Doorways 9

"Sometimes," said the woman-who-was-a-woman-but-also-something-more. She turned her head to look down at Danny, and the mirror behind her reflected a small amount of the glory that her body naturally hid.

Danny shivered sideways at her regard, sidestepping mirrors that had always and had never been there. If the other doors could be called demons, then this one could be called angelic. That didn't mean they'd be friendly to Danny or his family.

"Who are you?" she asked.

"Danny," he said, unpleasantly reminded of Gula's attempt to eat him, to draw him out through his name. It wasn't the same, and yet…

"Not that," said Industria. Lights shone in her eyes. Her reflections turned to examine Danny directly, looking out through the glass. Danny's reflections seemed to fade, becoming less real. "Who are you?"

"I go by Phantom, too," said Danny.

She shook her head. "You're a doorway, but you don't go to the same place I do."

"No," said Danny. "I go to the Ghost Zone. You go… elsewhere."

"The Green Country, not the Red. Infinite Realms, not the Unmade World. I know. You carry the traces of Dreams."

"Nocturne," said Danny. "His name is Nocturne."

"That was never his true name. Just as yours was never Danny, never Phantom."

"Just like yours isn't really Industria," said Danny, peeved. "It isn't as if we have anything written on our lintels."

"Don't we?"

"Maybe you do. I don't."

She stepped sideways and was replaced by her reflection. "I've done my research. I always do my research. The Door of Dreams is not the only one that leads to the World Imagined. Time. Storms. Growth. These have names. You have arrived on my threshold, from which I hold back Acedia. You come bearing the echoes of Gula, of Superbia. I ask again, who are you?"

Three times, and Danny didn't have the benefit of being at home, on his own threshold. He also, thankfully, wasn't trapped in a circle of blood blossoms. Not that it would have mattered if he was. The entity in front of him operated on a different set of rules than the thing that had worn Serena Goodritch and eaten Vlad. The mirrors were enough for her purposes.

What was ripped from his mouth, his core, wasn't human. He couldn't even begin to guess at a way to translate it into something human. It was the purest, most direct, most complete description of what he had, obliquely, termed his Obsession when negotiating with Nocturne.

"Oh," said Industria.

A hand entered Danny's field of view. He had, at some point, fallen to his knees. He took the hand, and Industria pulled him up. Some of the mirrors had gone back to normal reflections. Others had faded further. A few seemed too real, too deep. One reflected not the hall of mirrors, but the Fentonworks' lab.

"Sorry," she said. "I had to know."

"No," said Danny, hoarsely. The human throat wasn't designed for that kind of utterance. "I understand. Well. I mean. I understand why you did it. Not, ah." He gestured at his mouth.

"You didn't understand what you said?" she asked.

Danny didn't really know how to explain it, but one of his reflections spoke for him, the words transmitted through the glass. "Not… Not really. It's like when you're standing in front of yourself. You can think of different things, then."

"Maybe," she said. "But you really need to figure that out, and sooner rather than later. Before someone takes advantage. My name is Millie."

"Like your name tag?"

"Yeah. That is what a name tag is for." She sighed. "Why are you here?"

"After Gula showed up on my doorstep and tried to eat me, me and my parents thought it'd be good to check in on everyone who used to be part of their club. Your dad's George Amal?"

"Also," chimed in a reflection, "we ran into some 'Acolytes of Acedia' the other day. Know anything about that?"

"Crap, I thought I'd fixed that." Millie looked him over. "Your last name is Fenton?"

"Yeah."

"I heard about you on the news. There's a lot of speculation that your family killed Vlad Masters."

"We didn't," said Danny. He was echoed by his reflections.

(He didn't like that. It felt like pieces of himself were being pinched and siphoned away.)

"That's what people are saying," said Millie. She shook her head. "You shouldn't have to worry about Acedia leaking past me again. I work hard. I'll have to make some adjustments, but this park will contain it."

"Why?"

"Parks like this look like they're just here for people to relax, but they take a lot of work, and people here are doing things, not just sitting around lazily. It's an interface Acedia tries to latch onto, but can't. Not easily. And what it does do, I can counter and disperse. It makes reality a little weird, but it's better than the alternative."

"Why haven't you closed it?" clarified Danny.

"Sealed it?" asked a reflection.

"Destroyed it?" asked another.

"Because I cant," said Millie. "I'm sure you've realized it isn't that easy to get rid of these things. I'd love to know what you did to banish Gula and how you got away from Superbia."

"I… didn't."

"What do you mean, you didn't? You're here, and there's nothing inside Serena Goodritch's body anymore. You must have. No doubt you'll have to find a way to bind Gula, soon enough. No manifestation of that thing lets a meal escape easily."

"No," said Danny. "The - Gula, wasn't stable, and it was in my home. What it tried to do to me, I turned back on it. Gula, that version of Gula, is gone."

"And Superbia? You carry its…" Millie-Industria waved her hand, as if to indicate Danny's whole body. "I can sense it on you. Its traces. Its taint. It's like a smell, almost."

"Gone. It wasn't fully open to begin with, but it was drawing against death, and it was death that…" He trailed off.

"Death opened me," said a reflection, quietly.

Millie hissed through her teeth. "The pride that challenges death. Where was it?"

"Golding City. The university."

"Of course it was the university," said Millie. She glared at the ground for a minute, then shook her head. "No, those things won't work here. The circumstances are too different."

"Isn't this your home?" asked Danny.

A reflection shifted. "Where you were made?"

"Yes," said Millie, "but Acedia is anchored here as well. And I've never heard of doors to that other place being closed like that before, to begin with. Are you sure they were closed? Destroyed?"

"Positive," said Danny and all his reflections.

"Maybe it's because he's a door to the infinite, rather than the supernal," said one of Millie's reflections.

"Maybe," agreed Millie. She looked up, back at Danny. "You… Aren't exactly diligent or industrious but you do work hard."

"Uh, thanks?"

She seemed to decide something, then. The mirrors shifted, and the reflection behind her stepped aside.

"Follow me," she said. She turned, and walked through the mirror. Danny hesitated. But he didn't really have a choice. "What were these acolytes you encountered like?"

"They were enslaving ghosts," said Danny. "To do stupid things. Do their chores. Run their business. You know, so they didn't have to. They ran a bed and breakfast. Sort of. I think it was mostly the ghosts, now."

"Typical," said Millie, sourly. "Somehow, with these things, the worst of it comes to slavery, always."

"Have you run into a lot of doors?" asked Danny.

"Not ones going that way," said Millie. "But I've met Dream, and I've met a few like me. I think Caritas would like you."

"There are others?" asked Danny, his heart aching with thought of more like him, others that could understand, even if they weren't quite the same.

"Mhm," said Millie. "Not that I can tell you where. We have an agreement. Privacy, you know."

"Oh. Of course."

Walking through a mirror was already several steps off of normal reality, but the deeper they went, the more things shifted. That tension that he could sense even walking on the surface, on the skin of what he now sensed to be a huge, many-layered mechanism, an almost-living thing of mirrors and difficulties. Something not easily bypassed by something that existed in inaction. It was difficult to move. It was difficult to breathe. It was difficult to think.

Danny knew that if he did not do those things, he would be trapped here.

"How long?"

"What?"

"How long have you been a door?" asked Danny. "I mean– How long has it been since you were first opened?"

"It was after Dad was in that accident. I went looking for something, anything that could help. I found Acedia. And rejected it. Acedia doesn't have a host. Too much work, I suppose, except when someone walks right into it. That was… Industria, then… My door… I rejected Acedia. It… overlapped," she said, struggling to put what it was like to become into words, as Danny often did. Even things like 'opening' and 'closing' and all these analogies weren't good enough. "It was a confirmation. You?"

"I was trying to fix something," said Danny, shrugging. "That something wound up being me. Only I wasn't broken."

Millie stopped. Industria stopped. "This is as far as you should go, I think. Do you feel it?"

Yes, Danny could feel it. That lazy, too-hot summer afternoon. Night, so late, too tired to get up to go to bed. Dishes in the sink, piling up. Remote control just a little further. Homework left unfinished. The itching under the skin to do something, but nothing being done. The consumption of hours. Their waste. Their despair.

"Do you understand why it's different? Whatever you faced before, it's different."

"It isn't that different," said Danny, thinking of Superbia, and the false confidence that swirled under his skin, daring him to try, telling him he could win by his strength and cleverness alone. But this… He didn't know if this wasn't a good fit for him, or if it was Acedia, whispering in his ear, turning him away from something he could and should do.

"You've defeated two holes in reality," said Indistria, leaning down so she could speak directly into Danny's ear. "By many measures, what you are is what you can do. Can what you did be repeated?" Her eyes gleamed from a dozen reflective surfaces.

He could not forget. Industria, too, was a doorway, a hole in reality. One that had more in common with Danny than the likes of Gula, but one nonetheless.

What if he only wanted to do something because of her?

Industria sighed, her breath hot on Danny's ear. "Can you strengthen the boundary? Can you expand the maze?"

"Ice," said Danny, breathlessly. "You use mirrors."

"It was what was available at the time."

"They used mirrors, too. The acolytes."

"Acedia could be traveling. But ice?"

"Ghost ice. Mirrors and mirror-coatings. Barriers."

"Do it."

Danny laid his hand flat against one of the mirror walls, and called on his ice. It crept out, over the glassy surface, then sunk deeper, the white cold mixing with the brilliant silver illumination that was Industria's power. He poured into it. Power. Energy. Thought. Hexagonal fractals spiraled outward, creating mazes within mazes, adding to the binding that kept Acedia from leaking into the world. His reflections did the same, all through the maze, shallower and deeper, scattered everywhere, a thousand parts of him. It was difficult. It was impossible.

He saw, now, why Industria could not destroy Acedia. He saw why she had only brought him partway. They were too different. They could not reach one another. The space between their thresholds was an infinite series of steps, and nothing could take such a journey. Forever, they could approach their borders and never find them, and Acedia… Acedia would not do that, or it would not be Acedia, and Industria could do nothing but, or she could not be Industria.

Danny was neither of those things, and his door stood on a sharper divide. Though he could not go to Acedia, and fight it in its own place of power, he could do things Industria could not.

But could he fill all this infinite space all by himself?

"You can do it," said Millie. And with Industria's hand on his shoulder, he could at least try.

.

Danny stumbled out of the house of mirrors and caught himself on a nearby piece of railing. Millie stood behind him on the steps.

"I'll tell the others about you," she said. "I need to get back to work. Will you be alright?"

"I'm fine," said Danny. "I just need to– I just need to–" Rest? Catch his breath? Was that safe?

"You should be fine," said Millie. She looked back, over her shoulder. "Plenty of people rest here. Resting isn't the problem. The problem is not getting back up."

The high-pitched tweedle of a phone ringtone interrupted any thoughts Danny might have had on the matter. Millie rolled her eyes and answered the phone. "Yes?" she said. She was quiet for a few minutes. "Yes, I'll tell him. Bye." She closed the phone. "My dad saw your parents. You're invited to dinner."