Maddie had a much better appreciation of everything Danny had been trying to tell her when she burst into Alicia's bedroom and saw the woman in the blue HAZMAT suit standing at the head of the bed.
The woman's back was to the door, but Maddie—despite what she would grudgingly acknowledge must feel like vast evidence to the contrary—was not an idiot.
"Get away from her," Maddie snarled as she leapt forward. Danielle came into view, tear-streaked face clearly frightened but aware, and she took advantage of the distraction Maddie offered by wrenching her arm away from the woman holding her. She didn't make it far, her energy seeming to give out as she became tangled in blankets and the tears started again. The scramble must have dislodged something from the bed, though; Maddie heard it fall to the floor, but she wasn't about to take her eyes off the two in front of her to see what it was.
The woman didn't make any attempt to stop Danielle's escape, perhaps because she hadn't even made it across the bed. Instead, the woman reached down to retrieve whatever had fallen before slipping it into her pocket and turning to face Maddie.
Maddie might as well have been looking into a mirror.
Well.
Not quite.
Maddie knew her expression held no trace of the surprise on this woman's features, not when she was torn between revulsion and anger and betrayal.
"Oh," said the woman as she tucked her hands into her pockets. All the better to hide whatever she'd been holding and swap it for a weapon, no doubt. She was smiling, too, as if this remotely resembled a situation one could smile about. "You must be Maddie."
Despite everything, shock jolted through Maddie. It wasn't the similarity in the voice—she knew they must sound the same to everyone else, but this woman sounded different than Maddie did to herself except in recordings—or even the warmth in her tone so much as the fact that the woman knew who she was. Maddie hadn't expected the woman to know who she was or to acknowledge that if she did.
Granted, she wasn't sure what she had been expecting. A fight, maybe. She did an awful lot of that when ghosts were involved. This woman might not be a ghost, but that didn't negate the fact that ghosts were still involved.
Humans, too, unfortunately, even if that HAZMAT suit hadn't been stolen from her ghost-proofed closet. Whatever Vlad claimed right now, she wasn't going to assume Danny was wrong about this. If he was, great. A larger part of her than she wanted to admit existed still dearly wished that Danny was wrong about all this. Until she saw some evidence to the contrary, however, she'd have to assume guilt and not innocence where Vlad was concerned. Because this—
Okay.
Jazz and Danny had both told her about Vlad's so-called obsession with her. He'd always been warmer towards her than to Jack, and she'd once thought that that was simply their relationship, but—
There had been a few times since the reunion that she'd second guessed the meaning behind the things Vlad had said or done, even if she hadn't necessarily acted on it at the time. She'd always put it out of her mind, thinking it was a one-off thing, making excuses, even since this had all started—
She couldn't keep doing that.
She was lying to herself.
She wondered if the woman across from her lied to herself, too.
She must. She clearly shared the lack of empathy Maddie had previously had for ghosts, Danielle included, or she wouldn't be doing any of this. Whatever this was. Danielle herself had gone still and silent, almost like she dared not breathe until this nightmare was over, and Maddie resolved to do whatever she could to make it end faster.
The others hadn't come back, though.
They mustn't have heard.
Maddie would've thought Cujo would have heard, even if everyone else had been too far away, but what if the weapon hadn't worked like she'd hoped it would? What if Cujo and Danny had had to stay to protect Alicia and to stop Vlad from doing something else? Vlad knew the value in waiting to act; he'd play possum if he thought it would get him farther ahead.
She couldn't worry about that now.
She was here for Danielle, and she'd have to be enough.
Hopefully, her being here ultimately helped more than it hurt.
Maddie took a steadying breath and asked, "I beg your pardon?"
The smile on the other woman's face faltered. "You didn't know."
There weren't a lot of things that properly summed up recent events, but that did it quite nicely. Maddie gave a sharp nod and waited. If the other woman was anything like her, she'd know—
"I'm Madeline." Her head tilted, and Maddie found herself on the receiving end of a look she usually tried to reserve for particularly puzzling problems. "I really am sorry. I thought you knew."
It didn't quite sound like her, did it? Surely not. This Maddie—Madeline—was different.
"Why would you think that?" Maddie asked carefully. She tried to edge sideways to get between Danielle and the stranger who wore Maddie's face, but the other woman seemed to anticipate Maddie better than a shapeshifter would. Shapeshifters could mimic the look of anything, but no ghost could replicate a particular human's behaviour without intensive study.
Well.
She'd never thought they could before.
That will have to be another thing to ask Danny, another time, because now….
Now she had to deal with a clone.
Her clone.
Her impossible clone that was somehow so much more than a clone should be.
Her age, her likeness, at least some of her mannerisms, and— Memories, surely. Some of them. Not all, but enough. Enough to find her way through Alicia's house without any trouble, at least, and enough to anticipate Maddie's actions in this situation now. That really shouldn't be possible, but possible had sailed as a ship long before this.
"Oh, best you don't do that, sweetie," Madeline said, reaching out to gently push Maddie aside. Maddie resisted, at which point the gentle push became an unsubtle shove that had Maddie stumbling back in spite of herself. "I'm not finished what I need to do."
"What do you…?" Maddie trailed off as she saw the other woman pull a needle out of her pocket. The liquid inside wasn't quite the colour of ectoplasm, a shade too dark, a touch too dull for the fresh liquid form, but Maddie didn't need to know what it was to know she didn't want it anywhere near Danielle. It reminded her entirely too much of Jack's Ecto-Dejecto, and Maddie doubted Danielle's system could handle being subjected to anything meant to work like that at this point.
Maddie reached out to grab the other woman's arm—either to wrench the needle from her grasp or flip her to the floor; Maddie wasn't picky—and found herself in a fight.
A vicious one.
The bruise that must be blooming across her cheek and the sharp pain in her chest whenever she took a breath would be the least of it at this rate.
The needle was dropped in the scuffle, and Maddie wasn't sure what happened to it, but that didn't matter; it was far more important if Madeline knew what had happened to it or if she had spares. Maddie suspected she would—Maddie herself would—but Madeline didn't overly guard one side or give herself away in another manner. Whether or not the other woman had the same level of training as Maddie, she'd certainly had enough to hold her own, and Danielle—
Maddie's glance at the bed to see if Danielle was taking advantage of the situation and getting out of there was her mistake. Maddie only had enough time to register that Danielle was sitting up and watching them fight before she took a kick to the gut that knocked the wind out of her and sent her to the floor. The other woman was on top of her before she could recover, one knee on her chest and wrenching Maddie's arm around with one hand while the other reached into her pocket and pulled out a different needle—
A sudden spark of green shot it out of her hand, and remnants of the ectoblast crackled and sparked over Madeline's suit.
For a second, Maddie thought she saw Madeline's eyes flash yellow.
"Danielle, honey," Madeline cooed without turning away from Maddie, "you know better than to use your powers in your condition. You might still be holding yourself together after one dose, but surely you know how well the first one is working already."
It was more statement than question, but Maddie wished it were a question Danielle would answer; she might make sense of it then.
"Vlad's wrong," Danielle whispered. "He's— He's wrong about a lot of things."
"He's not wrong about the formulation. You know he isn't. You know what it feels like to be destabilized."
The words shouldn't have made fear freeze in Maddie's chest, but this was an easy confirmation of what Danny had been saying: that Vlad was behind this. That he'd planned this, all of this.
That there wasn't any misunderstanding.
Madeline had come here to give Danielle something to destabilize her, something that could wreak just as much destruction on the human part of her as the ghost when the two were as integrated as they appeared to be, and Vlad—
Vlad would know exactly what that meant.
He'd know better than she did.
Danielle was a child, a child recovering from the horrific experience Maddie herself had subjected her to, and now Vlad had sent Madeline to—
"He's wrong that you have to do this," Danielle spat out, and Maddie wished she could see Danielle's face to try to guess if the earlier sobbing had been nothing more than an act. She'd have been scared, surely; likely still was. Traumatized—retraumatized—if Maddie were to ask Jazz, no doubt. But she'd acted out not only in her defense but also in Maddie's, and now she seemed to have gotten her feet under her and was ready to fight, even if most of that fighting was verbal.
That had to be promising…right?
Maddie was more familiar with Phantom's bluster and banter, the brave face he invariably showed in a fight where he was—or at the very least should be—severely outmatched, but she found it harder to identify in Danielle.
How much of this was a bluff?
Even if it were all a bluff, would Madeline have the same doubts about it that Maddie did, or did she know more than Maddie about all of this?
"If you take some time to really think about it," continued Danielle, "you'll realize I'm right. He's wrong to say you have to do this. Just like…just like he was wrong about what I had to do."
The look on Madeline's face was too cooly calculating to be truly considering. "I only have to deal with two little problems to earn my place by his side. You're one of them, and you won't be a problem for long." The smile was back, but this time, it was overly sweet, and Maddie had no illusions that it wasn't directed at her. "And you're the other, since it doesn't look like you're going to cooperate." Leaning forward, she said in a loud whisper, "That means I'll earn your name."
A layer of ice seemed to coat Maddie's spine.
How had she ever wondered if this woman sounded like her?
"You're delusional," Danielle said bluntly, which was frankly better than the response Maddie had been considering. "You'll never be good enough for him, just like I wasn't. You're not her."
Madeline finally tore her gaze away from Maddie and looked over her shoulder. "Don't you say that!"
"What, you don't think I know? I've been where you are."
The words were a distraction Maddie needed, and when she felt the pressure on her chest lessen as Madeline shifted, Maddie moved.
Judging by how Madeline had been fighting earlier, it shouldn't have been as easy for Maddie to turn the tables on her as it was. Still, this was hardly a friendly sparring match, and now that Maddie had a knee on the other woman's back and a firm grip on both arms, she would press her advantage before she gave it up.
It was an advantage which very much involved letting Danielle talk for as long as she cared to.
"You're just the best little soldier," Danielle said as if it hadn't taken Maddie any time at all to trap Madeline. The bitter venom was still in Danielle's voice, achingly similar to what she'd heard in Danny's when he'd talked about how Vlad had known about everything Danielle. About all of this. "That's why you've been sent out to play. I saw some of the ones that didn't make it as far as you did; they weren't any prettier than my other siblings. But I'll bet you're not perfect either, even if he tells you that you are, that you're the best, that no one could ever replace you. Because he used to tell that to me, and you know what he wants to do to me. He even sent you to do his dirty work for him."
"You're a mistake," Madeline said, and Maddie twisted the woman's arm past a point she knew had to hurt. It elicited a pained hiss but not the apology to Danielle that Maddie had hoped for.
Well, Maddie might not be able to, ah, encourage Madeline to apologize, and she couldn't apologize for her, but she could defend Danielle. "She's not. She never was."
Madeline huffed. "Do you even know her story?"
Truthfully, Maddie had pieced together far more of it now than she'd dreamed of before, but Madeline hardly needed to know that. "I know enough to know she's not a mistake."
That's what was important. That's all that mattered. The implications of everything Danielle had been saying, especially when coupled with everything Danny had told her and Jazz had feared, were dizzying to the point of distraction. Maddie couldn't afford to think too deeply on them now. She had to hold on to the simple truth that Danielle was a child, a ghost and a girl and a wonder but not a mistake, and—
From beneath Maddie, Madeline found the breath to let out a derisive snort, and Danielle's mouth twisted. "As far as Vlad was concerned, I was a mistake. And I thought I was for the longest time after—" She broke off. "I'm not. But he still thinks I am. And he doesn't want any mistakes to come back to haunt him." Her head tilted slightly as she looked pointedly at Madeline and added, "That's why you should get out now. The ghosts will welcome you if you don't want to risk Vlad finding you in this realm. He made you like us, didn't he? To improve you?"
Madeline hadn't been struggling before, exactly—since she was doing little more than shifting her weight or trying to slip into a slightly more comfortable and advantageous position, Maddie had gotten the impression that she was biding her time and waiting for the best time to try to reclaim the upper hand—but at Danielle's words, she went completely still.
"You might have all the memories Nocturne can safely extract from a sleeping mind," continued Danielle, "and all the training Vlad could give you before all this happened, but are you any older than I was when he first sent me out?"
"Don't talk to me like you know me."
"If you'd lived even a fraction of the years you look like you did, you wouldn't have any trouble answering that question."
"I'm not a child," ground out Madeline, which was a comfort to Maddie, however small, "and you are hardly my elder."
"Take it from me: remembering something isn't the same as living it." Danielle moved then, pulling herself to the side of the bed and then slipping off. She reached underneath the bed and retrieved what Maddie realized was the needle of Ecto-Dejecto-like solution Madeline had held.
It was still intact.
"You might have been told what it feels like to destabilize, but if Vlad never put you through that, you wouldn't know." Danielle walked towards them, the needle held in her hands with a disturbing familiarity, and this time, Maddie had to fight to keep Madeline still.
She wasn't sure she wanted to, though.
She didn't know what Danielle was doing.
"I know how to keep myself together." The words were softly spoken, but Maddie doubted any of them had trouble hearing them—or the threat beneath them. "Do you?"
"If you're thinking what I think you are, don't," Maddie whispered. "Please. Don't make my mistakes."
Danielle snorted, and in Maddie's surprise, she must have lost her grip on Madeline. The other woman shoved her aside with more strength than Maddie had thought she'd be able to gather in that position before rolling towards Danielle. The girl hopped away with an agility Maddie hadn't realized she still had, and Maddie couldn't help but wonder how long she'd be able to keep up this charade.
It had to be a charade, didn't it?
"Let's call a truce," Danielle said as Maddie and Madeline both got to their feet, and the words were really the only reason Maddie didn't try to tackle Madeline again immediately. Danielle was keeping her attention on Madeline, but Maddie knew she was in the girl's sight as well. "A real one, the sort that's binding for ghosts. You won't want to suffer the consequences of breaking it, trust me. You don't harm any of us, and I won't use this on you. Agreed?"
Madeline lunged for her instead of saying anything, but Danielle disappeared before the woman was close to making contact.
She reappeared on the other side of the room, hovering two feet from the ceiling, and looked no worse for the wear.
"You shouldn't be able to do that," snarled Madeline, something Maddie rather agreed with given the state Danielle had been in earlier, but Danielle shrugged.
"Like I said, I've had practice holding myself together and using my powers even when I'm destabilizing. You really wanna bet you can outlast me when Danny's going to do everything in his power to make sure you don't have Vlad as backup, or are you gonna do the smart thing and agree to the truce?"
Maddie wasn't sure how Danielle knew Vlad was out of the picture, however temporarily since she wasn't convinced her weapon would work as well as Danny hoped, but perhaps Danielle suspected Vlad would have shown up by now if he weren't.
"For what it's worth, I'll agree to it," Maddie said, watching Madeline more than Danielle because she knew the other woman must be assessing the situation. She didn't know how much value that would have when she wasn't a ghost, but she wasn't sure how much value Madeline's word would have because of that, either. "As should you, Madeline. Danielle might not be at her full strength, but it's still two on one."
"You don't understand," growled Madeline as her hands clenched into fists. "I cannot fail."
"You mean you think you can't afford to fail," corrected Danielle. "And you're right. You can't. Which should be a clue that your whole situation isn't as ideal as Vlad told you. If it were, he wouldn't be ready to drop you like a hot potato just because you decided to call a temporary truce."
"I'll stop you before you have a chance to attack her again," Maddie said quietly. "If I see you so much as reach for your pockets, I'll get you on the floor. You know I can."
Madeline spared her a glance. "I was trying to fight fair. I don't have to."
Maddie raised an eyebrow. "That was your definition of fighting fair?" The hair-pulling had been the least of the things Maddie wouldn't have counted as fair.
"She means on an even playing field," Danielle said. "She might be a clone, but she's not a carbon copy of you. She's a variation."
"An improvement," purred Madeline, "because I am more than you will ever be."
"Really." The word was bitter, disbelieving even to her own ears, and Maddie hated the truth of it. "I'm not sure I see the difference. You might not be as ignorant as I in the same areas, but you're as ignorant as I am, and that ignorance—and our arrogance, since you apparently share that fault of mine as well—will lead you to making a grave mistake. Stop now before you do any more harm to an innocent child. She's as much a girl as she is a ghost, and you have no right to destroy who she is."
The laughter that escaped Madeline wasn't Maddie's own, surely. She couldn't ever remember laughing like that. Sharp, incredulous barks lessened to a condescending chuckle but stoked the flame of embarrassment that had begun to burn in Maddie's chest just as easily.
She'd gotten something wrong.
Somehow.
Madeline might know more than enough about Maddie to win this if it were just the two of them, but Maddie didn't know nearly as much about Madeline as she needed to keep the advantage she should have with Danielle by her side, and the other two clearly knew it.
Still, she could square her shoulders and pretend she didn't know the cruel laughter was meant for her, even if the others wouldn't be fooled. "It's hardly a laughing matter. We're talking about a life here. I didn't— I didn't understand that before. I do now."
Madeline's lips remained quirked into the smirk that Maddie wanted to wipe off her face. "But that's why it's so funny, dear. You don't."
"Careful," Danielle said, teasing in her tone. "Remember, whatever you say about me applies to you, too."
That stole the smirk from Madeline's face. "It applies to mistakes," she hissed, her eyes narrowing in her anger. "Mistakes and errant experiments. You might pretend to be all high and mighty now, but we both know you only want a truce because you cannot maintain your current state. If we continue to fight, you'll lose, even with her on your side."
Madeline didn't look at Maddie as she said this, but Maddie could still feel the weight of the sneering judgement in her tone like a blow to the gut.
Danielle tilted her head to one side, looking completely unaffected by any of Madeline's words or their implications "Are you sure about that?"
"I'm sure you know I hardly need to dignify that with an answer."
"Hmm, yeah, well, that was an answer, so. You kinda lost that one." Danielle yawned and stretched, her hand brushing the ceiling, but Maddie suspected she was feigning the relaxation. She'd seen Danny do something similar before claiming he was tired and going to head to bed early. Before, Maddie had assumed Danny had simply been unlucky to be so tired during so many key ghost fights and miss out on the learning opportunities they posed; now, she knew he'd been using it as an excuse to sneak off and fight as Phantom.
"Point still stands, though," continued Danielle. "Are you comfortable betting on that? Because you would be. And I'm more than happy to bet that I could kick your butt, even with one shot of this stuff in my system." She raised the needle. "But I'm also happy to even the odds if you don't believe me."
Madeline stood glowering at Danielle for three heartbeats before spinning towards Maddie in a move Maddie hadn't anticipated. By the time her brain processed what had happened, she could feel the prick of a needle that Madeline held at her neck. Danielle had gone rigid, stopping her forward movement to intercept as Madeline tightened her grip on Maddie and the needle's point scratched into her skin.
"I'll bet that you'll try to be the hero," Madeline said, "because I have a feeling that once you decided you had the blood of your brethren on your hands, you've never felt clean."
Maddie saw Danielle's hands curl into fists, but the girl hadn't completely forgotten herself. Instead of dropping it, the hand holding the needle keeping its tip pointed at the wall behind her. "You think that's enough to stop me from fighting you now? Because my hands are already dirty?"
"I think she is," Madeline countered. Maddie wished she could simply go limp in the other woman's arms, but she didn't know what was in that needle and didn't particularly want to take her chances with it. It might not need a vein to be effectively deployed. If it didn't need precision, there was nothing stopping Madeline from sticking her the moment she tried anything.
Danielle's eyes flashed green, and Maddie was reminded of Danny's reaction when he'd first found them in the lab.
"Maddie," Danielle said quietly, "you're going to hate this as much as I do, but I don't have a better idea, so trust me."
"Trust—?"
She didn't have time to finish her question.
It wasn't because Madeline had jerked her back, though the other woman had done that. It wasn't because she'd slipped the needle into Maddie's body and depressed its contents—or, at least, Maddie didn't think it was.
Between one blink and the next, Danielle had disappeared again, and a heartbeat after that, Maddie wasn't alone in her own body.
Fighting against being overshadowed was second nature. It was such a gross violation, ghosts treating people as mere puppets, but she knew how overshadowing worked; she had a stronger chance of withstanding it than most, and—
Trust me.
The plea echoed in her bones.
Maddie stopped fighting.