Chapter Nineteen

CW: None, aside from mentions of depression, but I think that's pretty standard by this point.

Sam stood uncomfortably in the corner of Danny's room, holding an old shoe box while he dug around under his bed. The alarm clock on his night stand said it was quarter past noon, which was fifteen minutes late. Tucker promised he would be here, too, and she dug her toe into Danny's carpet, wondering if Tucker changed his mind. They spent most of the day yesterday at her house talking it over, trying to figure out some basic ground rules for when they finally talked to Danny again. Both of them agreed that they needed to keep pushing Danny to answer their questions and to be honest with them, knowing how much it was hurting not just them but him, too. They both agreed they needed to try not to judge him, to support him as best they could, and that if they did have issues with something he was doing, then they needed to talk to each other first and decide if it was really a problem before putting more pressure on Danny. It sounded so easy yesterday.

But as much as Sam knew what she needed to do to be there for Danny, that Tucker was right that he was their friend and that they needed to try to support him and accept him, Sam really, really hoped she didn't have to see his ghost form beneath the Hazmat suit again.

She shouldn't be so unsettled by it. She always advocated for looking beneath the surface, pushing to save animals and creatures that other people ignored because they weren't as cute looking as baby tigers, and Sam hated how much people judged her for her own appearance. But this . . . it wasn't just surface level. Being in a room with Danny when he was like that felt like a threat, like drinking something sweet only to learn it was poison, even if Tucker seemed oblivious to it. But that didn't mean Tucker was wrong. She needed to get through this, to get over it, for Danny's sake.

"Got one!" said Danny triumphantly, and crawling back out he held out a small, green blob with eyes and a tiny little mouth that revealed a very small set of fangs when it yawned.

"Okay, how is that cute? Because it's cute, right?" she said, smiling despite herself, and he grinned as he dropped it in the shoe box.

"Mostly. They used to come around all the time," he said as he started opening the drawers of his end tables, and Sam tried to ignore the drawer full of first aid supplies that looked depressingly well-used. She had no clue how injured he got as Phantom, never really giving it much thought, and she realized that lately things with Danny were somehow always worse than she suspected. She didn't want this hole to keep going deeper, to keep getting darker, but it seemed like that was unavoidable. "Like right after my accident, I kept finding them snuggling up to me in bed. I think they sensed my core, somehow. But I was super worried my parents would find them, so I tried to get them to stay away."

"Apparently not for long," said Sam as he pulled another one out and dropped it in the shoe box.

"It's actually been months since I last saw one in my room," he said, pausing in his search for a moment as he rubbed the back of his neck. "Maybe it's because they know my parents are being less hostile to the ghosts now, though. Or maybe it's my fault. I think they can sense stuff, and I haven't been in a good spot for a while."

"And now you are?"

"I've taken a small step," he said, not offering any more explanations as he started rummaging through his desk and flipped over some books. "C'mon, I know there's one more."

"Hey, guys, what's–what's that?" asked Tucker as he walked in, and he blinked at the box in her hands. "Are those ghosts?"

"Yeah," said Danny as he pulled one more out of a spot underneath his desk lamp that Sam would swear was too small for it to have possibly hidden inside of. "They're different from the kind of ghosts you're used to, though, since these are born in the ghost zone. Sometimes they eventually become something else, sometimes they don't. I don't know much about how it works." He shrugged as he dropped it in the shoe box alongside the others, and Sam stared at them for a bit as they eased themselves into the corners of the box. She never heard of ghosts being anything but imprints of the deceased thanks to how the Fentons described at the ghost safety assemblies at school, but she was increasingly realizing that what the Fentons didn't know about ghosts could fill a whole book, if not an entire library.

"Why not use a thermos?" asked Tucker.

"They can't be held by it," said Danny. "I don't know why. But they're kind of like cats in that they'll usually stay in a box. I can run them down to the portal, though, just give me a second." Taking the box from Sam, she stared at him as whispered something to the blobs on his way out, a faint hint of static and ice and something else running under the words. Ghost speech. She shuddered, rubbing her arms as he went downstairs.

"He seems weirdly chipper," said Tucker after a minute, clearly surprised. "You already talk to him?"

"No. We were waiting for you and then his ghost sense went off, and then he started pulling those blob ghosts out from under his bed," said Sam. "But I noticed it, too. He still seems like he's in a bad spot, but . . . something's changed, I think, too. Maybe it's just knowing that we're here and not completely freaking out."

"So you're not freaking out anymore?"

"Oh, no, I am, but it's a kind of background noise now," she admitted as she sat down at Danny's desk while Tucker took a spot on the floor by his closet. She did not mention that she was now taking medication and seeing a therapist for her anxiety, still, and had been since encountering Ember in Danny's back yard when she realized that as long as she was going to be friends with Danny, there would be no avoiding interacting with ghosts. It wasn't that Tucker or even Danny would judge her for it, but . . . She wasn't ready to tell them. Not yet. The medication was the only reason she didn't have a full-blown panic attack in Tucker's room the other day. "You?"

"About the same. I'm just worried about him." Tucker pulled out his phone, scrolling through TikTok for a minute while they waited for Danny to get back. Sam sighed as she looked up at the ceiling. Even during the day, Danny's star stickers seemed to faintly glow, although it might be her imagination. His room was cold, as always, but she anticipated that and wore tights beneath her skirt and an extra sweater layered over her tank top. On his desk were a few assignments and a couple of old pictures of the three of them. One of them she recognized from Floody Waters the summer before freshman year, maybe two weeks before Danny's accident, and he was smiling in a way she hadn't seen since then.

All of them were. It felt cliche to say it, but things really were so much simpler back then.

"Hey," said Danny as he walked back in with a bowl of cereal and sat on his bed, legs crossed as Tucker put his phone away. "So . . .?"

He let it hang as Sam shared a look with Tucker, neither one really wanting to jump into this even as the conversation had to happen. Sam ran her fingers through her hair as she spun around in the chair to face them. "Missed breakfast?" Tucker rolled his eyes at her, and she gave him a tiny, defensive shrug. It wasn't as if Tucker was willing to jump right in and talk about everything, either.

"I've been having trouble eating for a while now, and it's been worse these last few days," he said softly, stirring the cereal around with a spoon. Sam and Tucker both noticed it, of course, but hearing Danny admit it was different. "My Mom insisted." He took a bite, wincing slightly as he forced it down. "She might ambush both of you to make sure I didn't just throw it in the trash. I'm sor–"

"-don't start apologizing already or we'll be here forever," interrupted Tucker. "And honestly, the more I think about it, the more I think we owe you another apology for not noticing, well, everything, I guess? I mean, are you okay?"

"I will be, I think," he said as he stared at it for a second before forcing down another bite and then put the bowl down on his night stand. "Ughh. This sucks."

"If you don't want cereal, we could go to the Nasty Burger for lunch," offered Tucker. The door to the room was open, a set rule in the Fenton household that made Sam nuts, so she knew they couldn't have a totally open, honest conversation here. Danny being grounded would make most of this talk impossible. They planned to drag him out of the house to the Nasty Burger anyway, and then go to the park afterward to one of the quieter spots for some privacy. "They've got the power back and it's been a week since I last got their Double Nasty Burger."

"I can't go. I'm grounded. I barely managed to convince my parents to let you two come over," he said. "But thanks."

"Y'know, not wanting to eat can be a sign of being depressed or that you're sick," said Sam carefully as she tugged at the edge of her skirt, worried she might be crossing a line by naming the problem, but Danny didn't deny it or look upset that she brought it up.

"I know." He stared at the bowl for a moment, biting his lip, before he forced himself to pick it up again with a sigh. "And being depressed is part of it, but it's also a ghost thing."

She and Tucker shared a look, torn between asking him for details about it and desperately not wanting to know anything else that might give either of them nightmares for weeks on end about Danny. "Why did you get grounded?" asked Tucker eventually, dropping the subject for now as Danny forced another bite down. "I thought your parents were being friendlier about stuff because they understood what you were doing with the ghosts."

"They understood it until I had Jazz trick them into leaving the house last night so I could talk to Nocturn alone in the lab," he said, stirring the cereal around. "And they might have forgiven that part except that I also let him go."

Sam shivered, rubbing her arms. She couldn't remember the specifics of her dream the night of the sleepwalker attack, but the pleasant sensation lingered long after, the sense of a wonderful life, of acceptance, of hope, just beyond her grasp. But that awful scream–Danny's scream, she reminded herself–smashed it as surely as a knife in the chest.

Sam didn't want to spend an eternity in a pleasant dream, oblivious to the world around her, but it was the most content she felt in months. And the damage to Amity Park while she and the others slept was extensive. Her home was fine, of course, and they would be back at school again tomorrow. Back to facing tests and essays and their awful classmates and the ghost attacks, instead of the pleasant world of her dreams that could never, ever be.

"Aren't you the one that said Nocturn was too dangerous to release?" said Tucker. "Like, so dangerous that you literally had a breakdown in my room over it?"

"Yeah, well, you get why I'm grounded now," he said as he ate another spoonful.

"Did he trick you?" asked Sam, crossing her legs so she could lean a bit more easily on the left arm rest.

"No." Sam gritted her teeth. Why couldn't he just explain it? Why did everything have to be forcefully dragged out from him like this?

Tucker, too, seemed irritated as he crossed his arms over his chest. "Then why let him go?"

"Because I needed his help." He prodded at a piece of cereal in his bowl before putting it on his night stand again, and then rubbed his eyes with the heel of his hand. "I'm not exactly doing super great at the moment," he said bitterly, "and he was the only one who could help me. That's it. We managed to make a deal, though, and he won't hurt anyone that way again. At least not while I'm around."

"Danny," began Sam, glancing at Tucker, and he gave her a small nod. "This right here? That's kind of what we're talking about when we say that we're upset with you."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning you're pretty good at not answering questions," said Sam, "even when all we want to do is try to understand or help you. We know you're not doing okay. We've known it for ages - it's literally part of the reason why we thought you were possessed or something. And you seem to think that if you continue to keep me and Tucker and everyone else at arm's length it'll get better somehow, even though it should be super fucking obvious at this point that all it's ever done is make things worse."

"And we get why you're not telling your parents everything, and even why you felt like you needed to hide it from us, too," said Tucker, dropping his voice so low Sam almost couldn't hear him, but neither of them wanted the Fentons to hear this conversation. "Seriously. But it's clear this is only hurting you, and we're your friends. So please, Danny. Talk to us."

Danny stared at his hands, his finger tracing the outline of the death mark on his palm. Sam watched him closely as he swallowed, then, and rubbed the back of his neck. "It's hard to talk about it. It's not just–Some of it is that I've been focused on keeping this a secret for a long, long time, and it's hard to let that go with anyone. But some of it–it scares me. And I saw the way you both looked at me when I showed up in your room, Tucker, and I get it. I do. Nobody could accept that, accept me, that way." He paused as he bit his lip, and Sam could see him trembling. "But it's just–it's worse. Worse than you know, worse than you think, and if you already feel like I'm some kind of monster now, then I don't–" He broke off, shaking his head as he leaned forward and buried his face in his hands.

"You're not a monster, Danny," said Tucker gently, and Sam was glad he could say it with such conviction even as she hated that she couldn't. Why didn't it bother him? Tucker was right that dark and creepy was supposed to be her thing, not his, and yet there was a visceral horror she felt when she gazed upon Danny in that moment back in Tucker's room. It took everything in her to sit down next to him that night, to hold his hand and talk to him until he found whatever he needed to be human again.

Danny raised his head, and Sam swore she could see a faint, greenish glow within his normally blue eyes. "Would you say that if you knew the reason I'm unable to eat right now is because all I want to do is eat people's dreams the way Nocturn did? Like the way Spectra does?"

Her blood ran cold. "What?"

"That's my problem, okay? In that fight with him, I didn't mean to do it, but I took the dreams he stole and I–" He stopped, shaking his head. "I'd never done anything like that before. It's why I risked talking to Nocturn, and why I helped him. I don't want to hurt people. I never have. But if I give into that urge, that hunger, then I–you can say all you want, Tucker, that I'm not a monster, but it's not true."

"No, Danny, it is," he argued without hesitation. "Okay, so, you want to eat dreams and that's not great because you could end up hurting someone. But you haven't done it since that fight, when it sounds like you didn't even realize what it was you were doing. You've been fighting hard not to everyday since then. That's not something monsters do."

"Tucker's right," said Sam. "What matters is that you're trying, Danny. And if there's anything we can do to help, just tell us. We'll help. We want to be there for you, okay?"

He looked at the two of them, staring in awe, before giving a small nod. "Okay. Thanks. I'm not sure there's anything you can do besides just willing to be here and be with me. But I'll try to let you know if there's something else, too."

"What did Nocturn agree to do for you?" asked Tucker.

"Ghosts that have my problem usually experience it because they're trying to replace something that's missing," he said as he gently touched his chest with one hand. "There's like an ache, a hollow spot, that hurts all the time but if you asked me a few weeks ago, I couldn't have told you why. My obsession isn't exactly protection, like a lot of people think. It's protecting people's dreams, their futures, their hopes . . . The stuff I felt like I lost when I had my accident. It's why Nocturn got under my skin so badly. Stealing something like that, from the people I cared about, I just–I couldn't handle it. I completely flipped, and then at first I just wanted to take them back, to try to figure out a way to give the dreams and everything back, but that's not–it doesn't work that way, I guess."

"But Nocturn can give people dreams," said Danny. "So that's what he's doing for me. Just reshaping my worst fears and nightmares and injecting hope, and hopefully filling that void. I don't know if it'll work. But I also don't know what else to try."

Danny picked up the bowl of cereal again, stirring it around with a forlorn expression, as Sam took a deep breath. "Okay, that's it." Standing up, she grabbed the cereal from him and wrinkled her nose when she saw it. "Ughhh, raisin bran? Seriously? No wonder you don't want to eat."

"Sam–"

"-I'm getting you ungrounded," she said, "or at least ungrounded long enough for a trip to the Nasty Burger. I get it might not be as good as usual, but anything would be better than this." Before Danny could argue, she walked out of the room, the mostly full bowl of cereal in hand as she headed down the stairs. She could feel herself shaking slightly, Danny's confession still lingering, and she swallowed uncomfortably as she walked into the kitchen. Mrs. Fenton sat at the table with her laptop, and when she saw the mostly full bowl in Sam's hands her face fell.

"He wouldn't eat it?" she sighed.

"Nope, and neither would I," said Sam as she dumped it out and placed the bowl next to the sink. "Cereal was gross before I became a vegan, Mrs. Fenton. At least get him some with marshmallows in it if that's what you're going to insist on feeding him."

"I'll keep it in mind," she said with a bemused smile. "But he's not eating much lately. If he could tell me something he would like, I'd happily make it for him right now, but he doesn't seem to want anything."

"I know, which is why I was going to ask if Tucker and I can bring him to the Nasty Burger with us," she said as she leaned back against the counter. "And, look, I know he's supposed to be grounded right now, but he still seems super depressed. I think spending time with Tucker and me is helping him, and I think if we could go out to eat, get some sunshine, it might help him more, too. He also promised he'd eat an entire double cheeseburger as long as it has no pickles on it. Please, Mrs. Fenton?"

"Punishments aren't very effective if I start granting exceptions, you know," she said, but Sam could tell she had her when she smiled sadly. "But they've never been effective with Danny since this all started, so I doubt one trip will hurt. Just make sure he's home for dinner since his Uncle Vlad will be here."

"Who?" She tried to remember Danny mentioning an uncle before, any uncle, but her mind came up blank. She thought he only had an Aunt - Alyssa or Alicia or something?

"Vlad Masters," said Maddie, and Sam barely avoided scowling. She met Vlad Masters a few times at her parents' parties and usually made an effort to avoid him. He gave off some seriously unpleasant vibes that were worse than some of the ghosts. "He's not technically Danny's uncle, but we used to go to school with him and we've gotten close again since our college reunion last year. He donated money to the disaster relief efforts from the recent ghost attack and wants to be here to help however he can."

"Oh. Well, I'll let Danny know. Thanks, Mrs. Fenton!" she said quickly as she hurried back up the stairs. Danny looked up at her, raising an eyebrow at her as she entered and gave an overly dramatic bow. "I, of course, am the master of parental manipulation. We can go to the Nasty Burger and head out for a bit. Your Mom just wants you home in time for dinner because your Uncle, who is apparently Vlad Masters, is going to be here tonight."

The brief joy she saw in his expression vanished in an instant as Tucker gaped at Danny. "Wait, the most famous and probably most brilliant tech billionaire of the century is your uncle? Seriously? Why didn't you tell me?! I'd kill for a chance to like, even shake his hand for a minute."

"He's not actually my uncle. He was a friend of my parents' back in college. My Dad likes him a lot and thinks of him like a brother, so hence 'Uncle Vlad,'" he said sourly as he got to his feet.

"You seem as impressed with him as I am," said Sam as they grabbed their things and headed downstairs. Danny didn't say another word about it while they were in the house, though, instead giving a quick thanks and goodbye hug to his Mom before following them outside.

Sam stripped off her sweater the second they were out the door and tied it around her waist. Danny's room might be an ice box, but outside it was a pleasantly warm day, and even as he fell into step between her and Tucker, the cold that clung to the air around Danny didn't seem to be seeping into her half as much as usual.

"So what's wrong with him?" asked Tucker.

"He's a billionaire?" said Sam instantly, and she saw Tucker roll his eyes. "What? I've met most of them, Tucker, and know first hand just how much they all pretty much suck. Either they inherited their money from people who exploited and hurt others, or they made their money exploiting and hurting others. There's not a lot of gray areas. Even my family's money all comes from owning factories where they worked people to death a century ago. My parents didn't do that, but they're happy to continue to invest the money in other companies that do exploit people and let it grow to obscene amounts while they pursue their pet projects and other people starve. Personally, I can't wait to give it all away someday."

"I mean, I can confirm he's definitely done some awful stuff to make his money, but it's way worse than you think," said Danny. "He also wants to kill my Dad and marry my Mom. And I'm pretty sure he's murdered like at least a dozen liminals like me after talking to my parents last night."

Sam and Tucker both stopped, glancing at each other in horror as Danny walked a few more steps before he turned to look at them. "What?" he asked as he shoved his hands in his pockets.

"You can't just drop all of that at once!" said Sam.

"Like, seriously, dude," complained Tucker. "I–just–seriously?!"

"You're literally the ones that complained about me being too vague less than twenty minutes ago," he grumbled as they started walking beside him again. "I thought I'd try to get to the point this time."

"Okay, but like, details, maybe?"

"Fine. But you can't say a word, and if you see him, please don't let on that you know, okay?" he sighed. "About me or him or any of it."

"Obviously," said Sam and Tucker at the same time, and she gave Tucker a quick fist bump behind Danny's back.

"My Dad and Mom have been trying to create a portal to the Ghost Zone since college," he explained. "Vlad originally worked on it with them. They managed to create a prototype, and when they turned it on, Vlad got hit by the energy from the portal. My parents said he ended up in the hospital for a while with a serious case of ecto contamination. Sound familiar?"

"So he's like you? A liminal?" asked Sam.

"Yeah. The amount of energy he got exposed to was way less than what I was hit with, so I don't think he's as powerful as I am or that he has the same range of abilities I have, either," said Danny. "But he does have twenty years of experience and a ton of patience, and he blames my Dad for his accident. My Mom, well, he sees her as innocent. She's never been interested in him, at least as far as I can tell, but he's obsessed with her. Thinks she's the one who got away and that if my Dad were out of the picture, she'd realize what she's missing out on."

"Ew," said Sam.

"Yikes," said Tucker at the same time.

"It's both, really," said Danny with a half-smile, but it quickly faded. "Anyway, he had this plan at the reunion to try to get my Dad. I managed to stop it, he didn't realize I was involved, and as far as I know he hasn't worked out that I'm the same as him. But now that my parents know I'm a liminal, there's a chance they realized that he's one, too, and they might have reached out to him for advice about me. And I doubt they would keep my identity a secret from him, since as far as they know he's just this really cool tech billionaire and philanthropist. I don't know what he'll do if he figures out the truth, since I think if he's got that much, he'll probably be able to put together that I'm Phantom, too."

"What do you think he'll do to you?" asked Sam.

"I don't know. My parents mentioned that researcher, Alyce, was apparently threatened by someone super powerful until she agreed to stop her looking into liminals," said Danny, "but that she didn't know who that person was, just that they were capable of like getting her grant funding pulled and getting her kicked out of her apartment and stuff. And a bunch of the liminals she's spoken to over the years are now dead."

"And you think that was Vlad?"

"I know it was. She mentioned seeing the Wisconsin Ghost to my parents, and that's Vlad," said Danny. "I don't think there are any other liminals who can change form like we do, but I've seen him transform before. He calls himself Plasmius. Skulker works for him sometimes, too, and the researcher mentioned seeing him as well. And I'm not surprised he threatened her, since he's really careful about his secret, too, and there was a chance that she might figure it out if she had enough information. But what I don't get is why he went after the other liminals."

"Maybe he was worried they could also sense him, figure out what he was," suggested Sam. "You can sense ghosts, after all. It's not crazy that a liminal might be able to sense other liminals or something." She tried not to think about how she picked up on something from Vlad, either, or what that might mean for her. That she might be a little liminal, too, although she never had a near death experience the way Danny did. Still, there was no way she could let anyone else know that she could sense something around the ghosts again, even if she didn't quite understand it herself, now that she knew it might make her a target by people like Vlad.

"Yikes, Danny," said Tucker, rubbing his arms. "You should tell your parents, especially if he might try to kill you or hurt them."

"I don't think he'll kill me. He's too obsessed with my Mom, and if he killed me, there'd be no hope of that ever happening. Besides, if I tell them about Vlad, they'll figure out the rest about me, too," said Danny. "I don't think I'm ready for that."

"You don't know that he won't hurt you, and it sounds like he's already trying to kill your Dad or something. You should tell them something, Danny," said Sam as she kicked a rock a little too hard and it skittered into the street.

"I'll keep them safe, and seriously, I'll be fine," he said, and she groaned. "I promise."

"Promises still don't mean much from you these days, Danny Fenton," said Sam coolly. "You promised a whole bunch of things for two years that didn't come to pass."

Danny bit his lower lip, considering, and when he spoke she couldn't understand a word he said. His words had an echo and whisper behind them, a feeling of an autumn breeze despite the clear spring day. "Was that ghost speech?"

"Way less awful than last time," muttered Tucker, rubbing his arms. "What did you say, anyway?"

"I promised you, in the language of the dead and on my true name, that I won't keep my secret at the cost of my parents or me or anyone else being hurt by Vlad," he said with a shrug. "It carries more weight than a normal promise. It's, um . . . the best I can do. I realize it might not be enough still."

"What's your true name? Is it just like your regular name or is it Phantom or what?" asked Tucker, and Danny flushed a brilliant red. Huh.

"Nope. I'm not telling you. It's super over the top and embarrassing, and there's all kinds of bad things that can happen if someone who shouldn't know it gets their hands on it."

"Maybe, but you promised no more secrets, and without knowing what it translates to in plain old English I feel like I can't buy it," said Sam, gently teasing.

"Fine, let me try. It's hard to not say it in ghost speech, even when I want to, and you can't tell anyone, okay?" he said as he looked around to make sure they were alone, and then she heard that strange sound of a static and an echo, the feeling of the first winter chill on a brilliant sunny day, as he shook his head a few times before he finally managed to say it. "It's the liminal that creates and shatters the stars."

"Yikes, that's a mouthful," said Tucker, and then he clapped him on the back. "Hey, wait, does this mean I could summon you now and you couldn't say no? Can I give you orders to clean my room or something if I do?"

"Your room is like a thousand times cleaner than mine, Tucker," said Danny, which wasn't a no, exactly. "Unless you want to never find your socks again, I wouldn't try it, and besides, neither of you are liminals."

"Fine, fine," he chuckled, and although Sam couldn't say things were right just yet, this felt better. At least he was talking to them now and being honest. "But I wasn't really planning on trying it."

"Good, because the last time you summoned me I completely wrecked my insides trying to escape," said Danny, shuddering as he touched a hand to his stomach, and Sam flinched at the confession. She didn't realize he'd been hurt because of them. After learning he wasn't possessed, she assumed it was some kind of act. "I don't recommend becoming even a little tangible again while hiding inside tons of dirt and rocks."

"Wait, seriously?" said Tucker. "I'm so sorry, Danny."

"It was the only way to get out of the circle, or at least, the only one I could think of," he said with a shrug. "It's fine. I heal fast."

"You ever get hurt really badly?" asked Sam. "I saw the first aid supplies."

"I . . . yeah. A few times. When I'm in the Hazmat suit, I have a lot of resistance to some ghost attacks, but a strong enough ecto blast and stuff can penetrate and I can still get hurt," said Danny. "It's hard to say what the worst one I've gotten in a fight is and I've only needed stitches a few times, but that's mostly because nothing really compares to my accident."

They fell silent, then, as they walked the rest of the way to the Nasty Burger, both her and Tucker taking everything in. There was more. She knew there would be, that there probably always would be. They had missed so much of what was happening with Danny, and so much of who he was remained a mystery to them. But she felt a tiny spark of hope that maybe they would figure it out, because as much as he had definitely changed, there was so much about him that was still so very Danny, and maybe she would eventually be able to accept him. All of him.

At the very least, she had to try.

A/N: Thanks for the reviews, follows, favorites, etc! Next chapter might be out in two weeks instead of one - I am probably going to move to a biweekly posting schedule for a bit given work stuff and my plans to try and do Invisobang this year.