The first thing Danny became aware of was the sensation of being pressed into something. He wasn't entirely sure how he identified that sensation when ice coated his body so thoroughly, but he supposed it must be the same sense that told him he was in the Far Frozen and that the thing that was pushing him had a hand far larger than those that had carried him here.
He decides that this thing was also probably a friend. He had lots of friends in the Far Frozen. He liked having friends. Friends were good.
The thing he was being pressed into was… soft? Liquid, maybe? He wasn't quite sure. He was curious, but there was no way to satiate or express that curiosity. It felt almost like lying in bed
There were sounds around him. They rose and fell with the cadence of speech, but other than that, they were unintelligible. The strange thing was, it didn't feel like he was hearing the sounds with just his ears, but with his whole body, especially his chest. He supposed that made sense. The sounds must be making the ice he was encased in, the ice that was connected all the way through to his core, vibrate. Just like his core made all the ice vibrate, before.
He was curious about what was going on, about what was being said, but there was no way to satiate or express that curiosity. It felt almost like lying in bed, half asleep, listening to his family talk downstairs. Safe and cozy, too sleepy to move, but aware things were happening nonetheless.
As if to accentuate that feeling, his core purred once, sleepily, his whole body chiming. Something in his chest seemed to… not shift, exactly. Nothing there moved, nothing could move. But there seemed to be the potential for something to move, somehow, if the right conditions were fulfilled.
The tone of the outside sounds became more encouraging, and the large, friendly hand pushed down harder. Danny sank.
Up until now, Danny's airway had been mostly clear. The pressure of his escaping, overwhelming ghost sense had kept it that way, from where it formed in his lungs to his lips. But as he was submerged, liquid rushed in, past his lips and frozen-open jaw, filling every place open to receive it.
It was fine. It wasn't as if Danny was using his lungs.
The liquid managed to be cool and refreshing even to Danny's senses. But it was very much not his. It belonged to something powerful. Something stronger than Danny. Friendly, though. Like the hand was friendly. There was an intention about it, like a gentle request for entry.
Danny, without even really meaning to, granted the request. The ectoplasm - he could tell it was ectoplasm, now - slid smoothly into the ice, and, from there, into him. Then, after establishing itself, it began to take apart the ice. Not melting it, exactly, but disassembling it, drawing it out of his limbs.
Ripples and waves moved through the ectoplasm, and Danny found his ankle grasped by three huge fingers. The ghost they belonged to connected with the ectoplasm he'd absorbed, taking control of it. Slowly but surely, his leg was pulled straight. He didn't realize how strained and cramped his position had been, and his core thrummed with relief and gratitude.
The sound felt odd, though. He'd gotten used to it reverberating through his whole body in such a short time. It still stirred the ectoplasm around him, but still, the feeling wasn't quite as immediate, quite as unified.
He tried to move his other limbs, but they were still locked into place. But before he could be overly distressed about that, the hand moved to hold his other ankle, and pulled that leg straight as well. Then, they moved to his left wrist, and Danny would have liked to hold his friend's hand, or at least squeeze one of their fingers, but his fingers, of course, didn't move, not even once his arm was straightened. His right arm was given the same treatment.
The hand moved over Danny, then, brushing away the ice on his skin and dispersing the crystals under it. It felt good, and Danny's core continued to hum, exhausted but happy.
But then the fingers rested on Danny's chest, and he knew that they were going to try to do the same thing to his insides as they had just done to his outsides.
… and Danny rejected the control, expelled the ectoplasm. Whoever was outside might feel friendly, but he didn't know who it was. While he was okay with having the ice pulled away from his outsides and his limbs thawed enough to move, his organs were a different matter entirely.
(Especially when he was still half afraid of his parents walking in and deciding to investigate those organs.)
The hand withdrew, then, and Danny's core cried with the sudden lack. It couldn't keep that up for long, though. Soon, he drifted back into that state of unawareness as before.
.
Danny wasn't sure, at first, what had roused him. At first, he thought it was that the ambient noise had become markedly more rhythmic and measured, but that only made it more soothing, not less. Then, he realized the qualities of the ectoplasm he was submerged in were changing, as if new ectoplasm was being mixed in.
No, Danny realized. That was exactly what was happening. This ectoplasm was warmer than the first, and stronger. It put Danny in mind of intricacy, of precisely engineered systems, of vast eternities and celestial dances.
Inside Danny, that thing that felt as though it should move, but didn't, seemed to loosen, as if this new ectoplasm was a key, unlocking it.
As the new ectoplasm diffused into the old, and the two mixed and pressed into Danny, he calmed. His earlier worry felt silly, now.
He did not fight as the ice in him was reduced to a thin layer around his core. He didn't move, either. Instead, he let himself sleep.
.
Danny woke to sounds he could hear with his ears: ticking and hushed voices. The voices were familiar, but they were angry, arguing. He didn't like that.
His core made a sound of confusion, because his voice didn't seem to be up to the task. That was weird. It usually didn't do stuff like that while he was in human form.
With herculean effort, he pried open his eyes. They only got about halfway open, his lids too heavy to move any more, but that was enough to see.
He vaguely recognized the room he was in as one of the rooms the doctors of the Far Frozen had set aside for patients that needed more specialized or intensive care than the norm. He'd been in one, when he'd first frozen himself with his ice powers, and he'd gotten a tour later, since Frostbite said he'd be in those rooms if he ever needed medical care in the Far Frozen again, since he was a half ghosts and half ghosts were weird, and he wanted Danny to feel comfortable if he ever found himself in one unexpectedly, which… was what had happened. Huh.
But the room was different than it had been when he had last seen it. For one, there were a lot more medical machines in the room, all of them with different wires, tubes, and glowing strings attached to Danny. That was probably a bad sign. For another, the bed was stuffed with quilts and furs, so much so that Danny felt like he was tucked into a cloud. For a third, every available surface including the floor was covered in ticking clocks made of ice. Weird clocks, of all different sizes. One had a face divided into the thirteen zodiac constellations. That other one had eight frosty white flowers in high relief instead of numbers and four hands. Another had three faces knotted into one another in a dizzying Celtic knot. A fourth didn't seem to have any hands at all, as far as Danny could tell, and too many numbers.
But, perhaps the most important difference was that Clockwork was sitting in a chair pushed up against the wall directly opposite from Danny, sipping from a teacup. When he raised the cup to his lips, neon blue light reflected off his nose and lower face.
"Hello, Daniel."
Danny managed to croak in greeting.
"Before we are interrupted," said Clockwork, "I would like you to know that I will not and cannot do as you ask, but also that I will not and cannot blame you for asking. Also, no, these clocks aren't mine."
Danny swallowed a few times. "What?" he asked, hoarsely.
The voices outside stopped. Clockwork took another sip of his… tea. Was it tea?
The door of the room flew open. "Danny!" shouted Sam. "You're awake!"
Danny hummed in agreement. His core hummed, too.
Still weird.
Sam rushed to his side, then… hovered, her hands held out as if she wasn't sure whether or not she should touch him. She was, of course, wearing a thick coat. Black and quilted, with a fluffy ruff. He wondered if it was synthetic, or if someone had convinced her to wear fur, just this once. For some reason, she was also wearing flowers braided into her hair. Rows of them, in shades of purple and red. Danny inhaled slowly, breathing in their perfume. Had he been doing that all along? Breathing? He wasn't sure.
Frostbite was standing in the door.
"Hello, great one," he said. "How are you feeling?"
Danny considered that for a moment. "Weird," he decided, finally. He was weak and every inch of him was sore, especially his chest, but he didn't really feel bad. He twitched his hand towards Sam. Holding hands would be nice.
Frostbite hummed deep in his throat. It was an echoing, resonant sound that picked up tones from his core, and Danny found himself humming along as well, voice and core. He stopped, once he realized what he was doing, embarrassed.
"Ah, yes," said Frostbite, seemingly unbothered. He checked one of the machines on the way to Danny's side. "I had wondered if that would be one of the side effects. What do you remember?"
"I…" Danny paused, coughing to clear his throat.
Frostbite reached to one side and held up a cup, made of ice. "A drink may help, great one. May I?"
Danny nodded, and Frostbite held the glass to his lips. There was more than just water in the cup. It was sweet and salty, and reminded Danny of sports drinks. There was ectoplasm in it, too, diluted so much Danny could barely detect it. Before he knew it, Danny had finished the whole cup, and Frostbite put it to the side again.
"Do you remember what happened?" asked Frostbite, again.
Danny closed his eyes, thinking, licking his lip. "My ghost sense went off, and it didn't stop. And it was thick. Heavy. Like…" He wracked his brain for a comparison. "Liquid nitrogen, maybe. But still mist." He grimaced. "I froze myself."
"You were basically a rock when Tucker and I found you," said Sam. "I don't think we could have moved you if you weren't floating."
"Oh," said Danny, remembering how he had initially been frozen to the shower floor. "Yeah. That would have been bad." He pulled his eyes back open. They didn't even get halfway open this time. "How did you guys get past Mom and Dad, anyway? Jazz help you?"
Sam glanced at Frostbite, lips pressed together. Frostbite shook his head minutely.
"They were distracted by a ghost," Sam said, looking back at Danny. "You don't have to worry about it, though. The ghost that distracted them isn't there anymore."
Danny let out a breath in relief, and was dismayed to see a curl of mist in it. He whined at the sight.
"It's alright," said Frostbite. "That's normal, for something like this."
"What is it?" asked Danny.
Frostbite was quiet for a moment.
"How bad is it?" It had to be bad, if Frostbite didn't want to say anything.
"I have faith that you will recover," said Frostbite, "but some of what I have to say will not be pleasant to hear, and you will face some permanent changes which may prove difficult to navigate, although none of them should cause you lasting pain in and of themselves."
Danny took a deep breath. "Okay," he said.
Frostbite nodded. "While you were away on your 'vacation,' your haunt had an abrupt increase in power. There are a number of things that can cause such a thing, but in this particular case, it was a fault occurring between your portal and Plamius's portal. Our engineers can tell you more about the causes once you have healed."
Danny nodded.
"However, since you were away at the time, you did not connect to the new power until you returned."
"That's why I lost control when I crossed the city limits," said Danny.
"I would imagine so, although your reaction may have been even worse, had you been in the city at the time the fault formed. However…" Frostbite sighed, heavily, sadly. "Great one, I am sorry to say that when you froze yourself solid, you experienced another death."
"Are you saying I'm…" Danny swallowed. "A full ghost, now?"
"No. You are as alive as you were during your last checkup. When a half-ghost, like yourself, experiences something that should have killed or ended them permanently, they instead gain another layer on their core. It has been a long time since there were many half-ghosts in the Realms, but that, at least, is well documented."
"I didn't think cores worked that way," said Danny, more than a little disturbed. He knew cores could grow and change, but he'd thought the process was slow. Glacially slow.
"They generally do not. But half-ghosts are an exception to many rules."
"You said there'd be… Changes? Effects?"
"Yes. Depending on the trauma of… the event, the additional core layer grants a commensurate increase in power, as well as new abilities. But they can also cause changes in personality, tastes, sensitivities, and control of established abilities."
"Personality?" asked Danny, feeling very small and very scared. He'd seen what a change in personality could do to him. He didn't like it. He glanced at Clockwork. Clockwork raised an eyebrow but didn't seem otherwise concerned.
"The personality changes are generally small, if they exist. If you haven't noticed anything yet, they likely do not. For you, the major change seems to be an increased sensitivity to spectral noise."
"What does that mean?"
"I means–"
All the clocks in the room started to chime at once. Frostbite broke off, but Danny hardly noticed. His core was too busy chiming along with the clocks, trying to harmonize with the disparate notes. There was pressure, too, to sing with them with the voice in his throat.
The chimes died off after a while, Danny didn't know how long. He was left panting, cool mist on his tongue, eyes shut, but with a glow of contentment and belonging.
"Danny?" said Sam. "Are you alright?"
Danny hummed at her.
"Great one, can you open your eyes?"
It was very hard, but, yes, he could.
"Great one, can you speak to me?"
Danny hummed again, then realized he couldn't actually speak with his core. "Yyyess?"
"Do you remember what we were just talking about?"
Talking? They had been talking? Right. They had been talking. They'd been talking about… About…
He forced his eyes open wider. They'd been talking about death. His death. And… "Sensitivity?" he asked, finally, flustered.
"Sensitivity to spectral noise. I suppose that's as good a demonstration as any, although these clocks probably have a greater influence over you than most things will."
"Why?" asked Danny.
"Because they were made from your energy," said Frostbite. "You notice that you feel quite weak despite having been told that your power has increased greatly?"
"Yeah, but I thought that was just because…" Because he had died, even if it hadn't stuck.
"That is because Lord Clockwork and I have infused you with our ectoplasm and are damping your power. When we first thawed you, we had to put your additional energy somewhere. Hence the clocks."
Danny nodded, a little dazed by all the information. He didn't know how much of this he'd be able to retain. Honestly, he sort of wanted to go back to sleep. "That makes sense."
"We will have to wean you off of our ectoplasm and make sure you have good control of your core and any new powers before you can go back to Amity Park."
"But," said Danny. He blinked heavily, his eyes stinging. "I've already been gone for so long."
"I know it is difficult to be away from one's haunt, great one. But if you return before you are stable, you may freeze yourself again - and die again."
Danny shuddered. That was the last thing he wanted.
"Hey," said Sam, softly. "We'll be okay. We've got everything under control, promise. Tucker's holding down the fort back home, managing the tech, monitoring things, you know how it is."
"Tuck does love his monitors," said Danny. "I thought he was just here because, you know, hospitals."
"Nope, he's working so you don't have to."
Danny hummed gratefully, his eyes starting to drift closed. He was so tired. He wanted to ask more questions. Something didn't seem to fit, and it niggled at him. He pulled at the feeling, and a question fell out, even if Danny didn't think it was the question. "If I, um. If this happens again, could my core get too big to fit?"
Frostbite actually chuckled, and Danny found himself relaxing at the sound. "I understand the concern," he said. He adjusted the blankets and pillows propping Danny up. Danny's grateful hum became an outright purr. "But a ghost's core is an object in the same way that light is a particle. It's a useful approximation, but it isn't entirely true, and it is far from the whole story." He set something - a stuffed animal? A pillow? - on Danny's chest. "You perceive it as being in your chest, but it isn't really there." Frostbite paused. "Great one?"
"I think he's asleep," said Sam after a moment.
"I believe you are correct," said Frostbite.
"Good," said Sam. "We should continue our conversation. Outside."
"Of course," said Frostbite.
After a few minutes, Danny opened his eyes just a sliver and looked at Clockwork through his eyelashes. "I'm not going to ask you to undo my death," he said.
"I'm glad," said Clockwork. "That would, after all, be remarkably frivolous."
Danny nodded. "I mean, I'm still alive, right? So there wouldn't be any point."
"Indeed."
Satisfied, Danny closed his eyes again.
.
It turned out that being 'weaned' off of Frostbite and Clockwork's ectoplasm still involved taking in a lot of their ectoplasm.
"This feels a lot like drinking blood," said Danny, looking down at the cup in his hands. He was well enough, now, to sit on the side of the bed.
"Cool," said Sam. "That's pretty goth."
Danny raised his eyebrows and tilted the cup at her so she could see the neon green liquid inside. She shrugged.
That was another thing, though. Sam was always there, and whenever he said anything about her going home or her parents being worried, she brushed him off. It was nice that she was so worried about him that she didn't care, but he cared and he worried. He didn't want her to get in trouble. He'd already be in enough trouble for both of them.
"You don't have enough personal control to forgo it, yet, great one," said Frostbite. He was the only one here today. Clockwork sort of came and went.
Danny sighed and drank. The thing was, drinking the ectoplasm wasn't terrible. It gave him a little boost of energy, and it sort of made him feel like Clockwork and Frostbite were wrapping him in a hug. It made him feel safe, secure in the knowledge that his powers weren't going to flare out of control. But Frostbite said that if their ectoplasm was in him for too long, it'd start to change him both physically and mentally, and he had enough of that lately, thanks.
"Good," said Frostbite, taking the cup when Danny was done with it. "Today we are going to try some guided meditations."
That was, at least, a positive in all of this. He finally had the time to learn his ice powers properly, rather than just the crash course he got when Undergrowth took over. They could be a lot more delicate than he'd thought back then.
"Start by picking one of these clocks and focusing on it…"
.
A specialist in ectosignatures and spectral noise visited the Far Frozen a few days after that. He looked for all the world like an elf from a fantasy novel or a tabletop game. He even had a lute. He also had a set of delicate tuning forks in various metals and crystals.
"Try not to sing with this one," said the specialist for what had to be the hundredth time.
Danny nodded jerkily, looking down at his hands and blushing furiously. The specialist had been going through his tuning forks one-by-one. First, he'd had Danny harmonize with them on purpose, then he'd asked how each one had felt, and now he wanted Danny not to sing with them. It should have been easy, but staying quiet felt like trying to hold back the tide. And, half the time, the distraction of the sound would drive any other thoughts out of his head, and he'd have to be reminded of what they were doing.
It was incredibly embarrassing.
"Even if you cannot prevent your core from resonating, try not to use your regular voice."
"Okay," said Danny, quietly.
The specialist struck the tuning fork against the palm of his hand. Danny's core hummed in tune with it, and it wasn't a second before Danny's mouth was open and the same note was spilling from his mouth. The specialist damped the fork with his fingers.
"I think that's probably enough data," he said, putting it away. "The others will probably all be the same. You said you had a voice-based power before? A destructive one?"
"Yeah, the Ghostly Wail," said Danny. "It was sort of… I'd scream really loudly and it'd cause like… ectoplasmic waves."
"It sounded like he was dying," input Sam.
"It does?" asked Danny, surprised.
"You don't remember? It sounds exactly like when you, well." She shrugged. A petal dropped from one of the flowers in her hair.
"I didn't realize," said Danny. Sam would know, though. "Anyway, it's, um, destructive. And tiring. I usually turn human again after I use it. It's like… a finishing move."
"Mhm," said the specialist, starting to clean up the rest of his tools. "I see. There are a few things I think I can conclude from this. Firstly, you will almost certainly be able to learn any sound-based ability you come across. However, you will also be extremely vulnerable to all sound based powers, and if one is used around you, you will echo it, like you did with these tuning forks–" he waved one that was still out of the box before putting it away, too, "--strengthening and spreading the effect. I'd also recommend you refrain from using any destructive sound-based abilities."
"Why?" asked Sam, as Danny grappled with the fact that Ember could probably hypnotize him even faster than Tucker, now.
"Because they will be even more powerful and destructive," said the specialist, "and your control is not very good right now, so even if it didn't damage you as well, it would probably leave you exhausted and defenseless." He paused and gave Sam a significant look. "Once you are more recovered, you will probably be able to sense ectosignatures with greater accuracy and detail as well, but for now… that part of you seems to be overstrained."
Of course it was. He'd apparently killed himself with it. He rubbed his eyes and gave the specialist a weak smile.
"Thanks for coming," he said.
.
Danny sank the rest of the way to the floor as he felt the foreign ectoplasm inside him - Clockwork's, this time - clamp down on his power and disrupt an uncontrolled release before it had time to start. When they did this, Danny's limbs felt noodle-y and weak, but he managed to crawl over to Clockwork and snuggle into his cloak. This was one of the side effects Frostbite had talked about: the breakdown of personal social boundaries between himself and them.
Already, Frostbite was worried that this one, a persistent desire to hug or cuddle with them, to just be with them, to touch them, was permanent. But his power built up too fast, and changes to ambient ectosignatures and spectral noise caused by something as minor as Sam opening the door could set him off, now that they weren't constantly suppressing him.
(And that worried Danny. Sam was human. If he lost control around her, he could seriously hurt her. But he also wanted her close. She was the only one of his people he'd seen since this started.)
A whine built in Danny's core and throat, low and pained. Clockwork had stopped the release. All the energy was still there, waiting to be used. And it was building.
"I know it hurts," said Clockwork, putting a gloved hand on Danny's head and holding it there. "But I think it would be beneficial if, instead of me shaping it, or taking you somewhere distant to release it safely, we tried something else. Beyond a simple release, you have two other options. One, you could use your power to strengthen the bonds in the ice structures around us. Two, you could use your power as I have been: to create something complex." He gestured at the clocks around them. They weren't the same ones that had been in here when he'd first woken up. Those had been removed by the yeti nurses when the room had become too full for them to check the monitoring machines.
(The room had been emptied of clocks at least four times, to Danny's knowledge.)
"Don't know how to make clocks," mumbled Danny.
"With how often I've made clocks through you, I would be very surprised if that were true. I am going to slowly release my hold. Try to take control."
"Should I go?" asked Sam, from the doorway. She hadn't moved after opening it.
"That may be for the best," said Clockwork.
Sam nodded and took a step back, shutting the door softly.
"Alright, I'm going to start now."
Very slowly, the grip Clockwork had on Danny eased away. He ached with the loss as much as with the returned power (which, he understood distantly, was likely not a good sign for his future independence), and he struggled to control the increasingly intense flow.
He had to let it out.
He picked a random clear spot on the floor and channeled the ice in that direction, trying to capture the feeling that he got when Clockwork did it. The sense of order, of belonging, of fitting, of even, regular movement, and precise rules. Trying to focus on that, make it real and solid.
Clockwork continued to feed him back his own power, until Danny's control started to slip, and then he picked the bulk of it back up, weaving around what Danny had already done. Finally, the power inside him returned to bearable levels, and he sagged against Clockwork. He couldn't remember what they'd been doing before Danny's control had failed, before Sam had opened the door, but all he wanted to do now was sleep.
"Do not sleep just yet," said Clockwork, rubbing Danny's shoulder. "You will want to see what you did."
Reluctantly, Danny opened his eyes.
On the floor sat a sloping shelf clock, one that might go on a fireplace mantle. It was a little large for its type, a little too broad, too deep, but it was recognizable. More than recognizable. It was actually very detailed, the body and face both covered with false inlay decorations of different shades of ice, in the shape of crescent moons and stars.
As if it sensed his attention, the clock chose that moment to chime. It played a lullaby, and Danny sang himself to sleep.
.
"I understand that you and Clockwork had some success yesterday with chanelling your power."
"A little," said Danny. "By making a clock."
Frostbite nodded. "Today we will talk about the other way you can channel your power into your surroundings. You are aware of how natural ice forms, yes?"
Jazz had made him learn after he'd first gotten his ice powers. He nodded. "When water cools, hydrogen bonds form between the molecules, and those make and loses energy, the molecules form hydrogen bonds between themselves. Those bonds make them have a crystal pattern, and you have to put in enough energy into the system to break them before the ice melts."
"Yes," said Frostbite. "That is somewhat simplified, but correct. When we make ice–" he formed a crystal over his hand as he spoke, "--we first add ectoplasm to the structure. In addition to the hydrogen bonds, ghost ice is formed with ectoplasmic bonds. Unlike hydrogen bonds, you can add power and energy to those ectoplasmic bonds to make them more permanent, thereby making the ice they're part of more difficult to melt. There is a limit to how much power can be put into such a bond, but if you are able to carry a small amount of ice with you, or if you are able to create a small amount of ice, you should be able to channel energy into strengthening those bonds instead of into making new ice."
"Okay. How do I do that?"
"Let us begin with feeling the energy already in the ice," said Frostbite, then we can move on from there.
.
Clockwork, Frostbite, and Sam sat down in Danny's room, around his bed. They all looked serious. Danny looked between them, nervously. He'd thought things were going well. He'd gotten back enough control to not randomly freeze himself and others, and the amount of Clockwork and Frostbite's ectoplasm he was eating had been cut down by half.
"Great one," said Frostbite, gravely, "you know that I have been a doctor, a physician, for many years."
"Yes?" said Danny, hesitantly.
"I have taken many oaths in respect to my practice of medicine, the principal one of which is to do no harm."
Danny nodded. "Right."
"Then believe me when I say I do not present these options to you lightly." He took a deep breath. "There is something we have been avoiding telling you."
"Yeah," said Danny. "I kind of figured." He was unwell, but that didn't mean he was stupid or unobservant.
"You did?"
"I told you he would," said Sam.
"I mean, I figured that if all three of you weren't saying anything, it probably wasn't… urgent?" He felt his heart fluttering. Had he been wrong.
"That… is correct, great one. It wasn't urgent. But it is something that we believe… I believe could greatly upset you." He paused. "To the point of core fracture and destabilization. In other cases, I would generally prescribe a memory modification to bypass the shock. However…" His eyes drifted to Sam. "I have been convinced to come to a compromise by Miss Sam, who was quite insistent that you would prefer to keep your memory, and that you would be strong enough to withstand being informed."
Sam smiled at Danny, encouragingly.
"What's the compromise?" asked Danny.
"We will tell you what we have kept from you, but you must agree to allow us to carry out an emergency memory modification if you destabilize or show signs of imminent destabilization." He put a small, red-tinted bottle on the table. "This is an extract of Pseudomyosotis confabuli, a flower that grows along the banks of the Lethe. We would inject it directly into your bloodstream."
He pointed at the IV Danny was currently hooked up to. Right now, it was feeding him vitamins, and while he was fully awake, he always asked what he was being given, but he felt uncomfortable heat creep up his spine as he thought of how easy it would have been to just give it to him, and he'd be none the wiser.
"Its immediate effect would be to clear your short term memory, but while active in your system, it would allow us to alter your memories via simple conversation. I already have a new memory structure planned out that would allow you to avoid the dangerous stressor entirely."
"What if I say no?" asked Danny. "What if I don't agree?"
"Then we will not tell you, and I will be unable to, in good conscience, allow you to return to Amity Park," said Frostbite.
Danny frowned. "Not even if I want to go, even without knowing?"
"You are a child in my care, great one," said Frostbite, softly, "I cannot allow you to do something that would in all likelihood destroy you."
"Before you start making plans to sneak away to Amity Park regardless of what we say," said Clockwork, mildly, "be aware that you still have a great deal of our ectoplasm running through you, through which we can exert quite a bit of control over your physical body."
"Yes," said Frostbite, "although it would pain me to do so, if you tried to return despite our warnings, I would increase the dose of our ectoplasm you are receiving until you were physically dependent on the presence of our ectosignatures to function."
"That's not what we talked about," snarled Sam.
"It is what would be necessary, to keep him from dying or ending," said Frostbite, sharply. "It may seem harsh, but anything that may turn a ghost from the object of their Obsession must, by necessity, be harsh."
Danny looked between the three of them and let out a small, hysterical laugh. "You guys aren't giving me a lot of choices here."
"These are the choices that exist," said Frostbite. "As I said, I do not present them lightly. I would generally recommend that you think long and hard about such a decision, but I know that even being aware of the existence of such information is, in itself, destabilizing."
Frostbite was right. Danny was already winding himself into knots with the stress of not knowing. Whatever it was, it had to have something to do with Amity Park, if they didn't want to let him go back there. Maybe when he'd frozen himself, he'd frozen part of the city, too? Or had his parents done something horrible while he was away? Was Jazz okay? What if the real reason Tucker wasn't visiting was that something terrible had happened to him? Had a lot of people gotten hurt in a ghost fight while he was gone? Was that why Sam didn't care how long she stayed here, or what her parents' reaction would be when she got back
He had to know. And he absolutely had to go back to Amity Park, one way or another. Who else would keep it safe? Could he still keep it safe if Frostbite changed his memories?
"You also have the option to take the Pseudomyosotis confabuli now," said Frostbite, seeming to sense his distress, if not his train of thought, "rather than after you learn of the… unfortunate news. It would save you a great deal of potential damage. And you can always choose to take it later, even if you do not destabilize."
That wasn't what Danny wanted to do at all.
"I…" said Danny, slowly. "I'll agree to the compromise. If I'm really destabilizing, and that's the only thing you can do…"
"For a destabilization of that nature, it is," said Frostbite.
"Okay. Okay. I agree, then. You can mess with my memory if I'm destabilizing."
Frostbite nodded, but it was Sam who spoke next. "I'm the one who was there, so I'll tell you what happened. Do you remember when we called you a few days into your vacation?"
"Yeah," said Danny. "You told me that nothing was wrong."
"We lied," said Sam. "That was an hour or so after the portals, uh. Exploded."
"... were people hurt?"
Sam hesitated. "I died," she said, finally.
Danny stared for a moment, then lunged forward, grabbing her wrist. Her skin was warmer than his, but couldn't find a pulse. His core spasmed, and let out a tiny wisp of his ghost sense. He looked up at her, tears pricking in his eyes.
"Hey, don't cry. I'm still here. I'm fine. Tucker came back, too."
"Tucker, too?" asked Danny, his voice breaking. Either his heart or his core was throbbing painfully. Or maybe it was both.
(It didn't make sense for Tucker to have died. Sam's house was near Vlad's mansion, so that made sense, but Tucker and Sam lived in two very different places, and it had been in the middle of the night. Unless they'd been releasing a ghost through the portal.)
(He really hoped they'd been releasing a ghost through the portal.)
"Yeah, but he looks a bit different, that's why he hasn't been visiting. But… pretty much everyone came back."
"Everyone?"
"The reaction between the portals took out the whole city," said Sam. "There were a couple exceptions, but mostly… yeah. Everyone died. But they almost all came back."
"How– But the city– It was–" It had been quiet, Danny remembered. Too quiet. Too calm. "The buildings?" He was clutching at straws, trying to put holes in the facts even as he knew they were right, knew Sam was telling the truth.
"Since it's your haunt, it sort of put itself back together," she said. "A lot of things are, like, ecto-copies of stuff that got leveled, but we're ghosts, so it's not like it matters, I guess?"
"It's my fault," said Danny. "It's because I forgot to change the filtrator, isn't it? It's my fault and everyone is dead."
"No," said Frostbite. "Our engineers think that the cause of the fault was a newly installed regulation device on your parents' portal. Not something you had any control over."
The sound that made its way out of Danny's mouth was nothing but pain.
"It's okay," said Sam. "We're– Well, you know what dying is like, but it's over. We're safe. Your haunt is pretty welcoming and we're all adapting."
"What about," croaked Danny, "hunters?"
Sam made a face. "Well, remember how I said mostly everyone came back? Anti ghost stuff and giant ectoplasmic explosions don't mix well."
"Mom and Dad?"
Sam stilled, and for the first time, Danny could see that she was a ghost. Humans couldn't hold that still, not for that long.
"Everyone knew about the portal, Danny," she said, finally. "Your parents talked about it all the time. When the portals exploded, they knew who to blame it on. That many people dead… there were a lot of revenants. The revenants are… well, they've faded."
Revenants. Ghosts who were Obsessed with taking revenge on the people responsible for their deaths. Danny could follow the thought to its ultimate conclusion and back to the origin point.
His parents were dead.
They were killed by ghosts.
The ghosts who killed them had been killed by the portal.
They'd been killed because Danny hadn't been there to protect them.
Now they were all gone for good, because they'd killed his parents.
And everyone left in Amity Park was dead.
Except, maybe, for one.
"Jazz?" he managed. He needed to know.
"She's fine," said Sam. "Tucker and I fought off everyone who wanted to bother her."
Danny took a deep, shuddering breath and let himself break. For a brief moment, he was nothing but agony, spasming backward, his back arching in a vain attempt to get away from the hurt.
"Hey," said Sam. "Hey." She took his hands as he sobbed. "We came back. We came back, and everyone is waiting for you. We love you, and we need you."
"Need me?" From the corner of his eye, he saw Frostbite pick up the bottle of Pseudomyosotis confabuli. Frostbite didn't move to the IV line, however.
"Yeah, who else is going to break up fights and keep hunters from coming in to eradicate people, right? Besides, it's your haunt, your home. It wouldn't be right, without you there. But you've got to– You can't destabilize, okay?"
Danny moaned. He didn't know how to stop himself from destabilizing. It hurt, knowing this hurt, and part of him very much wanted to forget.
But he didn't know how Frostbite and Clockwork would edit this to hurt less, and he didn't want to risk it.
There was one way, though. One way out that didn't require him to face this or to forget. He turned to Clockwork, desperately, even as he knew what the answer had to be. After all, Clockwork had already told him.
"Clockwork," he said. "Can you– Can you– Fix it. Fix it, please. Send me back. Or- Or erase it. Please. Please. I'll do– I'll do anything, I just–"
"I cannot, Daniel," said Clockwork softly, sadly. "I'm sorry, but this was the way things were meant to be."
Danny held on to himself as tightly as he could and cried.
.
Grief, Danny had heard, could do strange things to your mind and memory. It certainly did to Danny. He wasn't sure how long he was lost inside himself. He didn't remember any of that time. When he first came out of it, he worried, at first, that Frostbite had altered his memory after all.
But, no. He still remembered. He still remembered and it was still terrible. Too terrible for him to even properly wrap his head around.
"Sam," he said. "I need to see it. I need to go back to Amity Park."
.
On this side, at least, the portal looked the same as it always had.
"This is where we leave you," said Frostbite. "Considering the circumstances, we do not want to further aggravate you with 'foreign' presences in your haunt."
"I don't know that you guys are really foreign," said Danny. "Not any more."
"Still," said Frostbite, "I think it will do you good to be in a place that is truly yours, without any… additional outside influences."
Danny made a face. He still had a lot of Frostbite and Clockwork's ectoplasm in him, so he knew where that was coming from.
"You should come back after twelve hours for a checkup," continued Frostbite, "to make sure you're still stable."
Danny nodded. "Okay."
"Come on," said Sam. "Tucker's waiting."
Danny took a deep breath and flew through the portal. Power flowed into him, but he wrestled it under control.
At first glance, the lab looked the same as it always had. At second glance, everything in it had that odd, insubstantial look that ectoplasmic constructs shared. At third glance, there what could only be described as a multi-dimensional crack spiraling off the portal and through the 'concrete' and 'metal' wall.
"Where's Tucker?" Danny asked.
"Upstairs. I'll show you."
Sam flew ahead of him, and Danny followed, trying not to look too closely at his home and how it had changed.
(He tried not to think about how his parents would have reacted to the ectoplasmic simulacra of their lab. He hadn't asked for any details of what had happened to them. He didn't know if they'd even gotten all the way to Fentonworks, or if the GAV had been stopped earlier.)
Tucker was waiting at the kitchen table, and Danny immediately understood why he hadn't come to see him. Tucker, unlike Sam, definitely was rocking the classic ghost look. Deep green skin, red eyes, strange electronics built into his body… Danny might not have recognized him if he hadn't been told. But he had been, so he dove at Tucker, hugging him.
"Hey, man," said Tucker. "It's been a long time."
Danny sniffled.
"You're okay, you're okay," said Tucker. "Everyone's fine."
"You're dead."
"And so are you. It'll be okay."
Once Danny got a hold of himself, they went out onto the street. It, too shimmered with ectoplasm. Just a little. Barely noticeable. But there.
Other than the three of them, no one was around.
"Where is everyone?" asked Danny as they walked. His street wasn't exactly the busiest in Amity, but it usually wasn't this…
… dead.
"We asked them to give you some space today," said Sam. "And… most people don't like coming here. It reminds them."
"Oh."
"Yeah," said Tucker. "I don't know how you did it, with the portal right under you like that."
Danny shrugged. "It was just what I had to do."
"Let's take a walk around," suggested Sam. "You can see where everything is."
One moment, the street was empty. The next, it was full of people, walking, talking, driving, all the sights and sounds of life that had been missing, but Fentonworks was vivid, green, pulsing, and there was a light in the sky of the same shade, towards where Vlad lived. They pulsed, and the people stopped, staring, and–
Danny doubled over, ghost sense billowing out of his mouth. For a moment, he was scared that he'd completely lost control again, that he was going to freeze himself solid, but he shaped the wave of energy and the fog tapered off. Sam and Tucker helped him stand back up. The ground all around them was covered with fractals of frost, but had already started to melt under Sam and Tucker's feet. A bit more alarming was the large grandfather clock - big enough that Danny could fit inside the cabinet - on the sidewalk in front of them. He decided to ignore it for now.
"What was that?" he asked, hoarsely.
"Death echo," said Sam. "We've been getting a lot of them. But we've been told they tend to fade over time."
"Frostbite?"
"Ghostwriter, actually," said Tucker.
Danny bristled. "He was here?"
"Yeah, it's been… it's been a bit weird," said Tucker. "He didn't want to fight or anything, just… look. He actually gave us his condolences, you know. A bunch of ghosts did that."
"But they're not here now," said Sam. "We asked them to clear out."
Danny nodded. Good. He didn't want to deal with them. "Where's Jazz?"
"She's been staying with me and my parents," said Tucker. "Do you want to head that way?"
"Yeah," said Danny. He sniffed, and wiped at his nose. "Yeah. Is this okay to leave here?" He pointed at the clock.
"It's your haunt," said Tucker.
"Okay," said Danny, deciding it was a problem for later.
Sam patted him on the shoulder. "You know, if you can deal with the death echoes, I think you're up for anything here. They're pretty… intense."
"Oh. Yeah." Danny glanced at the clock. "I guess I did deal with it."
Tucker took his hand. "It'll be okay."
Sam took his other hand. "It really will be. Before you know it, things will be back to normal. We'll be going to school, fighting ghosts, getting detention–"
"Staying up late playing Doomed, watching shows, working on PDAs–"
"Going to the Nasty Burger, eating ice cream, walking in the park–"
"And no one will care that you're a ghost–"
"Because we all are," finished Sam.
Danny stood there, squeezing their hands, feeling their ectosignatures. They seemed to fit together, to slot into place like the teeth of the ice gears in the clock he'd just made.
The clock struck the hour, and Danny hummed with it. Sam and Tucker hummed with him.
Oh. Oh. That felt right. That felt good. He leaned his head against Tucker's shoulder.
"We can take a break before we go see Jazz," Tucker suggested.
"Yeah," said Sam.
Danny nodded. "Thanks," he said.
"No problem," she said, "and remember, it will be okay."
For the first time since finding out, Danny felt as if he might actually believe that.