Edited by TwilightWalkerOfTime!

Gift for JadeNoRyuu as part of Phic Pight! This was a fun one to write, I went a little off the prompt...

Prompt used:

"Turns out that producing songs does give your soul the power of immortality, above all if they contain your name in the lyrics."

"So, what are you all planning on doing with all the money?" Tucker asked over the comms. His voice was staticky due to all the interference in the Ghost Zone. The giant rocks of ectoplasm making an asteroid field they were in wasn't helping things, either. It took Danny a moment for him to parse the question and before he could ask what money, Tucker had continued, "I'm thinking personal VR arcade. Right in my basement."

"Tucker," Sam interrupted, "you don't have a basement." As if that were the problem with his idea, not the money.

"I'm going to add one." Tucker chuckled.

"One, do you have any idea how expensive that is?" Sam responded. "Two, I don't think your parents are gonna let you do that."

"It'll be fine," Tucker dismissed. "My parents were planning on selling the house after high school anyways. They wanted to move somewhere warmer and retire now that I'm almost done with high school. I'll buy the house, bum off your couch for a few months while we rebuild it, and then bam," his point was punctuated by him hitting something, probably the dash of the Specter Speeder, "personal VR arcade."

Danny scoffed into the silence that followed. "Dude, I can't imagine we're making that much money off one meme song."

There was a pause on the other end of the comms, which Danny took as a sign that Tucker had come down to Earth, but then Sam shouted, "Oh my God! That can't be right!"

"Nope, completely. And this is in four weeks! It's been gaining speed! Not only that, but I took a bit of a gamble and started selling merch. The Danny plushies have been selling like hotcakes!"

Danny paused in his flight and looked back across the Ghost Zone at the Specter Speeder, "The Danny what?"

"Danny plushies! They're like your ghost form but tiny. There are a couple of variations, but they all have big eyes and posable arms. And! We have a back order of them. Our supplier is currently trying to find another company to subcontract to, but the stipulations on the contract are slowing that down."

That was not the answer Danny wanted to hear.

"Tucker…" Sam began, "how long have you been selling these? Cause now I remember a few of the comments being something like, 'I can't believe someone made a song for those dolls'..."

Danny took a deep (though as a ghost, it wasn't real) breath and pinched his nose. That was also something he didn't want to hear.

"A while… like, a year? But yeah, people love 'em," Tucker continued. Danny was pretty sure he was taking psychic damage from this conversation. "So yeah, the video has made us about 400k each, and the merch sales is close to a 25k split each." There was a pause, and Danny assumed it was because Tucker was shrugging. "Should be enough for the down payment at minimum, and with you two helping footing the mortgage, we should be able to make the changes we want when you two move in."

"Excuse me?" Sam sneered. "Why would I move in with you?"

"Because Danny is going to, and the second you no longer have to live in your parents' house, you're going to dip. And with the three of us living together, you and I can pay for Danny, and we can pretend Danny is making money off his parents' inventions. Easy excuse as to why Danny won't have a job."

Danny took that moment to chime back into the conversation. "Why wouldn't I have a job?"

"Because you're a superhero? Dude, it's already a problem at school, but you think even the Nasty Burger is gonna let you get away when you dip 'cause a ghost showed up?"

Danny paused and thought about it. "Oh…" That was going to kill a lot of his job prospects.

Sam sighed. "For the record, I'm only mad 'cause you were assuming I was going to move in with you." She sighed again. "But… you're absolutely right. When you put it like that, it's absolutely what we're gonna do."

"Alright, well with that out of the way, what are you guys gonna spend the money on?"

Danny opened his mouth to make a quip about lawyers and trademarking his likeness, but before he could, he felt his breath get forced out of his body. The icy cold wisp that came out of his lungs and throat fogged the air in front of him, and he sighed. "Probably more weapons… I got incoming."

Sam or Tucker started responding, but he couldn't hear them over the scream of "Phantom!"

Danny looked up just in time to see Ember flying at him at full speed. By the time he had processed that 'no, of course she's not friendly', it was too late to react. Ember collided with him in a full-body tackle that if he were human probably would have bisected him completely.

"I hate you!" she screamed right into his ear as she took the two of them flying across the zone. The crackle of her flaming hair drowned out anything else. The impact of stone only served to knock what little breath he thought he should have out of his lungs as Ember continued to drag him through several floating rocks. One, a second, and then a third, then she finally let go. Leaving him flying before he crashed into a fourth.

Danny blinked as he regained his bearings, half-buried in the ectoplasmic rock. He wasn't a stranger to people screaming about how they hated him — though that was usually reserved by his parents — but he wasn't normally accustomed to them crying while doing so.

With a heave, he pulled himself out of the asteroid. Ember wiped her tears and started growling as her hair flared up. There was a moment of stillness as he took in her appearance; she lacked a lot of the haughtiness that she usually carried, tall and proud of who she was. That wasn't her right now; she was hunched over, angry and sad…. Mostly angry.

Danny wasn't sure what was going on, but his gut (which he had learned to trust over years of heroing) told him it wasn't a good idea to get the calvary to come charging in yet. Danny quickly reached up and activated the com link. "Guys, hang back-"

He didn't get a chance to explain himself as Ember charged him again. Without the advantage of flying at him at somewhere around 115 mph at his unsuspecting back, he was able to defend himself much better.

Much better than he really should have…

She wasn't throwing ectoblasts or using her guitar to fire off shockwaves. Instead, she was throwing punches and kicks. Ember was not a physical combatant, compared to Danny, who had to be one (with Skulker swinging that giant skinning knife around).

Compared to that, this was easy.

Though not easy enough to be distracted, he thought as she reached up and tried to claw at him. He continued to dodge wild grasping swings and saw Sam and Tucker flying up to the two of them. He looked Ember in the eyes, still filled with tears, and bit his lip. This is either gonna make her kill me harder, or it's gonna stop the fight…

The next time one of her telegraphed punches came flying, he ducked under her arm and got behind her. "What the!" gasped out of her mouth before he wrapped her in a hug. "What the- what the hell are you doing, dipstick!"

Ember continued to whirl around and try to hit Danny, but he kept himself pinned to her back. As a ghost, she probably could have contorted her body in some ungodly way, but like most ghosts, they avoided doing that.

"Let go of me!" Ember screamed. "Or I'm gonna kill you deader!"

"On account of you trying to rip my head off, I'm going to say no."

Which of course served to just piss her off more. She continued to swing the two of them around, desperate to try and get out of his grip. It took an entire minute before Ember finally calmed down and stopped trying to hit Danny, but he still refused to let go. Especially when the fight left Ember and she started sobbing.

Having heard the fighting stop, Sam and Tucker pulled the Specter Speeder up next to the two of them. Their weapons were primed to save Danny if the fight had gone south, but seeing Danny holding Ember in his arms as she sobbed made them put them away.

Danny understood Tucker priming the weapons of the Specter Speeder, but seeing Sam putting her pistol away made him wonder if she was gonna hang out the door and shoot as Tucker flew by.

Sam made her way to the door of the Specter Speeder and opened it. "What's going on?" she asked tentatively and thankfully clearly (they really needed to update the Fenton Phones to work better this deep in the zone).

Ember sniffed and rubbed her eyes. "Your stupid theme song..."

"My… what?" Of all the things for Ember to declare her hatred of him for, that hadn't been it.

"You know… that stupid song you guys put out?" Ember growled. "It's… it's popular!"

Danny let go of Ember (probably stupidly) and floated a few feet away from her. "Why does that matter?"

"Why does it matter?" Ember screeched. She whirled on Danny, and he saw Sam reach for her gun, but then Ember calmed down. She paused and looked up for a while, unnaturally still, before she sighed. "I don't want to explain this. It'll be easier to show you. Come on." With that, she started flying off into the ether of the Ghost Zone.

Danny blinked and looked at Sam. The two of them shrugged, and Danny flew after Ember as Sam closed the door to the Specter Speeder.

Ember flew through the Ghost Zone at full speed. Danny was barely gaining on her, and the Specter Speeder was slowly losing ground. They blazed through the Ghost Zone, flying through uncharted (to him at least) space. The further they flew, the more nervous Danny should have gotten.

Should have.

Instead of the fear and excitement they usually got when going through unexplored territory, Danny felt something else. It felt like when you were getting ready for bed after a long productive day, but you knew you had more to do tomorrow. Restful and content, yet stressed.

Danny was in the middle of trying to process that when he noticed that Ember had stopped, apparently reaching their destination.

When Danny got close, he stopped immediately. "Ember…" his voice came out as a whisper, "What the fuck is that?"

Ember tilted her head and looked at him, a sad smile on her face. "I think you know… don't you?" She turned back and ran her hand over the metal of what was in front of them.

It was a metal hexagon. From inside edge to inside edge, it was about 15 feet across, which would be plenty of room for the Specter Speeder to fly through. The metal edges were about 4 feet wide, and though the inside of the circle was pitch black, Danny was sure that if he could see what was inside it, there would be a slowly closing corridor about 12 feet deep.

He died in it, after all. You didn't just forget what that looked like.

Ember took his silence to be confirmation. "It's your lair Baby-Pop…" she said, running her hands along the metal. "We're lucky. Most ghosts… never find their lairs, or if they do, it's long after they've forgotten anything about themselves. These are called the infinite realms, after all."

Ember walked across thin air to stand in front of the portal. The pure inky blackness made her stand out as she folded her arms. "There's nothing saying we don't wake up near our lairs."

Danny swallowed. That nervousness he felt approaching only grew stronger this close to his lair. "You mean… ghosts don't wake up in their lair?"

"No…" Ember said, a melancholy tainting her voice. "We don't." She looked up as Sam and Tucker approached in the speeder. She sighed and turned. "Come on…" She glanced at Danny once before stepping into the black.

As she passed through, the edges of the black void in the center of this fake portal lit up, giving off a corona of fire and light for the brief second she passed through. Danny reached up and stuck his hand in, feeling no resistance as his hand pierced the veil. The moment his hand passed through, the edges lit up again, staying alight as he kept his arm in.

He took a deep breath and pushed through.

And immediately, his breath was stolen from him as the pure blackness gave way to a star-studded sky. Not just that, but what was quite clearly the International Space Station sat in front of him, where Ember sat on one of its solar arrays. Danny flew over to her. "Okay, this is officially one of the coolest things I've ever seen, but why are we here?"

Ember stood up. "Almost there, just follow me," she said. "Tell your friends to stay put when they enter. They'd probably be fine, but Imma go ahead and guess you don't want them crashing and breaking your ship."

And with that cryptic statement, Ember started flying off again. Danny scrambled to repeat what Ember said to Sam and Tucker as the Specter Speeder made its way into his lair.

He'd deal with the fact that he was dead enough to have a lair later.

He and Ember flew through the night sky of his lair, but this time it was a much shorter trip. Only fifteen seconds or so at their top speeds. When Ember stopped, Danny slowed till he was next to her, and he realized something.

The stars in his night sky weren't stars. They were names.

The names were inscribed on a solid black wall, and when he touched it, he could feel the curve of the wall, giving him the idea that his lair wasn't an endless void but actually a sphere with the ISS in the center of it.

"This is what every artist wants, Phantom," Ember whispered, running her finger along one of the names. Danny didn't recognize the name at all; it was no one he knew. He quickly activated the comlink in his ear and switched the input to local mode, letting Sam and Tucker listen in as well. "When we create, the thing we create connects us, across time, across space, across lives…"

Ember's hand dropped to her side. "When people sing our songs or tribute our work… when we touch them with our arts… their name gets inscribed into our lairs. A reminder that we are still affecting the world, that we had lived." Her voice dropped. "It can't just be a passing thing, something that you really connect with."

Danny looked at each of the names inscribed in his lair, thousands, maybe even millions, of all various hues and brightnesses, and uttered in awe, "This many people cared about my stupid song?"

"Yes!" Ember hissed, and Danny jumped to move away from her, though she didn't attack. "Your stupid song that you don't even care about is something so many people love! I hate you so much right now!"

Danny frowned and folded his arms. "Why do you care so much? You've got to have like… billions of names in your lair, right?"

"How many fucking people remembered I even had a goddamn concert after your friend ruined it? Have you seen anyone with my merch afterward?" Danny blinked. Thinking about it, he couldn't remember anyone walking around with Ember merch after the concert. At the time, he chalked that up to people losing interest after Tucker ruined her concert. But… no one mentioned Ember again, even though logically, there should have been something, even if it had been something like, 'Did you see what happened during the concert?'

It was like they had completely forgotten she existed.

Ember pounded her fist against the wall, though it made barely any noise, sounding more like someone smacking a cornstarch and water mixture than a solid wall. "The only goddamn name I have in my lair is Tucker Foley, and it's carved into the goddamn toilet!"

The bark of laughter from Sam came through before it was quickly cut off, and Danny was reminded that the default setting for "local" mode meant the output was also broadcast to the nearby area. Ember snapped her head toward the Specter Speeder and snarled.

Sam had the right idea and didn't antagonize the ghost that had almost conquered the world at one point, she stopped laughing and got quiet. Tucker on the other hand…

"So, wait, I'm the only one who's name is in your lair? Does that make us like, ghostly soulmates?"

"Not on your fucking afterlife!" Ember screeched, drawing more power than Danny had ever seen from her without her guitar. Her hand lit up with ectoplasm, outshining all the nearby stars.

Danny knew the look in Ember's eyes. "Please don't…" he begged, knowing that it would literally do nothing.

Ember responded by throwing an ectoblast at the Specter Speeder. Tucker let out a rather inglorious scream as the beam flew past Danny right at the vehicle. Danny turned, ready to do something when the beam destroyed their transport.

But he didn't need to.

The beam curved at the last second, bending out of its path like it was circling a black hole. Danny's brow furrowed as he wondered why Ember had pulled back, but she clicked her teeth. "Figures, you're such a goody two shoes…"

"What do you mean?" Danny asked despite himself.

Ember huffed and waved her arms about. "There's a reason why every ghost in Amity Park knows where your lair is, your lair prevents anyone from being harmed in it. It's the perfect neutral ground." She hummed and gave Danny an appraising look. "Your lair fufills your need to keep people safe… but there's no one in it for you to keep safe."

A chill ran down Danny's spine. The way Ember phrased that… did he have an obsession? One that was driving him to protect people? On the surface, that sounded like a good thing… If Sam and Tucker were in danger and in the area, they could make their way to the safety of his lair.

But what if they got there, and his lair didn't think it was safe for them to go out?

Would it trap them here?

Ember shifted, snapping Danny out of his thoughts. He watched her reach up and gently stroke the names along the wall of his lair. The motion was so soft and gentle that for a moment, Danny forgot that it was one of his enemies here.

It seemed she forgot that he was there too, because she turned and when their eyes met, she jumped. The look on her face made Danny's breathing hitch. Her face had been filled with so much longing before it was replaced with a sneer. She scoffed and brushed her hair away from her face. "Whatever," she snapped, "enjoy your fucking fame."

Danny felt power rise in Ember, and he only had a second to react when he realized what she was doing. "Hey, wait!" he shouted, only to get pushed back as fire sprouted around Ember and burned away immediately, taking her with it as she teleported.

And for a few heartbeats, all Danny could do was sit there and stare at the names written in his lair.

The moment was broken by an alarm going off. "Ah, jeez!" Tucker shouted. "Danny! We got to book it! Your parents are gonna be home in thirty minutes, and we're WAY farther from the portal than we've ever been!"

Danny gasped as Tucker turned the Specter Speeder around, dove inside the vehicle, and hoped the auto-mapping software in there could plot a way back home without going through any asteroid fields this time.

After a very tense 3 minutes of scrambling to get the ghost-hunting gear back into place, Danny had completely forgotten about what had happened with Ember. It was hard to worry about what had happened when he was worrying about what he was going to be doing the next minute.

But at 12:01 at night, Danny sat on his bed, finally able to actually decompress and think about what had happened.

He knew ghosts got a lair in the Ghost Zone when they died – he had read enough of his parents' papers on the subject to know that much at least. He also knew that they were supposed to help a ghost sustain their obsession.

And he was dead enough to get a lair himself, and it actively protected people in it.

He had worried for a long time if he had an obsession. If he was only alive because some drive to do something was sustaining him.

Danny took a deep breath and put his fingers on the pulse point of his neck, and he counted the slow (too slow) beats and tried to think of better thoughts.

It wasn't long until the image of his lair flooded his brain again, filled with a million stars.

Stars that Ember wanted.

Slowly he sat up and made his way over to his closet. It was an absolute mess. Too many instances of throwing stuff in there when his parents got on his case about the state of his room and never took any actual care to clean it. He never really needed to. He could just reach in and rummage around with his intangibility to find what he needed.

Though he wasn't looking for something in his closet right now.

On the other side of the wall was Jazz's closet.

He reached through and rummaged around in her closet, trying to find something that should have been there, assuming she hadn't remembered to throw it out.

It was still there.

Pulling his arm back, he came back holding a guitar. The body had a flame pattern on it and was colored in Ember's colors. Danny ran his fingers along the neck and came back with a literal pile of dust on them. He shook off the dust before clumsily plucking at the strings.

He wasn't exactly a musician, but he knew enough to tell when something was out of tune.

This guitar had been sitting there, completely forgotten, at the back of Jazz's closet for over two years, gathering nothing but dust.

His phone buzzed, and he jumped. It buzzed a second time, and he realized it wasn't a text but a phone call. He reached over and grabbed it. A glance at the name had him answering. "Hey, Sam," he whispered, careful not to accidentally wake anyone.

"Hey," she whispered back. Her hushed tones made this feel like something illicit and made his heart race. "I didn't wake you, did I?"

"No." He chuckled and sat down on his bed. "I want to speak with whoever said, 'I can sleep when I'm dead,' 'cause they lied to me."

Sam chuckled back at his stupid joke. "Good, I'm glad… I wanted someone to talk to."

"And you called me at midnight?"

"Why would I call anyone else?" Sam laughed, though it quickly died. "I just… I dunno. I feel bad."

"Ember?" Danny asked, needlessly clarifying.

"Mhmm…" Sam murmured into the phone. There was a rustle on the other side of the phone, probably her rolling over. "It's… I've thought about it, you know? What kind of mark I'm gonna leave on the world." She chuckled dryly. "It's hard not to when we're facing death all the time, right?"

Danny nodded instinctively. "Right," he agreed. Though he had his own thoughts on the matter. "I personally try to avoid thinking about my mortality." He chuckled despite himself as he made his hand light up with ectoplasm. "I've been getting a lot of answers I don't want lately."

"Sorry," Sam responded quickly. The word was terse, but her tone was somber.

"Don't be. Not your fault."

"It is, and you know it," Sam responded immediately. Danny opened his mouth to disagree, but she sighed. "I don't want to have that argument again. I…" She trailed off. "I don't know what. I'm sitting here, feeling bad about Ember, and I don't like sitting.

"I get that, I do…" Danny paused and looked down at his sister's guitar. "I really do. But… what can we do?"

"Maybe…" Sam began but then trailed off. "I dunno. We could… we could do it ourselves… You know, sing Ember's song… Remember? I think that's what it was called. I dunno, I never got one of her CD's."

Danny thought for a second. "Tucker might still have it… he doesn't like deleting anything. Gives him an excuse to buy another hard drive."

"Think he's up right now?"

"Nah," Danny said, shaking his head. "He probably crashed the moment he went home."

"Ugh, fine, we can call him tomorrow," Sam said, actually sounding annoyed. She huffed, and there was a rustle again as she rolled around in her bed. "I guess I should let you sleep, too, huh?"

"Let's not be too hasty." He paused and looked down at the guitar in his lap. "Hey, Sam? Can you teach me how to play guitar?"

Weeks later, Ember awoke in her lair with a start. The crowds in it, that she could never find or play for, cheered wildly. Their screams shook the couch she was using as a bed.

But over all that, she could hear the sound of wood being carved.

Ember scrambled, throwing off the blanket as she snapped out of that in-between state of awareness and non-existence. Her eyes flitted across the walls, trying to find the change in her lair.

There.

Right above where she laid her head, in bright gold lettering.

Danny "Phantom" Fenton.

Samantha "Sam" Manson.

She ran her fingers over the names, echos of the two of them singing her song. Really singing it. Putting their heart and soul into it. She closed her eyes and let the feeling take her, letting her see when and where this was sung.

She smiled as she saw them singing and filming a music video. They used Phantom's lair as the backdrop.

Tucker had been there too, filming them and helping edit the video before posting it.

Where others would hear her song too.

Maybe it'd touch them too.

Ember took a step back and looked over the writing another time, and smiled.

She'd have to do something nice for them sometime soon.