Epilogue

CW: Mentions of death, depression, suicide, and pretty much every other thing that appeared as a content warning prior to this chapter

As it turned out, Danny did not have much time.

The morning he came back, he woke up to his face splashed all over the news. Someone managed to get footage of the last part of the fight against Pariah Dark and put it on TikTok. Footage that included him transforming. He never even noticed him near the field, but Wes had stalked him once for a few months just after his accident, insisting that Danny was a ghost. His friends forgot about it, his family never knew, and Danny stubbornly ignored it and played dumb long enough that Wes eventually gave it up. He had no real proof aside from Danny being a bit odd.

And now, well, he did have proof, a lot of it, having managed to sneak out and capture footage from the last part of the fight.

The Guys in White were at his house within the hour. The Fright Knight, who Danny was definitely sure he told to leave him alone for a week, appeared and suggested politely that taking the ruler of the Infinite Realms hostage would not end well, and while Danny didn't love the threat, he didn't deny the reality that the ghosts would not accept it. He doubted it would be enough to keep them at bay for long, but Sam was willing to throw what she could of her family's fortune towards a legal and political fight. Their current strategy right now, apparently, was to have Danny fall under the rules that governed visiting dignitaries, not certain that his citizenship status and protections granted by it would hold up in court thanks to some of the nasty laws the Guys in White managed to get passed.

They would lobby to change those, to give him more protection, but it would not happen overnight or even within the next year according to Sam's parents, who practically made careers out of lobbying politicians.

He also couldn't get out of being Ghost King. Even if they weren't depending on it as part of their legal strategy right now, it looked like it was a permanent position, but they had figured out he could appoint a regent for at least a couple of years. Queen Dora was flattered and a little terrified, but she accepted it, offering to instruct him if he wanted to learn more.

He didn't, really, but he also didn't want to screw it up as long as he couldn't find a way out of the job, so he found himself reading books on ghostly history, culture, and law. Some of it he knew intuitively. Other parts of it, though, he was learning little by little. His parents were more excited about it than he was.

"Dann-o, there's a cool story about this ghost, here, Vortex?" Dad said, pointing at the book and snacking on some chips while they were sitting in the kitchen one afternoon, and Danny gave him a glare that could level buildings as Cujo sat anxiously at his feet. Even though Cujo couldn't eat human food, he still begged for it at the table whenever they ate. Old habits, he supposed.

"Dad, I do not want to talk about ghosts again right now. Please?" he groaned. "I'd rather get help with my homework. You know, the human kind with lots of poetry and chemical reactions and trig?"

Danny expected to get stuck repeating the year, and he still might need to depending on how he did with summer school, but the staff was surprisingly accommodating. He was touched and surprised when Mr. Lancer reacted to the truth with horror at the thought of his student fighting ghosts, and Mr. Lancer insisted on meeting with him and his parents to talk about other options. Danny wasn't as worried about the ghost attacks anymore - the ghosts were reluctant to push back against him directly so far and his brief time being dead seemed to have changed his relationships in ways he was still reckoning with - but he didn't dismiss it, either, in no small part because he had read about a few ghosts like Vortex and he suspected they were going to be a challenge if they ever came his way.

Even some of his old bullies were kinder, apologizing to him for the way they hurt him, and although part of him realized it might just be a desperate sense of self-preservation pushing them to do it, he tried to give them the benefit of the doubt. Dash was the exception, avoiding him and appearing terrified every time he spotted Danny within ten feet of him, apparently realizing just how much weight Danny's threat a few months ago now carried. Most of his classmates that he saw over the summer so far were giving him a wide berth, exchanging uneasy glances and whispering. A few thanked him.

"They'll get used to it, Danny," said Sam as they sat at the Nasty Burger, waiting for Val to get off her shift so they could go see a movie and try, for a few hours, to just be normal. Danny didn't totally get why she was working at the Nasty Burger now that she had a job with his parents, but apparently she wanted to earn extra money during the summer and decided to wait to give her notice until the new school year. "It'll be okay."

"I know."

They didn't make it to the movie that night - there were a half-dozen reporters outside, one of them apparently getting a tip from some staff person that he would be there, and so they went to Sam's house instead and watched some bad TV shows for a couple of hours.

And in his sleep, the crown and ring whispered to him. He still dreamed, but the dreams were different and didn't always feel like his own. They were of places and people and ghosts he didn't know and hadn't met, of times he had not even existed yet. The dreams scared him, sometimes, and he woke up not always feeling like himself afterward in a way that unnerved him, no matter how much Nocturn assured him it was natural, that the dreams were merely the echoes of past kings and rulers trapped within the artifacts that were now bound to Danny, and that he would learn to adjust in time.

His ghost half was different now too. Flexible. He could appear as he had for so long, as Phantom in the Hazmat suit he originally died in that day in the portal, and he found a strange comfort in it even as another part of him felt as if he'd outgrown it, somehow. But most of the time he just looked like himself, his hair white instead of black, eyes green instead of blue, while his skin faintly glowed with the lichtenberg figure running up his arm, and if someone looked too long they swore they could see the black void and stars within him still. The crown floated over his head, the ring on his finger. He could hide them, if he wanted, but there was rarely a point when he was a ghost.

And he could appear as he had the first time he broke free from the Hazmat suit, all shining teeth and claws and void and stars, but he avoided it, knowing that as far as his family and friends had come, they still found it terrifying. Or at least most of them did.

"I don't get it," said Tucker to him when he talked about it after summer school one day. "It's really not scary."

"You're just saying that."

"No, seriously, it's just–it still feels like you. It always has. I can't explain it, man, because I know it should make me want to crap my pants, but it's never hit me that way."

"And Sam?"

"Nah, she finds it appropriately madness inducing," he laughed. "Sorry, Danny. My brain's probably broken or something."

"I don't think so," he said quietly. "I feel that way now, sometimes, though. I can–there are things I just know and it's weird."

"Like?"

"Like the ghosts," he said. "I know them, like, everything about them with just a look. And it–" he stopped, shaking his head. He wondered how Pariah knew during their fight that Danny was a liminal, but with the crown in his possession, how could he not? It gave him the power to see the ghosts in a way no one else could. To see the death echoes that haunted them, the obsessions that ruled them, and the full extent of their potential. "Sorry. It's just a lot. I feel like I'm peeking at them behind a shower curtain or something. It's gross."

"It's good that it's you," said Tucker. "I mean it's not, like, super great and you should figure out how to turn it off, because that sucks, but there are people who would do some pretty terrible stuff if they had that power. And you've always been able to see the ghosts in a way that no one else ever could."

He honestly didn't even think to try and just turn off that power, and although the crown seemed appalled by the suggestion, apparently he could, and it made him feel like he could breathe again. Sometimes, Tucker was a genius, and Danny realized he probably should have told him and Sam everything much, much sooner.

Little by little the summer came to an end, and by the skin of his teeth he passed summer school and was told he would be permitted to join his classmates in his junior year. It was a stupid fear, really - there was no shame in having to take another year to graduate after being out of school so much - but he really didn't want to be separated from his friends.

"I'm glad you made it," said Jazz. "Now you can help me with learning more about ghost psychology."

"Jazz, if I'm not going to do extra homework with Mom and Dad, then I'm not going to do extra homework with you. I don't have time," he groaned. "But there are plenty of books, and Ember's offering guitar lessons still if you want to spend some time getting to know one of them."

"I might take her up on that," said Jazz, and to his surprise she actually did. Ember seemed into it, at least, since Jazz was better at guitar than he was and more dedicated to practicing in between their sessions, and she was pushing Jazz into small rebellions, inviting her to parties and trying to get her to be a little less uptight. Which, since this was Jazz, mostly meant stuff like staying out ten minutes past her curfew that their parents no longer even enforced or having a "party" with three of her friends that mostly involved watching British drama series.

He found Valerie one night while out flying, and she was sitting on her hoverboard over the lake, staring up at the sky. "You okay?"

"How do you deal with it?" she asked as she retracted her helmet, letting her hair blow in the breeze. "Like, not being fully human anymore?"

"Honestly? Pretty badly," he said, laughing softly, and then his smile faded. "I had a pretty low point after the thing with Dash. I never told anyone this before, but I . . . I tried to kill myself."

"You–why?"

"Hurting him was a breaking point, I think," said Danny. "I wasn't in a good spot after the whole possession thing. I know you all only wanted to help me, but it felt like a rejection of me, of everything I was, when you all thought I was possessed instead of just me. And then, because I was scared of what would happen to me if I showed up as Phantom, I kept ignoring my obsession and resisting transforming to help people no matter how badly it hurt me to do it. I thought I could get through it, but I couldn't, not really, and with Dash . . . hurting him went against everything that I felt like made me, me. I know you'll say he deserved it or whatever, but it's not that simple, and I just wondered what the point was, then. Of everything I was doing. Before it was easy to say to myself that at least I was helping people and doing the right thing, but then?"

"I'm so sorry, Danny," said Val as she put a hand on his back. "We never–it wasn't about that–"

"-I know," he said. "I get it, I do, really, but it doesn't matter. It still hurt. But I got through it. Sydney talked me down. Convinced me to try to open up, even a little, and I realized I should've done it sooner even though it terrified me. My parents figuring out I wasn't possessed on their own helped. It made me feel seen in a way I hadn't in a long time." He sighed, running his fingers through his hair. "I'm still figuring a lot of this out. There are days where it feels amazing and others where I silently wonder how much better my life would be if I never stepped into that portal, and where that void and emptiness eats at me and tries to suck me back in even as I keep fighting it. But letting the people I care about know the truth? I couldn't–I wouldn't be here if I never did that. If I didn't at least give people a chance to accept me and every part of me."

"You think everyone has?" He recognized the fear there, the anxiety. He knew it better than anyone.

"Fuck no," he said, and she smiled at the curse. He didn't swear much, after all. "But the people who I care about are trying, and that's mostly what matters. There's going to be stuff all of you won't ever understand and maybe some stuff they'll never truly accept, I think, but it's okay. I just–I mostly just need to know that they're okay with that and can at least tolerate those parts of me that are kind of scary, too. I'm still learning how to do that, honestly, and how to stop lying to everyone. It's harder than it should be, but it's worth it, too."

Val hummed, shifting her weight as she looked up at the night sky. "I should tell my Dad, shouldn't I?"

"Yeah. Take it from me that no matter what kind of fear you're feeling, it's worse to keep it a secret.. I imagine he'll mostly just be worried about you, though," said Danny. "He loves you a lot."

"I know," she said quietly. "But it's still scary."

"Yeah, it is," he said. "I'm still scared sometimes, you know. That this is all a dream and I'm going to wake up back in the Ghost Zone, still dead and . . ." He shook his head. "It's stupid, I know."

"It's not." They sat in silence, looking up at the stars for a bit. "You know I wanted to bring you up here like a dozen times to see the stars when we were dating, but I was too scared you'd hate me when you found out I hunted ghosts."

Danny smiled at her. "Kind of silly since I never hated my parents for it," he said, "although I'm not going to pretend it didn't sting to hear them talk about ghosts the way they did, even if they never knew I was one, too. At least partly. I don't know what I would've done if you told me, though. I knew the truth already, but hearing it from you would be different."

"Same. I didn't learn the truth about you until we thought you were already dead," said Val. "I was pretty angry. Mostly at myself, I think, for not seeing it or figuring it out sooner."

"Nobody thinks a person can be both alive and dead, Val. It would've been a pretty big leap to make on your own," he said as he stared out at the night sky, absentmindedly rubbing his palm. "But I'm glad you know now."

"Me, too."

He was silent for a moment, considering. "There is something I'd like your help with, though," he said.

"Oh?"

Valerie, of course, thought it was a terrible idea, but that was precisely why he needed her there with him. While Danny wasn't present for most of Vlad's trial, he had seen some of it, watching quietly as he was forced to face justice. They decided to bring him to the Ghost Zone for his trial before creatures known as Observants that Danny found mostly irritating, but they were efficient. Judicious. They initially proposed removing his core and destroying it, but the thought made Danny sick. He'd already destroyed one ghost and had no desire to do so again, the memory of that moment still haunting him. So Danny refused, and as the only person that had sufficient enough power to do so, they were forced to come up with another punishment.

So instead Vlad would be imprisoned in the Ghost Zone, in a special cell to keep him contained, isolated and alone, enduring a sentence with no definitive end date and cut off from the world until the Observants chose to release him. In the human world, rumors spread. Some claimed Vlad was killed during the invasion of Pariah Dark or that he fled to some foreign country to avoid the legal issues that were steadily mounting, others that he was the victim of a new serial killer targetting billionaires, and others with theories that were even more wild and absurd. Danny felt strangely twisted up about it, uncertain what he wanted to do until now despite the terror and anxiety his plans sent through him. He needed someone to be there with him, someone who would respect his lead but that would also be ready to act just in case.

Val was right that it was probably one of his worst ideas yet and that nothing good would come of it.

"I see that the rumors of your death were greatly exaggerated," said Vlad as Danny walked into the prison. He had rarely seen the man so out of sorts, his long silver hair loose around his shoulders, his suit rumpled and dirty. Yet the man smirked as he saw him and Valerie. "Oh, and you've adopted my lap dog now, too? How cute."

"I'm nobody's lap dog," snapped Val, and Vlad merely chuckled at her as Danny tried not to wince. "We're friends. Partners."

"Partners? Ms. Grey, you are many things, but Daniel's equal is not one of them," said Vlad coolly.

"If you're just going to keep taunting Val, then we're going to go," said Danny as he looked back at Val, and he saw her relax a little, forcing herself to calm down. It was one thing to know that Vlad would go out of his way to manipulate and needle them, but it was an entirely different thing to not react to it.

"And leave me without the company of two annoying brats? How will I ever survive?" he sneered as he gestured dramatically at himself, but instead of taking the bait, Danny let out a slow breath and turned around.

"You were right, Val. He's clearly not willing to listen," said Danny. "Let's go."

They walked back towards the door, and it was as he put his hand on the handle that Vlad spoke. "Too cowardly to kill me, Daniel?" Danny paused, his shoulders tense. He didn't want to be here. Nobody expected him to do this, to force himself to endure Vlad's presence after what the man did to him, and by all rights, he didn't need to and shouldn't bother. His fingers went up to his chest, brushing the scar hidden beneath his shirt, and then he turned back towards Vlad.

"I'm not a murderer," said Danny eventually, crossing his arms, even if that wasn't entirely true. He had killed Pariah Dark, even if he didn't intend to do so, but he would not destroy another ghost ever again if he could help it. "You know, my Mom wants you dead. Jazz does, too, and so do my friends and Val. You know the one person that doesn't?"

There was a flicker of something there, an emotion that Danny couldn't quite place. "You?"

"Honestly, Vlad, I don't know exactly what I want," said Danny softly. "You tried to kill me. You have killed dozens of others. You could have destroyed the Ghost Zone and Earth by releasing Pariah Dark, causing the deaths of countless thousands. By all rights, the Observants aren't wrong that your core should be removed and destroyed." He paused, biting his lip as he considered his next words carefully. "Nearly every ghost that came through the portal I reached out to and tried to help at least once. At first it was selfish. I just wanted to prove to myself that they weren't the monsters my parents thought they were, and I was still learning to control my powers, so if I could convince them not to attack, to find other ways to satisfy their obsessions, then it was easier on me since it made it less likely that anyone would learn the truth about what I was."

"But you are a monster," argued Vlad. "I saw what happened during your battle with Nocturn. I saw what you took."

Danny felt Val's hand on his shoulder, and he looked back at her, giving a small smile to reassure her that he was okay to keep going before he turned back to Vlad and walked to the front of his cell, sitting down with his legs crossed in front of him while Val watched quietly from the door. "I didn't know what I was doing then," said Danny. "Not really. And I never want to do it again. I'm trying not to give into the darkness that brought me to that point where I needed to consume dreams and could lie to myself about how I would be protecting them if I did. Right now, at least, I don't think I'm a monster."

"But my parents . . . My Dad . . . he's the only person that doesn't want you dead yet, even after everything you did," said Danny. "He still remembers you as his friend. He blames himself for how you are now because he knows he couldn't be there after your accident in college, and he knows it's his fault that you were hurt that day and changed." He blamed himself for Danny's near-death at Vlad's hands, too, even as Danny forgave him. It struck Danny, then, just how much he did have in common with his Dad as he continued. Maybe Vlad was right. Maybe they were both fools. "And even though he won't say it to me, I know a part of him wonders if every evil thing you've done is because of what you and I are, if it's being a liminal that drove you to this point, that caused you to become twisted by your obsession–"

"-I do not have an obsession!" hissed Vlad. "I am not like those foolish ghosts who–"

"-you do," interrupted Danny, surprised at how steady he manaegd to keep his voice. "I do. We can't help it. But I know from experience what happens if you can't satisfy it or if you ignore it. And my Dad's hunch . . . it's not entirely wrong. Our obsessions can't twist us into something we're not. That's not how it works. But they can make it easier to give into our worst impulses, to do something we shouldn't, to–to consume the dreams that belong to others and call it protection. Or to slowly see yourself twisted over time as you inadvertently push your friends away in fear, and then destroy everyone else in the process as you try to force them to be close to you, to like you, to love you–"

"-I don't need love," said Vlad. "Or friendship. There is no one out there that is my equal, no one who–"

"-stop," said Danny softly, and he was surprised when Vlad shut his mouth tightly, merely glaring at him instead. "You wouldn't have come to me in the park that day if you hadn't wanted friendship. A family. To find someone that could understand you when no one else could, when everyone else seemed to abandon you." Danny let out a shaky breath. "You and Spectra and Pariah Dark are the only ghosts that I've never really given a choice to, that I've never–that I've never tried to reach out to. Spectra, well, she tortured me. Pariah Dark tried to destroy everyone and everything and wouldn't have stopped until he succeeded. And you–you wanted to kill my Dad. Marry my Mom. And I–I was terrified of what you might do to me, then, too, if you got your way. Even back then, I could see how–I could see that void in you. That ache that nothing seemed to fill. The emptiness and loneliness and desperation."

"But I didn't really understand it all until I tried to kill myself," said Danny softly, and he heard Val react behind him, no doubt surprised he would admit any weakness to Vlad. Maybe he shouldn't. But Danny didn't think he could reach him without willing to be vulnerable, without putting his whole self in front of him, and letting Vlad see that there were those that still welcomed Danny and loved him and cared for him despite all of his flaws and fears. "And when I tried to fill that with something I stole, with something that was never mine, it–it felt better, for a moment. But it didn't last. I knew that if I gave into that, then I would be exactly the kind of monster my parents feared the ghosts were all along."

"You'd end up like me?" finished Vlad.

"I didn't say that."

"You didn't have to. I can see what you're trying to do, Daniel," he scoffed. "I'm not a fool."

"Then prove it," said Danny. "I want to offer you a choice. The same choice I offered the other ghosts. The same choice my family and friends gave me every second they refused to give up on me, even if I didn't realize that's what they were giving me then. I want to help you." He couldn't help his own surprise, then, as he realized the words were true. He hadn't been entirely sure until now that this was what he wanted to do so much as what he felt he should do, that he owed it to Vlad, somehow, even though everyone reassured him that he owed the man nothing and that Vlad was a serial killer that deserved to rot for eternity, even as some small part of him agreed with them, too, that there was nothing there left to save. "I want–I want you to be better, to become the person my Dad remembers. To become the kind of person I wish I had back when this all started. To–to not be alone, to have that ache and emptiness and void, because I know how much it hurts in a way no other human ever will. And if you want that, too, then I'm willing to come here, every day, and try to talk to you, to see if there can be another way forward, to try to make up for the terrible things that you've done, somehow, to me and so many others, even though I doubt that'll ever be possible."

"And if you're not . . . then I guess you'll continue to sit in this cell, alone, as you convince yourself that you're unique, that no one can be your peer or your friend or your family while that void continues to grow and consumes you until there's nothing left of that shred of who you once were, of the man that my parents called their friend," said Danny as he stood up. "But that will be your choice. And I'm only making this offer once."

He waited, forcing himself to stay still rather than to anxiously rub at the scar on his palm. A part of him still felt nauseous and terrified at the thought of trying to befriend the man who spent so much time hurting the people he loved, who tried to kill him and nearly succeeded, and a voice inside him screamed that it wasn't fair that he should be the one to do this. He could feel the ring humming on his finger, singing a song of rage he would love to give into instead that would let him push Vlad away, keep him locked and alone in this cell to dwell for an eternity on the pain he caused so many.

But the other part of him knew how easily it could have been him, if he hadn't had his friends and his family, if they had given up long ago when he hoped they would instead of refusing to keep holding on, to keep on being there at his side despite how much he pushed them away. Danny selfishly wanted to prove to himself that he could save Vlad, too, somehow, in case he ever ended up alone again, in case he did find himself succumbing to his worst impulses with no one immediately there to catch him. He needed to believe that someone out there might be willing to extend him a hand, too. And Danny knew that without someone to guide him, Vlad would never understand how much harm he did, and while Danny might not be the best choice for a whole host of reasons, there wasn't exactly a line of humans or ghosts clamoring for the opportunity. They didn't see the point.

But he did. He always had. And he wanted to give Vlad a second chance, if only because it somehow felt like giving himself one, too.

"You should take the offer," said Val. "Even if you hate Danny, no one else is going to. I even told Danny not to, that you weren't worth it after everything, that you'll try to manipulate him and you'll use this as some way to hurt him and torture him some more. But he's too much of an idiot to listen. Even now." Danny turned and he could see her smiling at him faintly. She wasn't wrong. This was probably a waste of time, and the longer Vlad went without answering, the more certain he was that he shouldn't have bothered, shouldn't have come here and that Vlad was too far gone, past saving and–

"I assume at any point I can choose to stop dealing with your visits should your preaching grow too obnoxious?" said Vlad eventually, and Danny rolled his eyes.

"Sure, fruit loop. But that's true for me, too," said Danny.

"I am not a fruit loop," he hissed, and Danny merely crossed his arms, watching and waiting, and then the man sighed. "But fine. I suppose even your dismal company is better than centuries of isolation."

"I'm so flattered," said Danny sarcastically. "I'll see you tomorrow, fruit loop."

"See you tomorrow, little badger."

A/N: Thanks for the faves, reviews, etc along the way! I really appreciate the support, especially since this is the first long fic I've written and completed in over a decade at this point.

If you have tumblr, I'd strongly suggest checking out the art that zillychu did that was inspired by this fic. It's very cool, and I'd link it here, but this website hates me and I don't think you can post links in fics without it messing everything up.

I'm not sure I'll be posting stories here again in the future, too, if only because this website has literally fought me on posting every chapter. But if you like my writing, I am on AO3 under the username PhantomTwitch. You can find this fic and some others I've written over there (though my older FFN stuff, most of which I'm kind of embarrassed by, has not been cross posted).

But seriously, thank you again for reading! This fic felt so self-indulgent for me, so the fact that anyone else liked it is still kind of amazing to me.