Behind Blue Eyes
I don't own Danny Phantom, but man I wish I did.
Welcome back again! Keep on telling me what you guys think with this chapter! Sorry it's shorter than the last two, but I couldn't resist this ending. Next chapter will be longer to make up for it, promise! Anyway, read on, readers.
The Talk
Star stopped by her locker on the way out, wanting to empty her backpack out before the long walk home. She was so consumed by her thoughts all day that she never even opened it to exchange books, which explained the rather heavy math book she was still carrying around.
She opened her locker, careful not to hit Paulina who was standing in front of her locker, and stilled. Sitting in her locker was her light blue star-shaped hair clip. When had that gotten there? How had that gotten there? There was no way she would have left this here, let alone had the time.
The only time it could have fallen out was at last night's game and the only person who could have found it was… Danny Fenton.
"Hurry up Star, we've got to leave now if we want our table at the Nasty Burger. Dash and Kwan are waiting for us." Paulina reminded her.
Star slightly shut her locker so she could look Paulina in the face and put on her most convincing apologetic voice.
"I can't go today, my dad's making me pick up my stupid brother from school. I'll meet you there if I can." Star excused herself from the event and as expected, Paulina huffed.
"Fine, we'll go over now. Catch up with us later, okay?" Paulina replied before walking off.
Star glanced at her retreating form and watched as she left through the front of the building surrounded by the members of the A-list. Then, she looked back at her locker and began to wonder just how Fenton had even noticed her hair clip on the ground, let alone had time to pick it up and not even mentioning how he got it into her locker.
That must be why he was looking at her all day, she realized. He was probably trying to gauge if she knew it was him who had returned her hair clip. She picked it up and slammed her locker shut, coming to a sudden decision as she raced out of Casper High.
It didn't take long to locate her target. Fenton was walking home as usual, flanked on both sides by Manson and Foley. They didn't seem to be acting any different than usual, despite what Star witnessed earlier.
Foley was typing away on his PDA, mumbling something she couldn't hear even as she approached and Manson was not so discretely poking Fenton in all the holes on his shirt, as if trying to get a reaction while Fenton did most of the talking. She could hear him more than Foley, he was talking louder, but she still couldn't hear more than a few scattered words at her distance.
'Lead', 'ambush' and 'tattoos' were the only words she could clearly make out and they did nothing to sooth her curiosity. Before she could loose her nerve, she shouted to get Fenton's attention.
"Hey Fenton, got a minute?" Star called, hoping they were far enough away from school that nobody else really heard her.
All three of them turned in unison, seemingly equally shocked by the shout. Upon seeing whom it was that had gotten their attention, Manson glared, Foley winced and Fenton seemed to freeze for just a second before smiling and nodding at her.
"Go ahead, I'll meet you guys at Sam's." Fenton told his friends. They both seemed reluctant to leave him with her, but he prompted again. "Oh come on, I've been alone with worse. It'll be fine."
"Be careful Danny, don't turn your back to it." Manson muttered before she turned away. Foley glanced between her, Fenton and Manson.
"Later, dude." Foley said, turning to follow Manson away.
Star approached the now alone boy as his friends walked further away, looking him up and down to confirm her own suspicions. He looked completely fine, just as he had that morning. Impossibly fine for the condition she had seen him in throughout the day.
"Sorry about them, well, mostly Sam- she doesn't like you guys very much." Fenton apologized on her behalf, but Star only shrugged. Manson's attitude was the least of her worries and factored in none to her questions.
She was a bit caught off guard by the apology, but she tried not to let it show as she accepted it.
"It's okay, I don't know what I expected when I pulled you away." She replied. She paused, trying to gather her thoughts on where to go next. There were so many things she wanted to ask about- the hair clip, the spitball, the bruises and cuts, she couldn't decide.
Luckily, Fenton did for her.
"How's your hip?" He asked. She guessed she did a bad job at hiding the surprised expression she made, because he seemed to think she was angry. "I didn't mean to stare or anything, I just wanted to make sure you were okay after last night, that was a really strong blast and a hard fall. I noticed you weren't wearing your favorite jeans and you sat in right handed desks all day, even though your left handed so I just figured-" Fenton took a breath. "I'll let you do the talking now."
"There's a nasty bruise on my thigh, but I think it should go away in a couple days. It doesn't hurt as much as it did this morning." Star told him automatically, not sure what to say at the unexpected question. "My turn, how did this get in my locker?" She asked, holding out the star-shaped hair clip.
Fenton tried to look away as he rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly.
"I dropped my keys at the football field last night, didn't realize until I got all the way home. When I was there I found that, I- uh, I figured there was only one person it could belong too." Fenton explained nervously.
"But how did you get it into my locker?" Star pressed further.
She felt like she was watching a movie as the emotions and reactions flickered through Fenton's blue eyes.
"Sorry if I invaded your privacy, I didn't mean anything by it and I just thought it would be easier to give it to you that way so you didn't have to be seen talking to me during school. I know what talking to my friends and I can do to social status around here." He chuckled awkwardly, and Star almost didn't realize what he was doing.
"Stop not answering the question." She told him pointedly.
He didn't deny it and barely winced at the accusation. Instead, he just sighed and then there was something different about him.
"If you promise not to tell anyone, I'll tell you." Fenton told her. She nodded without hesitation. "If you try hard enough, you can get into anyone's locker. They've been replaced and fixed a million times in the past few years, the school started to make cheaper and cheaper repairs. If you're persistent enough, there's not a locker in the school you can't shimmy open. I don't like to do it, but it comes in handy to know."
Star nodded pretty much right away. It made enough sense to her, and she figured there had to be some way that Fenton had been escaping the inside of lockers Dash shoved him in.
"I was actually hoping you just thought you forgot it there in the first place, but I'm not surprised you knew. Sorry again I went into your locker." Fenton continued.
Star could only nod once more; almost dumbfounded by the revelation that Fenton hadn't even wanted her to know it was him who returned her clip. But she could think later, now was the time to ask questions.
"And another thing," She started quickly. She didn't want to tell him yet that she didn't care that he had broken into her locker in case he was only still here out of guilt. "About last night, how-"
"I told you, you should really forget about the whole thing." Fenton cut her off abruptly, sounding just like he had last night when he was talking to the ghost.
"You're the one who brought it up first earlier. Besides, I promised not to tell anyone, not to forget about it." Star replied back.
Fenton seemed catch the underlying meaning of her words. You talk, or I tell. After only a brief pause, he sighed and ran a hand through his messy black hair and looked at her expectantly. Clearly, he wasn't going to make this easy.
"What happened today? To your shirt and arms?" Star started with what she thought would be the hardest questions for him to lie about.
"Nothing happened, the faucet in the bathroom went crazy and soaked me. I changed my shirt, I keep spares everywhere because I'm so clumsy but I forgot that's the shirt I used when Tuck and I wanted to play a prank on my sister. Looked like bullet holes and blood, right?" Fenton replied with a chuckle at the memory.
"And last night? How did you do all that stuff? That ghost knew you and you kept talking back to it." Star continued.
She watched Fenton very carefully and he responded eerily easily, like he had practiced for these questions.
"My parents hunt ghosts for a living, Star. You really think they didn't make sure Jazz and I could take care of ourselves if we were attacked by a ghost?" Fenton replied.
"Why don't you do it more often then?" Star pressed and Fenton scoffed in reply.
"There are people out there for that already, they don't need me out there making things worse. My parents, the Red Huntress, Phantom- they can handle the ghosts fine without me. I can't do anything they aren't already doing." He said, crossing his arms. "Besides, I want nothing to do with ghost hunting."
Star supposed that made sense. Fenton was always one of the first off the scene of any ghost attack, but just because he was scared of ghosts didn't mean he couldn't face them once in a while. It didn't take long for Star to draw a connection.
"You only did that because I was there. You would've run away." She wasn't sure if she was asking or not.
"Well, yeah. Wouldn't you?" But that was not the answer she was expecting.
She wasn't exactly sure what he meant by that or what he was trying to get at, but her words died in her throat when she saw Fenton visibly shiver and gasp again. It was nowhere near cold enough for his breath to be visible, what was that about?
"Star, run." Fenton turned around and stepped sideways so he was in front of her.
Star hesitated for only a moment but grabbed Fenton's wrist and began pulling him in the direction of the school, ignoring his surprised yelp. He ran along with her, trying to keep his balance.
"What are you doing?!" He cried out in shock. Star vaguely registered him trying to slip from her grip, but it felt like more of an obligation than desire to be free.
She didn't answer and chose to run instead, sprinting the few yards back to Casper High and bursting through the front doors. Fenton yelped a few more times, but seemed resigned to be pulled along until a familiar voice startled them to a quick halt.
"Ms. Anderson, I hope you're not the reason Mr. Fenton is late to detention?" Mr. Falluca's voice came from the left.
They turned to be face-to-face with their math teacher, who had his hands on his hips. Star stammered, but Fenton stepped in front of her again and did the talking.
"Actually, I totally forgot I had detention today. Star was just trying to remind me before I left." Fenton lied effortlessly to Falluca.
Falluca seemed to buy it, but Fenton shivered again and she heard him whisper something under his breath.
"Uh- Mr. Falluca, I gotta-" Fenton started motioning with his hands but was cut off by the screams of the other detention attendees as the temperature dropped suddenly.
A group of kids poured from the room Falluca was standing in front of, all screaming about a ghost inside. Falluca took off too, following the students and Star turned to see what Fenton's reaction would be and was surprised to not see him at her side. She swiveled her head around just in time to see the door to the classroom slam shut and she couldn't help but run up to it and peer through the glass opening to see inside.
There, her thoughts were confirmed; Danny Fenton was once again staring down a ghost.
It was another new ghost, she realized quickly. This must be some kind of record with two new ghosts appearing two days in a row. This one also had green skin and red eyes, but looked more artsy than the one from last night. It had on a black artists smock over a dark green long sleeved shirt with rolled up sleeves and ugly brown slacks. A brown beret sat lopsided on its head, hiding large parts of its messy orange hair as if trying to compliment the orange '35' smeared across the smock in paint.
Star watched as Fenton ran forward and slid underneath the ghost, dodging what looked like a lot of very sharp paintbrushes. Instead of attacking, he ran to the back corner and bent down and only then did the blonde girl realize what happened; Brittney Hall had cowered under her desk instead of running to safety.
Fenton picked her up bridal style just as he had done to her the night before and jumped up onto a desk. The ghost turned and charged, trying to tackle the boy but Fenton leapt into the air and pushed off the ghosts back, sending it slamming into a bookshelf in the back of the room and the blue eyed boy ran straight for the door.
Star decided to be of some help and opened the door for him. Fenton recovered from his shock fairly quickly and tried to run through the door, but was struck in the side of the head with a flat shaped disc that vaguely resembled a paint palette. Fenton stumbled but remained standing and set Brittney on her feet, pushing her over to Star quickly as he caught something glowing in his hands and it exploded in his face, throwing him backwards.
Star reached out and grabbed Brittney's hand and pulled her through the door-frame just as another attack went where she had been standing. Fenton rolled forward, coming into her view as he threw what looked like the ghosts own glowing equipment back at it. He stood and glanced over to them, Star's eyes glued to his while Brittney's were squeezed shut as she clutched Star's hand.
"Go, now!" Fenton cried before turning to face the ghost again.
Star watched as he was hit in the chest with an ectoblast and flung backwards just before the door shut violently again. Star lunged to try and open it, but it wouldn't budge. She heard things breaking inside, both metal and wooden, and a whole lot of slamming around. The ghost and Fenton wrestled across the room, floating and on the ground.
Fenton ducked under a desk to avoid more paintbrushes and then kicked the desk out, knocking the ghost over briefly before it charged again and tackled Fenton out of her line of sight. There was a few more noises of clashing and slamming but then, everything came to a stop and not a peep could be heard from inside. Only then did the door gently open.
Brittney, who had just opened her eyes for the first time since Star saw her, was shaking when Star turned around to face her.
"Are you okay?" Star asked, unsure of what to do next.
"I think so." Brittney said, trying to smile. "Thank god for Danny Phantom, right?"
Told you the ending was perfect! I know, I'm evil. See you all next time!