"Can we talk about the day you were taken?"

Danny let out a long breath. His therapist had been kind enough to avoid this specific topic up until now. However, with his looming release date, his therapist seemed to conclude that enough was enough. There were certain topics—topics that Danny would much prefer to bury down in his memory and never mention again—that needed to be brought up if he were to 'stabilize' enough to reenter society in a week. "What about it?"

She adjusted her clipboard and tucked a loose blond curl behind her ears. "Let's start with what you were doing just before they showed up."

"I wasn't even doing anything. I...I was home," Danny said, fighting to keep the defensive tone out of his voice. "I was in my room. Playing...uh, playing video games with Sam and Tucker."

The therapist frowned and scanned her notes, "Your friends were there?"

"No," Danny said quickly. "We were voice chatting."

"Ah. So you were playing video games. What happened next?"

"I heard noise from downstairs. Yelling."

"Your parents?" she prompted.

Danny shrugged and looked down. The blue stress ball was back on his lap. He didn't really remember picking it up before sessions now. Whenever he sat down in the comfy green armchair it was always in his hands. "Yeah. The...the Guys in White must have knocked and I—and I didn't hear it. I don't...I don't know."

"Did you go downstairs to see what was going on?"

Danny snorted. "Well, I tried. I opened my door and—uh, only to have Jazz come running down the hallway. She...she looked like a madman." His expression fell, and he picked on a loose thread on his shirt sleeve. "She was...was yelling at me. Don't go downstairs. I should have listened. I don't...I can't…"

Jazz's normally immaculate hair splayed all over her face as she stormed down the hallway. A clump was caught in her lip, but she made no move to wipe it to the side. Her eyes were wide with panic, and her mouth was open but motionless. Her hands waved in front of her, a clear motion to STOP!

Danny's look confusion immediately turned into one of concern. "What's going on?"

Her voice returned to her. "Danny! Get out of here! Run! "They're here!"

"Who's here?"

Jazz reached where Danny stood and started attempting to push him back in his room. "Go away, don't come home until we call you!"

"Jazz, stop!" Danny snapped. To his surprise, Jazz took her hands off him. "Who's here?"

A frustrated tear slid down her cheek, "No, you don't understand, you can't go downstairs," she begged. "It's the Guys in White."

"Danny?" came a familiar voice.

Danny's head snapped up, his eyes meeting his therapists'. He was in her office. Sun beamed in through the large windows, lighting up the dull gray-brown carpet. "Sorry," he whispered.

"It's okay," she said. Her voice was comforting. "Are you alright to continue?"

"Y-yeah." He took a deep breath. "Yeah," he repeated, his voice stronger.

"Okay, but you need to let me know if you're not alright to continue at any point during this, okay? If we need to take a break at any point, we can."

Danny nodded. "Okay. I'm alright to continue."

The therapist gave him a reassuring smile. Picking up her pencil again, she pressed on, "So Jazz stopped you from going downstairs?"

"She...she tried," Danny said, his focus back on the stress ball. He rolled it around in his fingers. "It all happened so fast."

"I understand, Danny. It must have been extremely frightening for you."

"Yeah." Fog was beginning to appear in his vision again. "She was screaming at me...and I finally got it out of her who was there…"

"And?" the therapist asked. "Focus on me, Danny."

"Yeah." His gaze trailed back up to the therapist. "I phased right through her. She was trying to push me back into...uh, into my room. So I went through her. Wouldn't have made a difference either way. They...they had...they had the whole house surrounded. And she was crying. Begging me not to go downstairs but...my parents…"

"What about them?"

Danny placed a hand over his core. "I had to protect them."

"Don't do this!" Jazz screamed from behind him. "Goddamnit, Danny, please listen to me!"

"They're going to hurt Mom and Dad!" Danny exclaimed, releasing his intangibility and running towards the stairs.

His heartbeat thundered in his ear. Ectoplasmic energy surfaced to his skin, and his fists sparked in response. Despite being in his human form, his core throbbed. It needed to take over. People were in danger. He needed to go ghost.

He suppressed the urge and continued on, all but flying down the stairs and bolting out to the living room where to find his parents, red faced, screaming at four Guys in White agents on his doorstep.

"I was afraid." Danny rocked back and forth in his chair. "I thought that the...Guys in...the agents would hurt them to—to get to me. No, I know they would have hurt them—hurt them to get to me. They...they did."

"They hurt your parents, Danny?" the therapist asked, her tone serious.

Danny ran a hand through his hair, pausing at the end to grab a fistfull of hair. He bowed his hand, pulling at the strands in a vain attempt to lock himself in reality. "Yeah. They did. Not right away but my...you know, they tried—my parents did. So hard. To block the agents from me. I knew they would, I knew they would, you know? It's so...so like the Guys in White too. They don't care about anyone...no one...anything, even humans, that are in the way of their...their prize. Me. I had to go downstairs, you get it?"

She nodded sympathetically. "Of course, Danny. So you went downstairs to protect them."

"Yeah...I can't explain it. The feeling that I get—that any ghost gets—when their...their...obsession—the thing that drives them—is called upon. I know that you...you're aware. I mean, you're my therapist. You have to be. But it's just...it's…"

"It's overwhelming, isn't it?" the therapist offered.

Danny nodded. "And during the accident, I don't remember it, but I wasn't—ah, I mean, my 'death,' for lack of a better term, wasn't normal. I didn't die, but I...I mean...I turned into a ghost. If that makes any—um, any sense. And I had...didn't have a purpose for a—uh, solid month. My ectoplasm wasn't stable enough. It kept re—rejecting my body. I know we've already talked about...about the accident and stuff so you know that all already. But still."

"It's important to you," the therapist said. "It's okay to talk about these things, Danny. They're important. They're all little pieces of the puzzle that makes you you."

"Mm," Danny hummed in response. "Right. And, you know, I—I did eventually get that drive. My ectoplasm started...started stabilizing. And now the ghost part of me has this thing. To protect. To help people in dis...distress. So when I heard my parents yelling and Jazz was crying and it all…it just got so...overwhelming. I needed to go downstairs. To help them. Protect them from the government." Danny's head fell into his hands. "It sounds so stupid saying it now. As if—as if I could actually do anything about the government who...who came to get me in the first place. It...none of it even mattered."

"Maybe it feels that way now, but I think the fact that you tried to help your family members in distress just goes to show what a kind person you are, Danny."

"I guess," he agreed, though he was unconvinced. Kind or just incredibly impulsive and dumb. He was still torn between the two.

The therapist tilted her head. Her blond hair was parted to the side, with the more voluminous side pinned back with a butterfly clip. A large curl fell onto her shoulder, providing a splash of light against her gray sweater. "So you were downstairs. What did you see?"

Danny lifted his head up, his hands automatically going back down to his lap to grip the stress ball. He ran his thumb along the rubber. "Mom and Dad were at the door. Their backs were—were to me. It looked like they were trying to...to, um, block the entrance? I think. They were yelling. They were trying to get the agents to leave. Arguing about laws. But the laws only protect humans. They didn't stand a chance."

His vision faltered, and suddenly he was in his living room. He looked ahead and saw a group of six adults standing by his doorway. His parents were outnumbered, he realized. He needed to help them.

"Mom? Dad? What's going on?" Danny said, cautiously approaching the group.

The argument immediately halted as six pairs of eyes swiveled around to meet his. He met the gazes of his parents, and his heart plummeted to his stomach. He knew. Oh god, he knew.

"Danny, please go back upstairs," said his father in an oddly strained tone that didn't fit his personality. His face was chalk white. "The adults will sort this out, okay? Go with your sister."

He glanced at his Mom. She was always the strong parent. The woman that always made sure they woke up on time for school in the morning, no matter if she had the flu or had pulled an all-nighter with Dad to work on a project. The parent that, when he broke his arm in first grade and had to take the scary trip to the ER, kissed his forehead and told him that everything was going to be okay. And the mother that had promised Danny she would start teaching him to drive soon and helped him shop for bowties to match Sam's dress for the homecoming dance and, after the initial fighting and tears had passed after he was outed on national television as Phantom, had hugged him and told him that she loved him and how proud of him she was and how blessed she was to have such amazing children.

But he looked at her. Her eyes were red, her skin was blotchy with tears or fury or both, Danny couldn't tell. The desperate expression, the silent plea to please go was enough to shatter any semblance of false bravado he had left in him.

"Danny Fenton Phantom," one of the agents spoke, ignoring his Dad, "By order of the United States government in accordance with the of the Anti Ecto Control Act, you're now considered property of the United States. You can either come freely or—"

"No he is not!" his Mom snapped, gathering her bearings. "He is a child. A human child!"

The head-agent's expression hardened. "It has been contaminated with Ectoplasm. Its DNA can no longer be considered human. Now you will allow us to take the ghost or we will be forced to arrest you both as well."

"They called me an it," Danny whispered, returning to reality.

"What did you feel? When they said that?"

"Like...like an It."

He blinked, and a tear trickle down his cheek. He didn't even know when his eyes welled up. Slowly, as time went on in the facility, he found himself allowing a few tears to escape during therapy sessions. His therapist told him it was healthy, that he was healing.

He was unsure.

"Yeah?" the therapist pressed.

"Yeah. I mean, I knew what was going to—to happen. Like, I always knew it was a possibility. I'd almost been taken by—by them so many times before, and then I went and...I went and got myself revealed on the news. So now they knew where...oh my god, they knew I lived. They knew...I knew it was only a matter of time—" His voice broke. He attempted to wipe the dampness from his eyes before continuing, "I guess I just wanted...hoped they would turn a blind eye now that they knew I was an actual...an actual kid. But...when they said that...I just knew it was no different. I was still an It. But now I was an It with a home address."

"I know you've heard this so many times from me Danny," the therapist said. "But you didn't deserve what happened to you. You're not an It, and you did not deserve to be treated like one."

"I...I know." Danny sniffed. "I just...I don't know…"

"What don't you know, Danny?" the therapist inquired.

"I know they were wrong. I really—I really do," Danny said. He had been saying ghosts had emotions since his inception as one. "I was just...I was so alone. And scared."

"It's terrifying when your country turns against you like that," the therapist supplied.

"Yeah," Danny said. "I was alone. All because I'm a fucking halfa."

He turned away, staring at the white wall. His vision dissolved, and he was back in Fenton Works. Only, the scene was different. Broken picture frames littered the ground. Next to them, a broken urn. His dead grandmother who he'd never met spread across the floor. The whir of an ecto-gun caught his attention, and he turned to see the head agent holding a gun pointed directly at his skull.

"Come with us, ghost," the agent said.

His mother was sobbing. Three other agents had physically restrained her and pinned her to the floor. Her face was bruised and she had a gash along her forehead. His father was pale and sweating, his hands cuffed behind his back. Several men gripped his arms, holding him back. A gun—a human gun—was pressed up against his temple.

More agents had poured into the home as soon as the head agent pressed a button on his earpiece. A distress signal, Danny vaguely recognized the motion. His head felt like it was filled with dense smoke, although he was fairly certain the agents hadn't filled the room with any toxic substance. And yet, he watched the scene unfold in front of him as if it were a dream. The agents stormed into his house, his parents were defenseless, and he couldn't do anything.

Oh god, please wake up.

"Ghost," the agent snapped. "I will not ask again. Come over here or we will be forced to shoot."

His legs shook. Out the window, helicopters flew above their house outside of a massive green dome which Danny had no doubt was configured to his specific DNA. He glanced over to his mother's hysterical form. Mom. Always so confident. Reduced to the floor with multiple GiW agents pinning her arms to her sides.

"Danny," his father whispered. "I love you."

His legs gave out. Almost immediately, he felt something snap around his neck. His fogged brain only had a moment to panic before his entire body surged with electricity.

In the distance, he heard Jazz scream.

It didn't matter. Rough hands quickly cuffed him before they gripped his elbows and dragged him through the front door of his home. The fresh air hit his face, and he lifted his head to see his front door getting further and further away from him.

Home. The place he'd always felt safe.

Torn away. Because he wasn't human.

The agent dragged him down the concrete path to his house. Out of impulse, he jerked to the side. The agent dropped him, startled, and Danny's head connected to the ground in full. Light exploded before his eyes, and his clouded dissociation was replaced with a flood of pain.

"Danny!" his father's hoarse voice broke through his thoughts. A gunshot fired, and Danny's core once again surged with adrenalin. He yanked, willing his core to override the GiW tech. It had worked once before, hadn't it? If he could do it then, he could do it now…

Electricity flooded his senses, lighting his bones aflame.

"Ah-ah-ah!" the deep voice of the main agent came into his ears. Danny was picked up and thrown into the back of a gray metal truck. Through his hazy vision he could just make out the smirking form of the main agent.

The GiW agent put a hand on the metal door. "I wouldn't be using that nasty ghost side if I were you. Ectoplasm is a disease, ghost. And we fully intend to eradicate the Earth of this disease, starting with you. I hope you enjoyed your time pretending to be human, because this is the last time you'll ever see the outside world. Welcome to hell, dog."

"The trauma we experience in our lives has a deep impact on the way we view ourselves," the therapist addressed the group. She was a thin woman, whose relatively average female height was overshadowed by the towering male teens around her. Her curly black ringlets were pulled into a tight ponytail on top of her head, which further accented her sharp facial structure.

Of the therapists Danny had encountered during his inpatient stay, she was one of his favorites. She got him in a way most other therapists in the facility didn't. Not that the other therapists were bad—of course, they were all great in their own right—but there was something different about her that Danny was immediately drawn to.

She pushed up the sleeves of her purple sweater and continued, "Sometimes people talk about feeling detached from others, feeling like they purposefully separate themselves from the people around them. Isolate themselves."

Danny crossed his arms, slouching down in his chair. His eyes burned holes through the floor. She was always so so accurate.

"This can impact how we view ourselves. And the longer we isolate ourselves from the people who love us, the worse our self-image becomes."

If it weren't for the chip in his neck that disabled his ghostly powers, Danny might have turned invisible right then.

"Let's go around and talk about times where we isolated ourselves from the people we were close to, and how that affected our self-image. I'll go first." She glanced around the room to make sure everyone was focused before saying, "When I was a teenager I started isolating myself from my friends because I thought they didn't care about me. It affected the way I thought about myself—my self image—a lot. At the time I viewed myself as unworthy of my friendships."

Danny slumped down in his chair. Even when recounting a painful time in her life, she sounded self-assured. Grounded. Everything Danny wanted to be and more. Everything Danny knew he could never be.

Not after what happened to him.

"Charlie, would you like to go next?"

Danny heard rustling and looked up. A tall, redhead boy had adjusted his position and took a deep breath. He couldn't be older than sixteen. Danny recognized him as someone who had been a patient for longer than normal, like he was.

The boy started, "I guess I isolated myself from my mom. When the guys at school all figured out I was gay and then everything blew up with my dad—it was just hard, you know? And my mom—I just didn't wanna tell her why I wasn't hanging out with my friends or going over to my dad's place anymore. I just didn't...wanna deal with that. I was...afraid of making her sad. I just preferred to be sad by myself, you know? But at the same time, I knew I was making her sad by not talking to her anymore. But I just didn't know what else to do."

"And how did that make you feel about yourself?" the therapist asked.

The boy frowned. "I just thought I was horrible I guess. I couldn't stand myself. I mean, that's how I ended up here."

The therapist nodded empathetically, "That's really difficult. Thank you for sharing. Miguel, would you like to go next?"

"Uhh," the hispanic boy froze, his eyes darting to his lap. He was a new face in the circle, having only just arrived yesterday. He crossed his arms, his leg bouncing in distress. "I, uh…" he shook his head. "No."

"That's alright," The therapist said, her kind smile never wavering. She turned to the next boy.

Danny couldn't help but stare at the hispanic boy. He was...shit, that was me.

Three weeks. That's how long he's been in the inpatient facility. It was also the amount of time he was held in the GiW facility. Three weeks.

His memories of the first few days in the adolescent hospital were incomplete. They existed in fragments, small moments of a puzzle with too many pieces missing. A hand, giving him white pills. The scraping of a chair being pulled away from the table. The small bout of panic that gripped him when he woke up the first day in a strange bed. A gentle smile, prodding him to talk with a 'it's okay to feel, Danny.'

In the same length of time it took for the GiW to break him, he was...still broken. Hospitalized. Under twenty-four hour surveillance. But now he could remember more. He knew what he ate for breakfast that morning, and he remembered picking out a red shirt to wear that day. And unlike when he was first admitted, now he could participate during group therapy sessions. Even if he wouldn't speak unless asked, having the ability to talk in front of the other patients wasn't something he could do three weeks ago. It made his stomach tie in knots, but he could do it now.

"...My sister was worried the most, I think," a nasally voice faded into Danny's musing. "It got to the point where she would text my friends about me. Ask them if I'd hung out with them recently or whatnot. Oh god, I was so pissed when I found out she was doing that. I—this is going to sound horrible—but I smashed her phone into the wall. Screen shattered, she was screaming. And I just stormed out of the house."

Jazz did a similar thing when Danny got back from the GiW. She was constantly texting Sam and Tucker, asking them to come over because Danny wouldn't talk to Jazz. Only, as they soon found out, Danny wasn't talking to anyone.

"Danny," Sam said in a clear attempt to get his attention. They were sitting on his bed. Danny didn't remember letting them in his room. He wasn't sure how long they've been here. He hoped they didn't come over to play Doomed. Danny wasn't really in the mood to play Doomed right now.

"Sorry," Danny said, unsure as to what he was apologizing for. He must have spaced out again. He didn't remember letting them in though.

Sam and Tucker's eyes met for a brief moment. A silent conversation passed between the duo, one that Danny couldn't decode.

Strange. He usually had no problem understanding their unspoken expressions.

"You're fine, dude," Tucker responded a beat later.

Danny's dazed expression lingered on them a moment longer, before he blinked and responded with a delayed, "Oh. Okay." His gaze drifted back to his wall, and he studied the chipped paint. The years of explosions and failed technological experiments, courtesy of his parents, did little to maintain the spotless condition of their house when they first moved in all those years ago. Small cracks appeared at random on his otherwise plain wall. He reached a hand up and began to trace the imperfections.

Sam cleared her throat. "So Jazz let us in."

A flicker of annoyance interrupted Danny's daydreaming. He was annoyed, right? He...he couldn't remember why. He realized his hand had slid off the large crack in the paint he was tracing. That was no good. He would have to start over again.

"Jazz is really worried, Danny," Sam said, her voice tense.

Danny snorted. As if he wasn't already aware. She only came up to check on him—as she called it—twenty times a day. "I'm fine."

"No, Danny," Sam said. "I know you just got back and you're still...adjusting...to being home but…"

"We're worried," Tucker cut in.

"We all are," Sam whispered, her tone wavering.

Danny froze. Sam was the strong one of the three of them. Something was wrong. Why was she talking like that? This wasn't right. She was talking about him, wasn't she? Danny hoped she wasn't stressed about him. He was dealing.

"We've been trying let you tell us what happened at your own pace," Sam said. "We don't want to push you, and we're still not trying to push you. Really, you know we care about you so much. We're always gonna be here for you."

"But dude, you godda clue us in."

"I…" Danny said, his hand drifted up to his hair. "Nothing...nothing happened."

A beat of silence.

"What do you mean?" Sam pressed, the previous soft edge in her voice gone.

Danny tilted his head, his eyes meeting Sam's. "Nothing happened."

"At the...the facility?" Tucker's voice cracked in alarm.

"Yeah." Danny bobbed his head. "Yeah. At the facility."

"I hope you don't expect us to believe that bullshit," Sam said.

"Nothing happened," Danny reiterated.

"Danny please," Sam pleaded. "You're not even going to try?"

"I'm fine."

Sam looked betrayed. "Danny! We're your best friends! You're just going to block us out?"

"Sam, calm down," Tucker hissed, his hand lightly touching her arm.

Sam snatched her arm away, anger decorating her features. "No, I can't let this go, Tuck. Danny comes home after nearly dying, doesn't leave his room in days, and is just going to expect us to believe that nothing happened? That's bullshit, Tuck! That's complete and utter—"

"Danny?" the kind voice of the therapist pierced through his memories.

Danny blinked. Right. He was in group therapy with the thirteen other teens in his unit. They were discussing moments of isolation. Times they had pushed other people away, as if his entire half-life as Danny Phantom wasn't one big moment of isolation.

"Danny, would you like to share a time where you isolated yourself from a loved one?"

His mouth dried instantly, and he felt heat rise to his cheeks. When Danny first gained the ability to talk during group therapy he assumed that, as time progressed, talking about Phantom stuff during group therapy would get easier. But now he knew better. It never got easier.

"Danny?" the therapist prodded softly, "Do you think you isolated yourself from your loved ones before coming to the hospital?"

"Yeah," he forced out. He licked his cracked lips. "I did."

"How?"

"I…" Danny pulled at his brain for words. He tried to ignore the way his hands had started shaking. All the other teens here had such believable, normal issues that fit right in during group therapy sessions. Even though each life story was unique, all of the patients shared a certain level of humanity in their experiences. A humanity that Danny and all his experiences didn't share. It made talking during group therapy sessions that much harder.

Because no matter how hard he tried, he wasn't...human. No one could ignore that.

He let out a shuddering breath, wincing at the random shooting pain in his ribcage. Nerve damage, he'd been told by his doctor. From...no, don't think about it.

"I got home and I didn't...I never talked about it to anyone. I'd stay upstairs all the time in...in bed. You know when I first came home, my mom hugged me. I was...Oh yeah, I was in the hospital. Not here, the other one. The main one. And, yeah...and she—uh, hugged me. And you know what happened?" He looked up at the other teens in the room. They all stared intently at him, grasping at each word like they'd never hear Danny Phantom speak again.

A flicker of anxiety at being the lone voice in the room gripped him, but he shoved it aside. He needed to power on. His therapist told him the more effort he gave at getting better, the sooner he could be released.

"Nothing happened," Danny said, his own self-loathing taking over his voice. "I felt nothing at her. She was my mother and I felt nothing. What kind of monster gets a—a hug from their mom who they weren't sure if I...they'd ever see again and just feels nothing? I mean, I—I know she did nothing wrong. But I just. I don't know. I don't know what's...what's wrong with me. She's my mom." Danny's voice cracked. He shielded his face from view.

Coming home had been infinitely harder than he'd been expecting. His core was screaming at him to protect. Protect his family from feeling the pain of his experiences, protecting his friends from his broken mind, protect himself from his own flashbacks. The GiW had destroyed everything. His friends and family couldn't look at him the same way anymore. His brain hardly managed to pull itself together long enough to get a single sentence out. His body had been torn up leaving him with excessive scarring and permanent nerve damage. And his core. They'd...they'd touched his core.

"Being separated from your family is extremely taxing, Danny," the therapist said. "It makes it very stressful and confusing when you come back. Your brain doesn't understand how to react."

They touched...

"And you're not a monster," a new voice added in. "You're recovering."

...his core.

"Danny?" The therapist asked.

His core. They took a piece of it away. They used a needle and took it away. It was his and they took it.

His chest spasmed. He winced and gripped his shirt with a hand, hardly feeling the pressing of his fist against his chest. How could something be so numb on the outside but hurt so much on the inside?

"Danny?" The therapist repeated.

How could they have done this? They touched his core. They violated him. It was his and they...they...

"Yeah?" Danny said, his dazed eyes shifting up to his therapist.

She frowned. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah." He blinked. At her unconvinced glance he quickly added, "Sorry, it's—uh, my chest."

"Do you need me to get a nurse?" she asked, her expression tight with worry.

"It's fine now. It passed."

"Okay," she said, hesitating. "Alright. Justin, would you like to go next?"

Thank you so much to fellow writer and linguist imekitty for helping me through this chapter! A lot of my ideas were hard to translate down onto the paper and she was an awesome soundboard for me to talk to, as well as helping to edit the chapter to help with flow and dialogue and stuff.

She also convinced me to continue past the two chapters that I'd planned to do. I'm not sure how long this fic will be, but you can expect more!

I had to do a TON of research for this chapter and I talked to hella people in the phandom who have had experiences in inpatient facilities either by working there, attending them, or having family/friends involved in them in any way. I want to thank everyone who allowed me to ask them questions and provided me with the most accurate vision for what it's really like on the inside. I learned a ton and I hope I maintained as accurate of a chapter as I could!