Things were a little easier with Valerie in his life. Of course Sam and Tucker did not approve, but honestly, it was a relief that someone else knew about his predicament. Plus Valerie was in a few of his classes so she offered to help him catch up on some of his work. They sat in Danny's new bedroom as Danny bounced a ball against the wall catching it when it bounced back and repeating the cycle.
"Will you please stop doing that? It's driving me crazy." Valerie glared.
"I get restless." Danny continued throwing the ball against the wall. Valerie grabbed the ball out of the air as it made its way back to Danny.
"You know you could do something about this homework." Valerie glared.
"I don't see why I should." Danny stuck his tongue out.
"Uh… because you don't want to flunk." Valerie gave him a harsh look.
The box ghost floated out of the middle of Danny's bed.
"Beware!" was his greeting, Danny looked to Valerie and Valerie looked to Danny.
"Aren't you going to do something?" Valerie asked.
"Aren't you? No ghost powers remember." Danny shot back. "Your job now."
"Ugh, fine, but only if you do some homework, or you get to deal with him." Valerie proposed.
"Fine." Danny sat down at the desk. The box ghost had already taken off out the window and Valerie was jumping out right behind him. Danny chuckled, it was very strange for Valerie to know who he was, and know that he knew who she was. He tried to focus on his homework but the words on the page swam before his face.
"English, English, English…" Danny chanted to himself as if that would make the pages make any more sense, "I'm not convinced that this is English." He muttered glaring at the book. Suddenly he shivered and a cold breath of air puffed in front of him.
"Oh no." as he swiveled around Skulker was standing there.
"Hello ghost child." Skulker smiled. Danny jumped up, backing into the desk. Skulker loomed in front of him yet seemed confused; he looked down at his scanner.
"Uh… Can we do this some other time?" Danny tried. Skulker frowned and looked from his scanner to Danny then back to his scanner.
"This can't be correct." He grabbed Danny by the leg holding him up, Danny's shirt falling up over his head while Skulker analyzed him.
"Hey! Put me down!" Danny griped, all he could see was the white his shirt and a portion of the room, he twisted and turned trying to get free. Suddenly Skulker was poking him in the ribs.
"Stop! Quit that!" Danny struggled to pull his shirt back down, or perhaps it was up since he was upside down. As he did Skulker held him higher to bring him level with his eyes.
"You're human." He stated.
"Gee. What took you so long to notice?" Danny quipped, "I don't suppose it was the lack of a ghostly glow, or perhaps the fact that I'm wearing regular clothes, or maybe the fact that I didn't kick your butt the second you walked in the door!"
"This doesn't make sense." He dropped Danny back onto the bed, "You've been off the radar for weeks, yet you suddenly popped up again allowing me to track you down. Yet you are unmistakably human, and therefore not worthy prey." Skulker tapped on the device on his arm.
"Or you just remembered where I lived." Danny rubbed his sore leg.
"Of course I could always mount your skull on my wall because of the trouble you've caused me." A large glowing blade slid out of the armor. Danny's eyes widened.
"You're not serious." He scampered off the bed and into the door, his hand scrambling for the handle. A blast shot through the door and Danny ducked, it threw Skulker across the room. More blasts came through the door, Danny covered his head and lay on the floor. The smoking door opened, and Danny scrambled out of the way. His mom stood there with a gun.
"Where's Valerie? Is she safe?" She asked all the time, keeping her eyes on Skulker, whose suit was malfunctioning due to the fire.
"Uh… she forgot a book so she went home to get it." Danny quickly covered. Maddie nodded then pulled something off her belt throwing it to Danny who caught it quickly. It was the Fenton thermos.
"You know how to use it, correct?" Maddie said it more as a statement. Danny stood.
"Yes." He looked at Skulker who was trying to free himself of his ruined suit. Danny uncapped the lid and sucked the small green ghost into the thermos, re-capping it, cutting off Skulker's protests. Maddie lowered the weapon.
"Are you alright?" She looked at Danny who let out a breath.
"Yeah… I just… I thought… I thought I was going to die." Danny's knees gave out on him. He was shaking and breathing heavily. Whether he admitted it or not this encounter scared him as much as the first time he'd fought a ghost. He tried to slow his breathing. Suddenly his mom was there rubbing circles into his back.
"I… I guess I've never really thought about… I could have died. Before I was already dead, well half dead… I was scared, but… this is the most frightened I've been since I got my powers." Danny swallowed, "I don't know why. I've faced worse, I've faced scarier, seen so much… I don't understand why this affects me so much." He tried to steady his shaking hands. He put his hand to his throat, "He was going to mount my head on his wall… gross… and yet… he's said it before… it just seemed so much more possible this time." Danny continued taking deep breaths. Soon he calmed down. Maddie, while rubbing his back in comfort, was silent. He half expected a hug or a comforting word, but her expression showed that her mind was somewhere else.
"Mo… Maddie?" Danny tried. Maddie looked at Danny.
"It'll be ok. We'll be upgrading the security soon." She took the thermos from his hands, "We need to clean this mess up." She glanced around the room and the scorch marks and the abandoned suit that popped and buzzed. Danny nodded but Maddie was already leaving the room. Danny paused then sat back at his desk and returned to the, slightly smoking, homework he was supposed to be working on.
Now he really couldn't focus. Skulker had rattled him up, if his ghost sense hadn't gone off it might have just taken his head off. Danny paused. His ghost sense? He felt as if it had gone off before Skulker appeared. He closed his eyes recalling the sense of cold in his chest, remembering the wisp of condensed air that alerted him. Had it truly been his ghost sense? He knew that spirits were known to alter the environment around them, dropping the temperature was one well known side effect. Had it just been cold because Skulker had dropped in, or was it his ghost sense. Danny ran a hand through his hair. He had tried thousands of times before, not giving up on the possibility that his powers could return. He took a deep breath and placed his hand on the desk hesitating now. He tried to access his ghostly core, and he pressed his hand into the table. He shivered and it felt as if the wood would give away and his hand would pass through, but it didn't, the desk remained solid beneath his palm.
"Whoa… what happened here?" Valerie stood in the room, having entered through the window. She frowned and deactivated her suit, Danny glanced around at the mess then rubbed his neck.
"Oh… yeah, Skulker showed up, wanted to mount my skull on his wall." Danny tried to reply in an offhand manner as if it was something that happened every day, but his voice still shook slightly.
"Gross." Valerie frowned, then she looked at Danny, "Whoa… are you ok?"
"Sure… why wouldn't I be?" Danny tried to smile.
"First of all because you were just attacked, second of all because you're pale as a ghost…" Valerie paused at her word choice. Danny tried not to but eventually he began snickering.
"You know what I mean!" she defended.
"Well it's ironic." Danny laughed, Valerie rolled her eyes.
"Well at least you still have a sense of humor." She walked back over to Danny's desk looking at his progress.
"What do you think about the question number…" She picked up the paper…"You know what… let's go with question number four, question number one has a hole blasted through it."
After his little escapade the first night Maddie had placed sensors on the doors and windows that alerted her to any escape attempts, something Danny had found out rather quickly after attempting to sneak out a couple times. He let his forehead rest against the cool glass pane and stared out onto the street. He had to talk to Sam, or Tucker about the potential return of his ghost powers.
The room was dark so the street below was visible quite clearly beneath him, his breath fogged up the glass and it seemed like it was about to rain. The sky was darker than normal, the moon and the stars hidden behind roiling clouds, lightning flashed and thunder rumbled through the streets.
Danny closed his eyes and remembered flying in a thunderstorm. The first time had been terrifying, the wind howling around him, trying to pull him every direction, the lighting in the air caused him to buzz with anticipation, hyper aware of everything around him. The clouds moving across the sky almost wavelike, angry and commanding respect. The surprisingly warm splattering of rain against his face, arms, back, shoulders, legs, everywhere. Hair in his eyes and plastered against his skin and his arms shaking with something other than the cold as he tried navigating the storm clouds, eyes wide, frightened, humbled.
That first time… the first time had been terrifying. After he'd landed, he'd been shaking so badly his knees gave out under him and he nearly sunk through the floorboards. Yet he'd felt alive, full of energy. While scared he'd discovered something in himself, something that yearned to feel. He'd never told Sam or Tucker how it felt. But he tried again, more daring each time, with each new thunderstorm, he'd found renewed strength. He'd even once gotten shocked by lightning, afterward he felt like he could fly for hours, the buzzing through his body needed to be released. The lightning however, had not had the same effect on his suit, he had landed burned and smoking, eyes glowing fiercely and he'd scared the psychologist out of Jazz who had been waiting for him to come home. She spent a couple moments gaping like a fish before demanding an explanation, quite upset when Danny shrugged it off.
A night like this would be one spent among the clouds, daring nature, his core alight with lightning, playing tag with the elements.
Danny's hand pressed against the window much like a child would at a candy shop, he felt the hollowness set back into his chest. Longing and empty he stared out the window, the rain began to spatter, no longer warm or full of life, but cold and taunting.
Danny peeled himself away from the window as his forehead and hand began to go numb with cold. He pulled up to the used laptop his mom had purchased to help him with his homework. He debated logging into the chat room to talk to Sam and Tucker, but he was certain after the last computer fiasco that she was watching everything. Ironically school would be the safest place to talk to them.
His homework had miraculously been completed earlier that night, after much help from Valerie of course. It lay in a stack on his desk. He flipped through the online games tab before closing the computer angrily as if it was to blame for his current state.
He glanced back out at the sky, flickering with light. The clock on his bedside suddenly went dark and there was a whine of the heat powering down. Danny returned to the window.
"Please…" he begged to the sky, hoping someone would hear him, "Let me go ghost." But his appearance remained unremarkable as ever. He returned to pacing the room in an agitated flurry.
As he paced he debated why he didn't just tell his mom who he was. Why didn't he just explain the situation? If he did, surely she could fix it. But what if she couldn't? And what if she thought fixing the situation would be making him 100% human again? What if she didn't believe him? What if she sent him to live with Vlad? Could Vlad help? Danny paused at this thought. Vlad could help right? But then again if he could, wouldn't he have done so already? On the other hand it would be like Vlad to leave him stranded like he was just to see him suffer, and squirm. Or perhaps Vlad didn't know how to fix the mess he was in anyway. Danny could call him and ask, but he certainly didn't want to deal with the sneer and the false sympathy of his arch-enemy, who would no doubt demand Danny become his son or something equally ridiculous. Besides, his ghost powers weren't quite worth that… yet.
He wanted to call his friends, to talk to them, express his anger, frustrations, and hopes. He wanted reassurance that he wasn't crazy or imagining that he saw his ghost sense. However, there was no one to witness it besides him, or possibly Skulker. After the near decapitation, he wasn't in the mood to talk to Skulker.
Hadn't Skulker said something about picking him up on his radar… could his powers have triggered it. It seemed more likely that Skulker had just remembered his address… but… the hunter had seemed genuinely confused when he realized Danny was human. More than anything Danny wanted to believe that his powers were returning, that everything would be ok. But life had taught him things were never that easy, and never that straightforward.
Danny flopped onto the bed burying his face in his pillow until it became hard to breathe. He emerged seconds later and glared up at the ceiling before jumping off the bed to pace once more. He returned to the window and placed his hand upon the glass pane, he tried to remember what it felt like to phase through things, how he triggered it.
It felt like breaking through the surface of water, but it also felt like pins and needles, it was strange and tingly and it had been so familiar once upon a time. Danny imagined the feeling of his hand passing through the window, concentrating and pushing on the glass as if it would make a difference. For a moment the glass gave away, his hand passing through it, his eyes went wide as he confirmed for sure that his ghost powers were returning, though slowly. It was a small miracle and he started grinning as he considered the possibility of everything going back to normal, but suddenly Danny felt a horrible burning through his body.
His ears began to ring and vision blurred and he pulled his hand back through the window, he reeled with pain. Nausea roiled his stomach and he turned, grabbing the nearby wastebasket and vomiting into it. He lost everything in his stomach and then some, he coughed and gagged. He heaved into the rubbish bin over and over before he slowly stopped, he rested his good arm over the lip of the can and closed his eyes, breathing heavily as he tried to regain his senses.
His hand felt like it had been run through a meat grinder, set on fire, and then for good measure, thrown into an acid bath. The rest of his body ached; his joints were stiff as if he'd suddenly acquired rigor mortis. He panted heavily trying to regain his breath, which felt as if it had been knocked from him. He couldn't move, his vision continued to be clouded and hazy, the room span and his head was pounding. He vomited once more into the rubbish bin, it burned up his throat, nothing but bile left in his stomach, he coughed and spat into the trash, staring at the hazy sick in the bin.
Danny wasn't sure how long he'd been hunched over the trash when his vision started to clear and the pain lessened, his joints unfreezing as he collapsed to the ground, leaving the rubbish bin to the side. His face was wet, he wiped at his eyes expecting tears but bright green ectoplasm greeted him. Danny groaned and lay on the ground for a while longer, without the strength to move. He looked to his right hand, the hand he'd managed to phase through the window. The fingers were still stiff; there was a cyanic tinge to the fingertips. The pain in his hand began to lessen at an incredibly slow pace and he tried to move his fingers to no avail. His hand wouldn't move, wouldn't respond to his mental signals, like it was dead.
Danny closed his eyes, his ears continued to ring, but he'd gotten the message. He wasn't supposed to step over the line between life and death the way he once had. There were consequences to be paid. His success was a warning of what would happen if he tried to use his powers. The small glimmer of hope he felt when he thought his powers were returning had been extinguished by the pain and repercussions he was experiencing.
The ground felt nice, the thunder was no longer soothing nor a reminder of better times, but an angry intrusion into his pounding head. Slowly Danny drifted off to sleep like that, laying on the floor next to his bed, wastebasket nearby and ectoplasm streaming down his face.
In his dreams he stood before Clockwork, the ghost was silent in his assessment of Danny's human ghost form.
"So now you know the consequences." Clockwork said. Danny blinked then shook his head.
"What? The consequences of what?" He asked as he looked down at his body, his hand was dead and he lifted his arm, the dead hand flopping to the side in a sickening way.
"Observe." Clockwork pointed to an hourglass, the sand was flowing at a slow pace, it was just over an eighth full. A mirrored clock face appeared on each side of the hourglass, one depicted the hourglass at an earlier time as there was much more sand in the glass, and the other depicted Danny at the window, his hand pressed against the glass. The sand was falling through at the same slow pace it was currently, but the hourglass was less than a sixteenth full, then without warning it began to fall quickly all at once at the same time Danny's hand passed through the window in the other clock face. As Danny's hand retracted and the side effects followed, the hourglass in the mirror slowed down till it reached the steady pace it was at before.
"You have limited time on this earth young Phantom, and as you know, Time… is everything." Clockwork waved his hand and the clock faces vanished. "Now you know your powers can be used, should the desire be strong enough. But you will pay a terrible price, Time is not on your side."
"Time isn't on my side?" Danny blinked, "If you haven't noticed, time is never on my side." Danny looked to the Time Master, "You knew about this didn't you." He accused, his eyes narrowing at the ghost.
"Of course. I know everything." Clockwork responded. Danny felt himself growing hot with anger, he clutched his dead hand to his chest.
"And yet you did nothing to prevent it!" He glared.
"Calm down child, there was nothing I could do." Clockwork's monotone irritated Danny, he hated how removed from everything Clockwork was. On some level he knew the ghost care, even had a soft spot for Danny, but Danny couldn't see that now. He felt like Clockwork was playing with his life and didn't even find the game interesting.
"You once told me you could see all the twists and turns and various outcomes of life, all the roads that it may or may not take. What kept you from directing the flow of traffic!?'' Danny snarled, his eyes narrowed, Clockwork sighed.
"With each decision you make certain roads open, others close. We chose to save your family, you chose to save them, you made a vow to save them, and at the moment you did that, all other roads closed off. Only one path remained, where it goes from there, however, is up to you." Clockwork explained. Danny paused.
"So… I don't have to die." He thought of the hourglass, its sands slipping through the glass showing him his remaining life.
"No. You're going to die, everyone dies. The only choices you have are when and how and what to do with your life until the moment that your heart stops beating." Clockwork shrugged and began floating away.
"I don't want to die, you need to fix this!" Danny yelled at the ghost running after him, Clockwork turned suddenly.
"Everyone dies, it's a side effect of life, I cannot change that no more than I can change the tides of the earth or the flow of time. I may manipulate it, bend it and make a mockery of it, but in the end Time only flows forward, And I wouldn't have it any other way." Clockwork's voice had seemed calm, but his words were harsh. Danny backed down.
"I'm… I'm scared." Danny admitted, his anger leaving him, Clockwork's face became kind.
"Do you think that I am not? I can see the end of Time child, there will come a point when Time will end. It is a very far way off; so far not even humans will live to see the end of it. At the end only I remain, till the end of time as all others fade away. Do you think that I am not scared?" Clockwork's words were soft. Danny looked to the ground, "It does not do well to dwell on eventualities, live the life you are given now."
The dream darkened and Clockwork faded away, leaving Danny alone. He became aware of the scenery around him, dark, but his body illuminated the area around him, as it had once done when he was a ghost. There was darkness in all directions and it stretched out forever, Danny stood and began walking hoping to come upon something in the darkness so that he may find his way free again.
Soon the ground beneath him turned into a glowing path. The path felt familiar, it filled him with warmth as he walked along. At the end of the path was a door, Danny knew he needed to reach the door, but as he tried, he found he could not get any closer, not as fast as he ran nor as large of steps he took, it stayed in the distance taunting him. A ticking noise filled the space, echoing on forever as he tried to reach the door. Once more the path beneath his feet gave away and suddenly we was falling, falling forever into blackness.
With a jerk Danny woke up. There was the distant rumble of thunder and the patter of rain had relented.
As Danny sat up he felt his face, ectoplasm had dried on it, sticky and gross. Danny peered into the trash can, a mixture of blood and ectoplasm in addition to supper greeted him. He sat up and leaned against the bed running a hand through his hair as he took deep breaths. The alarm clock on the bedside table was still dark, neglecting to inform him of the time. His joints were stiff with cold telling him the heating was still out with the electricity.
Danny attempted to clean his face with his hands, but the ectoplasm was like syrup and he only ended up making a bigger mess of it. Danny stood bringing the trash can with him as he creeped to the bathroom.
He fumbled around for some candles and a lighter he knew his mom kept in the bathroom in case of power outages. Which were more common than one would think especially with ghost attacks in the town. Danny was surprised the generator hadn't kicked in, but likely it was busy lending all its power to keep the portal working.
Before long a flickering light illuminated the bathroom. Danny locked the door then dumped the sick contents of the rubbish bin down the toilet. He flushed then proceeded to use the tub to rinse out the plastic bin and pour it down the toilet. With a final flush he turned his attention to his own clean up. His throat burned and the sticky green goop was not only on his face but in his hair, down the side of his throat and on his hands. Danny pulled off his clothes and stepped into the shower. The water was marginally warm but Danny suspected it wouldn't stay that way for long. He cleaned his body of the ectoplasmic residue, the water turned cold quickly, chilling him by the time he finished cleaning the mess out of his hair.
As he finished showering and turning the water off he shivered. He quickly toweled off and dried his hair before wrapping the towel around himself. Abandoning his clothes in the rest room and blowing out the candles Danny journeyed back to his room bringing the bin back with him. He quickly dressed in pajamas and crawled under the covers shivering, trying to get warm. Eventually the heater turned back on and began blowing warm air. Still Danny shivered under the blankets. The numbers on his clock were flashing 12:00 constantly.
He heard someone use the bathroom, though time seemed to have vanished from the world. Eventually his eyes drifted shut as the room warmed, and he soon drifted into a dreamless sleep once more.
Author's Note: Last round for today... yesterday? I'll hope to finish the updates by tomorrow evening, but who knows if I'll manage. I need sleep now.