Chapter Eleven

CW: Suicidal thoughts, mentions/brief description of suicide, depression, bullying, emetephobia

Be sure to mind the content warnings this time, this chapter is an intense one

Danny sat at his desk, drawing slow spirals in the margins of his notebook as Ms. Lozano tried to review how to conjugate verbs in the past perfect tense. . . or was it present perfect? Crud. He hated Spanish almost as much as he hated English class. His brain struggled to make sense of the words on a good day, and today was anything but. He stayed up until nearly 3 am last night playing Doomed! with Sam and Tucker, trying to put on the barest facade that everything was fine and normal and fixed even though he felt hollow. Even when he slept he only had nightmares, and he could barely muster the energy to be anything but angry or upset, his fuse too short and what little happiness he felt before the summoning stubbornly out of reach.

The worst part was how proud his sister and friends were, even after he confessed to being a half-broken mess last week. Jazz believed he took an important step forward on his recovery after he lashed out, his friends were pleased he opened up and was honest with them, even though they knew so very, very little about the truth. The reality was horrifying, and even testing the waters by telling them how he had nightmares about his parents proved to be too much as they denied that his fears about them were his own. They were just Phantom's. Not Danny's. Because accepting anything else would mean allowing themselves to believe things might be much worse than they wanted it to be.

A shiver passed through him and he turned his head, pretending to cough to cover up his breath fogging in front of him. Sam glanced at him uneasily, aware of what it meant, but he already explained that it was a side-effect of his portal accident, independent of his supposed possession, and his friends accepted it when he lied about talking to his parents about it. It wasn't as if they would ever check, not when they didn't want to know the truth. Not really.

He put his head down, pushing his pencil down harder as he drew the swirls and tried to ignore the intense pain in his core. Ignoring his obsessive urge to go and check and see which ghost it was, to make sure that nothing happened and that everyone was safe, their lives still on a path of their choosing despite the ghosts. There were people in Amity Park who thought they were so lucky that no one ever died in the ghost attacks, even as people were occasionally hurt, but it wasn't luck and Danny knew it. Ignoring his ghost sense put everyone at risk, he was being selfish, he shouldn't–

He pushed the thought down again, almost breaking his pencil as he bit his lip and his other hand involuntarily gripped his chest as his core ached. Ghosts were more than their obsessions. He knew that, and his frustration bubbled beneath the surface at this inhuman thing inside of him insisting he throw himself into danger to protect people that only viewed him as a monster. But he couldn't give in. His friends and family were watching too closely, and any appearance from Phantom would result in him trapped in a thermos, gone forever. He wasn't ignoring it, he was simply waiting for when it would be the best time, the best moment, to react. If he entered the fray again too soon, then he would be stopped and prevented from continuing to do good in the long-term.

The cracking, fragile ache of his core remained unmoved by his half-hearted logic, and gritting his teeth he felt an intense relief when the bell signaling the end of the period finally rang. He jumped to his feet, stuffing his notebook into his bag with his books, while Sam packed her stuff and fell into step beside him.

"That one looked pretty rough," she said. Great. She noticed. Danny couldn't afford to be so careless. "You sure you should be here today?"

"I'll be fine," he lied. He hated being at school right now, trying to act as if everything was okay and like he was going to pull off some miracle with his grades and his attendance. "It's not as bad as it looks." It was, in fact, worse, but Sam didn't press him further, seemingly pleased with his response as they headed to lunch. The ghost alarm remained stubbornly silent. Maybe it wasn't one of his nastier foes. Despite what most people believed, there were plenty of ghosts that came to Amity Park and did nothing but quietly fulfill their obsessions without leaving a path of destruction in their wake.

They sat down at their table and Danny gave a half-wave and smile to Val who was sitting with Star a few tables away, trying hard to convince her and the others that everything was fine, that he was great and oh so much better now thanks to them. Valerie already spent a few hours tripping over herself apologizing for not figuring out he was possessed and for dating him even though it was actually Phantom and not him, and he'd simply nodded and mumbled a thanks for the help she gave, telling her she couldn't have known the truth. She said she looked forward to getting to know the real him, now, and Danny had to make up an excuse and leave before he accidentally bit through his own tongue in an effort to hold back everything he wanted to say to her then but couldn't. As he waved at her now, trying to act so much like everything was fine between them and nothing was wrong and that he was fine, Valerie tilted her head a little and frowned before finally waving back and giving a small smile in return. Danny would need to sell it better next time. He used to be so good at pretending.

His lunch was a turkey sandwich with some chips and a piece of fudge. It should be okay. Turkey sandwiches were never his favorite, but they weren't awful, yet as he forced himself to take a bite Danny almost gagged. Nothing tasted right anymore, not since that day, but he also felt insatiable, a horrible gnawing hunger twisting in his gut. A side effect from not satisfying his obsession, maybe? Some weird side effect from the wish? Neither guess seemed quite right to him, not really, but he did his best to ignore it, eating food that tasted like chewing on dust, lest he give his family and friends one more thing to worry about.

This was fine. He was fine.

"How was Spanish?" asked Tucker as he sat down with his lunch tray. Chicken tenders, fries, and some applesauce. The smell alone made Danny nauseous today, though normally he'd eat something similar without hesitation.

"Boring," said Sam. Her own lunch was some kind of peanut noodles she brought from home, and she twirled them around on her fork. "We're going over more verb conjugations. It's kind of dull, so it makes it pretty hard to focus."

"That's why you should've taken French class with me," argued Tucker. "Mr. Alberts is an awesome teacher, he can make any dull topic interesting."

"My parents would've loved that. They argue French is like the top business language or something," grumbled Sam as she stabbed her noodles a little more viciously than necessary. Danny was happy to let the two of them talk with minimal participation from him. It made pretending so much easier. "And it's classy, and Spanish isn't, which they only think because they're being racist assholes."

"Yikes, Sam, tell us how you really feel," teased Tucker, shooting a glance at Danny, and he forced a half-smile in return. Clearly it failed to convince Tucker, though, as he frowned at him. "You okay, dude? You seem worse than usual, considering."

"I'm fine," he lied as he forced down another bite of his sandwich. How had he only eaten a quarter of it so far? How could it possibly be so impossibly giant despite being no bigger than any other sandwich he ate in his life? "Just tired. How do you two stay up so late all the time?"

"We usually don't," said Sam. "But the new expansion is so cool, and there's still so much of it you haven't even seen yet, Danny."

"Sure, but maybe we can save it for Friday? I really do want to try and bring my grades up a little bit," he said. Did he? It would help with the lie, the illusion that everything was better, but how long could it last? How long before he couldn't resist that pull in his core to become Phantom and fight the ghosts, even if it meant getting captured and tortured by his own parents or destroyed by Valerie? Was it possible to ignore it long enough that it would stop, that his obsession might change? Would he stop himself from returning to fight the ghosts and protect people even if it did change?

He pushed the thoughts down, barely registering Sam's agreement. "Fair enough. We can wait until Friday, then. Your house?"

"I guess. My parents are pretty happy to see you both coming over again, now that–um–y'know," he mumbled, trailing off a bit. He couldn't bring himself to say it, even now, and he knew his family and friends noticed even if they never asked why. He wished they would, even if Danny didn't know how he would answer. He wished any one of them would realize the truth, that they were wrong, that he was never possessed, yet it wouldn't happen. They were all too happy that he was fixed to even think about asking questions they might not like the answers to.

"Shit, look out–" began Tucker, but it was too late, and Danny felt someone roughly grab the back of his head and smash his face into the table.

"Hey, Fenturd!" snapped Dash as Danny blinked, his ears ringing as Dash gripped him by his hair. His fingers twisted through it and he could feel Dash digging his nails into Danny's scalp. Was his nose bleeding? Where was the teacher? "You were supposed to do the work on our chemistry project, remember?"

Chemistry project? Was he . . . oh. They had been assigned something together, hadn't they? Right before the summoning happened and he ended up out of school for a week. Crud.

"That doesn't merit smashing his head into a table, Dash," snapped Sam. "He was seriously sick last week, you can't expect–"

"-he's been back for days, hasn't he? There's no excuse and that stupid assignment counts for a huge part of my grade. My Dad's going to kill me" said Dash, cutting her off, and Dash grabbed him roughly by his arm before throwing him onto the floor. "And if I'm going to suffer, Fenton, so will you."

He should let Dash beat him up, get it out of his system so he wouldn't move on to someone else when he was done. The bully never attacked him so publicly before, and maybe he would finally get punished for it if the teachers caught him in the act. But the frustration and rage Danny felt over everything lately bubbled inside of him, and as he scrambled to his feet, Danny automatically dodged as Dash took a swing at him. Dash's punch was sloppy, too wide and unbalanced, and Dash barely kept from tumbling as his blow failed to land.

Danny, however, had nearly two years of fighting experience under his belt, his own technique by far more advanced than some stupid bully, and without thinking he drove his fist into Dash's gut, making Dash double over in pain. Danny heard a few "Oohs" and someone yelled "Kick his ass, Fenton!" as Dash struggled to his feet, and Dash's next punch was even sloppier than the first one. Instead of dodging, though, this time Danny grabbed his arm, twisting it behind Dash's back as he knocked him onto his knees. "I'm not going to be your punching bag anymore," Danny whispered as he leaned down next to Dash, "and if you try to attack anyone else, either, I'll do way worse to you than what you've done to me these last few years."

"Fuck, Fenton, my shoulder–" he screamed, trying to wrench free, and then Danny felt it in the way that Dash's arm jerked unnaturally, his shoulder dislocating, and there was a cry as Dash threw up his lunch. Danny blinked as he looked around at his classmates, their whispers and pointing, and oh . . . oh. He went way, way too far with this, his senses rushing back to him as the adrenaline from the fight faded. He shouldn't have–he attacked–oh, no. Oh no no no no no no no.

Danny didn't know when he fell to his knees, clutching his chest in pain, his breathing too fast. He felt a hand on his back–Sam or Tucker, maybe?-as someone tried to calm him down, and another student brought Dash to the nurse. There was a teacher talking, too. Mr. Lancer? And Valerie? But he couldn't focus, his mind spinning rapidly, repeating the same thing over and over again.

He hurt someone. He hurt Dash. His shoulder was dislocated, his throwing arm ruined, he would never play football again. Danny destroyed his dreams as surely as the portal destroyed his own.

"Danny, it's okay, Dash deserved it, he's been hurting you and tons of other kids for years," said Sam, but the words couldn't penetrate. His core screamed. This wasn't simply ignoring his obsession, it was actively defying it, going against his very sense of self, his very being. And why? Because he was angry? Because he was tired of his friends and family and everyone else not understanding him, of hurting him, when they couldn't possibly know what they were doing? Because fighting back against Dash was easy, a convenient target in the middle of this awful nightmare?

"I've called his parents," said Mr. Lancer. "Danny, we'll talk later about the consequences, okay? But for now I've asked your parents to pick you up and bring you home. Do you understand?"

He was a monster. He didn't deserve Lancer's compassion or anyone else's. Danny destroyed Dash's shoulder. His dreams. He couldn't–he wanted to disappear. Was he crying right now? When had he even started? He didn't know. It was selfish of him to try to pretend to be here, to be human, when he was some kind of freak. Danny told himself since his accident that Vlad didn't represent his future, but then what did he do today if not abuse his own power to strike someone else down? Danny could suffer another bloody nose and a few punches and kicks to the gut. He would heal. But Dash . . . his shoulder . . .

Danny did not remember his parents coming to collect him or getting into the GAV. He didn't remember going up to his room and laying down on his bed, but when he finally began to come out of his haze, he saw the sun was setting, the stars on his ceiling glowing. Did anyone else notice that they always glowed now, whether it was dark or not? He held up his hand, reaching for them for a brief moment before letting it drop to his side when there was a gentle knock.

"Hey, little brother, can I come in?" said Jazz, her voice like someone approaching a wounded animal, but Danny's freakishly fast healing already fixed what little damage Dash managed to do. No injuries here. At least, no physical ones.

"No." He didn't know how he managed to get the word out, but as usual, Jazz ignored it as she sat down beside him on the bed. She never cared about what he actually wanted, did she? She always pushed her way in, intruded into everything, and yet she still didn't realize the truth, either.

"Nobody's mad, you know," she said, and he tried to push the bitterness down. She was trying to help and he knew that, but right now, he could barely stand to be around her or his friends on a good day, and this . . . what was the point? "Well, Dash and his parents might be, but everyone else gets it. Sam and Tucker confirmed he's been bullying you and a bunch of other students for a long time." She paused, waiting for him to respond, but he wouldn't. Couldn't, even. None of them understood. Not really. Danny easily could have killed Dash. And for what? A bloody nose? Who else might he hurt? "Lancer said you're suspended for the next two days, though. There are, um, certain policies they have to follow. Mom and Dad are there right now trying to figure out why they didn't do anything before things got to this point."

Two days. Hardly a fitting punishment for what he did. Jazz put a hand on his shoulder. "Danny . . . please, you don't–"

"-leave me alone, Jazz." He put as much bite into his request as he could and felt the temperature in his room plummet. "I don't want to talk right now."

"But you need–"

"-I need you to leave me alone," he repeated, rolling over and curling up on himself, and Jazz sighed as she stood up, rubbing her arms.

"Fine. But we're going to talk about this, okay?" He heard his door click quietly shut and he waited, listening to her footsteps fade before letting his invisibility and intangibility flow through him as he stood up and then floated through the ceiling to the Ops Center. With a quick glance around to confirm it was empty, he let himself flicker back into the visible spectrum, walking almost on autopilot to the weapons locker before opening it.

He stared at the ecto blasters for a long time, his arms wrapped tightly around himself as he considered the unthinkable. He couldn't keep doing this. It wasn't just Dash, of course, but Dash was the result of it. The end. What happened when he suppressed everything, endlessly, in some stupid effort to try to protect the people he cared about, the people who could never love him as he truly was. A monster wearing human skin, pretending he could get along, convincing himself that ghosts weren't really that bad or as beholden to their obsessions as his parents thought, despite his own core fracturing every time he went against his own.

He stared at the weapons in the closet as he let himself toy with the idea for a moment. Was his healing factor too strong? Would it even work? Probably not, given what he survived in the portal that day. Half-survived. Or was that the fear talking? What did he have to live for, at this point? If he turned into Phantom and tried to make things right, his parents would eventually capture and dissect him, and at some point they'd realize the truth and it would destroy them. If it wasn't his parents, then it would be Valerie, blasting him until there was nothing left. If he didn't turn into Phantom again . . . well, he wasn't even sure that was an option. He felt sure his obsession would drive him to do it at some point, regardless of his own wishes. There was no ignoring what he was, no burying Phantom in the past and pretending the grave would be left untouched.

And being Danny Fenton, now, felt empty. Hollow. Hearing his friends and family and sister talk about Phantom, about the suffering he must have endured, about how horrifying and awful it all had to be. Talking about him, his other self, as if he were a monster, when the reality was that Danny Fenton was too cowardly to even consider taking that leap. The way they hated him, too, even as Danny Fenton these last couple of years. A bad friend and brother and student and son. Now that the possession was over, everything was supposed to be better, since all of the things that were wrong with him were supposed to be Phantom's fault. But he couldn't keep up even the minimal efforts to be better, to do better, anymore. Danny couldn't continue to hold a mask that weighed more than the sun.

"I wouldn't do that, if I were you." Danny jerked in surprise, seeing Sidney Pointdexter sitting on a table. He didn't think Sidney ever left Casper High, but it didn't matter.

"Do what?"

"Don't play that game with me, buddy," said Pointdexter. "I had a feeling you'd be in a rough spot after your run in with that bully. I'm sorry I didn't manage to warn you first."

"It's not your fault," said Danny, still staring hollowly at the weapons rack. Debating. Maybe there was no point in denying it. The ghosts understood him by far better than any of his family and friends did. "And it's not really about Dash. He's just . . . it was just . . . It's not your fault."

"Doesn't stop me from feeling like it is. You get that though, don't you?" said Sidney, his legs swinging slowly back and forth. "I was a freshman, you know. When I . . . ." Sidney trailed off, but there was a flash behind him, a feeling of overwhelming sorrow and anger and hopelessness and intense pain, as he saw the shadow of a muzzle in the air around Sidney followed by sudden nothingness, and Danny shuddered. He never experienced a death echo, or at least, not from this side.

"I'm sorry," he whispered, crying, and he wiped the tears on his sleeve as he went and sat down beside Sidney.

"Not your fault, either," said Sidney. "It was–I shouldn't have done it, you know. Maybe if I'd known I'd come back this way I wouldn't have. I thought everything would be over. I thought–I thought there would be nothing. But the world didn't let go, and I watched as my family and friends moved on without me. I found myself angry, blaming the bullies who drove me to this, wanting to get revenge on any that would try it again so that they could never hurt anyone else like they hurt me. But it's never enough. There's always someone who slips through the cracks."

"I don't know what else to do. I'm not sure this is what I want," he said, nodding at the cabinet, "but I can't–you don't know everything about me, Sidney. If you did, you wouldn't–you wouldn't try to save me."

"Sure I would, Danni-rino." There was a small smile on his face as he gently nudged him in the shoulder. "Maybe no one else knows the truth, but I do. I can't miss it, not when I spend nearly every minute at the school. Must be tough, having your friends and family not know everything you do as Phantom."

Danny felt his blood run cold. "What?"

"I've never told anyone, champ. Promise. Wouldn't betray a secret like that," he chuckled, holding his hands up defensively. "But maybe instead of using one of those weapons to do something you can't take back, you can talk to me instead, okay? You've done a lot for us ghosts. Might as well let us–or at least let me–do something for you. Please, Danny?"

It was odd hearing Sidney not call him by a nickname, and strange enough that Danny found himself nodding and slowly spilling the truth about everything. About his accident. About becoming Phantom. About deciding to befriend the ghosts at first not out of a sense of altruism, but out of a selfish desire to prove to himself that he didn't have to become the monster his parents thought. That befriending the ghosts also meant he didn't have to fight them as Phantom, when being Phantom was so, so dangerous before he learned how to turn invisible since getting away before his parents showed up used to be nearly impossible, the number of close calls giving him nightmares even now. That he found it also quietly eased his own obsession, too, as it helped him protect the ghosts, too. To give them a chance to pursue their own obsessions, their own dreams, despite being dead.

He told him about the frustration and exhaustion, about the way his parents and friends and everyone else talked about the ghosts, and how much it hurt him even as they themselves saw the proof that ghosts weren't like that. That he wasn't like that. Danny told him about the summoning, about how he thought it would provide an out, but instead–instead–

"-it destroyed you, didn't it?" said Sidney, and Danny nodded, crying softly into his hands, not wanting anyone to overhear them together even though no one should be near the Ops Center. Not wanting Jazz to stick her nose into things only to make everything worse right now.

And he told him about the last two weeks, and the hollowness and emptiness and resisting fulfilling his obsession. About refusing to turn into Phantom out of fear of what would happen since he blamed so much on his alter ego that his family and friends spoke only of harming half of himself, without knowing it was him.

"Why not tell them the truth, then?" said Sidney.

"I can't, they'll–"

"-if you're already at this point," he said, nodding at the ecto blasters in the closet, "then what's the harm?"

"Knowing that I'm a ghost would ruin them, Sid. My parents wouldn't be able to handle it, none of them could. And there's a big difference between dying this way and dying on a lab table," said Danny.

"I've seen your folks, y'know," said Sidney. "They were at the school today, talking to that teacher of yours, Mr. Lancer? They're fighting for you. They care about you."

"They care about someone that doesn't exist, not–not the real me. They all hated who Danny Fenton was so much these last two years that they decided I was possessed. And they hate Danny Phantom too much to even consider that we might be the same person." He shook his head. "I can't–I don't think I can do it."

"Do you want backup?" he offered. "I can be there, if you want. And you don't have to tell them everything at once. Maybe just a little at a time. Test the waters, so to speak. There's a whole range of liminals out there, buddy. Most of them don't have powers like yours, or stand so perfectly on the threshold between our worlds. It's more like they've got a toe across, at best. You could come clean about the possession part, at least, and let them know what you are without telling them about Phantom just yet."

Danny mulled it over, his stomach churning at the prospect of his loved ones knowing anything that might potentially lead to them knowing the whole truth. To rejection. "I don't . . . I don't know. How can I even prove it to them? Won't they just think I'm possessed again or that I've gone crazy?"

"If it helps, your parents already suspect the truth," said Sidney, and Danny blinked, staring at him. "Not the part about you being Phantom, but the possession? They're not convinced your friends and sister got it right. Your Dad's been questioning it some, at least. He talks to himself a lot while he works."

"You shouldn't spy on my parents, they're dangerous," groaned Danny. Even though his Dad missed most of the time, Danny still had more close calls than he could count. "And just how much of my life are you listening in on, Sidney?"

"Just enough to hopefully avoid letting you slip through the cracks, champ," he said as he put a hand on his shoulder, squeezing it gently. "Now, what do you want to do?"

"I don't know," he mumbled, pulling at his hair, but even as he said it he stood up and, with one last look, closed the door to the weapons locker. He promised Jazz weeks ago that he wouldn't kill himself, after all, even if she didn't think that person was him, and talking to Sidney didn't fix anything, not really, but it helped a little. Enough, at least, for now to make him reconsider long enough to not do anything just yet. "But maybe not this. At least, not yet."

"That's something. You want me to stick around for a bit?"

"No, but . . . can I talk to you again? If, um, y'know," he said, gesturing at the cabinet, and Sidney nodded.

"Of course, bud. Always. You've done so much for us, it's the least I can do for you," he said, Danny blinked as the ghost gave him a quick hug before vanishing, likely on his way back to the high school. He really wasn't sure what he was going to do, but maybe Sidney was right that he could start small rather than jumping into everything all at once. Just not , he was going to go fly and look at some stars in the desperate hope it would help him clear his head and figure out what to do.

A/N: Thanks, as always, for the reviews, follows, favorites, etc. I may upload the next chapter a little earlier than usual, too - this feels like a rough one to start/end the New Year on. We'll see, though - sometimes I get easily distracted.