Author's Note: Hope you enjoy the first new chapter of Human since I my hiatus years ago! Comments/Reviews fuel my will to make this fic live so I'd like to thank you for engaging with this little story of mine. I am going to spend some time working on my other DP fic, Time and Time again, it's a time regression one and I'd like to get some of that done soon.
Danny leaned his head against the cool metal of his locker, he didn't move to open it just yet, he was feeling tired and weak today. He hadn't slept well, nightmares about dying plagued him, he was going to die, and his mind raged against the idea. He didn't want to die! He certainly didn't want to die young! He would be 16 in the summer but he wasn't even sure if he'd live that long. He was going to die, and now his parents knew it.
Death, a proper death, a good death, a tragic death, a sudden death, a slow death, death, death, death. The thought haunted him, what did it matter what kind of death he had if he was dead anyway? He knew the thought was bitter and false as soon as it came into his mind. Death mattered to ghosts, as a half ghost it mattered to him. He had died once, even if he had still come back to life, it was important, his death was important. Ironically it was what had changed his life. But a full and proper death… that had always seemed to be years in the future. He had assumed he would continue dancing in the liminal space where life and death touched until he was old and decrepit. That reality had been taken from him, not only was he going to die, he was going to die young. The injustice of it all was almost too much to bear.
He took a deep breath and pulled his head away from the locker, the metal had warmed underneath his head anyway and no longer served to help cool him off. He stared at the door blankly as he considered ditching Lancer to go home, but he didn't want to go home, not yet. His parents were probably going to run a million more tests on him the second he got there. They were determined to fix this mess, to undo what they had done to him. Of course Danny let them try, let them run their tests and trials with his blood, hair, skin and spit. He had to be good, he couldn't take out his anger on them, not when they were trying so hard to be accepting and to help him.
But you wouldn't need their help if they hadn't messed you up in the first place. A dark thought traveled through his mind. He tried to push it to the side, there was no point in considering it, not now anyway, freaking out and getting angry wasn't helpful.
Then when are you allowed to be angry? The thoughts argued, he tried to think of them as someone else's, the devil on his shoulder so to speak, despite the fact he knew they were his own. He could be angry when this was over and he could let out his frustration in the Ghost Zone. He would be angry later, when his parents weren't trying to help, they felt guilty enough already for him being stuck like this, guilty enough for not noticing he was half dead already.
They should feel guilty, they did this to you, they're the reason you're a half ghost, they're the reason you're dying now. The voice argued, Danny rubbed his temples in an attempt to banish the thoughts.
"Don't spiral Fenton. It does you no good." He whispered before taking a deep breath and calming himself, he needed to move on from these dark thoughts so he could focus. He counted to ten and let his breath out slowly before opening the locker and sticking his books inside and digging out the books he'd need for homework with Mr. Lancer. He slammed the locker shut and hauled his bag over his shoulder before heading to Lancer's classroom.
The teacher was sitting behind his desk waiting, he smiled at Danny and gestured to an empty desk at the front of the classroom.
"Have a seat, let me know if you need any help or clarification. I'll be grading some papers." He said with a nod toward the stack of papers on his desk. Danny nodded and slumped into the desk.
Lancer had offered to help Danny catch up and get up to speed on work he didn't understand or had missed due to being a ghost. Danny appreciated the offer, but it was yet another reminder that he was Phantom now. He could never return to his life as Danny Fenton, and then he would die and be Phantom forever. He sighed heavily and dug his homework out of his bag.
English made more sense now that he had gotten some personal tutoring from Lancer. He had easily caught up in biology as well as physics, they were all subjects he had enjoyed before becoming half ghost had messed up his study time. It was nice to be able to dedicate time to the subjects he loved, subjects that he had hoped would one day get him into the space program. That was far out of reach now, not to mention PE continued to be a struggle, but overall he wasn't doing bad academically. He scoffed to himself at that thought.
"I'll at least have an A average before I die." He mumbled as he began tapping his pencil against the paper and frowned at the paper.
"Pardon?" Lancer asked, looking up from his desk, his brow furrowed.
"Uh…" Danny glanced around the room as if he would find an acceptable excuse somewhere in the classroom. "I don't know why I said that out loud, don't think too much of it." he said with a nonchalant shrug, hoping Lancer would think he was just being a dramatic teenager. The two of them stared at each other for a while before Lancer spoke.
"You're dying, aren't you? What your parents did… it isn't permanent, is it? You're becoming a ghost again… right?" he asked as he looked at the teen before him. Danny sighed and looked down at his paper before sighing again and pushing it to the side. He wasn't going to be able to focus on it now that Lancer mentioned him dying.
"Yeah… I'm slowly destabilizing… it'll go faster if I try to use my ghost powers. My parents…" Danny froze – cutting himself off mid sentence – his eyes going wide as he looked at Lancer, realizing that Lancer had called them his parents, and without thinking Danny had also referred to them as such as well. When did he figure it out? How did he figure it out? What did he think of him? Lancer's expression was strangely soft, kind, though a hint of remorse edged into his eyes. Danny swallowed nervously.
"You… you know?" Danny asked softly, Lancer sighed and set his papers aside as well.
"I can't claim to understand it, there is so much that doesn't make sense. I took a gamble in calling the Fentons your parents… I was hoping to prove myself wrong if I'm being honest…" he paused here and picked up one of the papers that was to the side of his desk, one of Danny's worksheets from his time as Phantom.
"Your handwriting is identical, not to mention the space doodles on the edges of your homework when you turn it in. You draw yourself the same in your space cartoons." He pointed out the doodle in the bottom right corner, explaining himself even though Danny had yet to ask. Lancer smiled kindly at Danny who felt as if he could have smacked himself. He hadn't even considered that when making the doodle, it was just something he did off to the side when he needed time to think about a question. A doodle had been all Lancer needed to figure him out, what a stupid way to have his secret exposed.
"If Mr. Fenton wasn't missing, I would have thought you shoved your homework onto him somehow. It isn't just the doodle, but that was the final clue. Before this it was your posture, the way you talk, your opinions, it's all too similar to Danny Fenton." Lancer said before standing and handing over the worksheet. Danny started at his tiny cartoon self riding a rocket to the moon in the bottom corner. How could a stupid doodle he'd done while bored give him away so easily?
"Still… it didn't make much sense, how could you be Danny Fenton? You were a ghost and Danny clearly was not, it still doesn't make sense to me, but despite it not making sense that a human could also be a ghost… it made entirely too much sense. The dropped beakers your freshman year, the tardiness, the way you always excused yourself right before a ghost attack, Fenton and Phantom rarely being seen in the same place, the ghost detectors going off around you." Lancer listed off the various clues and hints as Danny stared wide eyed, the explanation slowly sinking in.
"If Fenton hadn't gone missing, I likely would have just assumed that Fenton and Phantom were working together, or perhaps that you had overshadowed him, or he managed to hide you on his person somehow. There were a million possible scenarios, but each possible line of inquiry was rejected. I saw you doodle that space ship here last week while you worked on homework, everything seemed to line up, but I had to be certain… which is why I took the gamble with calling the Fentons your parents which confirmed it." Lancer said as he put a hand on Danny's shoulder. Danny looked up at him, he was speechless, there wasn't a point in denying it.
"You don't need to tell me how it happened, or how you managed to be alive and yet a ghost at the same time, but I do want to know… are you safe at home?" He asked seriously.
Danny stared at him the reality that now Lancer knew who he was, what he had been, was still sinking in slowly. He knew he was Fenton and Phantom. He wanted to know if he was safe? He didn't know how to respond, usually he would have lied and said, "Yes, of course I'm safe" or made a joke about Lancer reading too far into things because he was an English teacher. Instead he stared at Lancer. He knew. He had figured it out, even when it didn't make sense for a human to be a ghost, he had still figured it out.
Anger suddenly flared up inside Danny, if Lancer could figure it out based on his posture and a doodle, how the fuck had his parents missed it.
"All because of a stupid doodle. You're not an ecto-scientist or a ghost hunter or even vaguely interested in the Paranormal and you figured it out!" He laughed, the sound bordered on madness and he shook his head. "Some great fucking parents I have! World's leading ghost experts and they couldn't figure out their own son was half ghost! I mean Danny Fenton - Danny Phantom? They're not all that dissimilar." He said, throwing his hands in the air.
"Their stupid inventions have always targeted me ever since the portal accident! I went intangible and invisible in front of them so many times while learning how to control my powers! They were too obsessed with the portal working. Do you know how many beakers I dropped? Not here, but at home, do you know the amount of times I accidentally phased through my floor and dropped down into the living room or kitchen only to have them not even notice!?" He laughed again and covered his face with his hands again, before throwing his head back and laughing louder, growing more unhinged by the second. Lancer for his part was quiet and let the boy speak, nodding sympathetically while Danny rambled. Now that he had started it was all coming out.
"On more than one occasion they've seen my ghost half up close and personal, and yet they still couldn't tell! All they did was rave about tearing me apart molecule by molecule! On the one occasion that my dad didn't do that, he complained about having to help me not get wasted by other ghost hunters! He complained about helping his own half ghost son, who he couldn't even tell was half ghost!" Danny let out a sound more akin to a sob than a laugh now.
"And then - and then- they make me human! But the ghost part of me! How does that work? Who the hell knows! And not only do they make me human, but they make me live with them, they see me every goddamn day for weeks and guess what!? They still can't fucking tell I'm their son! They had to do a fucking DNA test to figure it out! I've slipped up so many times and called them mom and dad, I've literally done the exact same things I do every day, the same way! I eat the same cereal, watch the same movies, listen to the same music, wear the same clothes! Do they see it? NO!" He stood up from the desk at the last word, throwing his pencil across the room where it bounced and clattered to the floor. Danny groaned loudly before gesturing to himself, while it wasn't quite the bright colors he normally opted for, it was still a space themed shirt- a long sleeve with stars across it and a small NASA patch on the right shoulder, something people wouldn't find out of place if Danny Fenton wore it.
"They had so many similarities and so many side by side comparisons between Fenton and Phantom! They had so much proof, even if it was circumstantial and it took a DNA test for them to realize it was me! Body language and a doodle? You figure it out from that!? Why couldn't they!? They had so much more evidence! They could have figured it out before they trapped me in this single form, weak, and useless human body! Why didn't they know!?" He shouted before his shoulders fell and he wrapped his arms around himself.
"After everything I've been through, despite every reality, timeline, or glimpse into the future telling me that they'd accept me for who I am, ghost half and all… I still couldn't believe it. Why? Because… because they couldn't tell it was me." his eyes were spilling angry tears now and Lance looked at him with sympathy, holding back on speaking, just letting the boy air his grievances.
"I was in the hospital after the portal accident… I had electric burns… It was a miracle I was alive, the doctors said! Their invention nearly killed me! It changed me, altered me down to the very atoms and molecules that create me… I was in the hospital for two days, Mr. Lancer. I was so close to dying, completely and fully dying and once I was discharged do you know what they did?" He asked, his eyes seemed to flash a glowing acid green for a second and Lancer hesitated before asking.
"What did they do?" He asked softly.
"They spent the next two moths obsessing over that fucking portal that nearly killed me." he scoffed and shook his head in disgust. "Then they do this to me! Who even knows what's happened to my human half! It took a fucking DNA test for them to realize I was me… a DNA test." He shook his head, his body trembling now, though it was unclear if it was rage or sorrow that caused his tremors. Lancer remained quiet, letting Danny rant. Clearly the boy needed to get some stuff off his chest. Lancer hadn't even chastised him for the cursing or the shouting, clearly that would do no good in this situation.
"A fucking doodle and body language and you know it's me… I can't even prove I'm actually Danny Fenton because I can't turn human because my ghost half is human." He sighed and shook his head. "Why couldn't they tell? Why…" he trailed off and looked away, the tears had finally made their way from his eyes, down his cheeks, and to the floor where they dropped as Danny did nothing to wipe them away.
Lancer hadn't moved, he hadn't wanted to spook the boy and give him a reason to stop talking, he only moved now pulling Danny into an awkward hug. Danny froze with shock, awkward or not, the hug was oddly comforting and he closed his eyes, leaning into Lancer slightly, though he did not return the hug.
"I was just fourteen." Danny sniffled. "I died at fourteen… I'm not going to make it to sixteen… they had a whole year… a whole year to see me… why didn't they see me?"
Lancer rubbed Danny's back slowly as he thought over the question, looking for an appropriate response before finally speaking.
"Sometimes we only see the things we want to see." Lancer said, Danny snorted and Lancer continued, "That isn't an excuse for what happened, what they've put you through with this misguided resurrection, but we are all human. We make mistakes." He said.
Danny sniffled and pulled away from the hug embarrassed, he wiped his eyes where his angry tears had stained his cheeks,
"They're my parents… they should have recognized me… I know… I know I didn't tell them and that's my fault but… they're my parents." he said and shook his head. "There have been so many times I should have told them, times when I felt it was necessary for them to know… but I held back, I never revealed myself." He whispered. Lancer put a comforting hand on Danny's shoulder once more.
"You're fifteen, you're human… or… half human… We all make mistakes." He said softly. "I've made my fair share of them." Lancer reassured as he gave Danny what he hoped was an encouraging smile. Danny wiped at his nose and looked away from Lancer.
"I'm tired of being human then." He mumbled and shrugged off Lancer's hand.
"It won't always be this bad." Lancer reassured him. Danny shook his head and looked up at his teacher.
"Yeah? I'm dying Mr. Lancer, my body is breaking down, my very DNA is coming undone… when I die… I don't even know if I'll be a ghost, what if what they did to me permanently messed me up… it seems like all my parents' inventions do is mess me up." He shook his head and looked toward the windows that lined one wall of the classroom, anywhere but at Mr. Lancer.
"Your parents are smart, maybe they will still find a way to fix this situation." Lancer said hopefully, trying to convince himself more than anyone. He didn't want to attend another student's funeral, he had been to one too many in his years as a teacher. In fact, just one funeral was one too many. Danny however, wasn't so confident.
"They didn't even know that I would destabilize after shooting me, but I was just some ghost punk, so what was the point of caring if they made me human? I'm really just sick of being human." he said with a shake of his head. The words were both true and false, it wasn't that he wanted to die, he wanted to live, but not like this. He felt trapped, like his skin was too tight, he yearned for his ghost half, to be able to fly, the weightlessness that came with his temporary deaths.
Death came for him everytime he had transformed, washing over him and stilling his heart, making it no more than a vessel by which to house his soul, his core. He didn't need to breathe or sleep or eat, and it had been frightening at first, but after a while, he could step though the boundary of death as if he were visiting the house of an old friend. The death that was coming for him was different.
"Do you need to talk to someone? An councilor perhaps? Or a therapist?" Lancer suggested, breaking Danny out of his thoughts, Danny rolled his eyes at the suggestion.
"No, it's not like I want to die… I'm quite scared of it actually… I just… I miss being a ghost sometimes." He admitted softly, a chill ran up his spine and he shivered.
Lancer opened his mouth to try and offer words of comfort,but they were cut off by an evil cackle as the lights fizzled out, the room cast in the eerie glow of ghostly activity.
"Then perhaps I can help you with that."
Danny tensed his hands going into fists, his eyes narrowing as the ghost appeared, the wispy shadow laughing at Danny. Lancer's eyes widened when the ghost showed up, the attacks had seemed to slow down while Phantom had become human, so it had been a while since a ghost had shown up at the school.
"Spectra." Danny snarled, despite being human – and therefore in some part useless in a fight – he placed his body between the shadowy ghost and Lancer.
"Why are you here?" Danny demanded, his hands shook ever so slightly even as he glared at the ghost. Despite his bravado in protecting Lancer, he realized how easily Spectra could kill him, even if he managed to access his ghost powers, he may very well die today. He swallowed and kept his eyes trained on Spectra, waiting for her to make a move, but she just taunted him.
"Your anger, despair, guilt, I could taste it from the ghost Zone." Spectra laughed as she floated and inspected him. "Looking at you now I can see why you're such a mess." She reached out and grabbed his face staring into his eyes, Danny quickly slapped her hands away making her laugh again, the cruelty in her voice felt like ice to his heart.
"Shut up!" Danny hissed, he felt shitty enough without Spectra coming here to poke and prod at his insecurities.
"You're pathetic, look at you, no powers, trapped in a human form but having lost your humanity." She taunted, Danny's eyes narrowed.
"What does that mean?" He growled, his voice low and dangerous, the fear he felt about dying leaving him, replaced with a new fear of losing his humanity, of becoming evil.
"Haven't you noticed?" Spectra laughed as gestured to him. "You've been separating yourself from humans, I can feel your disconnect – your discontent – with humanity. You must have noticed it, I sense you fear the change! I can't wait to see what your ghost will do once that mortal form fails." Lancer began to inch his way to the desk as Spectra spoke, he had hidden a weapon in his desk for just such occasions, but Spectra caught onto this right away and lunged forward to grab him.
Danny snarled, the sound so animalistic and primal it caught both Spectra and Lancer off guard as he lunged for Spectra, knocking the ghost off course. The ghost and the boy crashed into the ground while Lancer fumbled for the drawer and the ghost weapon. Danny attempted to pin
Spectra to the ground, but she easily overpowered him, throwing him across the room and into the backboard. Something made a sickening crack, and Danny couldn't tell if it was him or the board. He slid to the ground, slumping to the side in a daze as he tried to regain his bearings. His adrenaline rush did much to keep him from losing consciousness but he still saw stars and felt like he might need to throw up. He could hear Spectra laughing, he knew she was taunting him but he wasn't sure what she was saying.
Whatever she said didn't matter anyway and she was suddenly on him, grabbing his neck and phasing through the floor and into the classroom below with him, leaving behind Lancer before the teacher could get to a weapon and help. This time she was the one to pin him to the ground as Danny struggled to break free, panic rising in his throat.
"Just when I thought you were a lost cause, you become the best meal I've encountered in ages." She purred, leaning in close and taking in a deep breath, drinking in his anguish, pain and panic.
"Get… off!" Danny managed to choke out as he struggled beneath her, he hated this, he hated her, he hated everything. He grit his teeth, emotions warred inside his body, he struggled to breathe as she kept her hands around his neck.
"Now why would I do that? I finally have you right where I want you, powerless and such a delectable meal." She said as she stroked his cheek, Danny shuddered with revulsion and tried to wiggle free, but it was no use. Her hands were like a metal vice, keeping him pinned as she drew energy from his despair, the longer he stayed there the stronger she would get. He stopped struggling a moment, wondering if he should just give up, if he should just give in to her, let her drain him like a battery let her feed off his misery, it might as well do someone some good, he was dying anyway.
No! That's Spectra talking! Fight it! His inner voice screamed at him, Danny's hands clenched into fists, rage rising in his chest and throat. He hated her, he hated her more than he hated anyone before, except possibly his evil future self. He hated her and he wanted to make her pay, realize what it meant to attack him, make her suffer the way she made others suffer. Power filled him and his eyes glowed fiercely as he looked up at her.
"Get. off. Of. ME!" He yelled, his last words morphing into his ghostly wail, knocking Spectra off of him and up into the ceiling, where she hit with a surprised sound. The ghostly wail cut off quickly, it had to be the shortest wail of his life and he felt drained already. His throat was on fire, but he refused to let the side effects take him yet, refused to be useless, kept the ectoplasm burning through his system even as it killed him. He sent a small mental plea to anyone who would help to keep him from falling until he had dealt with Spectra. Whether by prayer to the universe or by sheer will power he didn't drop to the ground with pain, he persisted, unlike he had the day he'd gotten his intangibility to work.
He pushed himself off the ground, gathering ecto-energy in his right hand, his body primed to use his ghost powers after the wail, the ectoplasm raged in his veins, making him feel powerful, unstoppable. He punched Spectra hard before she had a chance to recover, sending her crashing through several desks, before surging forward and cloaking his other hand in ecto-energy, delivering a sharp upper cut that sent her crashing into the ceiling once more before she crashed down painful, gasping, clearly caught off guard by the turn of events.
"You… you should be powerless! You were powerless a moment ago!" She cried out, shock and fear on her face. Danny couldn't waste time to answer, he wasn't sure his voice could be used even if he wanted to. He used her shock to grab her tail, and heaved her over his shoulder smacking her down into the floor, a snarl on his lips as ectoplasm began to leak from the corners of his mouth and his left eye.
Danny's rage was nearly all consuming, he couldn't remember the last time he had felt so angry. He wanted to destroy her, he wanted to keep her from hurting him or anyone else ever put his hand against her chest, right over her core, he let the energy build in his palm, growing beneath him until his whole body crackled with electricity and he locked eyes with the terrified Spectra. He took a moment to revel in her fear, before the energy dissipated.
"Boo." he rasped out. The warning served its purpose and Spectra fled, she held no illusions that Danny wouldn't have been able to destroy her core and erase her existence, so she fled. Danny managed a small satisfied smile before he completely collapsed, his eyes rolling back into his skull as the use of his powers took its toll.
Ectoplasm pooled around him mixed with blood, his body had gone cold and stiff as if he was a corpse. He barely breathed, his heart barely beat, he had pushed himself too far beyond the veil of death, and there was no going back now.
"You're almost out of time."
Danny blinked, the hourglass was gushing sand from the top of the glass to the bottom, his life leaking away, he had used his powers to stop Spectra and save Lancer, but at what cost?
"How… how much longer?" he asked softly.
"A day at most." Clockwork answered, looking over at him with pity. "I suggest you say your goodbyes."
"Goodbyes… right…" he said softly as he watched the hourglass. The sand slowed its pace, but that gave little comfort as there was barely any left at the top of the glass to begin with.
"I'm almost out of time." He echoed.
