just leave me alone so I can get some sleep."

She tried not to take his attitude personally, knowing how much he suffered through and continued to endure. She couldn't expect him to not be a little scared and irritable after everything. "Okay. I'll let you rest," she agreed as she headed up to her room to work on her homework, but she still sent a quick text to her mom suggesting she check on Danny. Her brother would be furious, of course, but it was her job as his older sister to keep Danny safe.

Checking her email, she frowned as she saw the one from Amity Park College. They accepted her and her plan of study with enthusiasm, but knowing what she did now, she found herself mildly regretting the decision. Not the part about going to a local school - Danny would need her support after everything - but about her plan of study. Everything Danny told her about the ghosts were lies constructed by Phantom to hide the truth that her parents were right. The ghosts were despicable, malicious creatures, anxious to manipulate and–and–

She stopped, then, remembering the Lunch Lady and the way she spoke to Danny so kindly. That hadn't been some kind of manipulation, at least as far as Jazz could tell. The Lunch Lady didn't know Jazz was there, and Jazz wasn't convinced the ghost knew Danny was possessed, either. It may have been a genuine effort on her part, even if Phantom was doing it for his own selfish reasons.

She wouldn't change her course of study. Not yet. It would be worth understanding the ghosts well enough to fight back and to see if she could figure out a way to prevent anyone else from suffering from possession the way Danny did.

Her phone buzzed, and glancing down she saw a text from Danny's friends, asking if they could hang out. She rolled her eyes as she picked up the phone to call Tucker.

"Hey, Jazz. You called? Seriously?" he groaned. "Why can't you just text like a normal person?"

"Normal people call sometimes, Tuck. Stop trying to turn me into your errand girl between you and Danny, okay?" she insisted. "You can work out play dates on your own now that you're officially sixteen."

"Aww, you remembered my birthday was yesterday, how sweet," he teased, and then his voice grew quiet. "Danny didn't, you know, but at least I get it this time. I'm guessing he's not doing great?"

"He's still pretty messed up," said Jazz, her eyes darting briefly to her doorway to make sure Danny wasn't standing there listening. "He's mostly been sleeping and pretty non-responsive, actually. He's been having a lot of nightmares, too. I'm starting to think he has post-possession PTSD or depression."

"Those real diagnoses or ones you made up?"

"Real . . . ish," she admitted. "PTSD is real. So is depression. And this situation could easily cause either with him, if not both. Mom and Dad got him to agree to therapy, but the earliest session they have isn't for a couple of weeks unless they want to admit him to an ER first."

Tucker paused, and she heard him whisper something to someone else in the room, but she couldn't make out the words. "Is he that bad? Like, do you think they need to do that?"

"Not yet," she said. "But they're considering it since he still hasn't eaten much. It might be a side-effect of the decontamination procedures and the possession, though. Mom and Dad aren't sure."

"We could bring over some food from the Nasty Burger or something," offered Tucker.

"That's not really what I'd call gentle on the stomach. If anything, it'll probably make him puke again."

"Do you have a better idea?" Jazz hummed, staring at the photos around her mirror for a moment, her eyes landing on an old one of her and Danny on a camping trip five years ago. They were both so little then, and Danny . . . his smile and the light in his eyes were both something she hadn't seen much of in a long time. She wished he could be that happy again, but seeing the way he was now, Jazz didn't feel optimistic.

"Okay, do it," she said, and she heard Tucker cheer. "But don't get mad if Danny tells you to leave or whatever, okay? He's going through a lot."

"Cool, we'll be there in about an hour," he said, hanging up, and Jazz tilted back in her chair and stared up at the ceiling. Unlike Danny, she didn't have star stickers all over her own. Her ceiling was textured and the stickers would never adhere to it even if she were so inclined, but the strange swirls and patterns on her own ceiling suited her. She would lay on her bed sometimes, looking for recognizable images and patterns with the random spirals in what amounted to an unofficial ink-blot test. Most days she saw an elderly, hunched woman with a cane; a bird in mid-flight; a dolphin jumping amidst a chaotic sea; but today she found nothing in the patterns, not even the ones she could usually spot with ease.

She sighed as she ran her fingers through her hair, resetting her headband to catch the loose strands that slipped out throughout the afternoon. There were no new pictures of her and Danny together on her mirror. There were two from the last eighteen months, ones that Danny fought and pushed back against her taking, but she could not bear to look at them when she knew the one giving the sad smile in both was Phantom and not Danny.

Jazz worked on homework until she heard the front door open, and then hurrying downstairs she saw Sam and Tucker with a couple of bags of food. "Hey, Jazz," said Sam, and she frowned when Danny didn't so much as turn to look at them, his eyes staring blankly at the TV screen. "We brought enough for everyone."

"No Valerie?"

"She's stuck working," said Tucker with a shrug as he sat down next to Danny. "Hey, buddy. We heard you're tired of oatmeal and toast, so we brought food. You interested?"

"No." The answer was cold, landing like snowflakes heralding an oncoming blizzard. "What are you doing here?"

"Well, Jazz said we could come over," said Sam as she took a seat and began sipping her soy milkshake. "It's been three days, Danny, and you haven't responded to any of our texts. We were worried about you."

"I'm fine. Just tired." Sam and Tucker exchanged a glance as Jazz sat down in the armchair with a couple of her assignments. She wasn't being nosy, she just wanted to make sure that if Danny really wasn't up to dealing with company, then she could make sure he got the space he desperately needed.

"So . . . home renovations, huh?" said Tucker. "There's a new episode of, um . . ." He trailed off, realization striking. Jazz sympathized with him since she already made that mistake once. There was no way to know what shows or movies or anything Danny liked anymore, and Danny volunteered nothing, his eyes remaining on the TV as Tucker pulled out his cheeseburger and set another in front of his friend on the table. A gentle invitation, at least, for Danny to eat something.

"I like these shows sometimes," admitted Sam in a feeble attempt to get him to open up and cover up Tucker's faux pas. "I get ideas about weird things to do to my room that I know will make my mom furious. She hates when people try to be 'trendy' instead of sticking to what's 'classy.'"

"There's a difference?" said Tucker, and Sam rolled her eyes.

"What about you, Danny? What part of this do you find riveting?" asked Sam.

"I don't have to think about it much, and it's not a monster movie or a horror movie." The room fell silent at his admission, Danny laying eerily still as he stared at the screen. Jazz hadn't considered that some things might literally be too traumatizing for Danny to engage with, and she knew Dad in particular had a fondness for old creature movies from the seventies and eighties. Prior to his accident, Danny loved them, too.

"So you're not interested in seeing the new Nightmerica movie?" said Sam, and Jazz could tell she meant it mostly as a joke, but Danny didn't crack a smile.

"No."

They tried a few more times to talk to him, to engage him about anything from things that happened in school to a new Doomed! expansion to a few movies coming out soon, but through it all Danny rarely gave more than a one or two word answer, remaining tucked under a blanket as his eyes continued to stare vacantly, his food sitting untouched.

"You should at least try to eat," said Jazz as she finished her homework, and when Danny didn't respond, she decided to push a little harder, to be a little less gentle. "If you don't, you'll probably have to go to the hospital, Danny. You haven't eaten much of anything in days."

Sam and Tucker shared an uneasy look, but her threat seemed to do the trick as he forced himself to sit up and pick up the cheeseburger. He opened the paper, his nose wrinkling as he poked it, and then with a sigh he took a small bite. "You haven't been eating?" said Tucker.

"Couldn't stop throwing up for a day or two," he mumbled as he took another tiny bite and slowly chewed it. "Now everything tastes wrong."

"I hate that feeling, like everything is coated in your own stomach acid," said Sam as she moved to sit down beside him. "But it'll get better."

"Hmm."

"Do you, uh . . . want to talk about it?" offered Tucker. They had been dancing around the topic since they arrived, just as Jazz and her parents had since they rescued him.

"Talk about what?" It was clear Danny knew exactly what Tucker meant, even as he pretended to be fascinated by his burger.

"The possession. Phantom. Any of it," said Sam. "I can't imagine how awful it must've been."

"There's worse things." He took another bite, and despite how many he managed to swallow, most of the burger remained. Danny was humoring her, but reluctantly. She was going to need to talk to her parents. She didn't want to see him go to the hospital again, but if it was that or watching him slowly starve himself to death, it wasn't even a real choice.

"I can't imagine anything worse. Not really," said Sam.

"Oh?" He put his food down on the table, his eyes sparkling with an odd sheen. "I've got a few things I can think of."

"Like what?"

"Let's say that Mom and Dad didn't realize I was, y'know," he said. Still refusing to say the word possessed, to acknowledge what happened in full. It wasn't a good sign. "And they just thought I was a ghost pretending to be alive, pretending to be Danny. And then let's say they got pretty upset about that, and decided to try and hunt me down until they could strap me to a table and dissect me, not realizing I was still Danny, and just took that knife and started slicing open my chest and pulling out the pieces, bit by bit, until they finally realized that I had a beating human heart and lungs and . . . and . . . " He trailed off as he stared at them. Jazz was covering her mouth with her hands while Sam's face was white as a sheet, and Tucker looked nauseous.

"Danny, Mom and Dad would never–they wouldn't hurt you. You know that, right?" stuttered Jazz.

"Not really. I've had lots and lots and lots of nightmares these last two years about what could happen." He stared at his hand, rubbing the mark on his palm for a moment before picking up his cheeseburger and taking another small bite. "Could still happen, even. My scans aren't coming back right. I've heard them talking about it."

"Danny, your parents love you," said Sam. "There's no way they would ever do something like that to you. These fears–they aren't yours. They're Phantom's."

For some reason that made Danny choke out a harsh laugh. "Right. Of course. I'll just forget all about it, Sam. It's so easy," he said. "I should've just reminded myself of that. These feelings aren't mine. They're just Phantom's. So, so simple."

"Dude, she's just trying to help," said Tucker.

"That's what you were all trying to do, right?" he snapped as he buried his face in his hands, eyes tightly shut. "And I know you all expect me to be super grateful, but I–I'm–" A shiver passed through him again and he coughed for a minute before grabbing his chest. Jazz barely resisted jumping to her feet and rushing over to him, her uneasiness growing.

"You okay?" she asked, and he shook his head, teeth gritted.

"No, I'm not okay," he said, and she could see tears forming in the corner of his eyes as he looked up at the three of them. "You want to know how I'm doing? Fine. I'm doing about as badly as I can imagine. I feel like I'm split in two and cracking at the seams. I can't stop wanting to throw up while also feeling constantly, obnoxiously hungry, and there's this hollow ache that I can't–" He stopped, shaking his head again. "Everything is wrong and it shouldn't be. I should be happy. I should be better. But I'm not. It's all just . . . worse, somehow."

"Danny, it's okay to not feel okay right now," said Jazz as she hugged him tightly. "You've been through a lot. Nobody expected you to be fine in a day."

"Jazz is right," said Tucker. "You don't have to pretend like it's all working out just for us, okay?"

"We know that this has to be hard for you," added Sam as she leaned against him and squeezed his hand. "And that maybe there's a lot of things that don't make sense, but we can figure it out together. We're here for you, Danny. We'll always be here for you."

Danny said nothing as the two of them held him closely. Although Jazz knew things were hard for Danny now, they would get easier, and at least he finally opened up and admitted how much he was struggling instead of continuing to keep it bottled up. Therapy would help, as well as spending more time with his friends. They could get through this. They had to get through this. They had done the right thing.

Hadn't they?

A/N: I rushed my final set of edits on this a bit because I'm busy from the holidays and I'm currently staring down a pretty bad winter storm that'll likely result in my losing power for a bit. But anyway, thanks for the reviews, favorites, etc! I do appreciate it a lot.