Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Mr. Darner had never liked ghosts.

Amity Park had long been known for its ghost sightings, but up until a year or so ago they had been few and far between, and Mr. Darner had liked it that way.

Children rarely came to his side of town, too afraid of the ghosts rumored to wander around the graveyard just down the street, and although Mr. Darner didn’t like the ghosts either, they at least stayed in the graveyard and the children stayed away from him. He had a nice quiet corner of the town to himself, and he liked it that way.

Then the Fentons activated a stupid portal and suddenly Amity’s ghost sightings had nearly tripled practically overnight. Rumors flew everywhere, and soon enough nobody could go more than a few days without seeing one of the spirits.

Mr. Darner hated it. All these ghosts flying around, wreaking havoc, making noise all night, capturing peoples’ interest faster than that antique store down the way they built three years ago. So much noise and for what?

Mr. Darner praised the swift actions of the GIW against these pests. They studied the ghosts’ feral nature and classified them as an invasive species. That is to say, shot on sight. For a brief period of time, the ghosts ran away scared. But Mr. Darner was still not happy, because even though the ghosts were gone, these new GIW people were shooting everyone and everything ghost related, making even more noise. All Mr. Darner wanted was some peace and quiet.

Then Phantom showed up, and Mr. Darner wasn’t the only one who hated him. The rest of the town was dubious and wary of the self-proclaimed protector of Amity Park. But he had to admit that Phantom driving away the ghosts and the ghost hunters did make Mr. Darner’s corner of the town a little more bearable.

Then the strange Fenton couple that started it all volunteered at the local hospital, and suddenly there was a new sect of ghost protectors.  They said that the ghosts weren’t invasive, they were actually endangered.  Mr. Darner was dubious of them as well, wondering what they could possibly do to make this town a little more liveable that Phantom or the GIW hadn’t already done.

Turns out, they could do a lot. Abandoned places were preserved for the ghosts, and instead of exterminating them, the hospital gave them a new place to stay, protected from the harsh world of ghost hunters and humans. Sure enough, Mr. Darner’s corner got quieter, and he reluctantly started to admit that maybe getting rid of the ghosts wasn’t the best way to deal with them.

And then one day he went walking around the block, feeling relatively safe for the first time in over a year, now that most of Amity’s ghosts had settled in the abandoned places dotted around town and Phantom dealt with the rest. He walked by the graveyard and saw the usual ghosts milling around, still there even after years of hectic new changes.

And Mr. Darner walked past it like he always did, but this time something started following him. A little girl, no older than ten, her long white gown stained dark with mud and dried blood, her smile innocent but her teeth too sharp. She attached herself to him, and no matter what he did to shoo her away she kept following him.

He contemplated calling the GIW to come and remove her, but she was always quiet and far too careful with his things to break anything, so he let her stay. She wisped around his house, watching TV with an unblinking green stare from over his shoulder. She refused all the food he tried to give her with a polite shake of her head, preferring ectoplasm and ghost pests to munch on instead. It was certainly a strange diet, and the sickening crunch of a ghostly rat being crushed by her jaws made him wary of just what she might do if she ever went hungry for too long. But, somehow, they co-existed.

Mr. Darner hated to admit it, but the girl grew on him. He had never been married or had kids, his girlfriend of almost five years had died of cancer long ago and he had never found anyone since, choosing the reclusive life of an old, cranky man instead. But the ghost who worked her way into his home was almost like the child he never had. It was only when he caught himself teaching her how to spell words with the magnetic letters on the fridge that he bought just for her a week ago that he realized he didn’t actually hate ghosts at all. At least, not this ghost.

He visited the hospital, asked about the little ghost info pamphlets they liked to hand out to just about anyone they could get their hands on. He read it, asked questions about what ghosts were actually like, and adjusted himself accordingly.

He left spaces of his house empty and dusty for her. Any bugs that might have accumulated from that were quickly snatched up and eaten, so he didn’t mind. She seemed to enjoy it anyway. She liked to play with the lights sometimes too, so he kept a box full of spare bulbs just in case one broke, but she was exceptionally careful and his electricity never gave out from her playing. He appreciated it.

And he took her walking to the graveyard with him sometimes too, until one day she led him to a lonely, moss-covered headstone so far back that he had never seen it before. On it, he learned her name. 

Violet Henderson

1961-1970

May She Rest In Peace

It was sad, she was born not long before himself. Beside her on either side rested both of her parents, Mary-Anne Henderson and John Henderson.

Violet was deathly still, staring at the headstones before her with an intensity to her gaze that might have unsettled him months ago but didn’t then. He walked forward and, with fingers shaky from old age, he wiped away the moss adorning their stones. Even if they didn’t have any living relatives here anymore, they still deserved to have their graves taken care of.

She seemed to settle at the motions, and she was oddly distant and listless on the way back home.

The next time they went, he brought some supplies with him. Some water and rags, an old toothbrush, the first stone polish he could find at the store. And he spent nearly two hours doing his best to clean up their stones to the best of his abilities. By the time he was done, he could read their names much clearer, and Violet gave him a bright smile with her too-sharp teeth. She had recently caught another rat, and ectoplasmic blood was still dripping down her chin. It made her look scary, but Mr. Darner didn’t mind. That was just how Violet was. She was a ghost after all, and he was loathe to try and change anything about her. After everything she’d been through, she deserved to live her afterlife the way she wanted to live it.

Every visit after that, he brought flowers. Mr. Darner used to hate flowers, always getting pollen everywhere, and far too bright and colorful for his eyes. But Violet had somehow managed to convince him that daisies were alright, and he made a point to bring daisies to her and her parents’ graves ever since.

Life moved on. Mr. Darner stayed on his little corner, with a new addition to his house that his neighbors talked about in hushed tones and terrified glances. Mr. Darner found his peace and quiet again, and realized that ghosts weren’t nearly as bad as everyone made them out to be. Violet was content with chasing the little ghost pests away for him, and munching on their tiny bodies when she got the chance. She made a home for herself in the attic, and liked to grow daisies in the yard.

They went to visit the graveyard every week, and Violet’s headstone sparkled in the sunlight. Wild daisies grew in the grass, and she flashed him her too-sharp smile.

Amity Park was always known for its ghosts, but rarely did anyone ever put the effort into knowing them. Mr. Darner figured that if more people met ghosts like Violet, maybe they wouldn’t be so quick to judge.

Life, and afterlife, moved on. 

Chapter Text

The echoing chittering sounds of a terrified and injured ghost floats through the forests surrounding Amity Park. The sparse trees and open spaces allow the sound to travel freely, although most of the human residents of Amity wouldn’t be able to tell there was a noise at all. But to a ghost, the sound is like a blaring alarm, ringing out for miles.

Phantom, the protector of Amity Park, raises his head from the depths of sleep, looking out over the town from his perch.

The bell tower on the roof of the school had been boarded up many years ago when they invented a way to ring the bell automatically, and soon enough even that was abandoned once phones allowed students to wake up on their own. Now the small tower sits abandoned, home to nothing but a ghost. It’s a small space, but it’s sheltered from all but the most windy storms and Phantom has made his home here as comfortable as possible. From here, he can see almost the entire town and keep a close eye on the school, which tends to be a frequent target for rowdy ghosts who think they can enter Phantom’s haunt and come out unscathed.

Today has been peaceful, and Phantom had taken the opportunity to rest, a gift rarely given, but now his dozing has been interrupted by the sounds of a ghost in deep trouble.

This is Phantom’s haunt, and he won’t allow any ghosts to be harmed here if he can help it.

Claws reach out to grip the brick edge of the tower and, with a quick shake of his tail to toss the blanket resting on him aside, he launches himself into the open air. Invisibility washes over him, and Phantom’s intensely green eyes with white pinprick pupils in the center lock onto the direction the noise is coming from. A light growl escapes him as he reaches the edge of town and makes a sharp dive down into the forest, phasing through trees and bushes as if they never existed at all.

The closer he gets to the source, the more voices he hears in response. Comforting echoes of other nearby ghosts who can’t do anything to help but can at least let the injured one know they aren’t alone. Phantom doesn’t give his own echoing call yet, still unsure of the situation and cautious of hunters. He’s made that mistake before, and he’s learned to be cautious since then.

Once the frosty breath of his ghost sense escapes his lips, he finally arrives at the source, a denser part of the forest with a sturdy-looking pine tree holding up a ghost net dangling off the ground. It glows an ominous light green, a diluted form of ectoplasm mixed into the rope. He can feel the malicious energy coming off of it despite still being intangible and far away.

The ghost inside is one he doesn’t recognize, and he’s young. A teenager with jet black hair and piercings everywhere, a torn up leather jacket over his shoulders. His left leg is twisted at an odd angle and Phantom knows that wasn’t from the trap. His jacket has tire tracks on the back, and Phantom can guess that this kid’s death may not have been an accident.

But that’s not important right now. Phantom zeroes in on the net keeping the ghost trapped. There’s something mechanical cinching the net shut and an equally green rope latching it to the tree above, but before Phantom lets himself move forward, his first priority is checking if this is just an automated trap or if there are hunters nearby.

The teen’s ghostly wail for help pierces into his skull and begs him to act even as he forces himself to focus on the surrounding forest instead. He carefully and silently drifts through the brush, looking for the telltale signs. Snapped branches, boot tracks, ectoplasmic residue from an ectogun, something indicating human life. A brief search reveals nothing, and although Phantom knows he should be looking more thoroughly, this kid needs help. He can’t ignore his Obsession any longer, and soon enough he’s drifting back over to the net.

The teen stills as he is finally able to sense Phantom’s presence, and even as Phantom keeps a tight hold on his invisibility, the teen’s eyes lock onto him. As Phantom reaches out for the mechanism and starts inspecting it, he periodically glances up at the surrounding forest just in case something wants to jump out at him.

“Any hunters nearby?” he whispers lowly.

The teen shakes his head, although he also starts scanning the forest in between glancing up at Phantom anyway.

The mechanism is simple but protected. A simple ectoplasmic lock prevents ghosts from phasing through it, so Phantom has to unlock it the old-fashioned way. He holds his hand above the device and lets frost surround it. The electrical wiring inside is frozen solid, until the whole thing becomes just one big ice cube. Then, with a pull of ghostly strength, he slams his fist into it and the whole thing shatters.

The teen tumbles out of the broken net with a yelp, but soon enough his legs melt into a tail and he starts floating again. It doesn’t look like he was injured, so Phantom nudges him away from the site.

“Try to avoid this part of the forest if you can. There’s probably more traps besides this one.”

The teen nods and floats away, sending a staticky Ghostpeak reply of ‘Thank you’ before disappearing.

And that’s the moment when everything goes wrong.

Despite still being invisible, he had let go of his intangibility. He had figured that if hunters were still around then they would have already attacked. He realizes just how wrong he is when something slams into his back and throws him to the ground. With a hiss of discomfort, his instinctual reach for intangibility fizzles out and leaves him solid instead. He pushes against the net weighing him down, his claws unable to cut through the restricting rope and his fangs not doing much better. Two hunters stalk out of the brush, smug grins on their faces and weapons in their hands.

One steps a bit too close and Phantom becomes visible as he lunges for their legs with a snarl.

“Woah!” the hunter says and he leaps back. The other one circles around to Phantom’s other side and neither one of them are intimidated by his fierce growling or the tense lines of his body waiting for a fight.

“Can’t believe we actually caught this little pest for once. It’s smaller than I thought it was,” the second hunter says snidely.

Phantom snarls, reaching his arm through the squares of the net to try and rake his claws along the Hunter’s leg. He’s too far away though, and all he does is swipe at empty air. He bares his teeth as the hunter points his ectogun at Phantom’s arm and the ghost quickly pulls his limb back towards him before he can take the shot.

Normally in this situation Phantom would just phase through the ground below him and escape, but they must have updated their tech without his knowledge, because something is preventing him from going intangible at all. Invisibility is still at his disposal, but that won’t do him much good when they both know they’ve already caught him.

That doesn’t stop him from using his ice though.

A crystallized sheet of ice starts to spread around him, and the hunters’ breaths become suddenly foggy in front of their faces as the temperature drops dramatically. The net is covered in a thin sheet of frost, reaching for the power source—

Until the second hunter suddenly raises his gun and fires without warning. Fire immediately burns and burrows into Phantom’s left side, prompting a pained wail and, ironically, even more ice.

But the hunters have made a mistake now. Phantom knows more about the behaviors of ectoplasm than probably anyone else in Amity besides his own parents, and he knows that the ectogun is built to disintegrate ectoplasm, which of course is very painful for a ghost but also works on the nets, which are also made of ectoplasm.

Now that there’s a hole in the net and Phantom is small enough to slip through, he pushes past the blinding pain and shoots out into the open air. He turns invisible immediately, but that doesn’t stop them from firing a barrage of nets and blasts at his retreating back. He’s far too injured to fight either of them now, so all he can do is swerve and leave to try to heal himself. He will find them another time, when he has the element of surprise instead of them.

A net goes flying by and he falters in midair. Ectoplasmic blood leaks from his side, staying invisible for only a moment or two before it becomes a bright green trail below him. He needs to get far away so they can’t just follow him back to his nest, or at least stop the bleeding somehow.

But something about the weirdly light feeling and the dark spots starting to cloud his vision tells him that maybe he won’t get that far after all. He doesn’t dare to look at the wound on his side, fearing what he might see, and instead puts all his energy into getting as far away from the danger behind him as possible.

The closer he gets to the town, the lower in the air he drifts, until the grass manages to get startlingly close startlingly fast and oh, he’s crashing now.

The ground rushes up to meet him and he barely has enough sense to turn onto his uninjured side before he scrapes along it and comes to a grinding stop. It doesn’t help the white hot flash of pain that jolts his joints into locking up just to hold in a scream. It comes out as a weak and pain-filled warble instead. 

The hunters are far behind him, but there’s still a trail of green blood leading them right to him. He can’t stay here, needs to at least find a place up high where they can’t reach him while he recovers for an hour or two. He’s far too exposed on the ground.

Phantom splits his tail into legs and struggles to his feet, breathing heavily and trying his best not to alert any nearby ghosts—or humans—that he’s hurt. He doesn’t care about invisibility anymore, needs to conserve his energy for flight instead. But he barely has enough energy to float just a few inches off the ground now, too much ectoplasm leaving his body too fast to be useful.

He can see the edge of town through the trees now. He might be able to hide away in the abandoned playground. Most of the ghosts there know him well enough, so they might be inclined to protect him if hunters show up. He wouldn’t bet on it, but it’s the best plan he has right now.

But as soon as he’s about to move in that direction, a twig snapping nearby has him whirling around with a growl. He doesn’t have the energy to go invisible right now, but that doesn’t stop him from gathering a green glow at his fingertips, ready to blast the first face he sees. He hunches over in a vain attempt to hide or protect his injured side and bares his teeth at the threat.

But instead of hunters chasing him down to kill him, out of the woods comes—

Sam Manson.

Phantom freezes.

Oh no.

Chapter Text

“Come on Tucker, I’m sure it’s not that far. Get your skinny little legs working!” Sam teases towards her companion.

Tucker, walking by her side and projecting nothing but unwillingness and boredom, groans. “What are we even doing? If you really did hear a ghost in the forest then why not just let Phantom handle it? He always handles these kinds of things.”

Sam rolls her eyes and tightens her grip on the sleeve of Tucker’s jacket, pulling him along despite his protesting. “Because we literally volunteered to do exactly this, follow ghosts and help them. Are you saying you don’t want to volunteer anymore, or are you gonna quit being a baby and come on.”

“Well…” Tucker says like he’s really considering the first option, but Sam gives a particularly harsh tug to force him forward. “Okay, okay! I guess I’ll follow you into the creepy haunted woods and rescue a ghost who’s probably already being rescued if that’s what makes you happy.”

Sam narrows her eyes at him but nods her acceptance anyway. She doesn’t let go of his sleeve though. 

Tucker might groan and complain about it often, but Sam knows that he actually enjoys this kind of work. They’ve both been fascinated by ghosts since they first started popping up in Amity about a year ago. They’re just so different. Each one is unique, so many biological differences not just from humans but from each other as well, and there’s still so much they don’t know. 

Ever since the GIW started trying to exterminate them in droves, encouraging independent hunters to catch ghosts for monetary rewards, only for the ghosts to disappear inside those sterile white walls never to be seen again, Sam has been fighting for ghost rights. She was one of the first in Amity who started believing that the ghosts weren’t what the GIW said they were, and she fought tooth and nail for that belief. Tucker joined her reluctantly at first, but the ectoplasm-powered technology that came out of all this had fascinated him to no end. He hated the destructive nature of the ectoguns that the GIW lent out to ghost hunters, and he became so inspired by Phantom’s heroic nature that he took the weapons blueprints and began his own ecto-inventions used to help ghosts instead of hurt them. 

Together, and with the help of Jack and Maddie Fenton, they inspired enough of a driving force in the town to create a new sect of the local Amity Hospital dedicated to helping ghosts as well. They functioned sort of like a veterinary hospital, taking in stray and hurt ghosts and helping them back on their feet—or tails. They preserved a few abandoned places around town that ghosts liked to frequent and protected those spaces from hunters and the GIW alike, which annoyed them to no end. Legally, they couldn’t do anything. The ghosts in those places had been declared an endangered species, citing that they had always been in Amity and their populations needed to be preserved, so those places had been turned into wildlife sanctuaries, with ghosts as the wildlife inhabiting them.

In response, the GIW had tried to declare ghosts an invasive species instead, citing the Fenton portal bringing many more ghosts to Amity than usual and called for their extermination as nothing more than pests. The hospital staff and some notable townspeople have been fighting the GIW in court for nearly four months, never quite reaching a solid conclusion. Not enough is known about ghosts to classify them definitively in the first place, so the court is at a stand-still and the hospital has been doing everything it can to help the ghosts before the GIW can catch them. 

So that’s why Sam and Tucker are here, following the distant sound of a trapped ghost and generally doing everything they can to help out. The less ghosts that go missing because of the GIW’s willful ignorance, the better. 

They pass by the edge of town, where cement turns into gravel turns into dirt and then nothing but wild forest beyond that. The air is colder than usual, which might have been a sign that Phantom was nearby if it weren’t for the sudden drop in temperature that the news was warning people about yesterday. It’s getting closer to autumn, so it’s not too unexpected. 

Not even Tucker makes a comment about it, already knowing that Sam isn’t going to let him go anyway, even if Phantom is nearby. 

They don’t manage to get that far into the forest when the wailing suddenly stops, and Sam and Tucker stop with it. The forest goes eerily silent as the two of them look at each other worriedly. They’re both wondering the same thing. Did Phantom rescue the ghost, or did the ghost hunters make them disappear? 

It doesn’t take long before a new sound echoes through the forest, the sounds of ectoguns firing and people shouting, and now both of them are really worried. 

“Should we go help or…?” Tucker murmurs uncertainly.

Even Sam is hesitant to answer. The ectoguns might be especially dangerous to ghosts, but that doesn’t mean they’re harmless to humans, and she wouldn’t want to get them both into a situation that they can’t get out of. 

Luckily she’s saved from making a decision when the firing also suddenly stops, and then, not long after, a small, echoing noise much closer to them reaches their ears. 

Sam is moving forward before she can determine if it’s even a good idea or not. But if there’s a ghost somewhere around here that needs help then Sam wants to help them. Tucker whispers that this is such a bad idea but reluctantly follows her anyway. 

There’s the sound of movement the closer that Sam gets, until she accidentally steps on a twig and then a fierce growl makes her freeze. 

But if this were a wild animal, the sound wouldn’t have an echo to it, and after a moment of hesitation she pushes through the brush to reach her target. 

There, in a tiny clearing right in front of her, is none other than Phantom himself. 

Both of them freeze at the same time, startled by each other’s presence. With the ominous green glow on Phantom's hands and the bright fangs he flashes in warning, she can guess that he was expecting someone else to confront him here. As soon as he sees her, the glow fades and his furiously defensive expression is covered up by a startled and wary one. His piercing green eyes stay unblinking and locked onto her own as her gaze drifts down to the giant wound on his side. 

He’s hurt, and pretty badly if the way he hasn’t already turned invisible and flown away is any indication. 

Phantom has always been the most flighty of all the regular ghosts of Amity. Whenever a ghost is causing trouble or needs help, he appears in a flash of green and white and, once the problem is dealt with, disappears just as quickly. Nobody has ever been able to get anywhere near him, and not for a lack of trying. The GIW considers Phantom a top priority threat, even has a hefty bounty out for his head, and the hospital has been trying everything they can to contact him or at least get him to seek medical attention for all the wounds he collects after his fights. 

But to this day nobody has ever spoken with him directly, nobody has touched him, nobody knows where his den is or what he does when he isn’t fighting ghosts, and any ghost hunter who manages to catch him has something terrible happen to them that prevents them from speaking a word of the experience. The only reason anyone even knows his name at all is because that’s what some of the other ghosts refer to him as. Just like his namesake, he’s a phantom, and he’s just as mysterious as one. 

Sam has never seen Phantom up close like this before, and she’s willing to bet she never will again. 

The ghost boy is smaller than she expected. Although he always looks small compared to the giant hulking ghosts he tends to fight, she had thought he would at least be Sam’s height, but even hunched over like he is she can tell he’s even shorter. He seems so… vulnerable like this. 

Sam is quiet for too long, and soon enough their accidental staring contest is interrupted by Tucker coming out of the brush just next to her. He’s muttering something about Sam going off on her own and how it’s going to take forever to get all these twigs out of his clothes, and then he glances up and sees Phantom. He yelps and lurches back, startling both Sam and Phantom.

The ghost pulls back, floating just a bit off the ground as he stares at the two of them almost accusingly, like he’s expecting one of them to attack him. He hisses lowly, the sound unnaturally terrifying. But it must be the injury that prevents him from just outright bolting or turning invisible. 

“Oh my God, that’s Phantom,” Tucker says, like it isn't already obvious to Sam. 

Sam ignores him and instead holds her hands up placatingly and takes a cautious step forward, trying her best to project calm towards the tense ghost before them. 

Phantom doesn’t take kindly to the step though and backs further away, his expression darkening further as he hisses again, his lip starting to pull back to reveal sharp fangs beneath. 

But Sam is far more aware of the ectoplasm steadily dripping from his wound onto the grass, turning it a much more vibrant shade than it was before. If he’s not careful then he’s going to bleed out. 

“You’re hurt,” she says softly. “Could you please let us help?”

She hears a startled “Us?!” from Tucker behind her and ignores that too. 

Phantom stares at both of them for a long moment, not dropping his defensive posture but also not outright fleeing yet. 

Then one of his slightly pointed ears twitches and he’s whirling to the side with a vicious snarl that makes both Tucker and Sam jump. Now Phantom has his eyes locked onto the forest instead, towards some invisible enemy they can’t see or hear yet. 

That is, until they hear faint yelling and the unmistakable snapping sounds of people moving through a forest uncaring of the damage they leave to nature in their wake. Ghost hunters.

Phantom begins backing away, closer to the town behind him, but what looks like a flare up of pain cuts his growling short and he falters in midair, looking for a terrifying second like he’s about to pass out. 

“Tucker, you distract them. I’ll help Phantom,” Sam says hurriedly, watching as Phantom glances their way warily but seems more concerned with almost listlessly turning around and floating towards the town. 

“What?!” Tucker yells. “Sam please you can’t do this to me! Why can’t you distract them?”

“You know how to keep someone’s attention better than I can, and you’re squeamish around blood anyway.”

“ Sam!”

Before either of them can do anything though, the hunters get there far faster than expected, bursting into the clearing. For a terrifying moment, they raise their weapons and point them right at Sam and Tucker—

And then, lightning fast, both of them are being shoved down by freezing cold hands, pointed claws lightly digging into their backs, and then the whole forest lights up with noise.

An unearthly scream like nothing they’ve ever heard before hurts their ears and forces them to cover their heads with shaking hands. In front of them, the two ghost hunters go flying as if hit with the force of a charging rhino each. One of them slams against a tree, his wrist bending a bit too far and his weapon shattering on impact. The other goes rolling across the grass and disappears into some bushes. 

By the time the wailing stops, neither of them get back up.

Sam’s ears are ringing as she drops her hands and glances up at the ghost still perched on top of them. 

Phantom is staring at the place the hunters used to be dazedly, his eyes glossed over and distant. He’s breathing raggedly, and Sam is surprised that he’s breathing at all considering he’s a ghost. There’s a fine tremor running through his tightly coiled body, and she can feel it through the hand still pressed to her back. Ectoplasm still steadily drips from his side, now falling onto Tucker’s back instead. 

Sam has a brief moment where she dreads the time it’s going to take to get all of that out of Tucker’s clothes, but right now she has more important things to worry about. 

“Phantom?” she murmurs uncertainly. 

He jolts and glances down at her as if just now remembering that she exists. His eyes are so intensely green that she has trouble breathing for a second. Then he’s pulling himself up and away from them on unsteady feet. He’s not even floating anymore, and that’s extremely concerning.

Sam pushes herself up at the same time that Phantom’s expression blanks out and suddenly he’s falling. 

Sam shoves herself forward but isn’t fast enough to stop Phantom’s head from colliding with the ground. He doesn’t move to get up or even to deter her from coming closer, just lays there with heaving lungs and a distant expression. 

Now that she’s even closer and Phantom is still, his wound is on full display. Everything is green. The blood, the chunks of what look like organs, even the hint of a ghostly rib poking out. It looks so much worse than Sam thought it would be, like he’s had a whole chunk of himself carelessly ripped out. There’s no way just some simple stitches are going to fix this. There isn’t even enough skin to close the wound. Sam isn’t even sure she can stop the bleeding on an injury this big. 

Tucker picks himself up and glances over her shoulder—and then promptly throws up. Luckily he does it away from Sam and Phantom. 

“We need to get you to the hospital,” Sam says shakily, her hands uselessly hovering over Phantom’s shaking form. “They can probably fix this.”

“Can anyone fix that?” Tucker asks incredulously behind her. 

Phantom sucks in a shuddering gasp and Sam feels herself go light-headed when she sees some of his insides shift around his lungs. That’s disgusting.

“No… hospitals,” he pushes out. 

His voice is soft and wispy, with a lilting echo to the end. It might have been almost melodic if it weren’t for the way he struggles to force the words out. It’s the first time that Phantom has spoken to a human, the first time Sam’s even heard his voice in person. She’s simultaneously honored and horrified. 

“Are you kidding me?” Tucker says first but speaking for both of them. “Do you see yourself man? You look like you’re about to drop dead.”

Phantom’s lips twist into a tiny smirk and chuckles. “Already there.”

Sam blanks at the joke. Seriously? He’s making jokes now of all times, when he’s actually about to die (again)? At least Phantom is living up to his name as a witty punster.

“Well I guess since you can still make jokes then you’re aware enough to be moved, because we can’t stay here.”

Phantom grimaces and finally moves his eyes to look at her instead of at the ground. 

“The… abandoned playground… Just need… some ecto-dejecto…” he gasps out.

“Alright, he’s clearly delirious. He needs a real hospital, right Sam?”

But Sam hesitates. Phantom is staring at her again, this time without any hint of the hostility or wariness from before. His expression is open, hopeful even. 

If those ghost hunters had pulled the trigger, Sam and Tucker would probably be dead. Phantom saved them, like he does with everyone else in Amity Park, at his own expense and probably knowing that he wouldn’t have any energy left after to run away. 

He’s putting his trust in them, and Sam has a debt to repay. 

“We’ll go to the playground,” she says finally.

Tucker gapes at her, about to argue for the hospital again, but she gestures pointedly to Phantom and when Tucker sees the same expression Sam is seeing, he softens a bit. 

“Fine,” he huffs. “You can take him to the playground and I’ll get the ecto-dejecto from the hospital. Hopefully they won’t ask too many questions…”

With that, Tucker spares them both one last worried glance before he’s rushing out of the woods and quickly disappears from view. Now Sam is left alone with quite possibly the most powerful and mysterious ghost in Amity. 

She reaches for one of Phantom’s arms, hesitating before gripping the rubbery clothing over his freezing cold wrist. 

“This is going to hurt,” she warns.

Phantom grimaces, tenses up in helpless anticipation, and nods. 

Sam lifts the ghost up, Phantom screams, and then they’re off.

This is going to be a long day, she thinks ruefully.

—

Despite the playground being abandoned, it’s anything but empty when they arrive. 

Ghosts mill around everywhere, some of the younger ones excitedly playing on the slides or swings while most of the others seem to fade in and out of existence randomly. As soon as Sam gets close though, all eyes are on her. 

Their cat-like stares follow her as she drags a mostly limp Phantom alongside her. Some of them go invisible to avoid her, and others float far away like they’ll catch the plague if they get any closer. She can see the fear on some of their faces, the recognition on others. Some of them have met her before, at the hospital, but she can’t imagine that those were fond memories for many of them. 

Phantom weakly reaches for the bars of the broken merry-go-round that hasn’t spun in over a decade and Sam shuffles him over so he can sit on it as gently as she can. He lowers himself onto his side, breathing heavily as he curls into himself. As soon as Sam lets go and backs away a step, the ghosts around them move closer, more interested in Phantom than Sam now.

Echoing murmurs fill the space as the ghosts start to crowd around him, swaying back and forth as if moving in time with his strained breathing. It’s kind of creepy, but Sam isn’t about to tell them that.

The sun is starting to set, and the darkening sky is making the ghosts around her glow brighter. Most of them glow the distinct shade of green everyone in Amity associates with them, but Phantom’s hair glows an unearthly white at the same time the black of his suit seems to suck up all the color around it. His eyes are a blindingly toxic green, but overall he’s somehow simultaneously muted and more noticeable than the rest of the ghosts around him. 

A woman with one of her legs caught in a bear trap floats over to Sam, who backs away instinctively but stops when she smiles politely at her. 

“What do you feel?” she asks cryptically. 

“What?” 

She chuckles, amused, and floats a bit closer. Sam doesn’t back away this time as the ghost settles beside her and holds out an arm to gesture to Phantom. 

“Intense emotions from humans create sprites, which we ghosts can eat to gain energy. Do you think you can make one for him?” She smiles, and it’s sharp around the edges, a bit too predatory to be natural, but she seems genuine despite that. 

Sam blinks, struck by the weirdness of this scenario she’s found herself in. The hospital never mentioned anything about sprites, and now that she thinks about it the Fentons didn’t either. Is this some kind of ghost secret nobody knows about? 

But Sam pushes her questions aside for now and focuses inward. She sees Phantom huddled on the faded red triangle of the merry-go-round, shaking and bleeding and scared. She feels worry and pity and a need to help. Phantom breathes out and the ghosts drift away. He breathes in and they drift closer. Like all of Amity Park seems to revolve around him in some way. 

She wants to help. She’s always wanted to help. She hates seeing ghosts get put through so much after everything they’ve already been through. It tears her up inside when she gets to know a new ghost, learns their hobbies or where they came from, only to watch the GIW hunters raid the streets and never see them again. They deserve better.

The woman’s eyes drift up to a spot above Sam’s head, and she reaches out to grab something Sam can’t see. Her clawed hand closes around it, and in her palm appears a little glowing ball of red. It has a wispy tail trailing behind it and it writhes in place like it’s angry to be there. 

“Anger,” the woman murmurs. “It will be enough.”

She floats forward, drifting close enough to Phantom to offer him the little glowing thing. He lifts his tired eyes up to her and shakily reaches out for it, winding his fingers around its tail to take hold of it. She lets go and pulls back, drifting back over to Sam to watch the scene unfold.

For a moment, Phantom just holds the sprite there, exhaustion dragging his limbs down. Then he shifts to tilt his head back and drop the writhing red thing past his fangs to his mouth. 

Sam is almost expecting to hear a crunch as he bites down, but it looks more like he’s eating a marshmallow than anything. It takes some effort for him to swallow, but once he does the change is almost immediate. 

His eyes glow brighter and gain more clarity. Frost forms on the metal below him. Ectoplasm stops dripping as crystals of ice form around the wound and seal it off from the rest of the world. He slumps over almost immediately after it’s done, but at least he’s not actively bleeding anymore, and he seems more present now than he was before. Maybe he’ll make it through this without a hospital after all.

Now that Phantom is starting to recover, some of the ghosts shift their attention from him to Sam instead. A man with a hole on the side of his head gets a little too close to her with a devilish grin on his face.

“What’s a human doing here anyway? Come to turn us over to the hunters?”

Sam worriedly glances around for help but the woman from before has disappeared, and now more ghosts seem to be becoming interested in her presence. 

A young boy—far too young—with soaking wet clothes and water dripping from his mouth snaps at her ankles and makes her jolt forward with a yelp. 

A woman with torn clothes and a too-wide scar across her neck eyes her up and down like she’s looking for a fight.

Sam is cornered, nowhere to go.

But a rasping, wispy voice stops them all in their tracks. 

“She’s under my protection. Harm her and you will answer to me.”

Phantom looks kind of pathetic lying down with a gaping hole in his side like he is, but his eyes are sharp and predatory as he stares each of them down. Sam is sure that if they wanted to they could just gang up on Phantom or ignore him, but they all back away from Sam instead, looking thoroughly cowed. 

She doesn’t know what to make of it, if she should be grateful that they respect his wishes or terrified that he has so much control over them even this injured and virtually defenseless. 

What has she gotten herself into?

Tucker picks the perfect moment to show back up again. The shrieking of the old gate being opened snaps away most of the ghosts’ attention, and if Tucker was about to yell something out then he changes his mind at the last second and snaps his mouth shut instead. He suddenly looks very nervous as he hurriedly makes his way over to Sam, a needle with glowing green liquid inside it in one hand.

The other ghosts give them space as Tucker shoves the needle into Sam’s waiting hands. 

“I got it. Said it was for some ghost in the playground, which isn’t technically a lie, and I mentioned you were with me so they wouldn’t follow me to help out.”

“Thanks Tucker,” she says genuinely and he smiles at her proudly. 

Sam gets closer to Phantom hesitantly, worried that the ghost might react badly to the sight of a mysterious needle, but he does the opposite. Phantom looks at and reaches for the needle gratefully. His hands only shake slightly as he takes it from her and expertly takes the cap off with his teeth and presses the needle into a space just above his hip. For ghosts, it doesn’t matter where ecto-dejecto is injected, seeing as they don’t have veins like humans do. Most of the space underneath their skin is just a stream of ectoplasm, with organs and bones underneath. It’s sort of like a second skin, or like one giant artery wrapped around the entire body. 

Phantom breathes a sigh of relief, and Sam watches with morbid fascination as his insides begin to knit themselves together from beneath the ice. The needle is pulled out and capped again, and Sam takes it back from him when he offers it. 

The ice starts to fall apart as he heals, flaking off in decently sized chunks. Phantom looks vaguely uncomfortable as the process goes on, twitching here and there. The hole in his side closes up most of the way, but the healing process slows to a crawl before it can finish. The ecto-dejecto gave him enough power to rapidly heal most of the way, but it’ll still take some time to fully recover. Until then, the ice wrapped around the wound should be enough to let the rest heal safely. It’s not perfect, but he’s not dying anymore, and that’s all Sam could really hope for. 

Phantom flexes his fingers and meshes his legs together to form a tail. With a wince, he floats up, only faltering a little as he tiredly drifts closer to the two of them. 

Sam can feel Tucker hiding behind her as he approaches, and she can understand the sentiment. They may not be ghost hunters, but anyone who manages to get this close to Phantom has some kind of tragedy befall them to make them forget, and now she’s starting to wonder if they should have made a run for it while he was still healing. Not that it would have made a difference, seeing as Phantom is a ghost who can find them no matter where they go, but still, she can understand Tucker’s worry this time.

Phantom stops just in front of them, floating silently for a moment before he looks away almost awkwardly.

“Thank you, for helping me. I don’t think I—I don’t think it would have ended well if you two weren’t there.”

Sam is about to point out that it didn’t end well. There are two ghost hunters either unconscious or dead in the woods and Phantom is still going to need some time to fully recover after this, but she wisely keeps that to herself. 

She crosses her arms and raises an eyebrow. “No problem. Y’know, in case you haven’t noticed, me and Tucker and everyone else at the hospital really do want to help you.”

There’s a brief flash of something across Phantom’s expression, but it’s gone before Sam can even begin to decipher it. He covers it up with a fanged grin. 

“Yes, you all are very insistent about that. You do know that the Fentons used to hunt me, right?”

Sam does remember that, but it was so long ago she almost forgot. The Fentons had created the portal in the first place to experiment on the Ghost Zone and the ghosts that came from it, but within the first few weeks after they had labeled Phantom a menace to society, they changed their tune completely. The GIW stole their tech and made it twice as deadly, and even for the Fentons that was too harsh. They had only wanted to study ghosts, but the GIW showed everyone just how cruel humans could be to beings they considered less than, and they realized their mistake. They began non-invasively studying ghosts from afar, publishing papers about their unique behaviors and overall neutral—not malicious—attitudes, until soon enough they grew to sympathize with the ghosts instead of hunting them. Sam and Tucker’s efforts to help ghosts also encouraged them to be more open towards the new inhabitants of Amity. They all brought their plan to the hospital to set up a Ghost Ward together, until they made their plan a reality. They’ve been nothing but supportive advocates since. 

That might not mean much to Phantom though, because he always got the brunt of the Fentons’ new tech back in the day. For a ghost who’s survived this long being reclusive and avoidant to humans, the Fentons would likely be the last people he would ever trust to get near him with medical equipment. 

Sam softens her gaze and she almost chuckles at the way Phantom narrows his eyes at her. 

“Yeah, but at least you can always come to me and Tucker. If you’re ever hurt that badly again, we would be happy to help.”

She feels Tucker nodding beside her a bit too quickly, but she knows he feels the same way. As scary as most ghosts and especially Phantom are, all they want to do is help. 

Phantom’s eyes drift up to the space above Sam’s head, and she’s about to ask what he’s looking at before he darts out a hand to grab whatever he’s looking at, pulling it back just as quickly. 

In his hand appears a ball of blue energy. It’s smaller than the red sprite from before, and longer. It idly drifts around Phantom’s clawed fingers.

“Protectiveness,” he murmurs with a gentle grin. “I guess I know that you’re telling the truth.”

Sam watches as Phantom releases it and it sifts through his fingers and out into the open air before disappearing as quickly as it came. 

His gaze flicks back to the two of them, something considering in his eyes. 

“Fine. If I’m ever that hurt again, I’ll find one of you. But! You can’t let the Fentons know that you’ve met me. Not until I know I can trust them, at least.”

Sam gives him a look, but Phantom doesn’t give any indication that he’s going to back down with this, so finally she sighs and nods.

“It’s a deal then.”

She holds out her hand, only to realize her mistake a second too late when he stares at the offered hand warily. But before she can pull back, he’s hesitantly reaching out to clasp his own hand with hers.

He’s just as cold as always, and his claws lightly press against her wrist. She shivers, and Phantom grins like he finds it funny.  

They give a light shake and then break apart. Phantom spares them one last glance before he floats up into the air and turns invisible, disappearing from sight. 

Sam holds her hand up, marveling that she just shook hands with Phantom. She turns to look at Tucker, who seems just as amazed. And they both laugh.

Chapter Text

Volunteering at the hospital is hard work for Sam and Tucker, but despite not being able to tell anyone about their experience with Phantom, they make it work.

Using their newfound knowledge of sprites, Tucker—with Mrs. Fenton’s help—invents a way to capture the embodiment of the feeling of calm, make it solid by introducing ectoplasm, and weave it into a blanket that, when given to a ghost, reduces their stressful reactions to treatment by nearly half . It’s proved to be invaluable over the few weeks they’ve had them. There’s only five of them right now but Tucker is planning on making a dozen or so more in the event that they might need enough for that many ghosts at once. 

With that as a side project, Tucker starts working with what little they know about ghost cores. Watching Phantom stitch himself up using ice gave him the idea to use something similar on other ghosts, but Mr. Fenton pointed out that a ghost with a fire core might react badly to a treatment like that. Now Tucker is working on a way to identify a ghost’s core so they can treat each ghost more effectively. But because of the tiny amount that they know about cores, it’s been slow going. 

Now Sam walks through the darkened halls—the ghosts seem to prefer the lights being dimmer, so the staff only turns them up when they really need to—with the deathly thin ghost cat, who the hospital staff affectionately calls Mittens, following by her side. Sam and all the other people here assumed that Mittens died from starvation, and the easily visible ribs on her sides make it fairly obvious, but she’s a very sweet cat. She likes to follow people around, cheer them up if their day is going poorly, and comfort the other ghosts who come in seeking help. Her fur is coarse and matted, but she’s an excellent cuddler and chases away the ghost rats who like to chew through the medical supplies, so nobody really minds. 

Sam makes it to the door she was looking for and reaches down to pet Mittens’ head before she enters, leaving the cat to go follow someone else. 

It’s dark inside, but Sam can easily see the green glow of the ghost sitting on the bed by the tinted window. She’s a young woman, her long white hair nearly reaching her waist and covering her body like a shield. Her eyes are green, just like every other ghost, and they look guarded and wary as she glances up at Sam. She pulls the blanket tighter over her shoulders and looks away miserably. 

There’s a hole in her stomach, a wound that will never close up or heal. It was what killed her, after all. But she came into the hospital two days ago for a different reason.

“Your arm looks better,” Sam says lightly as she takes a seat in the chair by the monitor machine.

It doesn’t monitor a person’s heart like a normal heart monitor would, but instead measures the energy emissions of a ghost’s core. More powerful ghosts have a more noticeable emission, but every ghost can have their health measured like this fairly well. Hers seems to be doing alright, if a little muted at times.

The woman distantly looks down at what used to be a mangled left arm. She had gotten caught in a ghost hunter’s wire trap, a cruel thing that would tighten the more someone tried to struggle out of it. Some of the staff thought her arm might not be salvageable, but they managed to save it. It’s still covered in giant scars and scabs, but looks mostly fine now. 

She doesn’t seem particularly happy though, and drops her arm onto the bed lifelessly.

“I thought…” she starts to whisper. A humorless chuckle escapes her lips. “I guess I thought that being dead would give me freedom from pain.”

Sam frowns. Ghost therapy is a bit above her pay grade, and she isn’t even getting paid to be here, but that’s not about to stop her from trying to help. Mostly Sam’s job around the hospital is to check on the patients, make sure they’re healing and ask if they need anything, occasionally go out and ask the ghosts out in Amity the same thing. She doesn’t know much about passing on , or if that’s even possible for these ghosts. But she tries her best, each and every time. 

“Does it help to know that you survived?” 

Sam winces at her poor choice of words, but the ghost seems to understand anyway.

“I guess… But that doesn’t make it hurt any less. And my soul might still be here but… the rest of me isn’t.”

Sam gets the feeling that she’s talking about more than just her injury. 

“Well, I’m not an expert on ghosts or anything, but I think the fact that you can still feel pain means that you can also still feel joy, and isn’t that something worth finding?”

She turns to look at Sam incredulously, her white hair falling like a curtain over her face. She gestures to the hospital room around them.

“Joy from what ?” 

Sam purses her lips and thinks for a moment. 

“Do you have any hobbies?”

She shakes her head and turns back towards the window with a huff. 

Well, if she’s not going to make this easy…

Sam stands up and the ghost casts her a wary glance as she heads for the door. 

“I’ll be right back, I promise.”

She closes the door behind her and then rushes down the hallway. Down by the front foyer they have a little corner full of toys and books for the occasions when a ghost happens to be a child, and it’s not unusual for things to go missing from there. Kids like toys, and ghosts have an even lower impulse control, but they always keep it full of things and the nurses won’t miss a few more items. 

She grabs a novel with some fairies on the cover, a coloring book with crayons, a pack of Uno cards, and some fidget toys. She also picks up a glass paper weight that looks like a flower on the way, and then she’s rushing back to the room with everything gathered in her arms haphazardly. 

She nudges the door open with her shoulder and smiles when the ghost looks up to see her. She gives a curious glance to the stuff in Sam’s arms, and then Sam is dumping it all on the bed in front of her. 

The ghost reaches for the kid’s novel and turns it over in her hands dubiously. She looks up at Sam with a frown.

“Hey, don’t knock it till you try it.”

Sam takes her seat again, this time scooting it closer to the bed so she can reach for the Uno deck. She pulls the cards out and starts shuffling them.

“Wanna play?”

The ghost gives her a blank look for a moment, but eventually concedes with a light sigh. She shuffles in the bed until she’s facing Sam.

Sam shuffles and then deals them both cards, and the ghost takes it with wispy, almost see-through hands. She goes first, hesitantly placing a red six down on the bed. Sam responds with a yellow six, and they go from there.

They play in silence at first, becoming slowly more comfortable with each other as the game progresses. Sam lays down a draw four and she hisses, but Sam knows what an aggressive ghost sounds like and she seems more lightly annoyed than anything. Sam chuckles as she draws her four cards with a pout on her face.

“Jennifer,” she says suddenly, after a longer minute of silence. They’re both down to four cards now, and Sam blinks at the suddenness of her voice.

She glances up shyly and glances back down at her cards just as quickly, her hair falling further over her eyes. 

“My name. It’s Jennifer. People call— called me Jenn.”

Sam grins and a light green blush spreads across Jenn’s face at the attention. 

“I’m Sam. It’s nice to meet you, Jenn.”

More hair falls over her face. “Nice to meet you too,” she mumbles.

Sam lies a blue four on top of Jenn’s blue three, and Jenn responds with a blue eight, and Sam with a yellow eight. More silence, until—

“Are you from Amity, Jenn?” Sam asks curiously.

Jenn looks away for a moment, puts down a yellow two, then shakes her head.

“I think I’m from Denver.”

Sam puts down a yellow skip and then a yellow reverse.

“The one in Colorado?”

Jenn nods and puts down a red reverse. “Is there more than one?”

Sam hums and pulls out her phone to do a brief search. 

“Yeah. There’s one in Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Arizona…”

She holds her phone up for Jenn to see the picture of a Denver sign with a little town in the background. 

Jenn furrows her brow as she looks at it, and Sam dutifully holds her phone up as the ghost inspects it. Suddenly Jenn’s face lights up in something like realization. Her gaze flicks to the wall past Sam’s head and stays there for a moment, clearly thinking deeply. 

“Jenn? Are you okay?”

She jolts, looks back at Sam with a sort of gentleness to her expression.

“You just reminded me… I just remembered my… thing, my… my Obsession .”

She makes a weird sound like a gasp and looks over her shoulder to the window behind her curiously. 

“I think I wanted to travel the world. I think I… I think that’s my purpose .”

She turns back to Sam with a light laugh and the beginning of an actual smile on her face. 

“Paris and Greece and Mount Everest, none of that ever interested me. I wanted to see the depths of the Pacific Ocean and the Sahara Desert and the Amazon . I never got to travel as a kid… Those places just always seemed so distant and magical .”

She blinks, looks at Sam, then ducks down like she’s embarrassed that she just admitted so much. 

“That sounds pretty awesome actually. Y’know you can fly and breathe underwater as a ghost now, so you can go wherever you want.”

Jenn’s eyes sparkle from behind her hair. 

“You… really think so?”

Sam nods with a gentle smile. “I know so. And hey, if you make it all the way to the Amazon Rainforest, send me a postcard or something. I’d love to see where you end up.”

Jenn’s face breaks out into a genuine, big smile, fangs and all. Sam’s heart melts at the sight. She really hopes that Jenn will get to see everything she wants to see. Sam can’t imagine what led to her dying with a giant hole in her stomach, but she would love to see this girl follow her dreams, even in death. 

Jenn nods decisively, real happiness on her face for the first time since she arrived here. 

Their card game ends without much fanfare, and then Sam needs to go check on the other patients. She wishes Jenn farewell and gets a big smile in return. 

The next day, Jenn is gone, but Sam has hope that she’ll make it out there on her own. Maybe she’ll even see Jenn again one day. 

The rest of her day is spent with thoughts of oceans and jungles and a sharp, ghostly grin.

Chapter Text

Weeks pass, and both Sam and Tucker make leaps and bounds with the ghosts at the hospital, but they don’t hear from Phantom for a fairly long time. They see his fights on the news, hear the usual theories and rumors from the people around Amity, but nothing really happens until a particularly vicious fight with Skulker one day. 

Tucker is the first one to hear the worried murmurs among the hospital staff, and he relays it all to Sam at the first chance he gets. They say they saw Phantom get hit pretty bad. A metal punch to the face and a wide slash of an ectoplasmic knife down one leg. They say he didn’t look so good when he flew off after Skulker’s usual retreat back to wherever he goes. He hasn’t been seen since, but that’s not saying much since Phantom is naturally reclusive and it’s only been five or so hours since then. Still, they worry.

But Sam can’t do anything about it, and it’s late. She settles down in her bed after a long day of watching over hurting ghosts and falls asleep quickly.

“Sam.”

She tosses and turns in bed, a nagging voice pulling her from her stubborn sleep.

“Sam.”

She mumbles something about getting up later, or at least she thinks she does. She hates it when her parents wake her up early.

“Sam.”

There’s a moment of silence.

And another.

“Sam.”

Sam’s eyes fly open. That voice doesn’t sound like either of her parents. 

Throwing her blanket off of her, she swirls her head this way and that, scanning her dark room for the source of the voice. Oh God if there’s a ghost in here with her right now she’s going to scream. 

“Sam,” the voice calls, and she realizes it’s coming from the bathroom.

She leaps out of bed and is instantly hit with a wave of cold air. It’s getting cold outside, but her parents like to keep the house at a constant temperature, and this definitely is not it. She shivers and grabs a jacket from the corner of her bed. She shrugs it on and hesitantly approaches the slightly-ajar bathroom door.

“Sam.”

Tense and fully expecting to end up like the first person to die in a horror movie, she slowly pushes the bathroom door open and peers inside. 

She doesn’t see anything at first, and when she flips the light switch the lights remain stubbornly off anyway. Her breath comes out misty in front of her, and her mirror has a light sheet of frost on it. 

There’s an ominous dripping sound, and she figures out the noise is coming from the corner behind the open door. 

She reaches for a bottle of shampoo, probably the only solid thing she can reach right now, and holds it ready to throw at the first thing that might lunge out at her. She reaches for the door handle and swings it out of the way—

And promptly jumps like two feet in the air when she comes face to face with Phantom. 

The shampoo falls out of her hand and lands on the tile floor with a loud crack and Phantom abruptly goes invisible at the noise.

Sam takes several deep breaths to steady herself, one hand on her chest and the other clutching the counter for support. It takes everything in her just to calm her racing heart. 

Phantom slowly becomes visible again, giving her that same unblinking glowing green stare that she remembers of their last meeting. He watches her every movement carefully, body wound tight like a spring ready to launch. 

Once Sam is sure that she’s not about to die of a heart attack, her hands make their way to her hips and she gives Phantom the best glare she can manage under the circumstances. 

“Dude, you scared the shit out of me. What the heck are you doing in the corner anyway? You could have just woken me up the normal way instead of being super creepy like this. And why aren’t my lights working?” It all comes out as a whisper-yell, mostly trying not to wake her parents up but also trying not to startle Phantom too much.

He looks away sheepishly, hunching his shoulders up defensively and fiddling with his fingers. 

“Sorry about your lights. That just kind of… happens sometimes,” he murmurs, and the way his voice echoes off the bathroom walls gives his already weird voice a double edge to it. 

Sam sighs and almost calls him out for apologizing about the light but not almost scaring her to death, but instead she stops mid-thought.

She takes in her surroundings a bit more, and then she realizes that Phantom is bleeding. There’s a sizable puddle of ectoplasm on the floor beneath him, and she realizes why he’s in the corner in the first place. 

There’s a drain in the floor over on that side of the bathroom, and he’s floating right over it, letting most of the ectoplasm disappear into the sewer system. The fact that there’s still a decent-sized puddle around it when most of it is probably long gone means he’s lost a lot of blood. 

There’s ice wrapped around his right leg, and he holds it gingerly even while he’s floating, but she can also see some more ice poking up from behind his shoulders and she figures there must have been more injuries that the hospital staff didn’t see. 

Sam doesn’t have the luxury of ecto-dejecto this time, but she does have a basic first aid kit in her cabinets somewhere. She starts rooting through her stuff to find it as Phantom idly floats in the corner, still watching her. 

She struggles a bit without any light to see by, blindly reaching through things to find the recognizable plastic clasp of the kit she’s looking for. 

She doesn’t hear Phantom drifting closer until he’s hovering right over her shoulder. She jolts and nearly hits him on instinct, but stops herself at the last second. She can hear him breathing, and it’s almost more scary than the intensity that he watches her with. 

He holds up one of his hands, and in his palm he conjures up a green glow. She recognizes it as one of the ways that Phantom attacks, but he doesn’t shoot it out like he normally does when he’s fighting. He just holds it there, letting it get bright. She watches it flicker like a fire, but it doesn’t hold a shape like fire does. It kind of hurts her head to look at. 

Now that her bathroom is being cast in an otherworldly green glow, she can mostly see the stuff in her cabinets, and she reaches back in. It doesn’t take much longer to find the kit, and she pulls it out with a noise of triumph. Phantom drifts back over to his corner, leaving a thin trail of ectoplasm in his wake, but keeps the light in his hand. 

“You should probably sit down,” Sam advises as she sets the kit on the counter and starts pulling out sutures and gauze. 

She hears a thud and whirls around to see that Phantom has sat himself down on the floor—thankfully avoiding the puddle he’s made by the drain—and looks about ready to pass out where he sits. 

“Is something wrong?” she asks in concern. He was a lot more hesitant to get close to her last time, but now it seems like he doesn’t care. It’s a little strange.

Phantom starts to shake his head, but stops halfway through the motion with a hiss and a wince. 

“I think I’m concussed,” he murmurs. 

He jolts suddenly as he looks at the green glow on his palm, like he didn’t realize he was still doing it and got scared when he saw it again.

“Yeah… I think you’re right.”

With supplies in hand, she makes her way to Phantom’s back and gasps at what she sees. 

There’s a huge gash there, covered over with ice but still ragged and bleeding sluggishly. It looks like he tried to cover it completely with ice, but wasn’t coordinated enough to get all of it. There’s a matching gash on his right thigh that looks much the same, if a bit smaller. 

“Can you drop the ice please?”

With a roll of his shoulders, the ice flakes and falls off into a clump on the floor. But he doesn’t only drop the ice on his back, he also drops the ice on his thigh, and now both wounds are exposed and bleeding much more than they were before.

“Ow.”

Sam huffs a startled laugh and rushes to stem the bleeding. 

“Definitely concussed,” she murmurs as she works. 

The wound is difficult to work with, but whatever she can’t fix with sutures she makes up for with a copious amount of bandages. It’s not perfect, but it’ll keep him alive (or as alive as a ghost can get) at least. 

“So why come to me for help anyway? It looked like you had this mostly covered with your ice anyway.”

She tries to make conversation, mostly to keep Phantom awake and aware so the concussion doesn’t cause too many problems, but also out of curiosity. 

Despite how long Phantom has been defending Amity from ghostly threats, nobody knows a thing about him. Even the ghosts only really know his name and not much else, or at least nothing they’re willing to share. The humans are left in the dark. And Sam has the perfect opportunity to get to know their protector a little better. 

She ignores the whisper in the back of her head telling her that weaseling information out of Phantom while he’s concussed and doesn’t know any better isn’t really a great thing to do. Maybe she’s being a little selfish, but she really does only want to help him and the other ghosts in Amity. 

“I couldn’t—“ he whines as Sam accidentally presses on the wound too hard and he shudders in a gasp as she adjusts her grip to be less harsh. “My ice can only… do so much. I couldn’t reach well enough to fix myself up, and I am bleeding a lot.”

Sam nods even though Phantom can’t see it. She wonders just how many times he’s flown back to his home injured like this, unable to fix himself but trying the best he can with the ice he has. How many times has he gone to rest wondering if that will be the time he finally passes on for good? What did he used to do when he was this injured and had nobody to turn to? 

Phantom suddenly looks up towards the ceiling, and Sam watches as his gaze follows something she can’t see float through her bathroom. She can guess what it might be.

He reaches out a hand and twirls it around the tail of a yellow glowing sprite. He chuckles slightly and drops his hand, letting it disappear from Sam’s view but still watching it float around himself. 

“Yellow for worry,” he mutters in something like amusement.

“So the different colors mean different emotions?”

Tucker’s experiments with calm sprites had shown them a dark blue color, and she remembers red being anger and light blue being protectiveness. The fact that intense emotion can literally manifest itself into a semi-physical form in the first place is amazing, but each one being color-coordinated? She wonders what about an emotion gives it its color, if it’s chemically related or something else. She wonders if that’s how ghosts are created in the first place, with intense emotions just before death…

Phantom nods, swaying a little with the motion. 

“Pink is for joy, black for despair, orange for… excitement I think…”

Sam hums. “What about green?”

Phantom shivers and goes silent for a moment. Then he turns to see her over his shoulder, one inhuman green and white eye boring right into her. 

“Green is for longing.”

And then it’s Sam’s turn to shiver. Another moment and then Phantom stops staring at her, turning back towards the rest of the bathroom like before. 

She snips off the end of the stitching on his back and gets him to lift his arms long enough to wrap bandages around his torso to cover whatever she couldn’t stitch together. It starts to turn a sickly green color as she goes and finds herself idly wondering if ghosts can get infections, if they can even get sick at all. Sam isn’t involved enough in what the nurses do at the hospital to know.

She turns to the gash on his thigh next, moving the gauze she had hastily pressed to the wound earlier out of the way so she can work. 

“Y’know, I’m not sure if it means anything to you,” Sam begins uncertainly, “but figuring out what sprites are has really helped the ghosts at the hospital. Tucker managed to make some blankets out of them, and it really calms them down, so… thank you for that.”

Phantom is silent for several long moments, and Sam tries to focus on the task in front of her instead of fidgeting, but he’s oddly still and even more distant now. What is he thinking about?

“I… helped?” he murmurs almost too softly to hear. “Without fighting?”

He suddenly sounds so small, and when Sam really looks at the ghost in front of her, she comes to the abrupt and startling realization that Phantom is young. She had never really noticed it before. His unearthly appearance, the way his hair moves like white fire and his eyes glow like a predator stalking prey, the way he only seems to fight opponents much bigger than him without a hint of fear on his face… He’s always looked small, but he’s never seemed young up until now. Just how old is Phantom?

Sam sees plenty of older ghosts, plenty of child ghosts too unfortunately, but something about Phantom looking like he’s around her own age is suddenly unsettling. What could have happened to him to make him the ghost he is today?

“Yeah, you did,” Sam breathes. 

She finishes stitching and wrapping the wound faster than expected, and then she doesn’t have much left to do besides clean. But it’s not like anyone is going to be exploring her bathroom anytime soon, so she can leave it for another day. For now, she stands up and reaches down to get Phantom up off the floor. He doesn’t seem to need her help but takes her hand anyway, and he’s cold and weightless in her hand as he floats up towards the ceiling. 

“I don’t know if ghosts need to sleep at all, but you can stay here for the night if you want. Just don’t go snooping through my things.”

Phantom trails silently behind her as she makes her way back to bed. It’s finally starting to warm up in here again, and the shadows don’t seem quite so dark anymore even as Phantom snuffs out the green light in his hand. 

“Ghosts can sleep when they’re hurt,” he mumbles as he drifts up towards the canopy of her bed. She raises an eyebrow as he settles on the top of the metal frame. She can see his ghostly glow through the decorative bars and wonders how he’s going to be comfortable up there, but he doesn’t seem to mind at all.

“To conserve energy for healing,” he explains. He peers down at her through the bars, and although his gaze is just as intense as always, Sam is somehow more used to it than she was before. “I sleep a lot.”

She shivers at that. It seems like Phantom is getting into fights practically every day, so he must spend a pretty large chunk of time just recovering. That’s… kind of sad.

Phantom shuffles around until he makes himself comfortable curled up in one of the corners of the canopy like a cat. Even in a relatively safe space like this, he presses his back against the thicker part of the metal and faces the door, though he glances toward the window a few times vigilantly. He doesn’t go to sleep immediately, although when Sam looks closely she can see the tired lines of his frame working against him.

“Tell me more about the sprite colors,” she murmurs up to him.

He glances down at her before looking back up thoughtfully. His wispy, echoing voice blankets the room almost comfortingly.

“You would think that love would be red, but it’s actually white… Or that sadness would be blue but it’s actually gray…”

Sam closes her eyes and listens, sinking into sleep as thoughts of purples and reds and blues mix in her head. 

It’s a surprisingly restful sleep, with the guardian of Amity Park watching over her, and soon enough both of them are succumbing to the pull of their dreams.

When Sam wakes up in the morning, Phantom is long gone. The ectoplasm has disappeared from her floor, everything returned to where it was before. The missing supplies from the first-aid kit are the only sign that the whole thing wasn’t a dream. 

Chapter Text

Tucker is the next one to meet Phantom again, and far sooner than either of them expected. 

Tucker is just sitting on his bed playing video games, a pile of electronics meant for his ghost core identification project left on the side for now as he focuses his attention elsewhere. It’s difficult for him to be patient like this, but he knows he’ll make a breakthrough eventually, he just needs to let that breakthrough come to him.

He doesn’t realize how literally that’s going to happen, or how much the universe likes to play pranks on him, until Phantom suddenly pops through his wall and Tucker is not ashamed to admit he screams.

Phantom barely manages to get out Tucker’s name before he’s turning invisible at the loud noise, and Tucker barely manages to close his mouth to stop.

God, he is so lucky neither of his parents are home or he would have a lot of explaining/lying to do. Or maybe they would believe him if he said he accidentally turned on a horror game? Yeah, probably not.

Phantom becomes visible again slowly, like he’s afraid Tucker is going to start screaming again, and maybe he would have. The ghost opens his mouth to say something, an uncertain and worried expression on his face, only for his whole body to lock up and suddenly fall to the floor in a heap. 

Tucker rushes forward on instinct, before realizing who exactly is in front of him, and hesitates. Phantom looks like he’s in pain, twitching faintly and reaching up to his throat—

Tucker blinks. He’s pretty sure a metal collar isn’t Phantom’s usual style of clothing, and now before he’s even asked he knows why Phantom came to him instead of Sam.

Tucker gasps. “Hold on,” he says in lieu of anything more comforting (what can he even say to a ghost who’s already dead ?).

He rushes to the other side of his room, to his dresser where most of his tools are scattered and piled up on each other haphazardly. Tucker knows his room is absolutely not OSHA compliant, but he knows where everything is and it’s not like anyone else is usually coming in here to see him, besides Sam anyway.

When he turns back around with three different precision screwdrivers in one hand and a flush cutter in the other, Phantom’s eyes are blown wide and frantic, face twisted into a helpless snarl as his claws scratch against the metal but find no purchase. It’s actually terrifying to see, and makes Tucker more than just a little wary of getting closer to help him right now. Would Phantom bite him? He figures he probably would. And Tucker is so weak and fragile compared to Phantom that he would probably just lose the whole arm in the process. He shudders at the thought. 

But Phantom is hurting, and Tucker has the tools to help, and Phantom hasn’t shown any sign of hurting either him or Sam yet, so against his better judgment he takes a step closer. Until Phantom’s eyes immediately lock onto him, white pupils growing impossibly small and focused, and a fierce growl leaves his throat, and then Tucker is throwing himself back in fear. 

“H-hey, ghost boy, you gotta calm down—“

Phantom’s growl is interrupted by a small convulsion, and then like lightning his legs melt into a tail and he’s throwing himself into the corner by the door. He collides with the wall harshly, but judging by the animalistic whine he lets out and the confusion in his eyes, Tucker can guess that he wasn’t expecting to hit the wall instead of going through it. 

Tucker’s first thought is that this is good. Phantom is stuck here until he can get that thing off his neck, so he won’t be running away to suffer alone. Then his next, much more fearful thought is oh my God, Phantom is stuck in here with me .

With another jolt from the collar, Phantom falls to the floor and his tail writhes around, knocking over everything around him with all the fury of a cat that was just thrown in a bathtub. It would probably be funny if Tucker wasn’t currently freaking out. 

Tucker ducks his head to avoid a cup flying towards his face and hurriedly reaches for his phone. He dials up the right number at the same time a book manages to smack him in the arm. 

The line connects with a click and Tucker is already yelling before Sam has a chance to speak.

“Sam oh my God please get over here right now Phantom is going crazy!! ”

There’s some shuffling and then a “ What?! ” before he hangs up and then a wrench nearly takes his teeth out. And wow he is really thankful all of a sudden that his neighbors never seem to hear any of the loud noises that come from his bedroom when he’s working on projects. 

Phantom stops for a moment, his back and tail pressed into the corner of the room and one clawed hand digging into the carpet, the other clutching at the collar. His eyes are wide and the snarl is still there. He’s staring at the floor and breathing heavily, a growl at the end of each breath. 

Tucker doesn’t want to set him off again, so he doesn’t move a muscle, but Phantom’s eyes suddenly find him again anyway. And despite the tense fury lining every inch of him, Tucker locks eyes with him and he realizes that Phantom is actually scared . The growling is terrifying, but he has a kind of desperation in his eyes that Tucker has never seen on any ghost before, let alone Phantom . Just what is that thing doing to him?

Phantom suddenly doubles over, both of his hands now tearing holes into the carpet and for a second Tucker thinks that the ghost is about to puke, but something else he’s never seen before happens instead.

A white ring of light appears around his torso, flickering in place and getting bigger . Phantom’s whole body locks up, looking like he’s trying to hold up some enormous weight with the way his expression is cinched up in focus and pain. His jaw opens up wide, revealing sharp, fanged teeth and a green mouth in a silent scream. 

The door bursts open and then Sam is there, and Tucker looks at her helplessly as Phantom struggles against an invisible enemy in the corner. Sam takes in the scene before him, all the destroyed things tossed around the room, Tucker still holding his tools but unable or unwilling to get close enough to use them. 

The white ring around Phantom separates into two, and in the space between them Phantom’s suit has turned white instead of black. It looks like it’s taking everything in him to stop it from happening.

Sam crosses the bedroom space and grabs Tucker’s wrist, dragging them both over to Phantom. This is exactly why the two of them work so well together, with Tucker as all thoughts and Sam as all actions. Together, he’s pretty sure they can get Phantom out of this. 

They both kneel down in front of the ghost and, when he doesn’t immediately get bitten, Tucker shuffles forward with his tools in hand. Phantom doesn’t even seem to notice when Tucker takes hold of the collar and starts inspecting it for a panel he can weasel into, so focused on keeping the rings at bay. Sam keeps a steady hold on Tucker’s arm and it helps him keep his hands steady.

There’s a light electrical shock when he touches the metal, small enough to ignore but constant enough to still be kind of annoying. He finds the panel he’s looking for, doesn’t want to take the time to take out each screw and instead he just sticks one of the screwdrivers into the gap and pries it open. Delicate wiring is found inside, and, although Tucker knows that it’s a bad idea to go cutting through wiring that’s currently being used, he sticks the flush cutter in there. He hurriedly gestures for Sam to get him a glove on the floor not far away and when she does he shoves it on his hand. It probably won’t do much, but it’s better than nothing. 

By now, the two rings have separated enough to reach Phantom’s waist and underarms, revealing more white underneath. It looks distinctly more like cloth than the rubbery texture of his suit, but Tucker has more important things to focus on in that moment than the ghost’s preferred clothing. 

He presses down on the wiring, snapping most of it in half. Tucker flinches back as a jolt of electricity races through his hand. 

The white rings abruptly snap together and fizzle away, and then Phantom collapses to the floor like a puppet with its strings cut. There’s a fine tremor running through him, a sheen of frost covering his hands. He has his eyes squeezed shut and there’s a wheezing sound as he breathes in and out. 

Now that the danger is gone, Tucker shakes the pain away and takes hold of the metal again to start the process of cutting through it. It doesn’t seem to have a lock or latch anywhere that he can find, so he has to go the slow way. Phantom lies there, mostly calm now, and lets Tucker work. 

It’s like the whole room breathes a sigh of relief.

Sam reaches out and, with a second of hesitation, lies her hand comfortingly on Phantom’s head. 

Phantom goes dangerously still, his breath hitching, and Sam and Tucker freeze, wary of the fangs still poking out of his mouth and the claws curled into his palms. But, completely unexpectedly, he goes boneless just as quickly, and then he actually leans into Sam’s hand. There’s a whine, low and hurt, and Tucker gets the distinct impression that Phantom is sometimes more animal than person. 

Sam moves her hand, ruffling through Phantom’s ghostly white hair that still wisps around like a fire that isn’t quite real. Tucker gives her an incredulous look and she just gives him a smug grin and a shrug. He rolls his eyes and gets back to the task at hand. He’s about halfway through now. 

Tucker blinks when a new sound reaches his ears, and he glances down at Phantom only to find that the ghost is… purring? Tucker blinks again. This cannot be real.

The collar comes apart with one final snap. Phantom cuts his rumbling noises short as he pries his eyes open and gingerly takes the collar from his neck. He turns it over in his hand and drops it on the floor with a clunk.

“Phantom,” Sam begins softly. “What happened ?”

Phantom lets out a sigh and an odd warbling noise as he picks himself up off the floor. His tail turns back into a pair of legs as he looks around and winces at the state of Tucker’s room.

“Don’t worry about it, man. This is like a weekly occurrence.”

Phantom eyes the dents in the walls and holes in the carpet skeptically. 

Tucker chuckles nervously, wondering how he’s going to cover this up from his parents. He’ll figure it out, right? 

Phantom tilts his head back and gently pushes himself off the ground to float by the ceiling. He crosses his arms self-consciously and turns upside down to address Sam and Tucker below. It takes a few idle circles around the fan in the center before he actually speaks though. 

“There’s this ghost. Plasmius ,” he spits. “The Fentons and you would probably know him as the Wisconsin Ghost, or the ghost who controls the green vultures.”

Tucker and Sam help each other up from the floor so they can more comfortably sit on the bed, watching Phantom float around in a circle above them. 

“Wait, so the ghost that Mr. Fenton is always complaining about that he met at that reunion thing is the same one who sends out those vultures? And he was powerful enough to do this to you ?” Sam asks. 

Phantom looks mildly uncomfortable for a moment before he swiftly covers up the expression and nods. 

“And if you’ve ever seen any weird ghost animal hybrids, that’s his fault too.”

“So what was he trying to do to you anyway?” 

Phantom grimaces at Tucker’s question. His legs become a tail again and he moves a bit faster around the ceiling before returning to a slow glide. Clearly the question is making him anxious for some reason, but Tucker has no idea why.

“His plans change from time to time, but right now he’s trying to… reveal my secrets to everyone in Amity. He needs to catch me to do it, and this is the closest he’s gotten so far.”

Sam and Tucker glance at each other, both of them wondering the same thing. Just what secrets does Phantom have that Plasmius knows about, and why doesn’t he want Amity Park to know? What is Plasmius’s end goal by doing this?

But neither of them are willing to speak the questions aloud. They watch Phantom anxiously circling above them and without a word spoken the two of them are already agreeing that whatever secrets Phantom has can wait for a time when Phantom is willing to tell them himself. Whatever they are can’t be that bad, or at least not immediately dangerous… He hopes so anyway.

“Ok, so, this Plasmius guy is obviously more powerful than the regular ghosts around here, so is there any way we can help you deal with him?”

Phantom stops in midair, staring at Tucker with a completely blank expression.

Tucker fidgets in place, wondering if he’s said something offensive. 

“You would… want to help me ?” he asks slowly.

Tucker wrinkles his nose. “Dude, we already help you.”

“With a fight against a ghost,” he says flatly. “A ghost who can snap you in half like a twig. That kind of help?”

“Well, when you put it like that …”

Sam interrupts him before he can finish that thought though. “Tucker makes like half of the tech we use at the hospital to help ghosts, so it wouldn’t be too difficult to make something that, I don’t know, subdues them or something? Right, Tucker?”

Tucker nods, because tech, and ghost tech, really is like his main specialty. But Phantom backs away from them, shaking his head. 

“I can’t ask you to do that. I can handle ghosts well enough on my own, and any tech you make is going to get stolen or replicated by the GIW anyway. It’s too risky.”

Tucker hates to admit it, but this is starting to sound like a challenge. He knows Sam can see the familiar glint in his eye by the way she grins at him, but it’s not like he can help it. He just really loves building things, and if Phantom doesn’t want what he builds then he’s just going to keep building things until he eventually finds something he does like. 

An idea pops into his head.

“What if I build something that only ghosts can use?”

Phantom pauses. “That’s… actually a good idea. You can do something like that?”

Tucker shrugs. “I can try. I would need your help, but I bet between the two of us we can make it work.”

Phantom hesitates, glancing around Tucker’s room dubiously. 

Tucker can mostly understand. Phantom has survived for this long by being elusive and wary of humans, so being in a predictable place for an extended period of time must seem pretty daunting for a ghost who hasn’t interacted with people since he first appeared in Amity. Tucker would never dream of turning Phantom in to the GIW, but he doesn’t know Tucker well enough to know that.

Phantom is overly cautious, and all Sam and Tucker can do is show him that he can trust them, as many times as it takes. 

Phantom glances back up at him and, with a moment more of hesitation, agrees with a nod.

“How would we get started?”

Tucker hops off the bed and reaches for the pile of junk on his desk. He reaches in and pulls out a beaker with some suspiciously glowing materials inside.

“How much do you know about the chemical makeup of ectoplasm?”

Phantom grins, his sharpened fangs glinting in the afternoon light. 

“Probably more than you do.”

Tucker smiles. Oh, this is going to be fun .

Chapter Text

Jazz knows that Sam and Tucker are hiding something.

First, it was a request for an ecto-dejecto injection with little to no explanation and a certainty that nobody else needed to come with him. It was strange, but nothing too noticeable. He did say that Sam was with him after all, so when Jazz heard about it from Alissa—who works at the front desk and was the one to give Tucker what he wanted—she didn’t think much more about it.

Then it was new inventions. Sam and Tucker never did explain how they learned about sprites, despite nobody else having ever heard of them before, or how he knew that there were different types of them and that they could even be handled in the first place. They’re invisible, so there’s almost no way that they could have just figured it all out on their own practically overnight.

But Jazz let that one go too. Because maybe it was a little suspicious, but not too long ago she had believed that ghosts weren’t real, and she sure was wrong about that, so she could be wrong about this too.

But then she starts catching glimpses of Sam or Tucker or both of them sneaking around, grabbing medical supplies and tools like squirrels gathering acorns for winter. She hears them whispering about stuff, and then as soon as she or someone else gets close they abruptly cut their conversation short. 

So yeah, Jazz is pretty sure that the two of them are hiding something. But the only hint pointing towards whatever that something is that she has is that it’s probably ghost related. They wouldn’t be targeting the supplies they use for the ghosts if that weren’t the case.

But, for a while, Jazz can’t really do anything about it. She’s far too busy rushing around to help as many ghosts and nurses as she can, plus her parents and also her own studies to become a licensed therapist. To say she’s been busy would be an understatement. She doesn’t want to tell on either Sam or Tucker for taking things, because the things they take are easily replaceable and the two of them are invaluable to the team, so for a while she just ignores it.

Until one day when she’s walking back home on a nice autumn evening and a fight breaks out in the streets between Phantom and Ember.

Jazz has seen these kind of fights before, everyone in Amity has, but after a solid year of ghost encounters and threats, you would think the town would have grown used to them by now. But the fact is, no matter how many times Jazz sees them, she can’t help but think that it looks like two dragons duking it out in the most violent way possible. 

Ember, now perched in the center of the street with her guitar thrown over his back and a joyous grin on her face, doesn’t dodge Phantom’s incoming attack but instead grabs him by the throat and swings him into the cement below them. Phantom phases through it and comes out fine just behind her, tackling her to the ground with a snarl. She laughs and says something demeaning, to which Phantom—still with his face twisted into a feral aggression Jazz has only seen on big cats fighting to the death—responds with his own witty quip. 

Ember grabs Phantom by the shoulders and flips them, opening her maw wide to snap her teeth down on his shoulder. Phantom makes a gurgling noise and then a wave of frost springs up between them, breaking them apart. Ember shakes the icy crystals off her arms and swings her guitar to the front of her body instead. If Jazz wasn’t already pretty far away, that would be the time to back up even farther. 

Phantom hisses and launches himself forward in a vain attempt to stop her before she can hit the strings, but he’s not fast enough and instead receives the full brunt of Ember’s musical attack. He goes tumbling pretty far, but he brushes it off quickly and leaps right back to her. 

Phantom manages to swerve around the next attack and then the two of them are locked together in a mess of limbs and fangs. 

A swipe to the side of his head, a punch to her stomach, a stomp on the end of his tail, a sharp bite to her wrist. Ember’s hair whips around like hellfire behind her as they swipe and swat at each other. Their growling battle is small but fierce, and all of Amity knows to stay far away. 

Phantom reaches for what would have been a vicious slash to her back, but stops mid-attack with his head perked up like he’s listening to something. Ember takes the distraction and elbows him in the side, going for her own bloody swipe to his stomach. He rolls out of the way and springs back up, but instead of lunging for Ember again, he throws a smirk and a “Catch me if you can!” behind his back before he jets off in the opposite direction.

It’s unusual for Phantom, and Jazz watches curiously as Ember snarls and races after him. They disappear into a nearby alley, one that happens to be within close walking distance for Jazz. And well, she admits that sometimes she’s a bit too curious for her own good, but as she inches closer to the mouth of the enclosed space she can also admit that this is very stupid. She keeps going anyway.

Cautiously tipping her head to look around the corner, she sees a flash of light and briefly hears Ember’s enraged voice, before all goes quiet and she can see again.

At the end of the dead-end space, she sees not just Phantom, but also Sam and Tucker. Jazz is pretty sure she goes lightheaded for a second as Phantom hovers near them, for the briefest moment worried that he might do something to them, before all three of them look at each other and break out into matching grins.

Tucker pumps his fist in the air with a triumphant “Yes!” while Phantom swirls partially around them with an echoing note of laughter. His sharp fangs flash white in the space of a smile and Sam responds in kind, clearly not afraid of him or his deadly teeth. 

“It worked!” Phantom exclaims excitedly before drifting closer to give them a closer look at a mechanical-looking cylinder that Jazz has just now realized he’s holding. That definitely wasn’t in his hands before. Did Tucker give it to him? “So what do we do now? She’s going to be okay in here, right?”

Tucker nods with all the certainty of someone who’s been working on a project for a very long time. Is that where all the parts they’ve been taking have been going? 

“She should be fine as long as you don’t break it while she’s still inside. And she’ll probably still be okay if that happens too, but I don’t know if we can safely test that.”

Phantom nods, staring at the device in appreciation. And then his ear twitches, he glances up and immediately locks eyes with Jazz—

Phantom freezes. And when Sam and Tucker look to see what he’s staring at, they freeze too. 

There’s a long moment where nobody dares even breathe.

Jazz takes a step forward, about to apologize and explain herself, but as soon as she moves Phantom flinches back. A light hiss escapes him before he swiftly spins around to fly the opposite direction and turns invisible as he goes. 

“Phantom, wait—“ she tries, but he’s already gone. She combs a hand through some of her hair and grimaces at herself. “Oh boy, I’ve done it now.”

Sam and Tucker glance at each other and then back at her warily. 

“Uh, Jazz,” Tucker begins with a nervous voice crack, “what are you doing here?”

She makes her way over to them, away from the view of the street, and tries to project the guilt she’s feeling so they can see it clearly. 

“I thought you guys and Phantom were acting weird, so I kind of followed him here. Completely on accident!” she rushes to say. “He just happened to be nearby and I was curious so…”

Tucker laughs incredulously. “So… what are you going to do then?”

Jazz’s eyes widen. “Well I’m not going to turn you in to the GIW if that’s what you’re thinking! Who do you think I am?”

Sam looks off to the side like she was actually thinking Jazz might do such a thing and Jazz shoots her a horrified look. She raises her hands defensively.

“Hey, I was thinking more like you might want us to stop interacting with Phantom. Or like, try to force him to get medical treatment like the hospital has been wanting for months.”

Jazz shakes her head and crosses her arms. “Medical autonomy is very important! If Phantom doesn’t want to seek treatment then I might be disappointed but I’m not about to guilt trip or force someone into doing something they really don’t want to do, even if I could force Phantom to do anything. As for interacting with him…”

Tucker fidgets in place before her, and even Sam looks a bit nervous at what Jazz is about to say. They really care about this, don’t they?

“I mean, how long has this been going on? I thought Phantom had a very strict ‘no talking to humans’ thing.”

Sam nods. “Yeah, he did, until we found him out in the woods with a hole in his side about to fade away for good. We’ve kind of just been helping him out since about a month ago.”

Jazz winces. Phantom was about to die and he still didn’t want to go anywhere near the hospital? Is he just incredibly stubborn or is there some kind of medical trauma that’s preventing him from seeking help? It worries her because she’s put her very heart and soul into that hospital, so for a ghost to keep suffering on their own because the very idea of going there is repulsive is… disheartening. 

“If you’ve been talking to him for a month then if he wanted to eat you I’m pretty sure he would have done it by now, so I don’t really have a reason to stop you.” She shrugs. 

“I’m still worried though. I mean, I don’t know much about ecto-inventions but you could have died today, and nobody would have known you were here. Did you have any kind of backup plan for if things went wrong?”

Sam looks away with a pout and Tucker fidgets harder, refusing to look her in the eyes. So they didn’t have a backup plan then. 

Jazz sighs. She really shouldn’t be surprised, considering the two of them have always been more proactive about helping ghosts than practically everyone else in town. Even when their plans were more hope than anything, they always seemed to come out on top anyway. 

“We had Phantom,” Tucker tries to argue weakly. 

And yeah, Phantom might be one of the strongest ghosts in Amity and is fiercely protective of its residents—both human and ghost—but he can’t be relied on for everything. Phantom may be powerful and attentive to the well-being of Amity Park, but he can’t be everywhere at once and even he makes mistakes sometimes. 

She doesn’t say any of that though, because her raised eyebrow and the way both Sam and Tucker look away guiltily conveys the message well enough.

Jazz sighs again. “By the way, is Phantom okay? Some of those swipes from Ember looked like they hurt.”

Sam hums and shrugs one shoulder before speaking towards the air.

“Hey Phantom, are you still here?”

There’s a moment of silence where Jazz is sure that he’s not, and it stretches on into a few more moments before—

“Yes.”

The disembodied voice above them makes both Jazz and Tucker jump. The playful echo from before has been replaced with more of a hiss like shattering ice. Jazz shivers in the suddenly cold and tense air and wonders just where Phantom actually is. He stays invisible, and Jazz imagines he’s circling above them like a hungry vulture. 

But now that Jazz knows Phantom is here and she can actually talk to him, she pushes past her discomfort to address him directly. She wouldn’t want to be rude and talk about him like he’s not there, after all, even if he is terrifying.

“Are you hurt? I saw you get hit a few times…”

More silence stretches on. A brush of cold air falls over her shoulder and she whips her head to the side. Toxic green eyes stare back at her, and she barely holds in a scream as she flinches back. 

He drifts farther away from her too, tilting his head as he looks her up and down. As Jazz forces herself to take a deep breath to calm herself, she examines Phantom in turn. 

He’s tense and partially turned away from her, subtly guarding his chest and throat with the angle he’s at. His face is blank but his eyes are intense and searching, unblinking. 

The device from before is still in one clawed hand, gripped tightly. The scratches from earlier can still be found on his body, but don’t seem as bad as they did just a few minutes ago. The claw marks on the left side of his head, barely missing his eye and taking a chunk out of his ear, are already closing up, turning from a deep green to the pale white of his skin. The bite on his shoulder is more shallow than she thought, and although his suit doesn’t seem to heal itself like the flesh beneath does, the punctures are already half as big as the tears around them. There are a few other gashes here and there, but they’re small and don’t seem to be bothering Phantom at all. At least, not in a way that he’s willing to show her right now.

“I’m fine,” he says, not as venomous as before but still not nearly as carefree as he was when he didn’t realize Jazz was there. 

She clears her throat. “I hope me being here isn’t too stressful for you. I can… leave, if you want.”

She tries to ignore the overwhelming part of her that absolutely does not want to leave right now. Jazz is beyond curious about him, and has been for a long time. 

What motivates him? Why is he so afraid of humans, even more so than every other ghost? Why does he keep protecting everyone in Amity Park despite being so elusive? Why is he so different than the other ghosts? And how in the world did Sam and Tucker manage to befriend him?

These questions keep her up at night, and she would love to hear more from Phantom himself. But she can also recognize that asking Phantom all of the questions that he’s refused to answer for anyone, even ghosts, would just make him uncomfortable at best and outright hostile at worst. 

So, despite her desire to know more about him, she gives him a way out. Right now, he can tell her if he never wants to see her again, and she would completely understand. 

Phantom grimaces and briefly glances over to Sam and Tucker before looking back at Jazz again just as quickly. There’s a flash of expression across his face that goes by almost too quickly to comprehend, but Jazz thinks she sees something like vulnerability there. 

“You can’t tell the Fentons—your parents.”

Jazz’s eyes widen. First surprised that Phantom is still scared of her parents after all this time and next that he’s willing to let her stay at all. Are her parents the reason that Phantom refuses to go anywhere near the hospital? Is he really so distrustful of the former ghost hunters?

“Yeah, I can do that. Is… me being here actually what you want?”

Phantom glances away and shrugs. “Today was a small fight, but sometimes it’s worse. Sam and Tucker have been helping me… I guess you could too… if you want…”

He trails off uncertainly, but Jazz picks up the rest.

“Of course! I’m more of the resident therapist but I’ve had lots of experience working with the nurses and ghosts.”

She blinks, worriedly turning back to Sam and Tucker. “Have you two been patching him up by yourselves?”

They both nod at her, and Tucker looks vaguely like he’s having flashbacks to some kind of disaster. These two are just volunteers. They were both too young to be let near any of the real medical procedures so all they’ve seen is some light nurse work. Sometimes they bring in an injured ghost, but they’ve never operated on one. 

They must have picked up enough to help though, because thankfully Phantom is still alive (or as alive as a ghost can be), but Jazz knows she would never want to be on the receiving end of stitch work from either of them.

“Wow, okay. From now on, if there’s a medical emergency, you call me. I’m so sorry you’ve had to deal with this on your own,” she directs at all of them. 

She eyes the scratches across Phantom’s head, mostly healed over by now but still visible as they gradually disappear. 

Phantom looks away and floats closer to Sam and Tucker. Jazz isn’t sure if the motion is more out of protectiveness for them or comfort for him. Maybe it’s both.

Tucker glances down at the device in Phantom’s hand and jolts.

“Oh! So, the thermos. Basically all you have to do now is go to wherever you want to release Ember—preferably the Ghost Zone—and then press this button to eject everything that’s stored inside.”

Phantom nods seriously, focusing his attention on Tucker now but still noticeably keeping Jazz in his periphery. 

“And that’s all there is to it! Let me know if I need to change or improve anything.”

Phantom’s face stretches into a wide grin, more sharp teeth than a genuine smile. Tucker doesn’t seem all that bothered by it, strangely enough.

“Sure thing.”

Phantom floats up, casting one last uncertain glance at Jazz before turning invisible and flying away. 

Jazz turns back to the two kids in front of her. “Well, I should get going too. But I’ll see you guys around, alright?”

They both smile and nod, and Jazz chuckles as she makes her way out of the alley and back towards her house. 

But on the way, there’s a little nagging whisper in the back of her head that tells her something about this seems almost… familiar. 

Phantom’s sharpened features and otherworldly white glow make him seem so much different, not just compared to humans but also other ghosts. The way he fights is more like an animal than a person, despite the jokes he likes to make. Even the way he moves is more predatory than the other ghosts, keeping himself wound up to fight at a moment’s notice. 

But none of that is what really draws Jazz’s attention. No, she thinks about the easy smile and joy he had shown moments before realizing Jazz was there, when it was just the three of them having fun. Phantom always seems so fearless, but she forgot just how young he is—or was. Ghosts don’t age after death, so he could be centuries old for all Jazz knows. But Jazz has met young ghosts who are older than they seem before, and while they may have a darkened and cynical edge to them sometimes, they still act like kids. Aging as a ghost gives them more memories and experiences, but it doesn’t change the way their minds naturally work. 

The way Tucker and Sam don’t seem to mind the flash of Phantom’s fangs or the unblinking stare, the way they all seem comfortable around each other…

Jazz reaches the front door of the house and swings it open, only to step inside and immediately realize what about this whole situation is so familiar to her. 

The door closes behind her and with a gasp she presses her back against it. She slides down it to the floor with tears gathering in her eyes. 

Something about the way Phantom was smiling, the easy confidence he had around Sam and Tucker, the way he froze when he saw Jazz like he had been caught with his hand in the cookie jar—

Jazz brings a shaking hand up to her mouth as she realizes that Phantom looked just like Danny.

Chapter Text

Phantom spends his days and nights helping others. It’s rare that he’ll take time off for himself when there are so many ghost hunter traps to dismantle and bigger, badder ghosts trying to steal his haunt from him. Plus there’s the GIW on his back, trying to lay him out on a table to cut him open. 

He spends a lot of time resting to heal, more often than he would like. Every minute he’s still recovering from a fight gives the hunters more opportunity to take a ghost away. Every hour is a new trap set, a new gun armed, another ghost gone.

He knows he’s pushing himself too much tonight. He’s injured this time not from a ghost fight but from a trap. He thought it was just a simple net trap like he’s seen a thousand times before, but the hunters must be getting wise to his tricks because as soon as that one was taken care of, there was a sudden spray of red-tinged acidic ectoplasm, and he was too slow to react. 

He should have been more observant, should have been faster, should have known, somehow. His own stupidity is why he’s refusing to rest this time. He should have been more careful, and this is what he gets for thinking anything that the hunters do would be that easy. 

Now there’s another hole in his side. There’s a rumbling, amused sound in his throat as he remembers the last time he was wandering around the woods looking like this. It’s not nearly as bad as it was when Sam and Tucker found him. It’s shallow but more spread out, barely leaking any ectoplasm but still painful. He can see three of his ribs poking out too. It’s not a life-threatening wound, but it is very uncomfortable. And if he were resting right now, he figures it would take a few hours to heal. 

He doesn’t have time for that though. Too many traps, too many hunters, too many things to do before he can sleep for the night. He’ll get around to it later.

He finds another trap, a wire one this time, and those barely take one blast of ectoplasm from his hands to destroy. They might be small and fragile if hit at the right spot, but the kinds of injuries that ghosts get from these things are brutal. 

The next trap is another simple net, and he takes that one out at a distance as well. It falls to the ground without anything caught below it and Phantom blasts it until it can’t be used anymore. 

Another net trap, and then he’s coming to one of the more professional traps. A big cage, flattened out on the ground and ready to form itself into a box as soon as something floats over it. The whole thing is made of metal, with a contraption on the outside to prevent intangibility. Even Phantom would have trouble getting out of this one. His ice and blasts wouldn’t do much unless he worked on it for a while, and by then hunters would have caught up to him. If he wasn’t able to duplicate himself, he would have no way out, and most ghosts don’t have even half of the abilities that Phantom has, so it would be impenetrable for them.

Speaking of duplication… Phantom splits himself in two, the other clone of him already knowing what to do as he floats over to the trap.

The walls of the cage spring up around him, thick metal bars sealing him off from the rest of the world. He’s not worried though, as the real Phantom floats up to the top of the cage and easily breaks the intangibility-preventing device. The clone floats through the bars and meshes back with Phantom, and the cage is useless now. But if hunters come back then they can always reuse it, so he takes it, turns it intangible with him, and drags it deep underground, most likely never to be seen again. If they want it, they’re going to have to bring some heavy digging equipment, and Phantom doubts that the GIW would want to bring attention to themselves like that. They’ll be forced to make a new one instead. Overall, a decent day of work, Phantom concludes.

The wound on his side is itchy as it slowly heals, and he resists the urge to scratch at it as he flies out of the forest back towards the town. He keeps himself invisible as he watches Amity from above, making sure no trouble is brewing and all the ghosts are where they should be. He checks over the abandoned playground briefly, and the graveyard and abandoned railroad tracks after that. There’s also an old skate park that barely sees any use anymore, and Phantom knows that ghosts have been making homes there as well. That place isn’t being protected by the hospital yet, so he keeps a closer eye out for hunters or GIW over there. He visits the hospital too, but doesn’t dare get any closer to it than his viewing point a few buildings away. Even with invisibility, the Fentons are there, and they aren’t hostile towards Phantom like the GIW is but they probably have tech advanced enough to sense or see him anyway. It’s a risk he isn’t willing to take just yet.

The chilling breath of his ghost sense alerts him to a nearby ghost, but the familiar aura doesn’t worry him as they approach. 

“What happened to you?” the Box Ghost asks when Phantom touches down on the darkened, empty street of Amity Park late at night. He’s near Tucker’s house. He’s been considering popping in to see what Tucker is planning on inventing next, and to tell him about how successful the thermos has been, but after their run-in with Jazz, he’s been hesitant.

Now Boxy floats up to him, lazily flashing his fangs but keeping his posture open to show that he isn’t a threat right now. Phantom and Boxy haven’t fought in a while, the other ghost more interested in inconveniencing humans than getting ripped apart, because Phantom has only grown in power since their first fight and these days he wouldn’t stand a chance.

“Nothing. Just some stupid mistake,” Phantom waves off. Boxy doesn’t look convinced, but he’s not about to call Phantom out on that. 

“Looking for hunters? Haven’t seen any around here in a while.”

Phantom shakes his head and floats higher, above the buildings to a higher vantage point. The night sky sparkles above him as Boxy follows him up. Phantom turns to Boxy curiously.

“How have Lunch Lady and Box Lunch been? I haven’t seen either of them for a few weeks.”

Boxy holds up a hand and tilts it back and forth in a “so-so” motion. “Lunch tried to remake the lunch line burgers at home and can’t get them right, says they have too much flavor, but she keeps trying. BL just does whatever she wants.” Boxy shrugs.

Phantom smiles. While he hasn’t fought Lunch Lady in a long time either, that’s mostly because she hasn’t had a reason to show up and get angry at the school. Box Lunch, on the other hand, is young and full of childlike confidence, so she still likes to bother Phantom whenever she thinks she can win (which is most of the time). It’s kind of endearing. Phantom sometimes catches himself thinking it feels a lot like having a younger sister, but he always stops that train of thought before it can really go anywhere. 

“Sounds like they’re doing fine then,” he murmurs.

They float in companionable silence for a few minutes, taking in the scenery around them. The town never changes, but it’s endearing in its simpleness. At least, that’s how Phantom sees it. 

The same cracks in the bricks of the old library, the same pothole on the corner that never gets filled, the same untouched Christmas lights on the old lady’s house since she first moved in. A few new people, a few traveling ghosts, maybe some small natural disaster every once in a while, but always the same stars in the sky. With as hectic as Phantom’s life is, he’s learned to appreciate the constants. He likes it when things are predictable, it makes them easier to deal with.

“Y’know,” Boxy begins, “you could always just take a break.”

He doesn’t glance at Phantom’s wound, but he feels like the other ghost’s attention is there anyway, and he frowns at the feeling of being judged. 

“I’ve got a town to protect,” he grumbles.

“You do that like every day. Constantly. One break won’t revive you.”

Phantom chuckles at the turn of phrase and Boxy smiles proudly. 

“Are you offering to take over for me for the night or something? Because if so then you’re gonna have to try harder than that.”

Boxy rolls his eyes. “I’m trying to get you to take care of yourself. You’re like, the most—um, I don’t know the word.” He furrows his brow, thinking deeply about what he’s trying to say.

Phantom chuckles and goes along with it. Oddly enough, he’s actually enjoying Boxy’s company, despite the playful criticism. 

“Describe it to me.”

Boxy holds his chin thoughtfully. “It’s like when someone really cares about something, so they put all of their effort into it, but they forget that they need to take care of their body too.”

Phantom hums, tilting his head. “What, like extreme passion? Carelessness?”

Boxy shakes his head. “It’s when someone would do anything to protect another person, but they don’t care if they get hurt to do it.”

Phantom chuckles again, but this time nervously. Boxy can be weirdly observant sometimes, and he wasn’t expecting to feel emotionally attacked like this tonight.

“Do you mean self-sacrificing?”

Boxy lights up excitedly. “Yes! That’s the word. Self-sacrificing. You should take a break, instead of burning yourself up to do things all the time.”

Phantom shrugs. “I guess…”

Jeez, what would he even do on a break? Sleep all day? Take a leisurely walk through the hunter-infested woods? Go to the public pool? He shivers at the thought. He would either get screamed at by the regular alive people there or accidentally freeze the water over. 

Phantom isn’t really one to just not do things. He’s a ghost of action, always needs to be doing something. Nothing good ever comes from him sitting still, even when it’s necessary. At best he’s bored, and at worst someone gets killed because of his inaction.

He’s so lost in thought that he almost doesn’t notice another frosty breath from his mouth, his ghost sense alerting him to the feeling of another ghost, familiar in a much different way. His eyes widen and he’s about to warn Boxy, but by then it’s already too late.

In a blur of white and red, a ghostly body slams into Phantom’s side, sending him careening into the side of a house too quickly to use his intangibility. A large hand with claws much longer than his own holds his head there and he scrambles to get them to let him go.

“Little Badger,” a voice hisses in his ear mockingly. “It’s been a while. How have you been?”

With a snarl, Phantom shoots a blast of ectoplasm at his stomach. Plasmius, in all his insane, caped glory, turns intangible to avoid it, dropping Phantom in the process.

Phantom whirls around to face him, and Plasmius floats not far away with a smug grin and the air of someone who knows that they’re going to win. 

“Get out of my haunt,” he hisses in Ghostspeak, too angry to use regular English. The words have more meaning in a ghost’s language than they do in a human’s anyway.

Plasmius lets out a rumbling laugh, freely showing his sharpened teeth and aggressive posture. It’s a clear sign that he isn’t about to back down. He wants Phantom’s haunt, and he’s going to fight to get it. 

“As if you can make me.”

And, well, he kind of has a point there. Plasmius is powerful, more experienced, and any ability Phantom has he can match with one of his own. Phantom might be able to beat him on a good day, but the itch of his still-healing side is a good way to tell that this is not a good day for him. He’s already weakened from that and from using his abilities all day without rest inbetween to recharge. And worse, Plasmius probably chose to attack him now knowing exactly that. 

Without warning, Plasmius launches himself at Phantom again, his hands lighting up with red, fiery ectoplasm as he lunges for Phantom’s throat.

Phantom turns intangible and then tangible again to shoot his own ectoplasmic blast at Plasmius’s back. It barely makes a scorch on him, and he whirls around with all the speed of a lightning strike.

Claws narrowly miss his chest and instead rake down his upper right arm, drawing a pained yelp from him. Then there’s an insanely strong kick to his stomach that sends him straight down. He collides with the concrete below, and a wheeze leaves him as he rolls out of the way of another attack aimed for his core . Plasmius isn’t messing around right now, and Phantom needs to be more careful.

He turns intangible and speeds away, Plasmius snarling just behind him. 

He sees Boxy floating nervously nearby and yells at him to “Get out of here!” Phantom breathes a sigh of relief as he turns tail and flies away. 

The relief is short-lived though, as a red ectoplasm-charged hand wraps around the end of his tail and yanks him back. He honestly didn’t know that Plasmius could still grab him even while intangible, which makes this fight a whole lot more difficult. 

This time he goes flying over the houses. He slows himself in the air and finds himself floating above the next street over. He’s not sure if it’s intentional, but he distinctly notices that Plasmius has thrown him into an area where nothing is nearby. Sam and Tucker are farther away, all the abandoned places and the graveyard are scattered in all directions, and the hospital is blurry in the distance with how far away it is. The only things around here are innocent humans. Things and people that Plasmius can exploit easily. This is not looking good for Phantom.

Plasmius appears almost out of nowhere, shooting a fiery blast towards Phantom before bodily lunging at him again. Phantom dodges the blast but doesn’t see the physical attack until it’s already too late. Claws slice at his already injured side, and he cries out as his wound pulses in pain. The once-shallow injury isn’t very shallow anymore. 

Deciding that his best bet is to just get as far away as possible, Phantom goes invisible and intangible to fly away as fast as he can. He doesn’t care which direction he’s going as long as it’s away.

Plasmius doesn’t take kindly to runners though, and then he’s still dodging his attacks while he’s running. 

“Little Badger,” Plasmius mocks not far behind him, going for another swipe that Phantom barely manages to get out of the way of in time. “This game grows tiresome. Why don’t you show me what you can really do, hm?”

Phantom knows what he’s trying to do, rile him up so he uses his more powerful abilities just to tire himself out more quickly. But, with the situation he’s currently in, it really is the best bet that he has right now.

With stuttering lungs and a groan of pain, he splits off a clone of himself, identical in every way. The two of them immediately go in two different directions. He doesn’t bother with invisibility or intangibility anymore, knows it’ll only tire him out more, so he drops them both to flee.

He doesn’t know how he knows, but Plasmius immediately locks onto the real Phantom and gives chase. His clone skids to a halt mid-air and whirls around to defend him. A few blasts of ectoplasm are aimed at Plasmius’s back but one hit from the other ghost is all it takes for the clone to dissolve and disappear. 

He tries to fly through some buildings in hopes that Plasmius will lose sight of him, but the ghost tears after him furiously and doesn’t give up the chase. Even going underground doesn’t help. 

When he comes up again he does a trick where he shoots some ectoplasm before Plasmius can come up after him, which luckily manages to hit him square in the shoulder, but it only seems to make him more angry. 

Finally, the running is over when Plasmius grabs hold of him again. Surprised, Phantom accidentally releases his intangibility and gets thrown into the cement ground. Plasmius doesn’t let up though, and then he holds his hand up, pushes his claws together, and plunges them right into Phantom’s shoulder. 

He screams, automatically lashing out at Plasmius’s arm, but he doesn’t manage to do much more than scratch him. 

Plasmius’s other hand reaches for Phantom’s face. Long claws dig into his cheeks firmly enough to keep him still but not enough to draw blood yet, and he forces Phantom to look him in the eye.

Intimidating blood red meets terrified toxic green, and Plasmius gives him a wide, sharp grin.

“I’ve got you now, Little Badger.”

“Phantom!”

Startled by the interrupting voice, Phantom glances to the side and realizes with mounting horror that he must have accidentally headed towards the hospital, because the bricks of the one place in Amity that he avoids like the plague loom above him now. People are filtering out of the doors to watch the ghost fight, and Sam, Tucker, and Jazz are all there, watching him and Plasmius with a mixture of worry and anger respectively. There are other people too. Nurses and civilians, a few ghosts, all eyes on him. 

His core thrums with more terror in that moment than it ever has in his life—or his unlife.

His eyes snap back to Plasmius, and the other ghost’s grin somehow manages to get bigger. 

“This is perfect, actually,” he drawls. “We have a decent audience. Surely this will be enough people to spread the word around.”

Before he can ask what he’s talking about, Plasmius leans in closer, and Phantom grunts in pain as the claws dig into him further. His tail writhes in place uselessly. 

“I will show everyone who you really are, Daniel,” he whispers. 

Phantom’s eyes go wide with fear and rage. This whole thing is all just one big plot to get his parents to leave each other, so Vlad can swoop in and take Phantom’s mom for himself. Revealing Phantom’s real identity would probably split the very town apart at the seams. It wouldn’t just ruin his parents, it would ruin everyone. 

This is all just some sick game to him. Just one more evil plot in a long line of plots, no different from the rest. For Phantom, this is everything. This is his life that Plasmius is playing with, and Phantom doesn’t take kindly to intruders in his haunt. 

Plasmius’s eyes widen almost comically as Phantom takes in a deep breath. And then he lets it out in a terrifying loud scream.

Plasmius goes flying off him, and despite the pain of having the claws abruptly ripped out of him, Phantom shoves himself up to keep the wail going. His claws dig into the road below to keep himself steady as Plasmius is blasted with all the fury of someone who has had enough. 

He cuts the wail off only to spread a line of frost along the ground. It races towards where Plasmius is lying on the ground and shoots up into a large wall, crashing into him. Then, while Plasmius is still shrugging the crystals off of himself, Phantom shoves the ground to launch himself forward. A deep growl leaves him as green lights glow in his hands and he slams his fists through the ice to hit Plasmius directly. 

This time, he actually manages to do some damage. Plasmius reels back as Phantom’s fist collides with his jaw first and his stomach next. Before he can go further though, Plasmius’s hand shoots out to grab him. Phantom dodges and pulls back to direct another ghostly wail at him, driving him to the ground.

Only a blast of red ectoplasm to Phantom’s chest gets him to stop. From the way it doesn’t burn much but instead makes him wheeze from the force of the impact, he can tell that’s all that Plasmius was trying to do. 

Plasmius straightens himself up with an angry snarl and a dramatic flare of his cape. Then it’s the two of them facing off on equal footing. Phantom bares his teeth in a fearsome hiss and Plasmius responds with an arrogant growl. 

They move at the same time. Plasmius goes for a slash while Phantom meets him with an ecto blast, and neither of them can dodge the other in time. Plasmius gets a hit to the face, ruining his perfect hair and scorching one of his pointed ears, while Phantom gets a vicious slash to his hip that feels like it scratches bone.

They both land on opposite sides of each other, with Phantom forming his tail back into legs as he hits the ground. 

But in the brief moment that Phantom is catching his breath, Plasmius lunges at him too quickly, and he underestimates just how much energy he’s used for this fight, and how much ectoplasm he’s lost from all the cuts on his body. He tries to summon frost to his fingertips, but for a heart-stopping moment he realizes it’s not working. The frost flakes off and melts on the ground before it can really form, and for a moment he’s left defenseless.

He opens his mouth for another wail, but the sound gets choked off as Plasmius’s hand wraps around his throat and slams him down. With a snarl, his claws dig into Plasmius’s wrist, but the other ghost doesn’t even seem to notice. 

He’s not as smug as before as he leans over Phantom again. Now he looks a lot more annoyed and genuinely angry. He must not have expected Phantom to put up so much of a fight. 

“This game has gone on long enough,” he growls lowly. 

“Couldn’t agree more,” Phantom gasps out. “There’s nothing you can do to show them who I am right now, so you might as well give up.”

Plasmius hums and tilts his head like he’s actually thinking about it, though they both know better than that. “You’re right.”

Phantom manages to get his intangibility working just long enough to slip out of Plasmius’s grasp, but before he can blink he’s being pressed down again. His face hits the ground as Plasmius’s glowing red hand digs its claws into his back and keeps him there. His own claws scramble against the ground in an effort to drag himself away, but Plasmius’s grip is firm and absolute. His intangibility flickers in and out but doesn’t get him anywhere.

“But,” Plasmius continues playfully, “I can always find a way and come back later.”

Phantom is about to agree that that’s a great idea, but then Plasmius is leaning further over him and he realizes that he’s not about to just let Phantom go.

Plasmius opens his jaw wide and Phantom’s scrambling grows frantic. His claws scrape futilely against the hard ground, and if a few of them get ripped out then he doesn’t notice, too focused on the fangs getting closer to his neck—

Plasmius’s teeth dig into the back of his neck and squeeze. With a hiccuping gasp, Phantom reaches up to try and claw at Plasmius’s face. His bloodied claws scrape uselessly against flesh too tough for him to pierce, weak as he is right now.

Plasmius growls and Phantom can feel it as the fangs dig further in. 

Looking around frantically for something anything to help him out of this, his eyes lock onto a familiar pair still watching him in the crowd.

Sam and Tucker stand there, watching him with mounting horror on their faces. 

He can’t do anything, can’t get out of this like he usually does. And Sam and Tucker—his friends , the only ones he’s had in a very long time—are about to watch him disappear for good. Sprites darker than the night sky above anxiously flit around their heads, only growing bigger as more emotions are funneled into them. 

Black is for fear. Black is for horror. Black is reserved for when you’re watching someone die.

Everyone is here, standing on the sidewalks and the street in a loose circle around him. He can’t let them watch this. He’s supposed to protect them, supposed to help them.

He needs to get up, get away, just do something, anything.

Plasmius presses down. There’s a sickening crunch, and then the world goes dark.

He thinks he hears someone scream his name (he’s not sure which one).

Chapter Text

Tucker’s thoughts float away. 

Funnily enough, he finds himself thinking about video games. He thinks about happier memories, about sitting inside on hot summer days with the few friends he’s had over the years playing together. His room has always been a mess, but they always made it work. It was almost comforting that way, surrounded by clutter and forcing to all cram themselves on the bed to fit. 

The memory fades away before he can really grasp it, before he can see who else is on that bed with him, right beside Sam and him.

But he doesn’t remember video games being this terrifying. 

He doesn’t remember seeing any of his friends this hurt.

And he definitely doesn’t remember blood being green.

Phantom’s claws scramble uselessly against the bigger ghost’s face before he easily picks Sam and Tucker out of the crowd and locks his eyes onto them. He looks like he’s drinking up the sight of them, like he thinks he won’t be able to see them again. He looks so small and scared, far more than the protector of Amity has ever been seen before.

Tucker can just barely hear the crunch from his place fairly far away from the scene, and then Phantom goes terrifyingly limp. His eyes stay open, but they’re glazed over and unseeing as they drift down to look at the ground instead. He doesn’t move at all after that.

Why does Tucker think it looks like he’s dead?

A horror-filled scream echoes in his ears as Jazz calls out Phantom’s name and stupidly rushes forward like she’s about to help him. 

The attacking ghost growls and tugs Phantom up by just his teeth like he weighs nothing at all. It looks sort of like a lion grabbing its cub to carry it around. Or maybe a more accurate comparison would be a lion dragging a dead antelope back to the rest of the pride, to eat it. 

Ectoplasm drips from Phantom’s many wounds and stains the front of the ghost’s clothes, but he doesn’t seem to care as he starts to float up into the air. 

That is, until a cardboard box hits him square on the head and he pauses to angrily stare at the offender. 

The Box Ghost floats nearby, hands held in front of him as he controls a few more boxes to float up to him. He stares at the other ghost with fear but also determination.

“Let him go!” he yells. And despite looking pretty wimpy and pathetic compared to the other one, the Box Ghost stands his ground.

The other ghost gives a throaty chuckle, muffled by the other ghost still held in his jaws. His hands start to glow that same ominous red color from before, ready to attack.

But then a wrench thuds against his back and he pauses again. He turns to see another ghost, a young man beside a motorcycle that Tucker recognizes as the infamous Johnny 13 that all the girls at school are always talking about. The normally laid-back biker looks genuinely angry now, with his girlfriend equally annoyed beside him. 

“Yeah, let him go!” 

The other ghosts around them seem to be emboldened by the two of them fighting back against Phantom's attacker. A pretty large ghost with a long beard takes a rock and throws it at him. Another young woman with nothing but empty space between her torso and the lower half of her body reaches into a nearby trash can and does the same with an empty soda bottle. 

The ghost growls in warning but the others don’t listen. Soon enough, all the ghosts in the crowd are banding together in a slowly-growing swarm. The Box Ghost takes the opportunity to bombard him with more boxes than Tucker has ever seen in one place at a time, and Johnny 13’s shadow reaches up to take a sizable bite out of his arm.

The ghost shakes it all off, furiously firing his red ectoplasm blasts at anything he can, but for every ghost that goes down, two more rise up in their place. 

“Let him go!”

“Phantom is our protector!”

“You can’t have him!”

The shouts of dozens, maybe even hundreds of ghosts are soon joined by the shouts of humans as well. 

Tucker knew that a lot of people supported the hospital, but the sheer number of people that are rushing to Phantom’s defense right now is staggering. He’s never seen so much support for the little ghost before, and okay maybe he starts tearing up at the sight a bit.

The ghost looks truly overwhelmed now. Another box hits him squarely in the face at the same time a dozen other ghosts crowd around him, clawing at his cape in an effort to drag him down. It actually looks like it’s working. 

The ghost abruptly drops Phantom, and he hits the ground with a dull thud. It doesn’t look like he’s moving. He… he can’t be dead for good, can he?

The other ghosts don’t give up their assault, even as the ghost slashes them down left and right with a fearsome snarl. 

Tucker jolts as Sam grabs his wrist and starts dragging him forward. He spies Jazz ahead of them trying to worm her way to Phantom’s side, with Sam doing the same behind her. 

They pass between humans and ghosts alike, all rallying against this threat that they could never hope to beat but they try anyway. A few of the ghosts aren’t even solid at all, and when Sam finally makes her way to Jazz’s side (still dragging Tucker behind her), they pass through together.

There’s a loose circle forming around Phantom, worried onlookers wondering if they should get closer to help him or not. They don’t know how to help a ghost, and especially not one this hurt. As Jazz, Sam, and Tucker approach, Phantom starts to stir.

He’s facing away from them, but Tucker can see one of his hands dragging closer to his body before he props it up under him. 

Ectoplasm flows like a waterfall from his neck and his glowing white hair covers his face as he trembles and forces himself up. He wants to tell Phantom to fricking lay back down, you are on the verge of death what are you doing, but they’re still too far away, and the voices of hundreds of people and ghosts are too loud for Phantom to be able to hear them.

He starts floating, gathering his arms close to his chest protectively as his legs mesh into a tail. 

“Phantom!” Jazz yells as she finally breaks through the crowd and reaches out for his retreating form. But her hand slips through him like she’s trying to grab fog. He doesn’t seem to hear her, and with his back turned he doesn’t see her either. 

He floats up too high to reach and then his image flickers a bit, before he goes completely invisible. 

Jazz, Sam, and Tucker skid to a halt in the space that Phantom once was, staring after where they last saw him in shock. Ectoplasmic blood squishes beneath their shoes, and Tucker distinctly feels like he’s going to be sick. 

And then he is sick. Lucky him.

Above them, the attacking ghost roars out in a primal sort of rage. He shoots out of the group trying to swarm him and whips his head around in every direction, huffing and puffing as he goes. He must be trying to find Phantom.

Luckily though, he doesn’t seem to find anything, and he roars again. 

“Worthless pests! You don’t know what you’ve just taken from me!”

Johnny’s shadow boldly leaps up to slash at him, but all he reaches is empty air as the ghost whirls around with a dramatic swish of his cape and disappears as well. 

Silence echoes through the street. They really did it. They drove away the ghost and protected Phantom. Tucker didn’t think that Amity had it in them. 

The ghosts, having completed what they set out to do, start to disappear one by one. A few of them sink into the ground or just fly away, until soon enough there’s only a small group of living people left. 

Jazz doesn’t seem concerned with any of that though, because now she’s dragging both Sam and Tucker after her as she follows a glowing green trail.

Phantom’s blood, Tucker realizes distantly as he’s pulled along. He’s still invisible, but the ectoplasm dripping from his injuries isn’t, and Jazz is following the droplets with a grim determination set on her face that’s honestly pretty scary.

They rush down the sidewalk, leaving the others long behind them. The trail doesn’t follow the roads, and it gets tricky trying to find where it starts again after passing over a few houses. 

“I think he’s going toward the school,” Jazz says suddenly after about twenty minutes of silent walking.

And Tucker realizes that she’s right, they are heading toward the school. Is that where Phantom has been staying all this time?

It takes a while still to actually reach it, but once they come up to the school grounds they can tell that this is the place. There’s a bigger splattering of ectoplasm on the grass near the gate. It’s kind of smeared, like he fell, dragged himself a bit and then got himself to float again.

There are smaller spots of ectoplasm on some of the bricks of the building, leading up to the old bell tower. And now they know exactly where he is. Now the question is how they’re going to get up there.

As if reading his mind, Sam speaks up. “I know a way.”

It’s a Saturday, so the doors are locked for the day, but that doesn’t seem to hinder Sam at all as she reaches into one of her pockets to pull out a hair pin and expertly sticks it into the door’s lock, making it click open a few moments later. She stands up and glances back at Jazz and Tucker. 

“Don’t tell anyone I know that.”

Tucker chuckles nervously and Jazz mimes zipping her lips shut.

They walk inside, and Sam leads them through the empty halls to a dusty closet with “employees only” printed on the front. Inside, there’s a staircase leading up.

“The bell tower was boarded up years ago,” Sam explains as they climb the stairs. “But there’s still roof access. It’s not perfect but we’ll be able to get up there.”

They make it to another door, and Jazz pushes it open to show them the roof. There’s some electrical boxes and vents and stuff scattered around, but the most eye-catching thing up here is definitely the tower. It’s too tall to get up into with how short the three of them are, but with a little boost one of them might be able to make it up.

As they get closer, the air becomes noticeably more chilly. A sound reaches Tucker’s ears, like a weird cross between a rasp and the sound of glaciers grinding together. Only once they’re at the base of the tower does he realize that it’s the sound of Phantom breathing.

They all glance at each other uncertainly, and Tucker gets the impression that they’re about to walk into a sleeping grizzly bear’s den. 

Somehow they silently decide that Sam is going up first. Jazz and Tucker work together to lift her up until she can reach the ledge and pull herself the rest of the way. There’s a pause where she disappears over the side, probably looking over Phantom and reacting to what she sees. Then she leans over the side to reach her arms down for Tucker. There’s a grim expression on her face, and he almost doesn’t want to know what she’s seen.

But he’s lifted up with her anyway, and he gets a good look at what has become of Phantom.

The bell tower is surprisingly spacious. Four pillars with archways between them gives him a great view of almost the entirety of Amity below. A collection of blankets, pillows, and other soft items that kind of all look like they’ve been through a shredder are piled up on the space’s floor, with the silent bell hanging above.

And in the middle of it all is Phantom.

He’s curled up, facing away from them but with his injured left side exposed for them to see. Ghostly white ribs poke out of the oozing flesh, and four deep lines of claw-marks make it look ragged and painfully exposed. 

They can see his neck too, the two rows of fangs drowning under the ectoplasm dripping from them. 

Phantom is trembling with each wheezing breath, like the very effort is more than he can handle. Tiny crystals of frost spread across the space, turning the ruined blankets stiff and inching up the brick walls. It’s a testament to how close to fading away he is that he doesn’t notice Sam and Tucker crouching only a foot or two away from him. 

Tucker forces himself to take a breath. Sam nudges him in the shoulder and they both wordlessly reach down to bring Jazz up next. She has much the same reaction, and Tucker tries to focus on anything else but the horrifying scene in front of them.

Jazz is the first one to move forward, carefully making her way around to see Phantom from the front. She pauses to grimace once or twice, probably seeing more wounds over there. Once she’s most of the way over there, she gestures for Sam and Tucker to follow. 

Sam picks her way over with Tucker right behind her, until they both sit themselves next to Jazz.

Phantom, predictably, looks worse at this angle. 

His face is buried in his torn blankets, with his white hair shielding most of his head and the left arm he has curled around himself shielding the rest. His other arm is stretched out in front of him, the gashes of claws visible on his upper arm. The shoulder of the same arm looks like it’s been drilled into, the hole going fairly deep. Tucker was there to see that one, and it doesn’t look much better up close than it did before. There’s a reddish scorch mark in the center of his chest that looks fairly mild and another set of claw marks along his hip that look much deeper. 

There’s probably more that Tucker can’t see. Bruises or cracked bones, maybe some organ damage and who knows what else. He doesn’t know, but all of it looks painful. If Tucker has ever found himself envying Phantom before, he certainly does not right now.

“Phantom,” Jazz whispers.

Phantom doesn’t react at all. His shuddering inhales and exhales continue on a steady rhythm as he stays sleeping. 

“Phantom,” she calls again, a little louder this time.

When there’s still no reaction from the ghost, she turns to the two of them instead. 

“What do we do?” Sam asks nervously. 

“The hospital…” Jazz begins hopefully, but she shakes her head a moment later. “He’s too hurt to be moved right now. We’re going to have to try and treat him here. If I go back to the hospital to get what we need, can you two stay here and make sure he doesn’t disappear again?”

Sam and Tucker nod at the same time, despite Tucker having a few internal doubts. What would they even be able to do to stop him? He’s a ghost! Disappearing is kind of his whole thing, and two teenagers aren’t going to be much help. But despite that, he’s going to try. Hopefully he stays asleep long enough for Jazz to get what she needs and come back.

Jazz nods, determination setting in her expression once again as she shuffles past them to reach the roof access door again. She casts them one last glance before the door closes behind her and Sam and Tucker are left on their own.

Phantom’s echoing, chilly breathing fills the silence ominously and Tucker shivers in the slowly worsening cold. Sam shuffles closer to wrap an arm around his shoulders, and the two of them hunker down to wait.

Chapter Text

Tucker doesn’t know how long it is before he’s jolted out of deep thought when Phantom suddenly shudders more than usual. His fingers twitch a bit before his hand curls inward, and the constant pattern of his breathing changes.

He’s waking up, Tucker realizes, and he doesn’t know if that’s a good thing or not. 

Sam notices not long after him, and she’s more bold than he is as she calls out his name.

“Phantom?”

He doesn’t react. One of his legs twitches next, and then he shuffles a bit. The shuffling barely gets anywhere before it stops abruptly, Phantom letting out a small whine of pain muffled by the blankets he has his face pressed into. 

“Hey, Phantom?” Sam calls again.

And there’s definitely a reaction this time. Phantom tenses up, looking almost like a cat bristling its fur. He sucks in a chilling gasp and then turns his head to peek an eye out to look at them.

Any hope that Phantom might have reacted positively to Sam and Tucker invading his den (or nest? The high vantage point seems more like a bird’s nest than anything) is dashed as Phantom’s visible eye widens and he jolts back.

The air grows so cold it hurts as Phantom lurches away from them. His legs don’t seem to be responding much to him though, and moving his arms clearly hurts him. He crumples back down not far away with a grunt. He gasps in a few breaths, looking confused as he watches them.

“Wha—?”

Phantom’s voice has more of an echo than usual. The sound of cracking ice comes out of his mouth at the same time as words and Tucker wonders what that means. 

Sam holds her hands out placatingly and gives him the best puppy eyes she can muster, making herself look harmless. 

“Hey, it’s okay. We’re here to help. Just… try to breathe and calm down, alright?”

Sam inches a little bit forward and that seems to be too much for Phantom to handle because he shoves himself further away, his back pressing into one of the pillars behind him. He bares his fangs and hisses at her, not in anger but in fear.

Sam flinches back and reluctantly gives him his space. 

And well, Tucker knows he isn’t the best at this kind of stuff. He’s not going to school to become a therapist like Jazz or naturally empathetic like Sam, or even as smart as the Fentons, but Phantom is his friend, and one of the few things Tucker knows how to do well is talk to his friends. 

“Hey man, can you maybe stop making it so cold in here? I think my face is about to get frozen off.”

Sam glances at him incredulously, and Phantom seems startled as he turns his attention to Tucker. 

He looks around himself, at the ice covering the walls and Sam and Tucker shivering before him. It looks like he becomes more aware of himself, and then the temperature gets reeled in. It’s still cold, but it’s a little bit more bearable now.

“Thanks. And we’re really sorry for coming here without permission but we were really worried that you were like dying or something and we wanted to know that you were okay.”

Phantom watches the two of them warily for a few more moments before he drops his gaze to the blankets below. He winces and tries to cradle his injuries as he starts to settle in his new corner. “Already dead,” he mumbles mostly humorlessly as he lays his head back down and trembles. 

Tucker chuckles at the joke anyway, and he sees Phantom’s faint smirk before it’s covered up by another wince. He tears his claws into the blankets as his legs turn into a tail and it curls around him. He seems to settle more once it’s done, looking even smaller than he did before. 

The calm, lulling atmosphere returns to the tower. Phantom still watches them warily, but seems more preoccupied with himself than them anyway. Tucker figures he’ll probably be more upset once he’s healed and has enough energy to yell at them for basically breaking into his house. 

“I feel weak,” Phantom mumbles to them suddenly, and Sam frowns at the admission. That must not be good then. 

“Not enough energy. My—“ He hesitates, looking at Sam and Tucker consideringly for a moment before he seems to come to some kind of agreement with himself, like he’s deciding that the two of them are trustworthy. 

“My core is fragile.”

Tucker knows that he doesn’t know much about the ins and outs of ghosts, and he knows Sam doesn’t either, but they both know that a ghost’s core feeling like it’s about to break is a very bad thing.

“What does that mean for you?” Sam asks, so much worry in her tone that Tucker is almost expecting Phantom to see a sprite coming off of her.

Phantom shudders and curls up tighter, looking vulnerable as he tells them things he wouldn’t say if he weren’t on the verge of disappearing for good. 

“I’m out of energy. I’m not healing.” 

Sam gasps and Tucker winces in sympathy. 

He’s glad that they decided to stick around and help him, because if Phantom can’t use his ice like he normally does, and he’s not healing, and he’s still bleeding, then the chances of him surviving this on his own are slim to none. 

“Sprites can help you, right?” Sam asks. 

Phantom nods, a little bit of humor coloring his face as he points up towards the silent bell hanging above them. 

“There’s like six of them up there.”

Tucker blinks and looks up despite knowing he won’t be able to see any of them. Sure enough, he doesn’t, but now he’s thinking about how Phantom is even going to be able to reach them with the way he looks right now. Without energy and having a core close to breaking, can he even float?

Sam seems to have the same idea as him. “Well, if you can’t reach those ones, I can make another one for you.”

Phantom gets a complicated look on his face, like a mixture between amusement, wariness, and something else. He shudders again and stares at her for a few tense seconds until eventually he nods his ascent.

Sam shuffles closer slowly, giving Phantom plenty of time to change his mind or show her a negative reaction so she can back off. He looks uncomfortable but doesn’t push her away this time as she folds her legs and sits beside him. She leans down so he can reach her.

A moment later, Phantom winces as he reaches up and snatches a sprite out of the air. It’s a bright yellow as it twitches erratically in his hand and he brings it closer to his face hesitantly. Sam gives him an encouraging nod and backs up to give him space. He pops it into his mouth and swallows it whole. 

He twitches a bit and groans as some of his wounds start to close up. It’s a slow thing, and Tucker doubts that one sprite will be enough to help him much, but it’s something at least. 

Phantom turns his head to press his forehead against the ground and curls his arms around his torso as a sheet of frost spreads across some of the bigger injuries. It looks like it hurts as he grits his teeth and does his best to strengthen the ice to close the wounds.

Tucker is just about to suggest that maybe he shouldn’t push himself so hard right now when Phantom suddenly stops with a cry of pain. His tail lashes behind him before he goes completely limp, buried behind his torn blankets. He’s still breathing, but it’s fainter than it was before, and Tucker starts to wonder if he passed out or something.

The frost that he did manage to form falls apart almost immediately, and more ectoplasm steadily leaks from his skin. 

Sam, being the braver one, moves forward to check on the ghost. She lays a hand on his shoulder and calls his name softly.

Phantom turns his head with a wince, revealing one dull green eye. He wheezes with the effort. 

“Help…” he whispers, far more vulnerability in just that one word than Phantom has ever shown them in the weeks they’ve known him. 

One wheeze turns into two, and then it’s like he can’t stop. Tucker watches in horror as Phantom squeezes his eyes shut and trembles as he struggles to draw in air. 

“Phantom?!” Sam calls, shaking his shoulder. He just curls up tighter, clawed hands gripping his suit so hard that he tears holes into it. 

Tucker hears the roof access door open, and both his and Sam’s head snap to the side to see Jazz rushing over to them. Her own worried expression manages to grow even more worried as she takes in what she can see of Sam and Tucker before her. 

Sam is reluctant to leave Phantom’s side, but when Tucker reaches over the ledge to grab Jazz’s hand, Sam is quick to help him. Together, they pull her up and she zeroes in on Phantom’s struggling form immediately. 

“What happened?” Jazz asks over the sound of Phantom desperately trying to breathe. She pulls a backpack from her shoulders and sets it down, ripping it open to get at the contents inside. 

“He said he was out of energy,” Tucker says hurriedly. “He said his core was weak, so Sam gave him a sprite for energy but he tried to use too much and now—“

Now, he doesn’t even know. Is his core going to break? Is he going to disappear to wherever ghosts go when they die again? Tucker hopes beyond hope that this is something they can still fix.

Jazz’s expression goes stony with determination and focus as she grabs a needle out of the bag, the familiar sight of ecto-dejecto glowing inside. She quickly but surprisingly gently stabs it into Phantom’s shoulder and injects only about a quarter of it before pulling it out. 

Phantom gasps in between wheezes at the contact and his eyes shoot open. His tail writhes weakly as his wounds start to stitch themselves back together again. Phantom stares past them all, very much out of it as his breathing soon gets back under control and he settles down again. He still trembles with every raspy breath, but he’s not dying anymore.

Tucker is wound tight with tension, not knowing if his friend is going to survive this. Sam doesn’t look much better as she stares at Phantom like he’s going to fade away if she so much as blinks. 

Jazz reaches back into the bag for more supplies, thankfully explaining to them what she’s doing as she goes. Tucker really needs something to focus on.

“I can’t give him too much of the dejecto at once or his core might overload and shatter. It would be safer to save it for emergencies and use sprites instead as often as we can get him to eat them. For now, I need to stop the bleeding and replace the ectoplasm that he’s lost. We don’t have much right now—not many ghostly ectoplasm donors out there—but we’ll make do.”

She takes some gauze and starts holding it against the biggest wound on his side, pressing it down as it turns a bright green and Phantom groans below her. She quickly replaces it with new gauze and then efficiently wraps it in bandages to keep it in place like she’s done it a thousand times before. She probably has. 

The same thing happens to all of Phantom’s other injuries, until soon enough he’s all wrapped up and fast asleep. 

“He’s not out of the woods yet,” Jazz explains as she sits back with a sigh. “It wouldn’t be safe to move him right now, but I’d like to take him to the hospital as soon as possible.”

She pauses and turns to Sam and Tucker with a deeply sad look on her face that strikes a cord with both of them. 

“I just… I need to make sure he’s okay. I need… I want to be able to protect him. I mean—he’s done so much for Amity for so long with almost no recognition or support and I just…”

She trails off, but Tucker knows what she means. He picks up the rest of her sentence for her.

“You want to help him.”

Jazz nods miserably. 

“We’ll help you then,” Tucker says resolutely.

Sam glances at him, and they have a whole conversation in the way they stare at each other for a moment before she speaks.

“Yeah, we will. We’ve been trying to get him to let us help for a while now anyway.”

Tucker grins, a new levity filling the atmosphere that wasn’t there before as the tension falls away. 

“We should come up with a name for the three of us.”

“Tucker, I know what you’re thinking and you better not say it.”

“I just think that having a fun team nickname would lift the mood a little. Is that really such a crime?”

“When it’s you coming up with the name, then yes it is.”

“Come on Sam, you don’t want to hear the name I just came up with? I bet you’ll love it.”

“And I know that I will absolutely hate it.”

“I’d like to hear it, Tucker! I’m sure it’s a great name.”

“Thank you Jazz. See, Sam? Somebody appreciates me around here.”

“Don’t say it.”

“I propose that we call ourselves… the Ghostbusters!”

“I hate you, I hate you, I hate you—“

“I think it’s funny.”

“Of course you do, because you have good taste and Sam does not.”

“I’ll show you good taste—!”

“Hey! Don’t pinch me! That’s so rude.”

“Don’t say Ghostbusters ever again.”

“Okay, okay…”

“…”

“…”

“Okay but just hear me out—“

——————

Phantom drifts in and out.

Vague sensations and voices float around but are too elusive to really grasp onto. Every time he tries to pry himself out of sleep he only slips further in.

There’s comfort, and pain. And, oddly enough, despite knowing subconsciously that there are humans around him, he isn’t agitated or afraid. 

What he is is too warm. His core weakly thrums in his chest, emitting barely enough energy to heal and nothing more. He wants his ice. He wants to be cold again, but every time he reaches down to pull the icy crystals from where they always come, his core hums in displeasure, and he still remains stubbornly warm. 

The few times that he manages to open his eyes, he can barely make out anything but the vague silhouette of a person sitting next to him and the yellows and blues of little glowing sprites spinning above him. 

He’s hungry, but too weak to move to eat them, and too nauseous and disoriented to try. 

He’s comfortable, but it doesn’t make sense. He doesn’t know why.

He’s safe, but then there’s the memory of fangs on his neck and his real name being whispered back to him—

Too many eyes watching his every move, horrified at what they see and too afraid to move—

The image of lying in bed with a fever and his mom and dad leaning over him and is that medicine or poison no please don’t hurt me—

Blood gushes into his mouth and a shout rings in his ears as his teeth are closed around something too warm and fleshy to be a sprite—

Phantom rips himself away from the person in front of him, breathing heavily as blood— too red it’s supposed to be green why is it red—drips from his fangs. He frantically looks around, blurry vision eventually giving way to the scene before him.

Jazz leans away from him, eyes wide and a bloodied hand clutched to her chest. Sam and Tucker sit on either side of her, one worriedly trying to get a look at Jazz’s hand and the other staring at Phantom in shock. 

He blinks and looks around, only to find himself in the same bell tower his nest is in, the same tower he’s been in since he fell asleep. He’s not at home right now. He never was.

He looks back at Jazz and his jaw shuts with a snap as he realizes what he’s done. 

He just bit Jazz. 

He really is nothing more than another monstrous ghost, isn’t he? Mom and Dad were right about him.

“I’m sorry—“ he rasps desperately. Invisibility flickers on and off randomly as his core struggles to maintain it. He ducks his head and lowers his eyes submissively, rumbling low in his throat, the way a ghost would if they were apologizing to a more powerful ghost. It comes naturally to him, even when he knows they don’t understand the meaning of the noise. 

“I’m sorry. ’M sorry,” he repeats. He tries to wipe the blood from his mouth with the back of his shaking hand, digging his claws into his palms to keep them tucked out of sight.

Phantom flinches back when he sees Jazz try to shuffle closer out of the corner of his eye. He glances up only fast enough to see her expression morph from surprise to concern. She freezes and Phantom does the same, trying his best to get the blood off his face as he waits for Jazz to either tell him to leave or for her to leave herself. 

“Phantom, it’s okay. Can you just take a deep breath for me?”

He sucks in a breath automatically, nearly choking on the sob that accidentally slips out beside it. 

It’s not okay! He just bit her. There is no way that is ever going to be okay. 

This is exactly why he tries not to interact with humans. It’s for their own safety, for his own peace of mind. The ghosts don’t care if he’s a little violent because that’s just how ghosts are, but it’s different for humans. He forgot to be careful, forgot that he’s not supposed to drop his guard like that. Humans are fragile in a way that ghosts aren’t, and it’s been so long since he spent this much time around living people that he just isn’t used to it anymore. But, was he ever really used to it in the first place?

Invisibility takes hold for all of a few seconds. Phantom abandons his efforts of hiding the blood, it’s probably already smeared all over his face. He digs his claws into his hair and pulls just hard enough to feel it, to give him something else to focus on that isn’t the worried, saddened faces of his tentative friends.

He becomes visible again far too soon, his core refusing to give him any more time as it weakly flickers in his chest. 

“Phantom—“ Jazz tries again, reaching out to him with her good hand. He forces himself not to flinch again as she willingly comes closer.

“It’s okay, really. It was barely even that deep and it was my mistake trying to wake you up anyway. This is my fault, not yours. You have nothing to apologize for.”

She says it all so calmly, but it doesn’t make any sense . How is it Jazz’s fault that Phantom can’t control himself? How is it her fault that he’s more like a wild animal than any of the other ghosts could ever claim to be?

She lays a cautious hand on his shoulder, but when she feels how tense Phantom is she releases him but doesn’t move away. 

“You were having a nightmare, I think,” Jazz explains, and when Phantom glances at her she’s watching him carefully. His skin itches under the scrutiny.

“I tried to wake you up without knowing how you might react. I should have been more careful, or just let you wake up on your own. That was my mistake.”

Phantom finds himself unconsciously relaxing the more he listens to her voice. He knows that this is his own fault, but her calm and logical voice is oddly soothing. 

He wants to reassure her, to tell her that it’s not her fault and that he was actually dreaming about his parents, but he keeps his jaw locked firmly shut. He does trust them, he tells himself, but there are certain things that are better kept in the safety of his own mind. He doesn’t want to think about what would happen if they were to figure out who he really is, or what he’s done. 

Jazz gives him a worried look at his silence, so he forces himself to speak. 

He shakes his head and tentatively releases his head from his claws. He still keeps them hidden, but rests them by his chest now as he settles down again. “I’m not used to…. being around people.” He almost says ‘anymore’ at the end of that, but bites his tongue at the last second. “That’s my fault, not yours.”

Then Jazz shakes her head, probably about to tell him that it’s not his fault, but Sam interrupts them both.

“How about we all stop trying to steal blame that doesn’t exist in the first place?” she says pointedly,jolting both Jazz and Phantom out of their respective pity parties. “Phantom had a nightmare, Jazz was a little too close when you reacted. That’s a perfectly reasonable reaction for someone waking up after getting pulverized by a ghost and having people in your nest for the first time. Why don’t we just leave it at that?”

He considers arguing his point some more, but figures it wouldn’t be worth it with the way Sam is staring him down determinedly. He focuses on something else instead.

“My nest?” 

“Phantom, buddy, have you seen this place? This is absolutely a nest,” Tucker says, gesturing to the vaguely circular arrangement of the blankets and other soft materials on the floor. 

“I guess…” Phantom replies half-heartedly. “I always just call it the bell tower, or a perch.”

Jazz somehow finds a way to look even more concerned at him. “That’s very… impersonal. Do you not consider this your home or safe place?”

Phantom looks away, feeling suddenly uncomfortable with the way Jazz is examining his words. It does make sense, he heard that she wants to be a therapist one day. But he’s already feeling vulnerable and doesn’t like the psychoanalyzing on top of that. 

“Oh, I’m sorry, Phantom. I didn’t mean to pry.”

He shrugs and tries to shake off the lingering uneasiness he gets with her being here. 

She frowns but doesn’t comment on his silence. Instead, she reaches for a backpack that Phantom is only just now noticing and pulls out some bandages to wrap up her hand. The bleeding has stopped on its own, but it’s still red before getting covered up with sterile white. 

“Anyway, you should eat something. I gave you some ecto-dejecto to save your core but I’m betting you’re out of energy again, so you’re going to need either some sprites or ghost animals to get back up to healthy levels again. I also have some ectoplasm that I’d like to give you to replace the blood you lost and encourage healing. If you’re afraid of needles then you don’t have to do that, but I would highly recommend it.”

“Ghost animals?” Tucker asks dubiously. “Are you saying Phantom should go, like, eat someone’s pet cat or something?”

Phantom chuckles and saves Jazz the explanation by answering it himself. 

“I wouldn’t eat someone’s pet, but there are a surprising number of ghost rats out there. And, working at the hospital, I thought you would’ve already known this, but ghosts are carnivores.”

Tucker and Sam both pale significantly. Phantom flashes them a brief grin before remembering that Jazz’s very red blood is probably still there. He reaches for a scrap of blanket that he doesn’t care about and tries to wipe it off. 

“Most ghosts don’t use enough energy regularly to need much,” he keeps explaining as he tosses the scrap away. “Maybe one or two sprites or a ghost rat a month is fine. A few extra if they’re phasing through walls or healing from an injury. If you ever see a ghost eating a lot, it means they’re gearing up for a fight.”

“I’ve been meaning to ask you about that, actually,” Jazz interjects. “I hope I wouldn’t be prying too much if I were to ask how much you eat? It would be easier to treat you if I knew how much energy you regularly consume compared to how much energy you expend in a fight or through healing.”

Phantom gives a quiet and awkward chuckle. He looks away and lightly scratches the bandages on the back of his neck sheepishly. 

“Well, I really only eat a few sprites a month… mostly whenever they’re offered to me…”

Jazz stares at him for a few moments, frozen. Then she blinks and practically explodes at him. “What?!”

If Phantom had any energy left to do it, he would probably go invisible right about now. Instead he gives an awkward grin as he watches Jazz look over him like she’s wondering how he’s still alive at all. And maybe she is.

“That sounds bad,” Tucker says helpfully. 

“Are you telling me,” Jazz begins, her tone low and almost dangerous, “that for the full year that you have been protecting Amity Park from ghosts and ghost hunters, that you have been relying solely off of your own power to heal?”

Phantom chuckles nervously. “You know, it doesn’t sound so bad when you put it like that.”

Jazz gives him an incredulous look like he’s just admitted to riding unicorns in his spare time. 

“What are you two talking about?” Sam asks, annoyed.

Jazz closes her eyes, breathes in and out a few times, and then turns to Sam looking very deceptively calm as she answers the question.

“If a ghost doesn’t eat to replenish their energy, then if they get hurt and need time to heal, they are relying only on whatever energy they have left to do it. If a ghost were to go into a fight, use half their energy just fighting, and then not eat anything to replenish that energy, they would only have half left to recover afterward. The less energy a ghost has in any given moment, the longer it takes to heal. Assuming that healing takes most of the rest of available energy, that ghost would have to spend even more time just resting to let that energy store itself up to reach full power again. If a ghost gets into a fight and uses all their energy, then their core is likely to get overloaded trying to heal the body, because there isn’t any energy left to use and no way to replenish it. Basically, any injuries a ghost sustains when they have no energy left… would either kill them or stay there for a long time.”

Sam turns to look at Phantom with frustration and pity on her face, while Tucker just looks sad. 

Phantom glances away guiltily. He’s been fine for this long, so he never really thought much about it. He didn’t mean to make them so worried. 

“Phantom, why don’t you eat?” Jazz asks.

He shuffles a bit uncomfortably. 

“The other ghosts don’t really mind it, but sometimes eating sprites can have… I guess you could call it side effects. Eating a worry sprite can make me paranoid, or eating a calm sprite can make me unfocused. Eating the rats and other ghost animals just feels… uncomfortable. I mean, they’re ghosts just like I am, and… I don’t know.”

He doesn’t say that when he eats like a ghost he doesn’t know what’s stopping him from looking for bigger prey. With the amount of energy he uses on a regular basis, one or two rats just isn’t enough, and he’s terrified that he’s going to start looking for a faster solution. He’s terrified that when he finally manages to sate the permanent hunger in his core then he won’t ever want to be hungry again, that he won’t be able to help himself…

What’s stopping him from preying on the innocent people of Amity Park? What’s stopping him from storming the GIW and devouring everyone he sees? Or from using the hospital as a fresh supply of ghosts that are too hurt to get away from him? He doesn’t know, and the thought terrifies him. 

He can’t tell them any of that though. He’s supposed to be a protector, not a monster. 

Jazz takes a deep breath to calm herself before she speaks again. “Okay, then I guess we’ll have to create some kind of ghost food supplement. For right now though, you need to eat. You’ve already used up all your energy and you need to heal or those wounds could be fatal.”

Phantom nods sheepishly. He knows he needs to eat something, side effects aside. He can worry about other things later. 

“Great! Any particular emotion you’d like today?” She says it with a teasing lilt to her tone, and Phantom gives a small grin in return. 

“Anger,” he says, and when the three of them give him curious looks he explains further. “Anger makes me feel energized. Whenever I do eat, I usually prefer the red sprites because of that…”

Jazz nods in understanding and then furrows her brow in thought. A lightbulb seems to go off in her head and she shuffles closer so he can reach. She closes her eyes and thinks, and then soon enough a little red sprite appears above her head. 

It zips around agitatedly before Phantom snatches it up, and it writhes in his hand as he stuffs it in his mouth and swallows. He can feel it hit his stomach as new energy fills his bones. He twitches as the healing starts to get itchy, going a little faster than before. 

A second red sprite appears above Jazz’s head, and for once Phantom doesn’t think about his audience as he snatches that one up just as quickly. It burns his tongue on the way down.

Jazz opens her eyes quickly enough to see the second one just before it disappears behind Phantom’s teeth forever, and she leans back with an encouraging smile on her face. 

“So what did you think about?” Sam asks. “Because somehow you made two of them.”

Jazz gives a small laugh. “I thought about my ex boyfriend.”

Sam and Tucker wince at the same time while Phantom looks at them questioningly. Jazz huffs and explains it to him.

“He was a douche, and that’s all I’ll say about that.”

Phantom chuckles. “That’s fair.”

“But romance that was doomed to fail aside,” Jazz continues, reaching into the backpack to pull out one of those IV bag things that’s filled with ectoplasm, “I’d like to replenish the ectoplasm you lost, if that’s alright with you? If you have a thing against needles then now would be the time to say so.”

Phantom shakes his head and shuffles around until he’s vaguely sitting up, leaning against one of the pillars of the tower. “Nothing against needles per se, but I’m generally against anything that looks like medical experimentation. This is fine though.”

He means it as a joke, but Jazz gives him a hard, searching look that makes him squirm.

“Is that because of the GIW?”

Phantom holds the back of his neck awkwardly and nods. “I’ve never been inside their compound or whatever, because even I can’t get past all those defenses, but I’ve heard stories of what goes on in there, and it’s never pretty. Plus, don’t take this personally but the Fentons used to tell me they were going to ‘rip me apart molecule by molecule’, so that didn’t really give me a great view of what goes on in ghost hunters’ basements.”

Jazz sighs. “That’s Mom and Dad for you. They always mean well but they can tend to mess everything up anyway. I’m sorry that they hurt you like that.”

Phantom waves a hand in the air dismissively as Jazz gets the needle ready. “It’s fine. It’s not like they ever managed to catch me.”

She holds out her hand and Phantom offers up his wrist. It may not matter where on his body the needle goes, but the wrist is just generally a good place to put it anyway. It goes in near-painlessly and Phantom flexes his hand as the ectoplasm runs down the tube and into his skin. It feels a little weird, but it’s easy to ignore. 

“Still, just because a ghost hunter didn’t catch you doesn’t mean they can’t give you trauma anyway. These things tend to stick with a person, or a ghost in your case.”

Not knowing what to say, Phantom wrinkles his nose and gets himself comfortable. 

“I mean, that’s probably nothing compared to what Phantom has done back to the ghost hunters,” Tucker jokes. 

Phantom chuckles with a raised eyebrow. “I wish I could deal back all the grief they’ve given me.”

He means it as a joke too, but Sam and Tucker give him matching odd looks that suddenly make him feel self-conscious. 

“But, you already do,” Sam tells him, confused.

Phantom tilts his head. “Uh, no, I don’t. I don’t hurt anyone unless I absolutely have to. Have people been saying that I terrorize the ghost hunters or something?”

Tucker gives an incredulous chuckle and glances at Sam with a look that says he doesn’t really know what’s going on.

“Yeah, dude. There are all these stories about ghost hunters who manage to capture you, but you break free and then within the week something terrible happens to them to make them forget. Only like, all of Amity Park knows about it.”

Phantom freezes, staring at the two of them wide-eyed. 

“What?!”

Jazz holds a hand up to her chin thoughtfully. “I could have sworn that rumor was actually true. I mean, that one guy tripped in front of a car.”

Phantom whirls to face her, completely astonished that this is what the people of Amity Park think of him, before a memory springs to mind and he abruptly flinches back. His three companions all notice the movement, and then all eyes are on him.

“Ok well, that one actually was me. I tried to overshadow him at the wrong moment and he accidentally tripped… But I didn’t do that on purpose and he didn’t get hit! I do make them forget, but anything terrible that happens to them has to just be coincidence or something.”

Tucker hums. “Well there was that other guy who got randomly swarmed by a pack of ghost dogs.”

Sam is quick to join in as well. “And then that woman who got locked in her own trap and had to go to the hospital for dehydration.”

“Hey, I don’t control the wild ghost dog population. They terrorize everyone, but I bet recognizable ghost hunters would be some of the highest people on their hit list. And that lady really did just walk into her own trap. She’s never even caught me before.”

“What about that one guy who disappeared for five days?” Jazz asks insistently. “He never told anyone what happened but he looked traumatized.”

Phantom grins sharply, reminiscing on that memory fondly. “I mean, I’m sure it was traumatizing for him, but it’s nothing like what you’re expecting. All I did was poltergeist around his vacation house for a few hours. And give him a wedgie. And draw a mustache on his face with a permanent marker. I didn’t torture him or anything. He’s probably just embarrassed.”

Jazz gives him a look like she’s actually impressed but doesn’t want to encourage him, and he grins back at her. 

“What about the guy who can’t speak anymore?” Tucker asks. 

Phantom winces. “That’s the guy who somehow managed to find a bear in the woods. He got away but hit a tree and got a pretty bad concussion. I tried to get him to go see a doctor but he refused so I think he got some brain damage from that.”

“That guy who got fished out of a river? He was the talk of the town for like two weeks,” Sam says next.

“Y’know, I asked him about that too, because he only caught me after that happened, and he said he was just taking a bath because the water in his house was out and he just didn’t want anyone prying into his business. I got out of his trap pretty easily and I felt bad for him so I went to go fix his pipes after that, and he still doesn’t know it was me.”

The three of them give him appreciative looks. 

“So all of that really wasn’t you at all? I mean, how do you make people forget in the first place anyway?” Tucker asks.

Phantom chuckles a bit awkwardly. “Well, it’s really just a simple overshadowing. I just get in, tell them not to remember whatever happened, and get out. And then they just… don’t think about it, I guess.”

And then the three of them glance at each other dubiously, warily, and Phantom rushes to explain.

“I only do it for ghost hunters, I swear! It’s just that, if they were to report back to the GIW with the interactions they have with me, then they would be able to see a pattern and catch me and other ghosts more easily. If they don’t remember anything, then the GIW doesn’t know what works and what doesn’t.”

He ignores the whisper in his head reminding him that he’s lying. He has overshadowed other people besides just hunters before, to make them forget. It’s something that Phantom himself has tried to make himself forget for a long time. 

He shoves the thought to the side, locking it back in the deep dark corner it came from. He makes himself look trustworthy, even though he knows he’s not. And when all of their expressions relax, he knows it’s working. He almost hates that it’s that easy.

Tucker gives a small laugh. “Well, we already knew that you weren’t as bad as everyone made you out to be, but it’s nice to know that that rumor wasn’t true at all.”

Phantom grins to cover up the way his core clenches in his chest painfully. He’s not sure why it does that, but something about the thought of Sam and Tucker being afraid of him, of not trusting him, makes him feel… bad. It’s not a feeling that he’s familiar with, and something that doesn’t really make sense. Of course they’re scared of him, he’s one of the most dangerous ghosts this town has ever seen. 

But that logic doesn’t make the feeling go away, and when the three of them grin and laugh with each other, he decides to push it to the back of his mind. If he ignores it for long enough then it’ll go away, won’t it?

Jazz must see something on his face though, because her smile morphs into a concerned frown. 

“You look tired. Maybe you should rest some more? We can talk more about treatment another time.”

Phantom gratefully takes the out with a nod, settling himself back down into his makeshift nest. He pauses when he glances back up at them though, idly scratching a claw along his jaw in thought nervously.

“Are you guys… staying here? Don’t you have like, families and school and stuff to go to?”

Sam and Tucker look at each other guiltily, but Jazz only looks at Phantom with even more concern. 

“I don’t have anything important coming up, but are you asking us to stay or leave?”

Phantom looks away and twiddles his claws. On the one hand, he doesn’t want to bite anyone again, would rather they stay far enough away from him to stay safe. But on the other hand…

Phantom hasn’t had real friends like this in a very long time, if he ever really did. Having them all here, willingly giving him their support and aid, makes his core flare up in a strange sort of comfort that he’s never felt with other ghosts or humans before. He’s scared to admit that he feels safe around them, but he’s hurt and having them around to keep other ghosts away is a gift he so rarely—if ever—gets to have.

“You can stay…” he says hesitantly. The excited looks of his friends makes him nervous and happy at the same time. “Just try to be careful. I’m basically a walking biohazard.” 

The joke makes Sam and Tucker laugh, but he notices the tight smile that Jazz gives him for it and thinks maybe it wasn’t the best joke to make. Regardless, he finally folds his arms and sets his head down on them comfortably. He casts one last glowing green look at his friends before he closes his eyes. A tiredness that he wasn’t even aware was creeping up on him suddenly makes itself known, and soon enough he’s drifting off to the comforting murmurs of the people around him.

Chapter Text

Phantom sleeps deeply for the most part. What seemed like a nap at first quickly turns into a much more drawn out affair as his body struggles to conserve as much energy as possible to put towards healing. It’s not much, and the ever-present hunger in the pit that is his stomach only grows larger. 

He does wake up a few times though. Each time, at least one of his three friends is there. He assumes that Sam and Tucker still need to go to school and make sure their parents don’t think they’re missing, so sometimes it’s just Jazz. Other times, it’s just Sam and Tucker, and a handful of times only one or the other. 

Jazz must have drilled it into their heads to get him to eat, because every time he wakes up for even a minute, someone is almost immediately there offering him a sprite. Most of the time, he’s too hungry and too desperate for energy to care about the side effects and just takes them without question. Other times, the mere thought of eating around them makes him nauseous. He gets stuck in his own head thinking about chain reactions, sprites leading to ghost rats leading to ghosts leading to humans leading to his friends. It’s nearly impossible for them to get him to eat anything those times, and the guilt that twists in his chest at their crestfallen expressions is nothing compared to the terror he feels at the idea that he might one day become the very monster that he swore to protect people from. So sometimes he doesn’t eat, but he does eat often enough to appease his friends for the most part. It’s good enough for him anyway, and even better that he can keep them away from the awful truth.

One time he wakes up, unsure of how long it’s been since the fight that landed him here in the first place, and Jazz is there with a blood bag full of ectoplasm. She smiles at him and waves it tantalizingly, starting what sounds like a well rehearsed speech about why taking an ectoplasm drip will be good for him. He doesn’t need to be convinced though, because he already knows that he needs it and he doesn’t mind the needle all that much anyway. So he rolls his eyes and cuts off her words with an offered wrist. 

She blinks, surprised, and then thanks him for his cooperation as she expertly sticks the needle in his skin for the second time (he’s not sure when she removed the first one) and tapes it there. He barely stays awake long enough for her to finish the fast and easy process, and by the time she finds a place to hang the bag up he’s already fast asleep again.

He dreams of swirling green ectoplasm, and the haunted, floating structures inside the Ghost Zone. It’s nice, until those dreams turn into more gruesome scenes of electrocution, of all of the cells in his body getting rearranged and killed and revived again. Then those dreams turn into nightmares of blood red eyes and a hiss of his name, of the eyes of dozens of people from around Amity Park watching in horror as Phantom is crushed beneath a much more powerful and dangerous ghost. 

He doesn’t bite anyone again, but he does jolt awake in a cold sweat a few times. He doesn’t pay attention to who is there when he does, just unsuccessfully tries to calm himself down and go back to sleep, making sure to keep himself (and his claws and fangs) far away from the fragile humans who keep him company. Most of the time he just closes his eyes and pretends to be asleep long enough that he actually does drift back into his dreams. And sometimes he just lies there shaking, trying his best to ignore what he knows are pitying and worried glances from his friends. He doesn’t have to be able to actually see them to know that much at least. 

He doesn’t know how much time passes before his ice starts to creep along the ground and pillars without his permission, like it’s slowly leaking out of him. He sees Sam, Tucker, and Jazz showing up with layers of hoodies on, teeth chattering as his ice creeps along the small space and freezes everything in its path. He tries to reel it back in whenever he’s awake but his powers stubbornly refuse to respond.

“Your core is destabilizing,” Jazz tells him during one of Phantom’s longer bouts of wakefulness. He reluctantly munches on one of Sam’s sprites as he listens to Jazz’s explanation. Sam and Tucker are shivering but resolutely sit on either side of him as they listen as well.

“That’s not good,” Phantom says helpfully. He gets grins from his friends on either side even while Jazz raises an eyebrow and crosses her arms at his nonchalant tone. 

Of course he already knows that this is more than just not good, but he’d like to hear her explanation anyway.

“When a ghost’s core starts to destabilize, their abilities—phasing through walls, going invisible, or creating ice—will gradually get out of control. The more unstable a ghost’s core is, the stranger their powers manifest themselves. It starts as a general annoyance before turning into life-threatening situations. If a ghost’s core becomes unstable enough, either their own powers will rebel and turn on them or their core will shatter completely, which means no more ghost.”

Phantom sees the glances that Sam and Tucker shoot him from his peripherals, but he ignores them both. Jazz may be making this all seem pretty bad, but he really is doing completely fine!

The scorch mark on his torso is mostly healed, as are the claw marks on his arm. His neck is intact and the hole in his shoulder doesn’t hurt nearly as much now as it did before. The gouges on his hip are still fairly deep and prevent him from comfortably standing up or switching from legs to a tail and back again, but he makes do. 

A destabilizing core is serious business for a ghost, like catching a deadly illness that they might not be able to recover from, but Phantom is fairly confident that his core is just being dramatic right now and that it’ll fix itself once he’s recovered and back out there protecting Amity. 

Phantom shrugs and, with a frown, Jazz continues her small lecture.

“The cause for the destabilization is unclear right now, but I have a few hypotheses. The first is that the ecto-dejecto that I gave you before to save your core combined with your body’s constant healing attempts are putting too much strain on your core and causing it to use up more energy than it has left to give. If this is the case, then it is fully treatable. All we would need to do is give you enough energy to heal fully, keep you away from strenuous activities, and then let your core naturally heal itself. If this isn’t a physical problem, then that means it probably has to do with your emotional health, which is a much more detrimental problem, and one that only you would be able to fix.”

Phantom hums, glancing around tiredly. “All it is is that I can’t fulfill my Obsession while I’m up here recovering, so my core is just being dramatic as always. I’ll be fine once I can go out again.”

His dismissiveness doesn’t seem to appease any of them though, and Jazz gives him that worried look that he’s come to associate with any time that he wakes from a nightmare or refuses to eat a sprite.

“Core destabilization is serious, Phantom. If your core is distressed enough about not fulfilling your Obsession after only a few days being out of commission, then it may be a much deeper emotional problem than you realize. This isn’t something that cores just do on a whim.”

Phantom resists the urge to roll his eyes. Sure, core destabilization is serious, but it’s just a little bit of ice. It’s no big deal. He’ll get a handle on it once he’s back up to fighting shape again.

“What is your Obsession anyway?” Sam asks innocently.

Phantom freezes, as does Jazz.

It’s just a question, just a little bit of curiosity, but everything in Phantom rebels at the thought of answering it. 

Sam and Tucker look alarmed by the sudden change in demeanor, and thankfully Jazz swoops in with a delicate explanation.

“Some ghosts aren’t comfortable with revealing their Obsessions, Sam. It can bring back unpleasant memories.”

And that’s an understatement. How is he supposed to explain that his Obsession formed out of self-hatred after dying? How does he explain that he was electrocuted in his parents’ basement and he desperately wants to stop other people from going through the same thing? How does he explain that he’s grown so distrustful of people because he’s afraid they’re going to tell the GIW about him?

His friends shiver as his ice spreads further around them, and Phantom shakes his head to rid himself of the things he doesn’t want to think about.

“It’s… fine. My Obsession is, um, protecting people. All of Amity Park is my haunt, so that includes all of the humans and ghosts who live here.”

They don’t seem very enthused about his admission. Actually they look much more worried than anything, and Phantom reaches up to scratch the back of his neck self-consciously. He forgets that he has a wound there and winces as he hits a sensitive area, reluctantly pulling his hand back down.

“Phantom,” Sam begins carefully, “you don’t have to tell us stuff that makes you uncomfortable. You know that, right?” 

Phantom gives a short and humorless bark of laughter. “I know. I just… The GIW has been trying to catch me for a long time, and I know that you guys would never tell them stuff about me—or at least, I want to believe that you would never tell them stuff about me, but it’s difficult to tell people things that I’ve never told anyone else but I need to stop being such a baby about it because you guys obviously only want to help me and—“

He cuts himself off before he can keep talking about too much. He dismissively waves a hand in the air and growls at himself under his breath instead. 

Briefly forgetting about his audience, Phantom rubs at his chest agitatedly. His core is aching, like it’s missing something important and needs it badly. He doesn’t know why his core wants to fulfill his Obsession so badly, but he knows he’ll be fine as soon as he recovers enough to go out and do it. He just needs to get better faster. He’ll be fine.

“You can trust us,” Sam says earnestly.

Phantom lets his hand fall to his lap and glances up at her. He’s not sure what expression he has on his face right now, but complicated emotions swirl in his stomach. 

He wants to believe that he can trust the three of them. He wants to rely on them, to find comfort in them. But can he really do that? He can barely keep them safe from the other regular ghosts of Amity, so how is he supposed to keep them safe from himself? What if he makes a mistake and ends up hurting them worse than just a bite to the hand? 

How is he supposed to get closer to them with all the secrets he keeps as a barrier around himself? 

No, it’s better to stay just far enough away to keep them safe. He can trust them with his life, but if they were to find out what he’s done then he’d be crushed under the weight of their disappointment (to say nothing of their anger). 

They can never know. They can never see who he really is, what he’s become. He wouldn’t be able to live with the inevitable rejection.

A sharp pain pierces through his core, and Phantom doubles over with a yelp, one hand clutching at his chest. 

Jazz says something in alarm but Phantom is too busy trying to reign in the sudden blast of ice spreading up the walls to the bell above them and farther. It’s leaking out of him uncontrollably, and guilt hits him as his friends are all coated in a thin sheet of frost. 

They shiver, grouping together for warmth at the same time that Jazz tries to move closer to help. She looks really worried, and her outstretched hand flinches away from him when bigger chunks of ice try to take hold of her fingers. 

He shoots them an apologetic look and tries to tell them not to worry, but more pain races through him too quickly to contain a ghostly whimper. 

It feels like his core is falling apart, like a jagged edge is being ripped open inside of him and the cracks just keep getting bigger. He’s going to shatter if this keeps up much longer, and the thought sends a sudden and unfamiliar bolt of fear through his nerves. Why is this happening to him?

The next thing he knows, his eyes shut of their own accord as his body collapses. Several pairs of hands find him, turning him on his side, and voices become vague and distant as they tell him to wake up. 

He tries, but the pleasant numb darkness blanketing his body doesn’t care what he wants, and it doesn’t take much longer to slip back into his dreams.

“We can’t just sit here and do nothing! He could be dying!”

“I know that, but ultimately it is his choice! There has to be a good reason why he doesn’t want to go to the hospital so badly.”

“He might not even get the chance to make a choice, Sam, and I’m not about to let him fade away when I can do something about it.”

“I thought you said that medical autonomy was important.”

“I did, but I can’t just sit here, Sam. I can’t just watch this happen. I have my own reasons for wanting to save him.”

“Care to share with the class?”

“Not right now. Just know that this is important to me.”

“Fine. Just don’t come crying to me if he stops talking to you after this.”

“I can live with that, just as long as he stays alive.”

Phantom groggily drifts back into some semblance of awareness to find himself swaying gently. 

He’s thrown over someone’s back, although he’s not sure who. Their arms are supporting his legs around their hips, and they’re leaning forward just enough to keep Phantom’s head on their shoulder and his arms draped haphazardly over their chest. A piggy-back ride, he thinks distantly.

The person holding him walks slowly, and the gentle rocking nearly puts him back to sleep with how soothing it is, but the slight pull of voices around him keeps him curious and just on the edge of awake.

He lets himself drift for a little while, sleepy and comfortable, until other things float into his awareness. 

He’s shivering, he realizes. Phantom never shivers. He has an ice core, making him practically immune to below freezing temperatures. The person holding him is shivering too, and a slight frown tugs at his lips as he remembers how dangerous his ice can be to other people. Why are they still carrying him? Shouldn’t they be trying to get warm? 

The shivering makes him aware of the ache blooming in his chest. It’s so constant that he almost didn’t notice it, but now that he knows it’s there it’s impossible to ignore. It hurts, in a way that only deep scars can hurt. 

He grumbles and twitches a bit, wanting to rub away the ache but too tired to actually reach for it. The person carrying him nearly trips, jolting both of them forward. He grumbles some more at the interruption to his comfortable piggy-back ride as they stop completely.

A voice nags at him close to his ear, telling him to open his eyes and show them that he’s awake. But Phantom is comfortable and burrows his head further into the shoulder instead. 

The person carrying him doesn’t move, and the voice is very insistent. Soon they resort to poking him in the side, and Phantom is tired but also getting increasingly annoyed as he squints his eyes open to glare at the bully messing with him. 

A blurry figure in front of him eventually materializes into Sam. For a moment, Phantom is happy to see her, but the worried frown on her face prompts him to actually listen to what she’s trying to say to him.

“—antom. Phantom, can you hear me?”

Phantom hums an affirmative distractedly, his eyes drifting to the scenery around them instead. It’s dark outside, and he can see a few houses dotted around. It’s nice and homey, just a small slice of Amity Park illuminated by street lamps and garage lights. At the same time, it kind of feels like he’s missing something. Is something important happening that he doesn’t know about? Actually, why is he even here?

Sam pokes him in the shoulder to get his attention again, and he reluctantly drags his eyes back over to her. 

“Phantom, this is important. Do you know where you are?”

“Amity Par’,” he mumbles, slightly confused why she would ask such an obvious question. 

Tucker laughs incredulously, and Phantom is distracted again as he realizes that Tucker has been standing just behind Sam’s left side the whole time but Phantom is only just now noticing that he’s there. 

“Where were you before you fell asleep?” Sam asks, weirdly insistent.

Phantom’s face scrunches up as he both tries to figure out why they’re being so weird and tries searching through his hazy memories to answer her question.

The bell… The bell… The bell tower!

Confusion soon gives way to fear as he finally snaps to the realization that he’s not in his makeshift home anymore. He’s being moved. The person carrying him is Jazz and they’re moving him somewhere else. 

He gasps in a shivering breath, whirling his head around to figure out exactly where he is. He’s tense and just about ready to turn intangible and bolt, despite knowing that his core probably won’t allow even that much use of his power. 

Sam gets closer, both hands held up peacefully as Phantom’s eyes snap to hers. His core tugs painfully in his chest as he’s reminded of their first meeting, the fear and wariness that he had felt back then briefly returning to him now.

“Hey, you’re okay. Just calm down. You’re safe, I promise.”

Sam’s words are interrupted by a rough shiver, and Phantom blinks and sucks in a sharp gasp as he looks down and realizes that his frost is spreading everywhere. It spiderwebs across the street below their feet and inches up their shoes, freezing their clothes stiff and making their breaths foggy. He can see where they came from by looking behind him to see a trail of ice leading all the way down the street. And, most horrifyingly of all, a thick sheet of ice has formed on Jazz’s coat, collecting in her hair and her shaking hands as they continue to support Phantom’s legs. She’s shivering violently, and probably has been for a while if the previously slow-paced walk is anything to go by. She has her head turned and is watching him carefully, worriedly, even though he’s the one hurting her. Just how long has she been borderline hypothermic because of him?

He would try to escape from her hold, but as soon as he tries to move a sharp ache from his core and a shiver of his own sends him back down. He casts a confused and helpless look towards Sam, and he tries to ask her why he’s here but the words come out as a breathless gasp instead. 

She seems to understand though, or maybe she was already planning on telling him anyway. Either way, she drops her hands and tries to convey calm and comfort as she speaks. 

“Jazz says that if we don’t get you to a hospital immediately then your core is going to shatter. She—“ Sam stops herself with a grimace before a more determined look crosses her face. “We don’t want to see you fade away.”

They’re bringing him to the hospital, he realizes in horror. They can’t—he can’t—there’s no way—

The Fentons are going to be there. They’re going to see the infamous protector Phantom being brought in for the first time after a full year of no contact and they’re going to want to run tests. They’re going to want to find out how he’s different from the others. They’re going to figure out what he is—they can’t know they can’t—

A fresh new wave of pain washes over him as the cracks in his core grow even bigger. His ice grows sharp and spreads even further as he yelps and goes impossibly tense. It takes everything in him to keep his teeth and claws away from Jazz’s skin, although he would really like to rip into something as a distraction. If he were at the bell tower then he could shred his blankets even further than they’ve already been shredded, but he can’t do that now. 

Jazz starts walking again as Sam and Tucker’s worried voices fly in through one of Phantom’s ears and spill right out of the other. He’s too busy gritting his teeth so hard he thinks they might crack and digging his claws into the palms of his own hands to keep Jazz safe from him to attempt to listen to them.

Phantom lets out a wheeze and sucks in a shuddering gasp as he reopens his eyes to squint at the path ahead of them. He can see the vague figure of the hospital standing tall behind a few other buildings. Jazz tries to pick up the pace, but the spreading ice and her constant shivering slows her down. Sam and Tucker urge her on, and as they get closer Phantom watches as Sam runs ahead to have more people meet them there. Anxiety flares to life in his chest, his core growing more fragile by the second as they inch closer to one of the few places that truly terrifies him.

As they round the last corner and Amity Park Hospital looms clearly in front of them, Sam rushes back over to them with three nurses trailing behind her. One of them has a trauma kit in hand with a bright green cross on each side marking it for use on ghosts instead of humans. The other two have a stretcher held between them, and Phantom squirms in place as they all get closer.

He makes a keening whine and tries to fight them off as three pairs of hands lift him away from Jazz’s back. He barely has enough energy or coherence to do much more than ineffectually wriggle in their hold on him, but he tries anyway. Sam and Tucker try to calm him down, telling him comforting things that he still can’t hear over the sound of his own panic. They manage to wrangle him onto the stretcher and pin him there. His own heavy breathing makes his growling much less intimidating than it would be otherwise. 

He can’t hear anything that Sam, Tucker, or Jazz are saying, but he does hear a few snippets of what the nurses say as they loom over him.

“—he can breathe—?”

“—uch ice, we need a hea—“

“—careful with the claws—!”

Phantom struggles against anything and everything within reach as they bring him inside and towards the closest emergency care room. He manages to rake his claws down one of their arms, but the wound is shallow and only serves to make him feel guilty that he’s hurting people who only want to help. But the white sterile walls and scrubs that look too much like lab coats around him are sending his mind to a place that he really does not want to be, and he can’t help but lash out at the sight of a needle coming towards him.

“NO!” he yells in Ghostspeak as he furiously shoves himself away from the thing. The nurses lose their grip on him as he goes partially intangible and kicks off the stretcher to land on the cold floor instead. The creaking of ice echoes through the entire hallway as he scrambles away from the humans surrounding him into the nearest wall. Shaking, scared, and confused, his hands glow green and aim themselves at whoever is closest defensively, and for the most part they all back away warily. 

That is, except for Jack and Maddie Fenton, who appear out of a door at the end of the hallway and are getting closer—

The ectoplasm waiting at his fingertips flickers away and, overcome by fear, Phantom doesn’t think, he only reacts. 

The ice already coating the entire hallway and collecting on the nurses’ clothes grows much thicker very quickly, the room dropping so drastically in temperature that even Phantom feels it pierce his body. The nurses and the Fentons slip on the ice, most barely able to catch themselves before falling. 

Phantom takes a deep breath in, staring directly at the Fentons as he prepares a ghostly wail—

But his mouth clamps tightly shut when Sam and Tucker practically leap in front of him. They slip on the ice too, but Sam catches herself with a hand on the wall and the two of them link arms to keep them both standing as they face off against the Fenton pair.

Jack and Maddie look surprised, as are the nurses, as Sam and Tucker place themselves between Phantom and everyone else. A growl turns into a concerned warble in the back of his throat, and Tucker briefly glances over his shoulder to give Phantom a reassuring look. He doesn’t have time to feel guilty about almost releasing a wail indoors directed at his own friends and family, because by then Tucker is already speaking. 

“Don’t worry. We won’t let anyone hurt you,” he says with a smile before turning back to face the rest of the room. 

“Kid, Phantom needs help,” Jack tries to reason, taking a few careful steps forward with Maddie sliding on the ice just behind him. The nurse with the trauma kit tries to move past the two of them towards Phantom, but Tucker gets in front of him and stops him in his tracks. 

Phantom shivers and watches the scene warily, waiting for the inevitable use of force. But despite his friends having brought him here in the first place, they seem determined to keep Phantom safe, and he finds his breathing getting minutely more level in their presence anyway.

“Can’t you see that he’s terrified?” Sam tells them. “At the very least he should know what’s going on, or be able to set some boundaries or something!”

“He’s dying,” one of the nurses tries to reason. “His core—“

But Phantom’s rough, raspy voice interrupts her. “Don’t—“

All eyes immediately turn to him, and Phantom shrinks under the scrutiny as he tries to speak.

“Don’t take my blood. You can’t—Just—Don’t test on me. Please.”

He sees Sam give everyone a very stern look, and Jack and Maddie look a little put out even as they nod their agreement. “Of course,” Maddie tells him seriously. “We won’t do anything that isn’t strictly necessary without your permission.”

Phantom stares at the Fentons, and although Maddie has her goggles over her eyes, he can still see Jack’s face clearly. They meet his gaze evenly, probably trying to convey trustworthiness, but all Phantom feels when he looks at them is paranoia and guilt. 

He releases a shaking breath and reluctantly turns his attention away from the Fentons to the nurses instead. They take that as their que, and Sam and Tucker move out of the way as they filter past and get him up onto the stretcher again—this time mostly willingly. He’s antsy as they reach for him, flinching away from their hands as his eyes wildly flit around the room, waiting for some kind of attack that never comes, until eventually they get him on the stretcher. 

They cart him off into a separate room, and Phantom tries not to let his eyes linger on the Fentons for too long as the doors close and the two of them are left with Sam and Tucker, and Phantom alone with only strangers.

The nurses tell him this time that the needle just contains a sedative, and Phantom hesitantly accepts the injection, distantly wondering what’s going to happen to him while he’s asleep. Are his friends going to be okay? Just how badly did he hurt Jazz? Will his core make it through this?

His parents haven’t recognized him so far, but how long will it be until that changes?

The nurse starts counting down from ten, but Phantom barely makes it to five before his eyes shut and he tilts over as he goes boneless. The nurses move to catch him before he falls, and by that point he’s already long gone. 

Chapter Text

Danny’s head is killing him, he thinks miserably as he trudges through the school hallways. 

The bruises on his ribs from Dash’s usual bullying technique of bodily shoving him into a too-small locker paired with the lack of sleep from the night before as he tried to cram everything he needed for the two tests he has to take today are not a good match. He hasn’t eaten a proper meal in a while, and his stomach protests loudly even as anxiety about his upcoming report card swirls in his gut and makes it hard to have an appetite for anything, let alone the gross lunch that the school always loves to dish out. 

Basically, Danny is not feeling good.

Sam and Tucker flank him on either side, talking over his ducked head as their words fly in one ear and out the other. He can’t concentrate on anything right now, and he knows that the math test he’s going to be taking in an hour is going to come back with an F on it even before he’s laid eyes on the stupid thing. His grades are already in the garbage, so it’s a wonder that he even tries in the first place. 

“You just need to apply yourself more.”

“Use these five studying techniques and your grades will go up instantly!”

“Maybe if you stopped moping around then this wouldn’t be so hard for you.”

He’s heard it all a million times. His grades are just bad, everyone knows that, to the point where sometimes he has to wonder if he really is just that stupid. At least, he’s not smart in the ways that school and his teachers want him to be smart. He can rebuild almost everything that his parents have ever made from scratch, and understand the chemical processes they use to research ghost DNA and ectoplasm, and he helped his dad wire some of the portal he’s been building in the basement. But basic algebra? Crappy biology textbooks and history lessons that no one listens to? Yeah, he’s not so good at that. And don’t even get him started on gym class.

He finds himself sitting down in his biology class on autopilot. He doesn’t even remember leaving Sam and Tucker behind in the hallway, doesn’t know if they said goodbye or not. 

He tries to read the chalk writing on the board but can’t get his eyes to focus long enough to read the gibberish he finds there. The teacher talks and all he hears is static. A new sheet of homework is placed in front of him, and he shoves it into his backpack without care for the way it gets crumpled up with everything else. 

The bell rings much sooner than he would have hoped, and then math class is next.

The test goes just as badly as he thought it would. He leans his head on one of his hands and tries not to fall asleep as his eyes droop and the numbers on the page grow long and tangled. At some point he realizes he’s running out of time and just starts circling answers that look like they might be right. 

The teacher calls the end of their time, picks up their papers, and Danny’s leg bounces anxiously under his desk as he waits to finally be released from this prison of a classroom. 

The bell rings again. He finds himself sitting down at the lunch table with a plate of some kind of ungodly meaty goop on one side and some frozen, reheated vegetables on the other. Sam and Tucker join him in their little corner of the room that nobody else every really ventures near, and Danny picks at his food aimlessly as they talk.

“I’m telling you Sam, I swear I saw something creepy in the restroom. It was like this shadow, and it got really cold all of a sudden.”

Sam rolls her eyes and stabs a carrot slice to wave it around on her plastic fork between them. “Yeah, I’m sure there was definitely something worth looking at in the women’s restroom. And you were probably just standing under a vent, those tend to get cold.”

Tucker makes an incredulous noise and very animatedly gestures with both of his hands. “I’m not making it up, Sam! And I wasn’t being a perve either. There was something there, I know it!”

Sam snorts at him and shoves the carrot in her mouth, suddenly turning her attention to the third member of their group. “What do you think, Danny?”

He jolts when he hears his name being called and looks up at them. He had been listening to their conversation, but now as he’s expected to answer a question about it, it’s like it all slips out of his head like water in a stream. 

“Um, what were you saying again?”

Sam narrows her eyes at him suspiciously, and Danny nervously leans away from her judging gaze even as Tucker holds his hands up in outrage and begins explaining it all to him for probably the third time today. 

“Well I was walking to class like always, and I passed by the restroom, but out of the corner of my eye I saw…”

Danny tries his best to nod and hum at appropriate parts of the story, although he doesn’t really listen to the words this time either. By the time Tucker’s story is done, all it takes is a murmured “Wow, that’s crazy,” for Tucker to grin and loudly exclaim that Danny agrees with him. Sam scoffs and launches into another argument with him, and soon enough Danny is forgotten about again. 

The bell rings. The three of them get up to put away their trays and go to their next class. Danny ends up dumping all of the untouched food from his tray into the garbage, and he still hasn’t eaten a thing.

The rest of the day goes by in the same blur, but at the same time it feels like an eternity before he’s finally able to just go home. He says goodbye to Sam and Tucker at the gate and rushes back to his house before either of them can stop to ask him why he’s acting so weird. Really all he wants to do is sleep. And wouldn’t it be great if he never had to go to school again? He scoffs at his own thoughts. Yeah, only in his wildest dreams. It isn’t even Friday yet.

Danny hunches his shoulders over his ears self-consciously as he sees his house getting closer, avoiding people’s judging eyes as he quickly slips inside and locks the door behind him. The huge blip thing on the roof attracts all the wrong kinds of attention, and although Danny does genuinely enjoy working on stuff with his parents, he wishes that at least they didn’t make their fanaticism so obvious to the rest of the town. Granted, it’s not like that would make Danny’s life much easier at this point. Dash and his friends would have bullied him regardless of if he was a Fenton or not, but he could dream at least.

He drags himself up to his own room and shrugs his backpack off to carelessly drop it on the floor. Then, without bothering to close the door behind him or even take off his shoes, he collapses face-first on his bed with a groan.

It doesn’t take long to fall into a fitful rest.

When Danny wakes up, it’s to the sound of the front door slamming closed, and it feels like he hasn’t slept at all. 

He wipes drool off his face and rolls over to put an arm over his dry eyes. The door closing that loudly means his dad is probably going out to do something. Who knows what that might be, maybe ghost hunting. He wonders if his mom or Jazz are still here, and if he’ll even be able to get up to check in the first place.

His entire body aches with every tiny movement, and his bones feel like jelly as he rolls to the edge of the bed to let gravity help him up. When he stands, he sways a little as cotton fills his head and makes everything feel fuzzy for a few moments before he gets used to it and keeps moving.

Jazz’s bedroom door is open when he passes by it and she isn’t inside, so she’s probably at her own classes or out with friends. When he gets down to the living room, it’s similarly empty and quiet. He can see the sun starting to set through the windows, and it casts everything in an orange glow. 

Deciding to see if he really is alone in the house, he heads for the basement. Danny reaches for and shrugs on the Fenton suit for safety, uncomfortably shimmying inside the rubbery clothes as he makes his way down.

He brushes his hand along the walls of the darkened room, passing by beakers and exposed wires. His mom clearly isn’t down here, but now that he’s here he can see the progress his parents have made on the portal.

There are still some open panels where they’ve been fiddling with the wiring, but it looks more complete than it did before. It’s kind of creepy to look at in the dark like this actually, but that’s not going to stop Danny from exploring it further. He may be exhausted, but the prospect of working on something he actually enjoys is starting to fill him with a new energy. Maybe he can help his dad out and fix the mess that is all the wires trailing along the floor, or work on that ecto-net he’s been so excited about. 

Danny ducks into the archway of the portal, curiously looking at all the new additions since the last time he saw it. He’s especially interested in the bright red button that’s been placed on the inside of the portal of all places. Looking closer, he can tell that his dad made a mistake by putting all the necessary activation stuff in the wrong area, forcing him to put the button here instead of where he was originally planning. He was probably just so tired of working on this thing that he didn’t want to take the whole thing apart to rewire it again. Danny can understand the sentiment. 

Now, any sane person, who isn’t sleep-deprived and running on fumes, would probably look at the button, see the mostly completed wiring and assume that pushing it would be a bad idea. But all Danny sees in that moment is an electrical mess and knows that his rubber suit should be able to protect him, and somewhere along the lines that thought gets twisted with the rest as it passes through his brain, until pushing the big red button seems like a good idea.

He pushes the button, and somehow it turns on.

Normally, a pure rubber suit would protect him against dangerous electrical currents, but when a portal to another dimension opens up right on top of him, the structural integrity of the suit can be called into question.

Really, one tear is all it takes, and suddenly Danny is feeling every single volt rushing through his body and burning him from the inside out. One half of him is stuck in the Ghost Zone, letting an endless amount of ectoplasm into his body as he dies a thousand times over. 

He doesn’t know when he blacks out, or how he’s still alive when he wakes up again, still twitching with the aftereffects and unable to move.

His gloves are white where they should be black, and the room is cast in an ominous green glow as his arms pass through the floor like it doesn’t exist.

His senses are heightened. He can smell how stale the half-eaten protein bar on the counter across the room from him is, knows it’s been sitting there for about a week. even through his color-distorted and blurry vision, he can still make out the small specks of dirt on the floor and ceiling, something he was never able to see before. He can feel the distant hum of something in his chest, where his heart should be, and he’s so overwhelmed that it doesn’t immediately scare him like everything else does.

He realizes, as he lays there, that not a single person was around to hear him scream.

He’s alone down here, and he has to deal with whatever this is on his own.

What is happening to him?

Phantom jolts awake with a gasp, startling everyone around him as he lurches up from the medical recovery bed to find himself in a sterile white room with little to no memory of how he got here. He clutches at his cracked core and heaves in a chilling breath as his eyes flit wildly around the room, trying to make sense of any of it.

Jazz’s face swims into his vision, looking down at him in concern as she holds Sam and Tucker back from his bed. 

“Phantom?” she asks gently. “Are you with us?”

He takes in the sight of the three of them, and the two nurses besides them, all standing in front of his bed watching him with varying levels of concern or professional calm. 

There’s a thin layer of frost along the walls, and everyone is wearing coats of some kind. He jolts as he remembers what he did to Jazz, and immediately looks her up and down worriedly. She has one arm extended to keep Sam and Tucker from rushing towards Phantom, and the other holding the blanket draped over her shoulders in place. Her fingers aren’t blue and she isn’t shivering like before, so it must be heated or something. 

She’s fine, he realizes with a sigh of relief, and nods to her question.

She seems relieved as well, and lowers her arm to let Sam and Tucker pass. They immediately take the opportunity to get into his personal space and throw all kinds of words at him that take him a few seconds to actually understand.

“We were so worried about you! How do you feel? Is your core better yet?”

He’s not even sure which one of them asks him, or if it’s both of them at the same time, but he looks down and frowns as he rubs at his aching chest.

It’s definitely still cracked, but it’s less unstable than it was before. His suit has all the same tears in it that it did before, no new additions, so they couldn’t have done surgery on him. How did they heal it so much? 

He gives the nurses and Jazz a questioning look, and they must understand his unspoken question because Jazz politely waves the nurses out of the room and takes a seat in a chair by the foot of the bed to explain it to them.

“Phantom’s core isn’t going to heal overnight guys. A ghost’s core is more based on emotions and energy than a human heart is. If the main emotional cause of the fracture isn’t treated, then the core is only going to keep breaking down until we can’t fix it anymore.”

Sam and Tucker look put out by the words, but then they turn to Phantom, and he finds himself nervously leaning away from them to avoid the question he knows is waiting on the tips of their tongues. Based on the dream he only half remembers by now, he can guess what his core is actually after, and he really does not want to go into detail about it with them. 

Thankfully, Jazz continues her explanation, saving him from their interrogation. 

“And as for what we did to stabilize it, I wouldn’t want to bore you with the details, but it was basically a mixture of low concentration ecto-dejecto, a bag or two of ectoplasm to trick your core into letting itself heal, and a lot of attention to detail on the core monitor.”

Phantom blinks. If he thinks about it some more, he can mostly understand what she’s saying. The core monitor measures how strong or weak the electrical pulses from his core are at the same time that new ectoplasm is introduced into his body, forcing his core to concentrate more on integrating and purifying that than the crisis it’s having. And then that lets them use ecto-dejecto in small, low doses whenever necessary to bring his core back up to a reasonably stable level. It’s a wonder that all that didn’t just outright overload his core and shatter it, but he supposes these people are professionals and know how to prevent that kind of thing.

“That’s… actually really smart,” he says with a rasp. He pauses to clear his throat, grimacing at the taste of phlegm in the back of his mouth. 

Jazz gives a small smile that’s wiped away far too quickly. “It’s not a permanent fix,” she warns again.

He nods grimly. “I know.” Just by looking at the frost coating the room around him, not as bad as it was before but still out of his control, he knows very well.

Sam and Tucker look between the two of them in bewilderment. “What do you mean it’s not a permanent fix?” Sam asks, annoyed. “Why is his core still breaking?”

Jazz gives Phantom a pointed look with a raised eyebrow, but he looks away from her and towards the wall to his left instead, outright avoiding the question. She sighs, and Sam seems to only get more annoyed by their collective silence. 

“If he doesn’t want to tell us the real reason—because I know this isn’t about your Obsession—then that’s on him, but Phantom, you do need to address it eventually. One procedure like this was risky enough, plus the dejecto you already had before that. I don’t think you’ll survive another one.”

Phantom nods and frowns. He thought that it was just his core complaining about not being able to fulfill his Obsession, but now he knows better. The speed that he became destabilized, the people that were around him at the time, and the dream he had… This is much worse than just his Obsession, and he’s starting to wonder if he has the courage to deal with it at all, even if it becomes a matter of life or death (again).

He’s not ready to face everything that he’s been running away from for all this time. He thinks that would destroy him much faster than his core ever will. 

“That being said,” Jazz continues, “there are ways to try to slow or prevent further fractures from forming while you figure that out. I can’t guarantee you’ll like it though.”

She smiles deviously as she says it, and Phantom squints at her, trying to figure out what she’s getting at.

Sam and Tucker brighten up at the idea. “Do you mean Room 13?” Tucker asks excitedly, completely forgetting the grim nature of the conversation only a moment ago.

Jazz gets a twinkle in her eye that Phantom does not like. 

“Do you think you’re up for some exercise?”

Room 13, as it turns out, is a renovated room in the hospital reserved for “ghost rehabilitation”, but looks more like a glorified playground. 

Tall beams reaching from the floor to the ceiling have ropes and tires slung between them like a kind of flying obstacle course. Large platforms that almost look like cat rests criss-cross up the walls. Soft pillows line the floor and a crate full of stuffed animals and chew toys sits in one corner.

His friends present the room like it’s some grand thing, but Phantom stares, dead-eyed, at what is obviously a place meant for ghost children, and wonders just how childish they think he is.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

He reluctantly follows the three of them inside, and Jazz smiles at him in a way that’s probably supposed to be reassuring but mostly just feels condescending as she closes the door behind them. The room is surprisingly spacious, and Phantom wonders if they knocked out the floor of the room above it to make such an open area.

“Don’t knock it ‘till you try it,” she says cheerfully. “Why don’t you go up and explore a bit while I explain?”

Phantom gives her a flat look that’s supposed to be a ‘no’, but she breaks out into a wide grin and puppy-dog eyes as he turns to her, and he scowls. She doesn’t budge though, and actually he thinks she tries to make the eyes more prominent, which starts to lean more into the realm of creepiness than cuteness. Knowing how stubborn she can be, he gets the hint and crosses his arms with a half-hearted glare before letting himself float up into the playground.

There’s a bunch of joined together ropes in the middle leading between two pillars on opposite sides of the room, and dangling from it are a bunch of tires in a line. He drifts up to it and melts his legs into a tail to circle around them and then loosely situates himself inside of one. It’s fairly big and he’s pretty small, so he lets his whole front half dangle out of the tire to watch the others standing below him, unafraid of falling even as Tucker seems to cringe at the height. 

Jazz takes the opportunity to explain once she sees that Phantom is listening. 

“Through some trial and error, we learned that when a ghost’s core is starting to break down, the best way we have to slow the progression is with exercise!”

Phantom groans automatically. It’s been a while since he was forced into gym activities. The few memories he has left of his time actually attending school are quickly pushed to the back of his mind, but Frostbite had done something similar when he was first learning how to control his ice. He shivers at the thought. Military training regimes from a yeti are not fun, and he hopes he never has to do anything like that again.

Sam crosses her arms and raises an eyebrow at him before Jazz can do it herself. “Don’t you fly around and help ghosts around Amity literally every day? What’s so bad about exercise?”

Phantom gnashes his teeth and looks away, letting his clawed hands hang below him in a subtle stretch. 

“That’s normal because it’s my routine. This—“ he gestures to the hanging wooden structures around him, “—is not.”

“Well, you’re going to have to make it your routine then, because it’s either this or let your core shatter,” Jazz says pointedly. There’s a seriousness to her tone that wasn’t there a moment ago, that familiar worry for him rising in her again. Phantom tries to hold her gaze in challenge, but it doesn’t take long for him to concede with a huff. He never was very good at that. 

“Exercising is a good way to use your abilities in a safe way, distracting your core with other things at the same time that you distract your mind from the emotional cause of the problem. It doesn’t make a huge difference, but this is the best we can do for you right now.”

Jazz sighs, letting some more of the worry into her tone in a way that makes Phantom want to turn invisible and fly away just to avoid it. “Whatever the real problem is for you, we can only treat the symptoms until either the problem is fixed or you’re willing to talk to us. Until then, the best band-aid I can give you is just to not think about it.”

Perfect, he thinks ruefully. That’s exactly what he was going to do anyway, but somehow hearing her say it aloud makes guilt rise up in the back of his throat. He’s really gotten himself into a complicated mess, huh? It’s ironic that the most effective trap he’s ever fallen into is one he made for himself. But hey, at least he has plenty of practice with ignoring his problems.

“Besides that,” Jazz continues, “we can’t exactly stop you, but you should stay in the hospital for as long as you’re able to.”

He makes a noise and twists to look at her upside down. 

“I know, but you can’t keep throwing yourself at random ghosts around town when you can’t control your powers effectively anymore and are at risk of your core shattering. It’s too risky. You shouldn’t be seeing any action again until you are fully healed.”

She eyes him pointedly, and Phantom turns his head to look at himself. Now that he’s actually paying attention, he can see that his wounds from the fight with Plasmius still haven’t healed all the way. There are bandages wrapped around his torso, hip, and shoulder that he didn’t even notice were there until now. His suit is back to normal, a product of him forgetting that he was even injured in the first place, so the bandages are kind of useless now that they’re just covering rubber instead of skin, but maybe he should let them stay there for a while longer, just so he doesn’t forget again. If he didn’t notice this before, his mind might be more scrambled than he originally thought, which only further proves Jazz’s point. 

Phantom sighs, flashing his fangs in annoyance as he lets himself fall out of the tire, only to catch himself mid-fall and fly up to circle through it again. He smirks at Tucker’s gasp.

“Fine, I’ll stay here for a while. But if someone powerful enough comes to threaten Amity, then I won’t have a choice but to fight them. I’m the only protector this place really has.”

Jazz smiles at him, but it doesn’t reach her eyes. He finds himself wondering why she looks so sad at the statement.

“Don’t forget!” Tucker says suddenly. “You have the thermos too now! That should make ghost-fighting a lot easier for you.”

Phantom blinks. “Oh yeah. It’s hidden in the bell tower right now, but I should be able to reach it if something happens. Makes my job a lot easier, honestly.”

“Great! Now that that’s settled, how about you show us some moves?” Jazz says it teasingly, and although the idea of showing off and letting them examine his abilities makes him kind of uncomfortable, her friendly tone makes it fairly easy to look past for their sake.

He huffs and crosses his arms as he floats out and above the tire further towards the ceiling. “This room might be big, but it’s too small to show you what I can really do, if that’s what you’re looking for. Plus, all of you have already seen my abilities.”

That makes all three of their smiles drop, clearly thinking back on his fight with Plasmius with a distinct lack of fondness. He frowns and looks away guiltily. He didn’t mean to bring up a sensitive topic. 

“You don’t need to stress your core out by using your abilities to their fullest, Phantom,” Jazz reminds him. “This is supposed to be for fun and light exercise. We can leave the room if that’ll make it easier?”

That actually manages to send a bolt of fear into him that makes the three of them shiver in the sudden cold chill. He flinches at his own reaction, his core and this whole situation making him more emotional than usual. 

“Uh, sorry,” he says helpfully as Jazz tightens the blanket around her shoulders. 

“I’m… not used to this place. I think I’d prefer if you all stayed?”

It comes out as a question because it’s a much more delicate version of what he’s actually feeling. He’s only barely holding onto the trust that nobody took any blood samples from him, but beyond that he’s terrified of the nurses and doctors probably wandering around just outside the room getting close enough to do something to him. He doesn’t want any more needles, scalpels, or anything of the like anywhere near him, and with his powers being unreliable he doesn’t know if he’d be able to run away or defend himself on his own. As much as he hates to admit it, he’s grown dependent on his friends. He’s not sure that he would be able to force himself to stay and heal if they weren’t here as well.

Jazz gives him a sad look but nods seriously anyway. “Okay, we’ll stay for as long as you need us to. Sam and Tucker will still have to go to school on some days, but I can set up an extra room for us all to sleep in while we’re here. Does that sound good to you two?”

She looks to Sam and Tucker, and they both rush to nod in approval. Phantom is struck by the immediate willingness they have to just… upend their lives to stay with him at the hospital. He almost wants to tell them that it’s fine, they can go sleep at their houses like they always do instead of coddling him, but the words catch in his throat and wither away there. His core thrums in approval, wanting the company, and he takes a deep breath to try to ignore the feeling.

Jazz claps her hands together, looking actually excited for the first time that Phantom has seen in the past few days. “Alright! Now that that’s settled, how about you fly some laps around the course, Phantom?”

She phrases it like a question, but it doesn’t sound like one, and he slumps with a groan. 

“Do I really have to? I can fly across all of Amity twice without breaking a sweat.”

Jazz grins at him devilishly. “Then this should be a walk in the park for you!”

He scowls and pouts at her, knowing that he’s been verbally defeated but still not willing to admit it. Sam snickers at the exchange, and he scowls at her too.

“I can’t believe this…” he mutters loud enough for them to hear as he slowly starts floating in a circle around the ceiling. 

His three friends wear matching grins below him, and although he hates the forced exercise, he finds it difficult to be mad at them when it seems to make them so happy.

Chapter Text

Now that they have Phantom basically confined in one spot, they start to notice things about him. 

When Tucker brings up wanting to create a new liquid diet without the side effects that sprites have to Phantom, he gets cagey and uncertain. Tucker only realizes nearly halfway into their conversation about it that Phantom isn’t uncertain about the invention itself, he’s uncertain about wanting to help Tucker. 

Still scared of being alone and the hospital staff moving through the halls, Phantom knows that to make this invention, Tucker is going to have to go to the lab. 

Noticing his distress, Tucker offers to just stay in Room 13 with him until Sam and Jazz come back (one of which is off writing an essay for school last minute and the other who’s busy with other ghosts), but Phantom seems to come to a decision then and shakes his head. 

“I’ll just go with you.” And then, muttering to himself in a way that Tucker isn’t sure if he was supposed to hear or not, he says “A short walk shouldn’t be too bad, right?”

He notices the way Phantom is tense and guarded for the few minutes it takes to walk from Room 13 to the lab just down the hall, even when Tucker assures him that he really wouldn’t mind not going if it would make Phantom more relaxed. But his ghostly friend only spares him a glance before going right back to eyeing each passerby warily. 

It’s only in those few minutes that Tucker realized just how comfortable Phantom has become with him, Sam, and Jazz. The unblinking stare and the careful distance that Phantom used to keep between him and every human he came across was completely tossed out the window with them. Even in the pretty short amount of time since they had first met Phantom, Tucker had gotten so used to the easy way they’ve talked and built the thermos together that it’s scary to see him acting this way again. 

Phantom hovers close to Tucker’s side, but also just out of reach at the same time. He acknowledges Tucker’s words but doesn’t react to them like he did before. How did he not notice how quickly they all became comfortable with each other? And how is he only noticing the way Phantom is pulling away now? 

The ghost boy doesn’t blink even once the door to the lab closes behind them and nobody else but them lingers inside. When Tucker starts building and runs into his first problem, he only gives out more information about ghosts and ectoplasm when directly asked, and only in hushed tones. 

He hates being there but doesn’t want to leave. He’s scared of humans but only wants to protect them. He needs help but can’t or won’t ask for it himself. 

Tucker goes through the whole process of making a machine that can convert sprites and ectoplasm into a liquid diet with no side effects. It will be incredibly useful not just for Phantom but for all the other ghostly patients at the hospital as well. 

Phantom smiles proudly at him, but he still doesn’t blink.

Sam notices the smaller things, the more spoken ones. 

When he seems like he’s in a bad mood one day, she challenges him to run a few laps around the room as fast as he can. But he just smiles at her and says that he’s tired and would rather spend the day sleeping. She finds it strange because his wounds have healed already, so he shouldn’t need to sleep for a whole day. 

She doesn’t say anything about it.

She notices the way he wants to be around them all the time, how he gets paranoid and agitated whenever they leave the room, even for a short time or just to go to sleep. But the longer they stay around him, the quieter he gets. Jazz tries to get him to be active, to get his mind off of whatever it is that’s causing his core to fracture. He tries, but sometimes Sam catches the way he winces or rubs at his chest when he thinks they aren’t looking. It doesn’t seem like it’s getting any better, but they all know better than to mention it to him again. Sam keeps quiet then too.

She sees the way he adamantly refuses to stoop so low as to use dog toys to vent his emotions, despite Jazz telling him multiple times that it’s completely normal for ghosts and nothing to be ashamed of. So when Sam goes into Room 13 by herself one day to find every single toy ripped to shreds and scattered around the room, with Phantom hovering by the back wall, deep marks under his eyes like he hasn’t slept at all (she didn’t know ghosts could even get shadows under their eyes like that), she’s surprised and very worried. Scraps of fabric and stuffing still hanging from his claws, he asks her not to tell the others. She frowns at him, considers trying to argue otherwise, but ends up sighing and agreeing anyway. She helps him clean up the mess in awkward silence. She doesn’t ask him about it, knows he wouldn’t tell the whole truth even if she did. And for a third time, she says nothing.

She wonders about the weight he carries. She wonders how much heavier the things he has left unsaid are compared to her own growing collection. 

Jazz sees the things he doesn’t say.

She sees Phantom and Danny’s shared face and she knows. 

She’s not sure how or why, what terrible fate might have befallen her own little brother for him to end up this way, but she wants to be there for him nonetheless. 

Phantom growls and gets snappish with them sometimes, and Jazz wonders if Danny was always like that. She wonders if it’s because he’s a ghost now or because of all the trauma and loneliness he’s gone through after all this time being away. He acts like a ghost, but also not.

Jazz tries to ask him how he’s able to breathe even in his sleep, something that other ghosts can’t do, and he visibly freezes up and says that it’s probably related to his ability to sense ghosts. Whenever other ghosts are nearby, a mist comes from his mouth to alert him. He says it’s an extension of his ice abilities. 

It all sounds perfectly logical to the three of them in the moment, but the more Jazz reflects on it the more she realizes that even with an ice core and some special abilities, he still shouldn’t be able to breathe in his sleep. No normal ghost can do that. 

She remembers the way he got defensive about his blood being taken and tested on when they first arrived, and she very gently asks him about that too. But this time instead of freezing up he whips around to face her, eyes wide and filled with what Jazz can only describe as terror. He chokes out a “Sorry” and races to get away from them, stashing himself away in a tire swing too high up for them to see or reach him. Sam and Tucker give her harsh and incredulous looks respectively, and she spends the next hour or so trying to coax him out again.

Jazz sees the way Tucker creates the new liquid diet for him, but he still hesitates to drink it. All three of them have to remember to offer more to him a few times every day, because when they aren’t in the room directly giving the little glass vials to him then he won’t take them at all. He never says why he hesitates, and although Jazz wants to ask she never does. 

She sees the way he stops being able to find relief in the calming blankets. They seemed to help him deal with his emotions before, but only a day or two afterwards it became obvious that he was so constantly stressed that they weren’t working anymore. Jazz tries to suggest eating a calm sprite, to get the effect directly from the source. She’s relieved when he reluctantly agrees, only to grow more concerned when that doesn’t do anything either. 

She notices when Phantom shies away from even other ghosts. She knows that, just like humans, ghosts are pack animals. They find comfort and companionship in each other. Phantom is different, keeping everyone at arm’s length and no closer, and he suffers for it. She can see the way it hurts him, how the cracks in his core continue to spread even as he says nothing about it. 

He talks less and less every day, and Jazz is getting far too adept at reading between the lines. She sees what he chooses not to say, and she’s so, so worried about him. 

And one day, Phantom wakes up and can’t go back to sleep. 

He wanders around the room, scratching at the arms of his suit and flashing his fangs at nothing but air. Memories and heartache flood his mind and won’t go away. 

He wishes he could forget just like he made them forget. He wishes he could put it all behind him, but the load weighing him down gets heavier every day he’s near them. Except the thing is, the longer he’s away from them the more his core twists and drags in his chest. 

It cries out for help and he resists the urge to scream. He’s not sure what his core actually looks like, he’s always imagined it as a kind of sphere right next to his stopped heart, but it must be nearly unrecognizable by now. 

He’s not even sure how long it’s been since they brought him here, is almost too afraid to ask, but it’s been long enough that the cracks have only gotten bigger, deeper, more painful. He’s not sure how much longer he can go on like this before he loses it all—his ability to float, to somewhat control his ice, to not break down and tear it out of his chest himself. 

It hurts, and it takes everything he has to make it less obvious to his friends, to his sister. They don’t know just how close he is to completely falling apart. It won’t be long now before his core has had enough, before he breaks. 

He doesn’t know what would happen if he did, and that thought scares him even more than the idea of just dying (again). The unknown looms before him, getting closer every day, every hour. If he were a full ghost, he thinks it would be a lot less intimidating. 

The image of a graveyard makes its way behind his closed eyelids, and Phantom reaches up to scrape his claws along his scalp in a vain effort to make it go away. He can’t tell them what he did. He can’t tell them what they did either. 

All he can do is keep it all in, to let himself keep breaking. Why does the need to protect hurt so much?

The decision to stay away doesn’t make him feel any better. The emotions are still there, swirling in his head and heart relentlessly. 

His core wants to reach out. It wants to be around the people he cares about more than anything. It doesn’t care that that’s exactly what Phantom needs to stay away from.

He needs to stay away, but it’s been so long since—

Since…

It’s been so long since it felt like he had a family. 

He growls and twists around the room but finds no relief in the action. He does it again, another lap and another after that. It doesn’t help, only seems to make it worse.

It doesn’t take long for Phantom to decide that he can’t take the buzzing under his skin anymore. He phases through the wall into the hallway thoughtlessly, racing for the door right across from him where he knows his friends have been sleeping lately. But as he’s about to phase through the door to join them, he stops in midair.

What if they don’t want him there? What if he asks to stay and they say no? What if he breaks down and they can’t handle it? What if they don’t want to handle it? 

What if, what if, what if…

Silently, carefully, he moves through the door. On the other side, a dark and small recovery room greets him. A rolling bed has been brought in and pushed up against a regular cot, a small nightstand moved out of the way to make room. And on the beds, Jazz is pressed up against the wall, Sam on the opposite end, and Tucker meshed in between them. They’re all asleep, and peacefully so. Phantom wishes he could say the same.

He hovers by the door for a little while, wondering what he’s even doing here, why he can’t just go back to his own room and sleep. It would probably be pretty creepy if any of them woke up to see him floating over them like this. 

Why is he here. What is he doing. Why can’t he just be normal for once.

Frost begins to spread through the room, and he barely notices the chill reaching into his bones. 

“Phantom?” 

He jolts, trying to bring up invisibility but it fizzles away before it can really do anything. His core is so weak that even his frost doesn’t have the usual bite to it, so the invisibility barely reaches halfway up his tail before leaving him defenseless again.

Sam has woken up, tiredly lifting her head from her pillow to look at him, confused and clearly tired. 

“What are you doing here?” she asks first. And then, squinting at him, she adds “Are you okay?”

Phantom hunches his shoulders and looks down at the floor. Out of the three of them, Sam would probably be the best one to wake up and see him here in the middle of the night. She was pretty freaked out the first time he came to her for help, though his own memories of the encounter are hazy. She doesn’t seem all that bothered this time, and he doesn’t really know how to feel about that.

“Come here.”

Phantom jolts again, staring up at Sam. Now he’s the one who’s confused. 

She smirks and sighs at him, easily nudging Tucker and herself aside to make some extra room between them. 

He stares, wondering if he really should join them or if he’d just be hurting everyone that much more by doing so. It won’t be long now before his core shatters, and he’s already delayed it for this long. A little bit longer is just going to prolong the inevitable. It’s a bad idea, he tells himself.

But then Sam reaches out a hand and says “It’s okay, Phantom. You can stay.”

And he finds his resolve crumbling before his eyes. He’s reaching out before he knows what he’s doing. His hand finds its way into hers, and he can clearly see the shiver that goes up her spine at the contact, but she doesn’t let go. 

He floats gently over as she pulls him along, until he’s settling between her and Tucker, until both of them are shivering. But Sam doesn’t seem to mind as she pulls the blanket up over all of them. Phantom is enveloped in a kind of warmth he hasn’t felt in far too long. He never realized how much he missed closeness like this until now. 

Sam lets go of his hand and reaches out her arm this time, a questioning raise of an eyebrow that takes Phantom a few moments to decipher the meaning of. He nods, and she smiles as she wraps her arms around him and holds him close. He hooks his chin over her shoulder and moves his claws very carefully as he tucks his arms up in between their stomachs. 

When was the last time someone hugged him? When was the last time someone wanted to be this close to him? They still don’t know who he was—who he is, but Sam still cares for him as if he had never left them. 

He supposes he shouldn’t be surprised. Sam has always been the kind of person to find friends in the strangest people. 

This place, with them, feels like home. 

His core aches a little less. The frost gathering on the walls steadily melts and breaks away. Phantom takes a deep breath in and feels grateful for the way Sam doesn’t mention the hitch he knows she can hear there. 

He closes his tired eyes, the buzzing in his head finally quiets down, and they both fall asleep cocooned in warmth. 

.

..

…

And in the darkened hospital, a man in a lab coat walks through the front door. 

Down the hall he goes, peering through the windows of each door. His footsteps echo through the empty corridors, until he comes to a stop in front of room number 14, right across the hall from 13, and quietly slips inside. 

A syringe glowing red is pulled from his coat pocket, and he reaches over to push the needle into the sleeping ghost boy’s neck…

The plunger is pressed down nearly all the way, before a clawed hand darts up to grab his wrist, almost crushing bone in the tight grip.

Violent green and white eyes snap open. 

Chapter Text

Phantom snaps awake quickly, a hand darting out to grab onto someone’s wrist in a grip so crushing he can feel the small bones grinding together. His claws dig into skin but don’t draw blood yet as his eyes snap open and lock onto whoever is trying to attack him.

A man in a lab coat stands over the bed, leaning over Sam and staring at Phantom behind rectangular glasses. He looks surprised that Phantom is awake, and he doesn’t need to see the yellow sprite forming above his head to be able to smell the fear and nervous energy seeping out of him. Phantom clearly wasn’t supposed to wake up for this.

For a moment, the two are frozen. Maybe in fear or anticipation, he doesn’t know. 

The man has the audacity to try to push the plunger down a little bit more, and at the same time that Phantom realizes exactly what he is trying to do, he lashes out. 

A snarl rips out of his mouth as he leaps from the bed and tackles the man to the ground. The needle slips out of his neck, still gripped in the man’s hand as his back hits the floor with a loud crack. 

Phantom hears shouting starting up from behind him but pays no mind to it, instead focusing all his energy on snapping at the man’s flailing arms, pointed claws tearing through his coat and into his shoulders. This time he does draw blood.

The man’s glasses are thrown from his face as he reaches up to wrap a hand around Phantom’s throat. He claws at the man’s arm instinctively, tail lashing out between them. Despite being densely packed with muscle, he is still a ghost, and a pretty small one at that, so it doesn’t take much effort for the man to toss him aside. 

He skids along the floor, claws shrieking as they dig into the tile. He flips himself upright and growls, baring his teeth as he lunges again. 

The man raises his arm up as a shield just in time for Phantom to crash into him. He tries to snap his teeth for the man’s face first, but he keeps a firm distance with his arm across Phantom’s chest. He changes direction, sinks his fangs deep into the arm instead, growling through the blood bubbling up around his mouth. 

The man yells and throws a punch for Phantom’s face, landing a few hits before he finally manages to dislodge the ghost. It doesn’t take long for Phantom to recover, about to dive in again—

But a pair of arms wraps around his waist to stop him. He writhes, twisting and trying to claw his way free. Phantom turns a vengeful eye towards his captor and finds Sam there. There’s a look of fear and concentration on her face, clearly struggling to hold him still on her own. 

He takes his claws away from her arms but doesn’t stop struggling, locking back onto the man on the ground. He snarls, hissing as Sam does everything in her power to hold him back. Her back hits a wall and then Tucker rushes to help her, grabbing one of Phantom’s arms and pulling it back. 

“Calm down!” he yells, but the rush of ectoplasm in Phantom’s ears drowns out nearly everything, and he’s not very keen on listening right now.

The man shoves himself up and tries to make a break for it, and Phantom twists and growls, snapping at him in an effort to attack him again. But Jazz apparently has it all handled by herself, because she grabs the back of his coat, juts a leg out to trip him, and sends him crashing back down to the floor. She keeps him there, pressing a socked foot to his throat in warning as she reaches over to the bed to press the call button. 

Phantom only marginally settles down. His eyes don’t waver from the man’s scared face, still panting and growling, but he’s not so much in a frenzy anymore now that he’s effectively caught. 

“Dude, you’re looking pretty scary right now,” Tucker says warily.

Phantom doesn’t make any move to acknowledge the statement. He’s sure that doesn’t help his case at all, but he doesn’t care much at the moment. Blood sluggishly drips from his chin, and his hands clench and unclench menacingly. 

He’s pretty sure he’s never looked more like a monster than he does right now.

The door swings open. Phantom doesn’t pay any mind to the small flood of nurses and a security guard or two as they all rush into the room and frantically ask what happened. Jazz glances from Phantom to the stranger on the floor and back, seemingly trying to figure the same thing out for herself, before she turns to them and tries to answer the best she can. 

Tucker tells them that he saw the needle in Phantom’s neck, and one of the nurses bends down to sweep the lone syringe up off the floor from where it fell. He hands it off to a researcher, and then she gives the room a last glance before rushing off to test whatever substance is left inside. 

A different nurse comes up to Phantom next, taking a pen light and trying to shine it into his eyes. The moment he pays attention enough to realize what she’s doing he snaps at her hand. Sam and Tucker shout at him as he starts up his flailing again, trying to break free.

But something is different now. From the entry point on his neck, he can feel something beginning to spread. 

It starts out as a tingling sensation, like an itch he can’t scratch. But it doesn’t take long for that to turn into something more like a burning. 

It spreads like fire inside him, and it rejects every part of his body like it’s repelling his very soul. 

He doubles over, coughing and hacking despite nothing being lodged in his throat or stomach. Suddenly there’s a lot more shouting, and while he still struggles they manage to wrangle him onto the bed anyway. Tail lashing, he curls up on his side and scraps his claws along the collar of his suit, easily tearing through rubber and flesh. Hands try to grab his wrists and stop him, but soon everyone freezes when they really look to see his skin. 

Red veins appear across his body, except they aren’t veins. They’re roots. 

He’s felt this before, but never so intense, and never so painfully. This rejection of his core, of the ectoplasm in his body—it can only mean one thing.

He coughs again, and this time ectoplasm comes out. It splatters onto the bed sheets, a nauseating green mixed with red. 

Blood blossoms, is his last thought, before his eyes roll up into his head and he goes suddenly limp and unresponsive on the bed. 

By the time Sam shouts and tries to shake him awake, he’s already gone to the world.

Through a red-tinted haze, a memory long buried rises to the surface. Phantom fades into Danny as the flashback invades his mind, and he can do nothing but watch it play out again.

Danny is more exhausted than he’s probably ever been in his life.

Caught between life and death like he is only adds an extra layer to the phrase “dead on your feet”, and he definitely feels dead.

His accident and the powers he gained from it have put a strain on practically everything and everyone in his life. He’s been doing even worse in school than he already was, and the absences have been racking up with every ghost he’s forced to chase away from either the school or himself. Sam and Tucker have noticed that there’s something going on with him too, and every time they ask him if he’s okay the lies he tells them feels like swallowing shards of glass. He hasn’t been able to hang out with them in weeks, and the few times where he has time to see them he ends up staying at home instead, drowning in guilt and shame for the kind of person he’s turning into. Is he even a person at all anymore? Or is he just a monster?

The changes to his diet have been strange to deal with. He’s been eating nearly three times as much food as he used to, his stomach constantly growling at him no matter which form he takes. His dad jokes that he’s hitting another growth spurt, and his mom wonders how many more inches he’s going to gain, but he can see the worry in Jazz’s eyes when he forces out a half-baked laugh. But when he’s in his ghost form, it feels like he’s missing something, and he doesn’t know what that might be.

The heightened senses have been wreaking havoc on his head too. He didn’t know that he was capable of getting so many headaches in such a short amount of time. And they appear with the smallest of causes too. Anything from a strong perfume to a billboard that’s too bright makes him wish he could just go out into the middle of the woods and stay there for a month. As if school wasn’t already awful, now he has to deal with this along with everything else.

Now, as he falls onto his bed to get just a few seconds of rest, he waits for the next ghost to cause trouble. It happens seemingly every day now. Ghosts have been slipping through the portal in massive droves, and his parents haven’t been able to shut it off. After all, the power button was put inside the portal, and trying to reach it is basically a death wish. Sure they could probably dismantle it, but that would be so dangerous while it’s still on. They’re just as likely to permanently rip a hole into the fabric of the universe as they are to close it down, and it’s a risk they aren’t ready to take just yet. So down in their basement it sits, feeding ghosts and ectoplasm into Amity with reckless abandon, leaving Danny to clean up the mess.

A chilly wisp of air leaves his lips, and Danny groans as he heaves himself up. A ring of white light appears around his torso and splits in two, running up and down either side of him to transform him into the ghost. He cracks his neck and phases through his bedroom wall to head towards where he can vaguely sense the other ghost might be causing trouble.

He sighs as he sees the Box Ghost for what must be the fourth time just this week alone. The ghost sees him and starts his usual spiel, but Danny is too tired to really listen to the words. 

“Yeah yeah, I get it, you just want to mess with boxes, but can you please just do it somewhere else? Somewhere that doesn’t bother people maybe?”

The Box Ghost outright laughs at him. “Of course not! My only goal is to cause suffering with my terrifying boxes! You cannot stop me!”

Danny rubs his eyes and stifles a yawn. All he wants to do is sleep…

He raises his fists, letting a green glow center there as he prepares for a fight. And of course the Box Ghost is just as annoying as ever as he launches a torrent of cardboard boxes at Danny’s face. 

The fight goes by in a blur, Danny just going through the motions at this point. A box gets thrown at him and he either blasts it or phases through it. Then he tries to blast Box Ghost, but he’s somehow too slippery to hit nearly every time. They go in a circle like that for a while, neither one quite managing to nail the other. But even as sleep-deprived as he is, Danny as a ghost still has more energy at his disposal than the Box Ghost does, and finally he does manage to land one hit. And thank the Ghost Zone that one hit is all it takes for the Box Ghost to gasp in shock, give some departing remark about returning to wreak havoc on Amity again, and then zooms away. 

Danny slumps in the air and sighs in a mixture of relief and resignation. Maybe he’ll actually be able to get an hour or two of sleep before he has to get up for school tomorrow. But before he does that, he needs to eat something. His stomach is killing him from the inside out and he remembers that there’s some leftover pizza in the fridge at home.

So that’s the way he goes. He flies over Amity Park tiredly, not bothering with seeing the sights or watching the stars tonight. It had been fun at first, being able to fly and all, but now all he can think about when he moves over Amity as a ghost like this is how long it’ll take before another ghost causes trouble. How long until a wannabe ghost hunter comes to try and shoot him down? How many nights can he spend out here before someone notices his disappearance from his bedroom? How many times can he tell the same lie over and over again? How long until he finally believes it himself when he tells everyone “I’m fine”?

He doesn’t know. Maybe that’s just what he gets for somehow getting himself killed only halfway. Now he can’t even enjoy the stars anymore. 

He drifts down to his house and carelessly phases through the wall to reach the living room. At this hour, everyone in the house would be asleep, so he transforms when he gets to the fridge. His feet hit the floor and he opens the door to look for the leftovers he’s so craving. 

Until the click of something metal from the stairs to his left makes his head whirl to the side in alarm.

There, on the stairs with an ecto gun pointed right at him, is his mother.

The fridge door slips out of his hand and shuts with a soft bang, and the two of them stand there, frozen and staring, both terrified in different but equal ways.

Her goggles are up on her head and the headpiece of her suit is down and bunched up around her neck. She wasn’t hunting his ghost form, she looks too casual for that, he just happened to surprise her. 

And surprise her he did. Her eyes are wide with fear, and her hands grip the gun so tightly they shake with the force of it.

“What are you?” she asks, her voice trembling. “What have you done with my baby?!”

Danny gasps and stumbles back, raising his hands up placatingly even as his heart begins to race in his chest so fast it feels like it’s going to burst. 

“Mom, I swear it’s me, I was just—“

Her face twists in anger even as tears begin to fall down her cheeks. She takes a threatening step forward, almost reaching the bottom of the stairs now as she holds the gun steadier.

“What have you done to Danny?!”

He sucks in a shuddering breath, his back nearly hitting a wall with how far he’s backed away from her. By now, his dad and Jazz have heard all the noise and come down to investigate. 

“Mads? What’s going on?” His dad rubs at his eyes tiredly, confusion coloring his face as he sees his mom’s entirely too tense posture and Danny shaking on the other side of the room with his hands up. 

“That thing isn’t Danny. He’s been—possessed or mimicked or something but that isn’t Danny!”

Danny and Jazz meet eyes from over both of their parents’ heads, and she lets out a gasp of her own as she tries to intervene. 

“Mom, don’t point that thing at Danny! He hasn’t done anything, you could kill him!”

She growls and makes to move even closer, Danny backing up as far as he can until his back presses flush against the wall near the door leading down to the basement. His dad reaches out a hand to grab her shoulder, but she rips her arm away and pulls the trigger—

Danny cries out as the shot hits the junction between his right shoulder and his neck. He clamps a hand over it automatically and doubles over in pain, the ectoplasm still burning as it eats away at his skin. He hears loud arguing even as his ears ring and static fills his vision. 

Jazz rushes over to him, and he doesn’t realize it until her hands are on him, trying to pry his hand away from the wound to press a cloth from the kitchen counter there instead. But when she does manage to move his hand, she freezes at what she sees.

“Danny?” she says in a shaking voice. He forces himself to glance up and focus on her suddenly scared and confused face as she stares at him. “Why is your blood green?”

The arguing stops abruptly, and when Danny’s eyes widen and he pulls his hand away from his neck to look at it, he sees what they’re all looking at. 

His hand is covered in red, but the bright green glow dripping from and mixing with the regular blood is impossible to miss. It’s not from the blast, it came from inside of him. 

Jazz stumbles away from him, horrified, and the hand that his dad had kept on his mom’s gun is dropped. She raises it again, ready to fire with burning determination on her face—

He transforms without meaning to. It’s an instinctual thing, his body reacting to the threat and trying to get him away . But the reaction is a mistake, and Jazz falls back to the floor as his hair turns white, his eyes flash a hypnotizing green, and his legs mesh into a tail that allows him to zip out of the way at the last moment.

He goes for the nearest corner above the fridge without thinking, huddling with his back to the wall and his cat-like eyes trained on the gun still aimed for his face. He’s never felt more hunted than he does at that moment. And he’s never been so terrified around his own family before.

But they don’t look at him like he’s their family. They look at him like he’s a monster. 

Jazz yelps in fear at the same time that his mom yells in rage and fires again. Danny zips out of the way, zooming around the kitchen to avoid each shot. He goes into full autopilot, his only goal at that point being survival. 

A shot gets him on the tail and he hisses in pain. Then, in a desperate bid to stop all this, he dives straight for his mother. He doesn’t think, only acts.

He phases into her body and takes over her senses, immediately quieting her mind and ignoring the startled cries of his dad and sister when he disappears inside of her. 

He doesn’t really know what he’s doing when it comes to possession, has only seen it done once or twice before, but this is the only way that he can think of to get this to end.

In two voices, his own and his mom’s, he cries out.

“Forget everything that happened tonight!”

“Forget everything that happened tonight!”

It’s like something clicks in her mind. The memories are tossed to the side easily, and she goes foggy as his dad reaches out for her in terrified concern. 

He goes for him next, immediately jumping from one body to the other. He does the same thing to him, and then after Jazz screams and tries to run away he does the same to her as well.

He leaves their bodies, floating by the ceiling and panting as he watches them blink tiredly, sit there for a minute or two, and then slowly pick themselves up to head for bed. All three of them are distant and listless as they move, following some wordless order or instinct. Danny catches his breath and floats silently behind them, watching cautiously, not quite believing that it could really be that easy. 

His parents go to their room and softly shut the door behind them. Jazz is quick to follow suit with her own space, and then the house descends back into silence.

Danny whirls back around and hurriedly gets to work on the kitchen with a single-minded focus. The ecto-gun was left abandoned at the base of the stairs, and he quickly returns it to its place in the lab. The blasts that it left on the walls and ceiling are shallow but obvious, and he makes use of his tentative knowledge of home renovation from watching his parents build the contraption on the roof to patch up the holes as quickly and quietly as he can. 

He has to pause a few times to clean some ectoplasm off the floor as it continues to drip from his shoulder, and to wipe tears from his eyes whenever they decide to fall. He gets the kitchen to look mostly like how it did before. If anyone asks about the little dents here and there then he can just tell them that it was always there and they must not remember it correctly. His parents are forgetful people, so it wouldn’t be too out there for them not to notice little things like that.

Once he’s done, the sun is already starting to rise. His bones drag with lethargy as he transforms back to a human and moves up to his own bedroom. He won’t be getting any sleep tonight, and he’s still going to have to figure out how to hide the wound on his neck. He supposes a hoodie might work, and a mixture of bandages and makeup can cover the rest well enough. 

The wound on his leg makes him wince with every step he takes, and when he reaches his bedroom door he abruptly switches direction and heads for the bathroom instead.

He closes the door behind him, flips the light on, and winces as he gets a good look at himself in the mirror. Now that he’s human again he can see it more clearly. His blood isn’t natural. There are pools of ectoplasm inside the red, not so much mixing with the blood but swirling inside it, sort of like oil and water. It drips down his neck and has already soaked most of his shirt, with the wound on his leg doing the same thing to his pants. 

His eyes are somehow the most striking part of the image though. They are sunken, with deep bags beneath betraying just how long he’s gone without sleep or rest. Tear tracks that have only half dried make his face look puffy and gaunt at the same time. He looks frail, but more than that he just looks tired. 

And in that gaze, he sees not a hint of remorse. 

His stomach does a flip inside of him, and he doesn’t fight it as he doubles over the toilet and throws up everything, heaving bile when there’s nothing left to give. 

This is the kind of person that he’s become, and he can’t even find the energy to resist it anymore.

Phantom jolts awake in a body that doesn’t feel like his own. The claws that have adorned his hands for a year now feel too large and stiff on his fingers, the fangs in his mouth too pointy and not quite fitting in with the rest of his teeth. His senses are too sharp, the smell of sterilization stings his nose and the dimmed white lights make his eyes ache.

His core aches and thrums in displeasure, the steady humming disrupted by his own heaving gasps. Even breathing itself feels strange, like there’s no relief to the action, like he could just stop and nothing would change. 

It’s been a long time since he woke up feeling like this, like Danny instead of Phantom. 

Wild eyes flit around a room he doesn’t recognize, and when he moves to get up and investigate he realizes there are arms wound around his waist keeping him down. 

He turns and realizes that it’s Sam, still asleep, and then the events of earlier crash into his head all at once. 

The burning is still there, more dull now but already starting to ramp up again now that he’s awake. He can feel a deep sense of wrongness inside him. The blood blossom serum is going to take its sweet time trying to repel his core, as if the poor thing hasn’t already been through enough. Phantom is starting to get pretty tired of having to deal with one horrible thing after another.

But a more important thing to think about is why. Why did the stranger in the lab coat inject him with it in the first place? If they had enough information to know where Phantom was and how to get to him, then surely he must have known that Phantom was already dying. Why go through so much trouble? And actually, how did a human manage to get a hold of blood blossoms in the first place?

He slips out of Sam’s grasp easily and floats over to the door. But when he tries to phase through it, his core stubbornly refuses to do even that, and he growls softly as he reaches for the door handle instead. Now that he’s out in the hallway, he can see that he slept all through the night because it’s daytime now. People are milling around, mostly nurses but also a few doctors and ghosts as well. Several people freeze when they see him, and normally that would be Phantom's cue to go invisible or leave, but right now he’s too focused on his goal to care about his lingering anxieties.

He floats above their heads, winding through the halls in an effort to find someone in particular. When he spots Jazz’s head of red hair, he darts over to her. 

She’s in the middle of a conversation with two other people, worried frowns on all of their faces that soon turn to surprise and open concern when they spot Phantom heading their way. 

Jazz whirls around and gets a look on her face that says she’s about to chew him out for getting up out of bed when he should be resting, so he beats her to the punch.

“Where is he?” 

Jazz scowls and crosses her arms, and Phantom resists the urge to roll his eyes at her. 

“Phantom, what the hell makes you think you can just cough up ectoplasm, pass out for hours, slip out of bed when you should be resting, and come up to me with that as your opening line? If you don’t get back in that bed in the next two minutes then you’d better believe I will drag you there myself.”

Phantom huffs, suppresses a cough, and floats lower so they can be closer to eye level with each other. “I’ll go back soon, but I need to know what his goal is, and how he managed to get blood blossoms when they should be extinct.”

Jazz and the other two give him a flat look, then look towards each other questioningly and back. Voice lowered now, Jazz asks “What are blood blossoms?”

Phantom twitches as the burning starts to pick up again, and he reaches a hand up to scratch at his left arm. Their eyes all follow the movement, and he has to clamp down on the urge to tense up or flee at the reaction because he has more important things to worry about. 

“It’s a type of flower found only in the Ghost Zone that repels ghosts and ectoplasm. It’s like the ghost equivalent of salt for slugs. There’s no way he could have gotten it without going to the Zone, because no ghost is able to get near them. But somehow he got one and now it’s inside me.”

The itching burning gets suddenly worse, and Phantom has to clamp his other hand around his wrist to stop himself from ripping clean through his arm. His teeth grind together at the amount of self control it takes to not just take off his whole arm altogether. 

Now that the concept of going back to bed has been forgotten, Jazz looks even more worried than before. “Has this happened to you before? Do you know what’s going to happen?”

He growls under his breath and shakes his head. “I’ve run into blood blossoms in the Zone before, but I’ve never been injected with one. No human has ever gotten a hold of one until now. If there are more blood blossoms outside of the Zone right now, then I need to find and destroy them as soon as possible, before this happens to more ghosts around Amity.”

Jazz takes a moment to close her eyes and sigh before she reaches out and lays a tentative hand on his shoulder. 

“Phantom, everyone in Amity admires your tenacity, but your core is one more bad day away from shattering completely and there’s no guarantee that you’d be able to float more than a block down the road before you collapse, let alone go hunting for flowers to destroy. You need to rest. Me, Sam, and Tucker can take care of things for you. Everyone wants to help you, if you’ll only just let us, okay?”

Despite having the urge to pull away, Phantom stays floating there with Jazz’s hand on his shoulder even as he scowls at her. “I can’t just sit here. I need to go find out what’s happening and fix this. If my core is so close to breaking then wouldn’t that be even more reason to do as much as I can before I can’t anymore?”

Jazz looks like she’s been slapped, and Phantom flinches back, already regretting his words. 

“Phantom, I…”

But before she can continue whatever it is she was going to say, suddenly Sam and Tucker come skidding down the hallway. Tucker just looks worried and frantic, but Sam looks pissed.

“Phantom! I swear I’m gonna pummel you into the ground so hard you’re going to wish you could die again because I won’t let you!”

They barrel into him so fast that it knocks the breath out of him, stirring up a few coughs as Sam grabs the collar of his suit to forcefully drag him closer until they’re face to face. 

“You will let us help you and you are going to like it. You got that?”

His coughing fades off and he nods dumbly, not really having much of a choice. She narrows her eyes at him, then lets him go. Tucker is wrapped around his middle, refusing to let go, so it’s not like it makes much of a difference anyway.

“Ok, so what’s the game plan?” Sam asks Jazz, who startles at the question and sends a sour look Phantom’s way.

“Is there any way to reverse the flower’s effects? Would flushing it out with more ectoplasm work at all?”

Phantom’s shoulders sag and he goes back to itching the side of his head this time. 

“I don’t know. Blood blossoms have never been used like this before, I only know how to deal with the flower itself. But I’d have to say that more ectoplasm would probably be a bad idea.”

He ignores the way the two strangers beside Jazz immediately take out a clipboard and notepad, starting to write down what he says. He clamps down on the urge to get defensive.

“Why is that?”

He switches to itching at one of his shoulders, his other hand gripping the front of his suit tightly. “Because the flowers repel ghosts and ectoplasm. It’s like putting two magnets against each other with nowhere to go. The serum isn’t going to be easy to just ‘flush out’, and adding more ectoplasm would just cause more of a reaction, and sorry in advance for the mental image I’m about to give you but I think I would just explode from the inside out.”

Tucker and Sam grimace at the same time. Jazz looks even more worried, if that’s even possible, and Phantom has to tear his claws away from himself when they manage to rip through his suit again. He growls and locks his hands together, trying to keep them there even as the ectoplasm under his skin burns. He can feel the serum coursing through him, getting absorbed into his organs and flesh. If his core doesn’t manage to kill him first, then this flower absolutely will. What a great time to be facing his own death (again). 

“We have a handful of researchers analyzing the contents of the syringe right now,” Jazz says. “I can tell them to focus on reversing the effects instead of identification, since you already know what it is. If it was synthesized in a lab, then there should be a way to break it down.”

Phantom nods. “I need to find the rest of the flowers, if there are any. And to do that I need to know where that guy came from.”

Jazz gives him a look, but it only takes a moment of scrutiny before she eases up and uncrosses her arms. “Fine, but Sam and Tucker are going to stay with you wherever you go. And if your symptoms get any worse then I want you to get help immediately. Understand?”

Phantom huffs but relents with a nod. He’s fully intending on not doing that, but with Sam and Tucker following him around and his ability to go intangible on the fritz now, he doesn’t really have much of a choice. He’ll just have to get everything done quickly then.

“Alright. He’s on the second floor, room 24. We have our two volunteer security guards watching him right now. The police aren’t legally required to consider ghosts as victims of a crime so all we can do is keep him around for a little while. Don’t be too rough with him or we might face legal consequences.”

An idea pops into his head at the words. “Does anyone else in Amity know that Phantom is staying here?”

Jazz gives him a different look this time. “No, I don’t think they do. I’m sure some of the staff have talked to their families about you, but I doubt anyone here would rat you out if the Fentons asked them not to. Why?”

A wicked grin stretches across his face. “If ghosts legally aren’t people, then I’m sure nobody would bat an eye at a rabid ghost attack.”

Sam snorts a laugh and Jazz looks like she’s torn between being scared and impressed. “I’m going to trust that you’re not about to kill a man only because I believe that you’re better than that, but if you need to help bury a body and it happened to be him then I wouldn’t mind grabbing a shovel.” She chuckles and then sighs. “Just be careful, okay?”

Tucker releases him momentarily to nervously smile up at her. “Don’t worry Jazz, we’ve got this.”

“Yeah, what he said,” Phantom adds with a sharp smile of his own, prompting a genuine tinge of humor in Jazz’s eyes.

And without much more fanfare, phantom whirls around and heads for the stairs to the next floor, Sam and Tucker right beside him. 

With a core half broken, powers mostly gone, and blood blossoms under his skin, he’s still going to make whoever planned this stunt wish they had never heard of the name Phantom.

Chapter Text

The man’s open surprise when he sees Phantom drift in through the door with Sam and Tucker right behind him is unexpected. 

He’s not tied or handcuffed to anything, so when the door opened he had been pacing the far wall with a hand on his chin. Now he’s staring at Phantom like he’s seen a ghost, cracked glasses nearly slipping off his nose.

“How are you still alive?” 

Phantom huffs a humorless laugh and separates his tail into legs to stand before him. “I’m not.”

The man blinks and turns to face Phantom directly, squinting at him. “The serum should have killed you within minutes.”

Phantom gives a sharp, toothy grin and leans into his personal space. “Oh really? Who told you that?”

The man shrinks away from his intensely green gaze, already visibly sweating. 

“I can’t tell you that.”

Phantom hums and kicks up so he floats above the man’s head. Arms crossed over his chest, he looks down at him from the ceiling now. His core is so weak now that even his ice has retreated from him, so his options for intimidation are limited. He knows that the breathing and not blinking thing tends to creep Tucker out, so he uses that to his advantage here. His eyes never blink and never waver, and it doesn’t take long for the man to nervously look away.

“Well, then I suppose I could overshadow you instead. That would probably be easier, and you wouldn’t remember a thing.”

The man scoffs and crosses his own arms. “We already know that your core is too weak to use an ability so complex. You’re bluffing.”

Phantom grins and begins to make small circles around the man’s head. 

“The fact that you know that in the first place, and that you’re using the word ‘we’, tells me that you were sent by someone with enough connections to get into the hospital’s physical records. So either it’s someone who works here, or the GIW.”

He jolts at the last word, and Phantom knows he’s hit the nail on the head. 

“So it’s the GIW then. That makes sense, but what I don’t understand is how you managed to get into the Ghost Zone.”

“We didn’t, I—“ He clamps his mouth shut mid-sentence, but it’s already too late. He’s giving everything away and Phantom hasn’t even gotten his fangs out yet. 

“Hm. If you didn’t go to the Ghost Zone, then you must have gotten it from a third party. Because there’s no way you could have bioengineered an extinct flower all on your own. The GIW has never been known for original ideas.”

“That’s not true!” he shouts indignantly.

Phantom whips around, getting right up in his face. The man flinches back at the sight of fangs and bright green eyes. 

“Really? How about you prove it to me then. Did you really create it yourself or did someone give it to you?”

The man opens his mouth to speak but stops himself midway, staring back at Phantom uncertainly. 

Phantom shrugs and backs away, floating back over to Sam and Tucker.

“I guess it doesn’t really matter either way. Oh and you should probably look for new employment soon, because I’m going to burn the GIW to the ground.”

He turns to throw a menacing smile over his shoulder with a friendly wave, before he sweeps a bewildered Sam and Tucker out of the room with him and locks the door behind him.

His smile drops at the same time he slumps against the nearest wall with a loud sigh. The security guards at the door peer at him curiously while Sam and Tucker look between themselves like they want to ask him things but are too nervous to ask.

Giving in to the urge to itch again, he digs his claws into his thigh and grimaces as he scratches, knowing that the burning won’t go away but unable to do much else. He looks up at the security guards to address them.

“Wait a few hours and then have someone go in and ask him where he got the serum from again. If he refuses to say then try heavily implying that the GIW isn’t skilled enough to create a serum on their own without help, that should get him to talk.”

Confused and surprised, the guards nod at him. Phantom considers his job done at this point, so he gestures for Sam and Tucker to follow and makes a point to stop scratching as he heads back down the stairs. 

He doesn’t even make it all the way down before his friends ask what they want to ask.

“Why did he say that you should already be dead?” Sam asks bluntly. Tucker makes a funny squeak noise that doesn’t at all stop her from continuing. “He said minutes, but you seem to be doing fine so far and it’s been hours.”

Phantom laughs humorlessly, switching from floating to walking when a flash of dizziness hits him. 

“I’m sure you three already know this—“ he shakes his head as his vision clouds up— “but I’m not exactly a normal ghost.”

He’s dying, so the statement doesn’t strike fear into him like it would normally. The thought of people figuring out what or who he is suddenly isn’t as important anymore, not when he’s facing his own mortality for the second time in his life, not when he has all of Amity to protect. Besides, it’s hard to care much about anything when the walls are spinning.

There’s a sense of weightlessness, cotton filling his head, a startled shout from behind him, and then his head hits the floor and he knows no more.

Danny makes a name for himself among the ghosts of Amity faster than the people. He tries to make himself scarce, just helping people here and there, never lingering long enough for anyone to get a good look at him. For all they know, he’s just another ghost who decided to be merciful. He hears a handful of whispers among people and ghosts that describe him, but so far nobody has connected the different sightings of him to each other. Nobody thinks that he’s any more than a passing spirit, there one moment and gone the next. It’s how he prefers it honestly. 

His parents make themselves known as ghost hunters, and he avoids them like the plague. He tries not to make it obvious that he does the same thing at home too. 

He gets to know some of the more peaceful ghosts around Amity at the same time that the GIW make their first appearance. 

He hears his parents describing the unfeeling nature of ghosts at the same time that he meets Rosie, a young girl who died around the beginning of the 2000’s, and learns that she hates roses but loves dogs with her entire heart—or core, he supposes. “Ghosts are just shells of their former selves, just a bunch of emotions left behind with no real sentience,” he hears his mom repeating in his head as he introduces her to Cujo, sees her practically vibrating with excitement as she carefully pets him in exactly the way that Danny shows her. She looks so happy, and he doesn’t miss the way that the other ghosts smile after her as she plays with the other ghost kids. They protect each other, and Danny protects them as well.

His parents finish constructing their first ecto-net at the same time that he meets Pete, a hardened soldier sporting the rope burns of the noose that killed him around his neck. He tells Danny about what it was like to fight in WWI, and how hard it was to return home once the fighting was done. He had left his wife and only child behind when he died, and the one thing that would bring him peace is to finally find their graves, hidden out in the world somewhere. His parents talk about capturing some ghosts to experiment on them, figure out what it is that makes them look so similar to humans, and Danny doesn’t know how to tell them that they are human. 

The GIW hires a bunch of crazy people to be ghost hunters for them, luring them in with the promise of big rewards for the more ghosts they capture. Danny watches a ghost named Stick lose an arm to a wire trap and the next day has to bite his tongue to stop himself from yelling at his English teacher when he says that ghosts need to be eradicated just like any other pest. He watches another ghost named David fall into an electrical spike trap that kills him slowly and painfully, with Danny too weak to do anything to help him, and later that week digs his nails into his palms when his dad proudly shows off his newest ghost killing machine. 

Danny lasts all of a week of this before he just skips school and leaves his house altogether. He doesn’t tell anyone where he’s going, and he doesn’t know when he’ll be back. Nobody tries to stop him. Nobody even sees him go.

He spends the day letting out his anger on the ghost hunters. He doesn’t kill anyone, and he tries not to maim them too badly, but he isn’t kind to them as he tears up every trap he can find and blasts their weapons until they become nothing more than a pile of scrap and trash. He doesn’t notice the way his fingertips start to curve into sharpened claws. He doesn’t notice his teeth pointing into fangs or his hair whipping around in an otherworldly wind. 

He feels enraged, but he also feels oddly free. The other ghosts look at him with newfound appreciation, seeing a ghost who finally has the courage and power to stand up to their tormentors. It’s a nice change from the way everyone at school looks at him, like he’s an old piece of gum on the bottom of their shoes. And it’s also a nice change from having to hear every little demeaning thing his parents have to say about the ghosts who are just trying to live and find peace. 

These are not the monsters that he was taught to believe, but now he is. 

He’s battered and bruised when he returns to his room, only to find nothing out of place from where it was before. His phone is still on the corner of the bed where he left it, not a single new message in sight, and his door is still closed. 

It’s like all his emotions just turn off as he forgoes a transformation and instead turns invisible to float through the house, watching his family. 

Jazz is in her room, having just gotten back from her first college class of the semester. She’s been so excited about it for the past month or so, and lately she’s been more interested in telling Danny all about the things she’s trying to learn—instead of the fact that she got into one of the best schools in the country. She looks excited and happy, playing music from her phone and bopping along to it as she puts away her things. 

He drifts down to the living room next and sees his parents having a nice conversation about possibly redecorating the front lawn with some colorful new flowers and bushes. They’re having dinner together, and it looks like spaghetti and meatballs. 

Jazz comes down not long after to join them, and the three of them fall into an easy conversation.

School let out a few hours ago, so Danny should have been home by now, but here his family is, having dinner without sparing even a moment to think about Danny too. 

Dinners lately have been stilted and painfully awkward. His parents will ask him questions about school and what he’s been up to with his friends, and he’ll avoid eye contact, pick at his food, and give them one-word answers if that. It never seems to put a damper on their mood, and they always carry on like it’s not the most obvious thing in the world that their son is depressed even while Jazz shoots him worried looks out of the corner of his eye. At least she keeps trying to find moments to ask if he’s okay, even if he always tells her that he’s fine. 

But even Jazz isn’t worrying about him now. She’s moving on to bigger, better things. She has her whole, amazing life ahead of her, and what has Danny done but drag her down? 

Nobody noticed that Danny was gone. Nobody went to check on him, and even his best friends haven’t asked him where he was all day.

Has he really pushed everyone so far away that they can’t even see him anymore? They all look so happy, so unbothered. Danny would hate to ruin that for them with his constantly bad mood. He might as well just leave them to it.

He whirls around and heads back up to his bedroom, and there he hovers for a while. 

He could just transform back, take a nap (however brief it might be), and just continue on tomorrow like usual. But…

He’s so tired lately. And not in the way that can just be fixed with a few hours of sleep.

He’s tired in the way that Butch—the ghostly butcher with the bone still exposed from his chopped off hand—is when he says that he misses his brother with every fiber in his very soul. Butch knows that his brother has already passed on, so it’s a real slap in the face from the universe that his Obsession is seeing his brother just once more. He’s already been drifting in the afterlife for a hundred years or so, and he’ll keep drifting for a hundred more, until his core withers away along with his resolve. 

He’s tired in the way that Lanky the ghost dog is, sitting at his former owner’s grave diligently for what must have been a dozen years already, brokenly howling a few times every week as he guards a place that doesn’t need guarding and mourns a person who nobody else remembers.

He’s tired in the way that Danny is, aimlessly drifting through his life and afterlife at the same time. It feels like every lie he tells his friends and family is another step closer to the grave he’s supposed to be lying in. If he wasn’t already a ghost, it would feel like he’s becoming one with every skipped class, every bruise that hurts a little less with practice, every fake smile and delayed hang out.

And why is it that he feels like when he transforms he just becomes a different kind of ghost? Is he a human that can turn into a ghost, or a ghost masquerading as a human?

How cruel is it to die twice? 

He tells himself that he just has to make it through another day. Just one more clenched fist in the face of his parents spreading blatantly harmful misinformation. Just one more heartfelt promise to protect another ghost that never gets fulfilled. Just one more day of avoiding all the people he loves and cares about. 

Just one more bad report card. One more night without sleep. One more this, one more that.

He’s run out of excuses to give himself. And he’s almost run out of energy to care.

He has to force himself to transform again, to lay back down with aching bones despite the tempting call of the fresh night air outside. But as he lies there, awake until the sun crests over the horizon and his alarm reminds him that he has to go back to being tormented at school, all he can think about is how much better his family’s lives would be without him, and the longing in his heart to be free.

He just has to make it through one more day. Just take it one step at a time like he always does, no matter how painful each one may be. He tells himself that he’ll get over this hopelessness eventually, despite the fact that he doesn’t at all believe his own words. 

Just keep going.

Just one more day.

Just one more…

The burning is worse by the time he wakes up next. He tries to wake up quickly, to just hurry up and move, but his body remains sluggish and non-compliant, too busy dealing with the new appearance of hot flashes rushing from his head down. As a ghost he can’t sweat, but that almost makes the feeling worse. He’s used to being cold, so the feverish warmth does not feel good.

When he’s able to drag his heavy eyes open, he’s immediately blinded by a light that’s way too bright. His breath hitches as the itching burning races suddenly up one of his legs and settles at his hip. He wishes he could rip the feeling out of his body. 

He wants to tear open flesh and bone and let the ectoplasm spill out until there’s no red left. Self-vivisection, he thinks, both amused and horrified by the image the word creates in his head.

A face floats into view, giving him blessed relief from the intense light on what he now realizes is the ceiling. 

The green eyes and red hair gives it away as Jazz. At first she looks worried, but that expression is quickly switched out for a more intense, angry one once she realizes he’s awake. 

“—hope you have a good explanation for why you didn’t come find me before passing out and scaring everyone half to death.”

He blinks slowly, taking a moment or two to process the words before he has enough brainpower to actually answer the question.

“Didn’t know,” he mutters, coughing as he tries to heave himself up.

Jazz puts a hand on his back to help him, putting some pillows behind him so he has something to lean on once he’s mostly upright. He doesn’t want to admit how much it helps.

Sam and Tucker are there too, two chairs dragged over to the foot of the bed and watching him.

“It’s not like I can predict when I’m gonna randomly pass out. It just hit me out of nowhere. I’m fine now.”

Sam scoffs and even Tucker gives him a look that says he thinks otherwise. 

“You absolutely are not fine,” Jazz tells him sternly. “The core monitor tells me that your core is working at one tenth of its normal power. Most ghosts would shatter at just one fifth. You slept for a shorter amount of time this time but your symptoms are only getting worse. And they told me what that guy said. The fact that you’re still alive with that serum in you is already a miracle on its own even without you pushing yourself at every opportunity.”

He growls and glares at her, although there’s no real heat in the look. “I’m pushing myself because I have to. If I don’t stop the GIW now then there’s no telling how many more blood blossoms they’ll get, how many ghosts will be killed before their time. Even worse, if they can spread that stuff into the Ghost Zone then they could eradicate everybody. If I can stop them, and I know I can, then I don’t have a choice. I have to.”

She sighs, rubs her eyes, takes a few deep breaths to calm herself. Phantom winces not just because of that but also the pain working its way up his spine. It makes it difficult to focus on the room around him when it feels like someone is taking his bones and stomping on them like an empty soda can. 

“Your plan worked, by the way,” Sam says after a few moments of silence. “The guy talked. He admitted that a third party did give the GIW the flower, but he said he didn’t know who. Something about this mission being his next promotion or something, so he didn’t have much to say besides that. We had to let him go.”

Phantom nods and takes a minute to scrub a hand down his tired face. A cramp appears in his stomach, and he has to resolutely swallow down the urge to vomit. A new wave of fever making itself known doesn’t help at all.

“I have to go there.”

Jazz huffs a laugh. “Alright, then we’ll go with you. If you’re going to be keeling over regularly then I’d at least like to be there to catch you.”

He has to curl his arms around his torso in a vain attempt to ease the pain there as he laughs as well. His smile quickly turns into a grimace, though he’s at least glad nobody mentions it.

Tucker reaches into a backpack that Phantom is only just now noticing has been sitting by his feet the whole time and pulls out a laptop. “Well, if we’re going to be breaking into a corporate facility, then I’d say now is my time to shine.”

Sam snorts and leans over his shoulder to watch his hands fly over the keyboard. “Just don’t go setting off the fire alarm again. This is already going to be dangerous enough without everybody being on high alert.”

“That was one time! And it’s not my fault that their fire suppression system was both linked to their internet and improperly labeled.”

“Y’know, I don’t know anything about code or hacking, but that sure does sound like a load of bullshit to me.”

Phantom finds a grin stretching across his face at the same time that a bewildered Jazz butts into the conversation.

“Hold on, are you saying that you two have broken into places before this?”

Completely in sync, the two of them look up at her and say, at the same time, “You can’t prove anything.”

Jazz glances at Phantom next as if expecting him to be the more reasonable one between the three of them, but he just smiles and shrugs. He’s not about to complain if Tucker has the necessary skills to get them into the GIW (even if the means that he got those skills might not be entirely legal). 

Jazz seems to give up quickly, because she sighs and gestures for them to keep going, at which point the two of them look delighted and Tucker goes right back to typing. 

A knock at the door startles everyone though, and when Jazz goes to open it, Phantom freezes up when he sees Jack and Maddie on the other side.

Everyone immediately turns to look at Phantom, a wide range of worried expressions as they wait to see his reaction. Curse his inability to use his powers. It takes a monumental amount of effort to not reach up and rub at his chest when his core aches at just the sight of them, and it takes even more effort to push away the panicked static filling his head so he can actually hear what they’re saying.

Jack brings a hand up to the back of his neck nervously. “Sorry, we were kind of eavesdropping. But we would just like to say…”

He looks to Maddie first, and she smiles and nods up at him resolutely. The hand on his neck falls back down to his side as he gains a more determined look, making a point to look Phantom in the eye.

“We’d just like to say that we want to help you too, Phantom. In any way we can.”

Phantom stares, unblinking. All eyes are on him, a dense silence permeating the room. 

And this is where he has to choose, isn’t it? Between letting his family get closer and possibly learning the truth, or pushing them away to keep everyone safe and happy, even if it means he fades away in the process. 

His parents have hurt him before. He can still feel the phantom sting of an ecto-gun’s blast hitting his neck, still see the terrified faces of his family (are they still his family, or should he be using the word ‘former’ there?) staring at the monster that had become of their son. 

He can see the inventions he helped build scattered around the lab in the basement, recreated for the GIW and used on innocent people every day since. He’s seen ghosts killed, dismembered, torn apart by those very same inventions. 

The portal that his dad was so excited about, that Danny helped build, was the thing that killed him. And maybe he can still transform back, can still pretend to be human if he wants, but he’s never been the same since. 

Can he really still let himself be around them, after all of that? Can he really say with certainty that they’ve changed? 

But maybe…

Maybe it doesn’t matter anymore.

Phantom’s core is close to shattering, and with this serum it’s only a matter of time before his core gives up. He's going to shatter and disappear, with only a handful of people left to mourn him. 

There’s no future left for him after this. Whatever happens, happens. 

Maybe, before he goes, he could spend just a little more time with his parents, like old times. Maybe, however brief it may be, he can feel like he belongs to a family again. 

The grin he plasters on his face is shaky, full of doubts and fear and sadness far too deep to put into words. But it’s something, and he doesn’t miss the way his family’s gaze softens when they see it.

“Okay,” he whispers, too emotional to say it any louder.

Jack and Maddie—Mom and Dad, smile at him, and he could almost describe the way they look at him as proud.

Just this once, he can let himself be a little more vulnerable. Just this once, he can trust his life in someone else’s hands, for however long that life is going to last. 

.

..

…

And elsewhere, a man in a lab coat walks into an office.

Green wallpaper and ornate golden pillars line the inside. A desk sits below a huge framed painting on the far wall, a renaissance piece depicting a horseman surrounded by fire. The darkened room seems to glow with a menacing light.

Another man, sitting in the chair behind the desk, doesn’t bother turning to address his guest, merely waits for the man to talk.

“A-apologies for the intrusion, sir. Um, the task you gave me went well. Most of the serum was injected, however…”

The other man tuts and idly waves a pale hand. “Oh just spit it out already.”

Straightening his cracked glasses, he clears his throat, wiping sweaty palms off on his coat. 

“Um, the target, Phantom. The serum hasn’t killed him yet.”

The man behind the desk hums, seemingly not very concerned with the news. “And did you procure a blood sample?”

“U-um, no. I was unable to do that,” he stammers out.

The man sighs and rises from his chair, holding a fluffy white cat in his arms as he continues to admire the paintings before him.

“Oh well, I suppose it can’t be helped. You did not complete your task, however, so unfortunately your promotion will be postponed to a later date. You are dismissed.”

The man squeaks and makes for the door quickly, but as he’s turning the handle, he stops to look back, clearing his throat again in a brief moment of confidence. 

“Um, sir? You don’t seem too concerned about Phantom being alive…”

A rumbling chuckle fills the room, sending a shiver up his spine. Cat purring in his arms, the man at the desk turns around to face the room proper. Dressed nicely with silver hair pulled back into a bun, Vlad Masters peers down at him as if looking at an ant instead of a person.

“I knew that Phantom could not be felled by such a simple trick, so I should hope he isn’t dead yet. Besides, I have so many more things planned for the protector of Amity Park.”

The man in the lab coat quickly opens the door and flees, a dark laughter ringing out through the halls behind him.

Chapter Text

Standing before the entrance to the GIW headquarters just outside of Amity Park in the middle of the night is a lot more intimidating than one might expect. It’s a simple rectangular building, painted white and sporting not a single window anywhere. The barbed wire at the top of the fences and the solid metal door with a password lock typically sends out a clear message to stay away for most humans. But for Phantom, it’s something deeper.

He can feel it, the closer they get to the building. A feeling in his core as if something terrible is happening here, telling him to flee and never return. If he listens closely, he can almost hear screaming, like the earth itself is crying out.

This place is a tomb. A place where any ghost who enters is never seen again. 

Phantom will hopefully be the last ghost to enter here, though he isn’t naive enough to think that he will be leaving with his life.

His core has gotten slightly stronger since he agreed to let his parents join them. Having his entire family and best friends willingly present is giving him a steady (although limited) supply of energy that he didn’t have before. But while he is able to use some of his abilities again, it also means that the serum is acting that much quicker.

He coughs into his fist, trying his best to stifle the noise as his dad takes out an ecto-gun and shoots a hole into the fence. The ectoplasm that’s used in the guns has a low level corrosive property, so it only takes a few shots for the metal to melt away and collapse into a vaguely circular shape. 

Jazz reaches over to rub his back, but it barely makes a difference when ectoplasm comes up. It splatters onto his palm, flecks of angry red mixing inside, and he flicks it off into the grass with a grimace. 

He looks up and immediately wants to go invisible when he notices everyone watching him, all of them with worried expressions. He’s only able to stop himself by blaring a reminder in his head that he needs to save up as much energy as he can. Invisibility can come later when he actually needs it. But the reasoning doesn’t make the eyes on his back as he floats through the opening make him feel any less exposed.

Boots hit the pavement, and as they come up to the door Jack does the same thing to the lock on the door. And then it’s Tucker’s time to shine. 

He pulls a tablet out of his backpack, pressing a few buttons before hissing a “Yesss” under his breath. That must mean that he managed to disable the cameras. The GIW will probably know that they’re coming, but they won’t be able to track them through the building or see how many of them there are. 

Another few taps and then Phantom feels a weight leave his shoulders as the barrier keeping all ghosts out is switched off. 

Before Jack is done with the lock, Phantom phases through the door himself. He’s impatient, and there’s nobody waiting to shoot him on the other side anyway. 

He manages to float a little ways down the hallway before the door finally swings open and the others rush to join him. 

But by the time he gets to the end of the hallway, he stops when a frosty mist travels from his mouth, a shiver going up his spine as the cold cuts through his fever. He can barely sense anything in here, the thick concrete walls blocking his senses somewhat. But what he can feel tells him that everything is below. 

He looks at the rest of the group and silently points down, and they all nod in understanding before they keep moving.

The first floor shows them nothing interesting. Just a bunch of empty rooms, janitor’s closets, and one lab that doesn’t look like it’s been used in months. When Jazz goes up to an office computer, she realizes that the computers are the same way. Everything has a thin layer of dust on it, empty and unused. 

“It’s a disguise,” Phantom says eventually once they’re sure that nobody is around to hear them. “To make this place seem like any other normal building, especially for inspections. All of the real stuff is in the basement.”

The problem is though, they can’t find the elevator. It must be hidden somewhere, but it’s hidden well enough that they can’t find it. 

Which means that Phantom has to bring everyone down to the next floor himself. He sighs once they go around the floor once more, still finding nothing, and resigns himself to his fate.

“Alright, everyone gather up.”

But Jazz steps forward. “Phantom, you don’t have the strength for this kind of thing right now. Why not just take one or two of us and conserve your energy for when you need it.”

Phantom opens his mouth to try and argue his point, but he closes it a second later. Instead of speaking, he turns his legs into a tail and zips over to them faster than anyone else can react, latching on to all five of them.

With his arms linked around his parents, Sam, and Tucker, Jazz’s arm gets wrapped in his tail as he drags them down through the floor.

They land on the first floor of the basement within seconds, but as soon as their feet are on solid ground and Phantom lets go, everyone stumbles and gasps. Trying to think back, Phantom is pretty sure that this was his first time extending his intangibility to any of them, and probably all of their first times going intangible. No wonder they’re all off balance.

But Phantom himself isn’t much better. He doesn’t think to turn his tail back into legs again as he falls to the floor, one hand pressed to the tiles and the other holding his mouth as he coughs and heaves. Red and ectoplasm drip past his fingers, bringing bright glowing colors to an otherwise blank and bland room. 

The feverish warmth gets worse in that moment. The itching under his skin is almost easy to ignore compared to the way his insides twist as he’s boiled alive. 

A hand finds its way to his shoulder, and he flinches away at first before realizing that it’s Jazz standing there and not a GIW agent coming to kill him. He forces himself to relax. He’d like to think that Jazz’s presence by his side is what makes the cough go away faster. Soon enough his body is done trying to kill itself and he wipes the ectoplasm in his hand off on his suit. 

He shoves himself up, floating again and trying (again) to ignore the worried looks sent his way.

“I’m fine,” he rasps, wiping some more ectoplasm from his chin. “Let’s keep going.”

He gets his bearings and finds that they’re all in a room. This one looks a lot more lived in. The computer has no dust on it, the filing cabinet is full, and several important-looking papers are scattered around the desk in the corner. He finds the door and is about to head in that direction when a very large hand bodily scoops him up.

Startled, Phantom looks up to see that his dad has picked him up in much the same way someone would hold a pet snake. He always forgets just how much smaller he is compared to Jack, especially now that he can float and be at eye level whenever he wants. He’s about to slip out of the hold, but Jack’s voice stops him.

“Don’t worry,” he says with a beaming smile. “You can still rest while we explore. We can pick up the slack just fine.”

Stunned, Phantom watches as Jack hands his ecto-gun off to Jazz and uses his newly free arm to practically cradle the ghost in his arms like a baby. Wide eyed, Phantom stares up at Jack’s very genuine face for several long moments. 

This can’t be real, he thinks. His parents still don’t recognize him, and it’s a miracle that they haven’t, but this has to be pushing it, right? It would probably be less risky if he refused. He can keep going just fine as is.

But then again… 

That feeling of safety, of family, is coming back again. His core hums stronger now than it has in weeks, urging him to be close to the people he loves. He’s surprised to find that he wants this. The comfort, the easy acceptance of his ghostly appearance and habits, the support. 

That first introduction to the hospital, when he first saw them, he was terrified that they would be exactly the same as they were before. That they would hate ghosts, and hate him in turn. 

A nauseous feeling rises up in his stomach when he remembers why they’re like this now. How long is this ‘family’ going to last, he wonders?

He blinks, shakes out his darkening thoughts. He takes a deep breath and lets it out, lets himself stay in the moment. Maybe it’s the way his core aches so badly for closeness like this, maybe it’s the fever making him too weak to object, or maybe he’s just tired of being scared all the time, but…

“Okay,” he says finally, and it’s like the whole room breathes a sigh of relief. Apparently they were waiting for his reaction, though now that he’s being held like this he’s finding it more difficult to care about the attention. 

He shifts in Jack’s arms, turning so he’s more facing down with one hand dangling off the side and his head held in the crook of his dad’s elbow. After a moment of hesitation, he gives in to the urge to wrap his tail around Jack’s arm. 

Tucker’s voice sounding from the desk in the corner interrupts his thoughts. “Hey guys, these papers are all about ghosts.”

Jack carries Phantom over towards the desk, the others following right behind, and they look down at the papers Tucker is holding.

The first one is a bunch of printed out models of molecular structures. Phantom recognizes a few of them. His parents have studied the same thing, the molecules and chemical compounds making up ectoplasm and ghosts, and how they react to each other.

The next one is… much more disturbing.

He hears Jazz audibly gag when they all lay eyes on the labeled illustration of a ghost that’s been cut open. Their ribs have been broken and shoved aside, exposing all the anatomy and organs beneath. Whoever drew the picture didn’t bother to detail the face, only the details of the gore within. Phantom’s eyes lock onto the labeled core, right in the center of the chest, nestled next to a heart that doesn’t beat. Even in the drawing, somehow he can tell how cold and lifeless the core is.

He doesn’t realize he’s growling until Sam reaches over to soothe a hand down his back. Phantom isn’t a pet, but it calms him nonetheless. His growling peters off into silence. His shoulders stay tense and unyielding as he glances at the rest of the papers but decides that he’s already seen more than enough.

“Let’s go,” he hisses, and it doesn’t take much more prompting than that to get everyone out of the room and back on track.

Maddie takes the front of the group, with Jazz right beside her, both of their ecto-guns pointed up and ready to fire at the first threat they might see. Sam and Tucker take the middle, periodically looking through the small windows on each door to find the blood blossoms that they came here for, or anything else that might be interesting enough to pursue. Phantom stays in Jack’s arms at the back, trying his best to focus on the ghostsense leading them further down instead of the way that it feels like there’s fire ants crawling all over him. 

They reach the second floor before they run into their first human. Maddie doesn’t hesitate as she raises the gun and fires right past the man’s head. He jumps, stumbling back to fall on his butt, and when Maddie steps closer with her gun still raised he holds his hands up in surrender. Terrified, he begs her not to shoot.

“Get out of here,” Jazz steps up to tell him firmly. Her voice is shaking as she says it, but Phantom realizes that it’s not in fear but in rage. “Never come back to this place again, and tell no one that we’re here.”

The man rushes to comply, nodding frantically as he scrambles past them towards the stairs leading up. 

“Good job, Jazz!” Maddie praises warmly, not a hint of remorse for the person they just terrorized. “Keep that up and the security guards might get jealous.”

Phantom can hear Tucker mutter “Why are the Fentons so crazy?” under his breath and has to try very hard to suppress a laugh. 

For a while, Phantom drifts in a state of half-awareness. His dad’s arms are a lot more comfortable than he would have thought they would be, and between the soothing rocking of being carried and the blood blossom sucking the life out of him, it’s hard not to let his eyes close a little bit longer than a normal blink a few times. The fever makes his limbs heavy and weak, like plastic that’s been out melting in the sun for too long. The itching makes him shuffle agitatedly, never fully able to ignore the feeling. There’s a headache working its way between his eyes the longer that they trudge through empty hallways with lights that are far too white and bright. 

But it’s when they make it to the third floor that a noise reaches his ears and has Phantom’s head shooting up. 

Jack stops immediately, and the others soon notice something happening and stop to look at him as well. 

“What is it?” Sam whispers, but Phantom quickly shushes her and the whole group falls deathly quiet.

Staring down at the floor, Phantom tilts his head this way and that, trying to hear the faint sound better through layers and layers of dirt and concrete. The static under his skin and clouds in his head make it more difficult, but he’s somewhat able to push past that to hear it properly.

A piercing wail, the sound of not just one but many ghosts crying out for help. They must have realized that Phantom is here, and now they’re calling for him to save them. They must still be several floors below if the sound is so small.

A new sound reaches his ears, and Phantom’s head whips to the side at the sudden sound of crashing and things being knocked aside. His ghostsense forces a mist from his lips, and his eyes widen as he realizes exactly who it is.

“RUN!” he yells to the others, right before the wall to their right is smashed clean through and collapses in a burst of dust and rubble. A streak of white and red is all he’s able to see before a clawed hand shoots out from the smoke to grab Phantom by the neck and rip him away from Jack’s grasp.

His dad and the others yell out in alarm as Phantom is lifted up and shoved into the left wall. The force leaves him breathless, his ribs cracking and straining as the concrete crumbles behind him. He coughs up ectoplasm, staining the glove of the hand still wrapped around his throat, and soon enough his friends and family disappear from view as him and his enemy tumble down, down, down.

Now set in freefall down a very deep hole, Phantom only has enough time to reach up and claw at the other ghost’s arms before he’s being slammed into the ground at the bottom. 

He can feel several ribs completely giving way, the crunch of bones being snapped echoing into the empty space. Through blurred vision he can see the face of the one holding him down.

Sinister laughter rings out around them as Plasmius’s grinning face stares down at him. 

Succumbing to pain and his own weakened core, Phantom’s eyes slip closed as he falls into the darkness of unconsciousness. 

“You should have been faster, Little Badger…”

Chapter Text

It all happens almost too quickly to even know what’s happening. One moment Phantom is telling them to run, and the next the hallway is being filled with dust as a clawed hand takes Phantom by the neck and disappears with him into the next wall. 

Jazz moves the fastest, rushing to climb over the rubble in the way to peer into the massive hole left in the monster’s wake. Sam grabs her hand, making sure she doesn’t fall in, because from the echoing of rocks hitting the bottom it sounds like she’s looking over a very deep hole in the ground.

Jazz calls out Phantom’s name into the darkness, unable to see anything but shadows below, and none of them hear a response back. 

After a moment where it seems like Jazz is frozen in shock, she shakes her head and turns back to the rest of them, determination set in her eyes the likes of which Sam has never seen before.

“We need to go farther down, quickly. We don’t know how much trouble D—Phantom is in right now and we need to help him.”

Sam notices the slip up, but isn’t sure what Jazz was going to say, can’t think of any other word that would go there. There’s something about the sound of the letter ‘D’ though, something that stirs up a sense of deja vu…

She doesn’t get a chance to think about it longer though, because Jazz is already forging a warpath ahead, and she and Tucker need to scramble to keep up. 

They walk all the way through two floors and find practically no one in any of the rooms. They manage to avoid a handful of researchers complaining about getting stuck with the night shift, and a grand total of one security guard who is easily taken care of with an ecto-blast to the shoulder that sends him running faster than Jazz can say “Get Out”. 

Sam is starting to get suspicious with how easy breaking into this place has been so far. Sure Phantom is missing now, and there’s some kind of superpowered monster that can break clean through concrete walls probably fighting him right now, but besides that this place is empty. 

Or at least it was empty, until they get to the sixth floor.

The entire atmosphere of the place changes completely. The hallways get wider and taller, and there are no visible lightbulbs anywhere despite the entire place being very well lit. There are no vents, but she shivers in the sudden cold. The normal low buzzing noise of electricity and air conditioning running through the building is gone, leaving only an eerie, unnatural silence in its place. She has faith that Tucker shut down all the cameras, but it suddenly feels like they’re being watched.

Sam has visited graveyards full of aggressive ghosts that aren’t half as creepy as this place is. 

Jazz takes the lead this time, with Jack and Maddie switching places from front to back. Sam doesn’t dare open her mouth to ask why, too scared to break the tense silence.

The bare walls soon give way to tall glass windows looking into large open rooms. 

And inside them, they find ghosts. 

Dozens of them, maybe hundreds. Some packed into rooms like sardines in a can, a writhing, incoherent mass of green limbs and ectoplasm. Some are separated with only one or two in a room to themselves, bigger and more aggressive as they claw at the walls of their cages. Some of them don’t even look human, and Sam quickly averts her gaze from what very obviously looks like a werewolf as they pass.

Some of their eyes linger for a moment or two on Sam and her group, but never for long. They look more intently further down the hall, open mouths seemingly making no sound as they call out for something only they can see. 

Sam and Tucker glance at each other as they come to the same conclusion. They’re calling out for Phantom. They’re waiting for him. 

Further down the hall, they find researchers. Scientists on their side of the glass looking at these ghosts like they’re nothing more than animals. Maddie doesn’t hesitate to shoot, watching them scatter aimlessly. 

Some of these ghosts have entire limbs missing. Some are huddled in corners, completely unresponsive or rocking back and forth. One or two are laughing hysterically, completely broken. 

How long have they been here? How many have fallen victim to the GIW? Will Phantom be next?

Sam thinks back to Phantom’s fight with Plasmius, thinks of all the ghosts and humans that came to his rescue, that truly believed in him and the hood he had done for them all. Do any of them know what’s going on here? Would any of them care? 

How many people have been willfully ignorant enough to allow a place like this to exist? Who is going to step up to defend them like Amity defended Phantom? 

After another group of researchers sees them and books it, one of them must have had the thought to pull an alarm because suddenly the white lights turn dark and begin flashing red. The sound of an alarm blaring is distant and separated by several layers of concrete and dirt, but still faintly heard. 

If people are going to be coming to investigate, then they don’t have much time left. There hasn’t been any sign of blood blossoms anywhere, and Sam is starting to think that maybe they should abandon that goal and focus on releasing as many ghosts as they can instead. Then again, she’s not so sure that some of them wouldn’t just rip them all to shreds as soon as they’re released. At the very least, they need to find Phantom before getting out of here, wherever that freakishly strong monster took him.

They go down another floor, this one also full of ghosts and a handful more people in lab coats. The repeating hallways and rooms make the place seem endless, a maze of grid patterns and haunting eyes falling their every move, the quiet shuffle of boots on a too-clean floor. 

“If we don’t find Phantom on the next floor, we need to head back up,” Maddie says suddenly. 

Jazz whirls on her first, a sort of maddened look in her eyes that makes her look just as crazy as the ghosts surrounding them. 

“What? We can’t just leave him here. What if he’s hurt or needs our help?”

The Fentons come to a slow stop, halting Sam and Tucker behind them as well. Sam really doesn’t know what’s gotten into Jazz lately. She’s been acting slightly off ever since they found Phantom in the bell tower, or maybe even before that. 

“I know, Jazz, but if we get caught down here then we could likely get arrested. We could lose the hospital, and then who would take care of all the other ghosts in Amity? Phantom is special, but that doesn’t mean we can sacrifice everything for just one ghost.”

Jazz’s face twists into an angry grimace, stepping towards her mother like she’s about to start a fight. Jack tries to get between them, placatingly holding his hands up and smiling nervously, but Jazz barely pays attention to him.

“We can’t leave him! Phantom is just as important to Amity as the hospital is, if not more so! You don’t know everything that he’s done for us and the ghosts. You don’t know he—“

She snaps her jaw shut and turns her head away quickly, shaking with stress and tense shoulders. Her parents glance at each other, and Sam can only guess what they might be thinking as Maddie reaches out, probably in an attempt to comfort her.

But Tucker abruptly grabs Sam’s sleeve, and she looks over to him only to find his eyes locked on something further down the hall, a stricken look on his face. And Sam turns to see what he’s seeing, only for her own eyes to widen in dawning horror.

Partially obscured by the flashing red lights, a form heading towards them slowly takes shape. She sees the piercing green eyes first, and the ghostly white hair next. But a sight that would normally be reassuring is somehow… wrong.

He shuffles and stumbles as he walks, barely keeping to a straight line and with arms limply dangling by his sides. His head is down, hair partially obscuring his wandering eyes as they take in the hallway’s floor but nothing in front of him. As he gets closer, Sam can hear faint mumbling, but it’s as if two voices are flowing from his mouth instead of one.

The new introduction of noise stops the Fenton’s argument just as quickly as it started, and soon enough all of them are frozen, staring at Phantom.

“Phantom?” Jazz says hesitantly. Maddie reaches for her daughter’s arm, snagging her sleeve to keep her close despite Jazz making no move to get closer to the ghost boy. On some instinctual level, they all know that this isn’t right, that there’s something wrong here, something dangerous.

Phantom stops abruptly at Jazz’s voice, swaying a bit in place. The mumbling stops too, and for several moments everyone is still and silent.

Phantom makes the first move, lifting his head to look at them. It takes him a moment to properly focus his eyes on any of them, twitching slightly and craning his head like he’s listening to something.

His gaze finds Maddie’s, and then his face splits into an impossibly wide grin. It twists his face unnaturally, and the way his fangs are shown prominently has Sam really wanting to run in the opposite direction. That is not the Phantom she knows.

“Lovely that you all decided to join us,” he hisses. But the sound is wrong. He speaks with two voices, his own whispered words overlaid by a louder, stronger tone that echoes through the hall and prompts shivers up their spines.

“I think I’ll make this easy for you.” He raises his hands up, flaring claws and ectoplasm gathering at his fingertips.

Where Tucker is still grabbing Sam’s sleeve, he takes a step back and brings Sam slightly with him. 

“If you don’t want to die—“ 

He pushes off the ground into a float, barely a whisper on the wind but seeming impossibly larger than he actually is as he moves closer. The red lights come around again, and as he moves Sam can’t tell if the red tint to his eyes is from the lights or something—some one—else.

“—then RUN.”

Sam and Tucker don’t hesitate. 

Maddie grabs Jazz’s sleeve and pulls her after them as the group turns tail and runs in the opposite direction, Phantom’s double, echoing laughter following right behind them. 

Sprinting through the halls, Sam yelps as a blast of ectoplasm goes flying over her head and collides with the floor in front of her, corroding the tiles like acid. She leaps over it instead of going around, taking a brief risk to glance over her shoulder at the ghost chasing them.

Phantom twitches in the air, arms and neck spasming randomly. And there’s something wrong with his face, like half of it is trying to form an expression more like a grimace than a smile. One of his eyes squints nearly shut while the other is blown wide and crazed with murderous delight.

This isn’t Phantom. 

They round a corner, Sam’s shoulder colliding with the wall as she turns too quickly. A burst of pain makes her vision white out for a moment even as she keeps running. 

She thought that it wasn’t possible for ghosts to overshadow other ghosts. She remembers Tucker asking about it once, and the Fenton couple’s lengthy lecture about the nature of ectoplasm and how risky it is to mingle with another ghost’s ectoplasm. 

But a different memory floats to her as well. 

‘I’m not a normal ghost,’ Phantom had said just yesterday, before fainting too quickly for Sam or Tucker to ask more about it.

What did he mean by that?

A scream and the sound of someone hitting the floor from behind them has Sam whirling around too quickly to really consider her actions. Tucker jolts to a stop as well, both of them panting from exertion.

Jazz lays on the ground, ectoplasm dripping from her leg and singeing the skin beneath. She tries to back away as Phantom hovers before her, Jack already reaching down to try and grab her. 

A blast from Phantom to his gloved hand stops him, and he grunts and immediately throws the glove away before it can dissolve his hand as well. The Fentons watch in horror as Phantom grins.

“You didn’t make it very far. Perhaps I should simply end you now. It would be the merciful way out.”

Jazz looks terrified, but she’s seen enough terror in her lifetime to be able to hide it decently well. She slips on a mask of defiance and flares up at him, despite the way she trembles and drags herself further away.

“You’re not Phantom,” she spits. “If he’s still in there, you’d better wish that he decides to be merciful to you.”

Phantom laughs, the deeper tone almost completely overriding his usual whispered voice. 

“Oh I don’t have the faintest idea what you mean. I’ve always been Phantom. Don’t you recognize me?”

Jazz manages to glare harder, pushing herself up on shaky limbs until she’s somewhat standing, keeping most of her weight off of her injured leg.

“Your acting is terrible. Maybe once Phantom kicks your butt you can still start another life as a comedian.”

Phantom’s maniacal grin abruptly drops, staring at Jazz with the gaze of a lion looking down on a mouse. How Jazz can still defiantly stare back at him is a wonder. If Sam were in the same position, she thinks she would be completely frozen in fear. Tucker would probably faint. Not for the first time, Sam looks at Jazz with nothing but admiration, like the big sister that she never had. 

Wait…

Big sister….

“Careful, you’re starting to bore me.”

Without warning, Phantom lashes out towards her. Claws and fangs extended, he lunges for Jazz’s throat with a snake-like hiss. She yelps and stumbles back, Jack and Maddie already rushing to try and reach her in time—

Phantom freezes in midair, his right hand rising to clutch at his left wrist only inches away from Jazz’s vulnerable face. She stumbles back into Jack’s arms, and he quickly brings her further away from the ghost as they watch the scene unfold.

Phantom seems surprised by the movement, struggling with some invisible force that shoves him a foot or so back in the air. He rolls his eyes and looks to the arm like it’s personally offending him, and maybe it is.

“Oh come now Badger. She’s just a human. She isn’t going to live long anyways.”

Phantom squints his widened eye completely shut, the other looking significantly more like his usual self as he keeps his outstretched arm at bay. 

“I… won’t let you hurt Jazz!”

For the first time since he reappeared, his double voice is flipped. Now his usual voice is overlayed on top of the stranger’s, fighting for dominance within his own body. 

He coughs, a simple noise that quickly turns into a series of hacking. Both hands fly to cover his mouth as he drifts down until he’s nearly touching the ground. One particularly violent cough has ectoplasm tinged red spurting from between his fingers and dripping down his chin. 

His left hand moves, reaching up to grab his hair and yank his own head back. His other eyes reopens, wide and frenzied as his body separates itself into two independently-controlled halves. The stranger has taken over his left side, while Phantom grapples for control of the right.

“You don’t make the rules here, Badger,” the other ghost growls, tightening his grip until Phantom winces.

Sam sees Maddie moving out of the corner of her eye, but doesn’t realize what she’s doing until both of Phantom’s halves lock onto her, right hand coming up in a placating gesture.

“Wait, don’t—“

An ecto-gun is fired, the blast tearing past Phantom to land somewhere behind him as he moves out of the way faster than Sam can see him move at all. The real Phantom loses all control as he goes lunging for Jack next. Mouth wide open and ready to chomp down on the first thing he can get his claws on, he barrels into Jack’s side and sends him and Jazz to the ground. Phantom tries to sink his teeth into Jack’s shoulder, laughing as he goes, but Maddie grabs the collar of his suit and yanks him back. 

He flies through the air easily and smacks into the wall behind him. Eyes wide and hungry, he lunges again, this time for Tucker, but barely makes it halfway before half of his body spasms and sends him crashing to the ground instead.

“You’re making this more difficult than it has to be,” Phantom hisses, using his left hand to drag himself up, sharp eyes locking onto Sam next. “Just give up already.”

Phantom shakes his head, getting himself upright but swaying where he stands. 

“Get out.” 

His claws curl around himself, tense to the wire and looking ready to rip someone into shreds, just barely able to hold back for now. The group inches away from him, Maddie gesturing to Jack and Jazz to run.

“Plasmius—“

He growls and lunges again, but this time Maddie is faster. She grabs one of Phantom’s arms and swiftly dodges to the side of his claws as she uses the handle of the ecto-gun to bash in the back of his head, sending him sprawling out on the floor. 

He growls and drags himself up again, his spine twisting unnaturally as he levels a blank look at them.

“You didn’t have the power to get rid of me before, and you certainly don’t have it now.”

Plasmius, Sam thinks derisively. 

He’s already caused Phantom enough grief after only one fight. As if tossing him around like a ragdoll and injuring him badly enough to require hospitalization wasn’t bad enough, now he has to find a way to overshadow Phantom and try to use him to kill his friends and allies. 

It’s kind of funny actually, that Plasmius is the reason that Phantom’s core has been breaking down, but his core being so weak is probably the only reason that any of them are alive right now. If he had his ice or ghostly wail, they would have already been toast. It’s a miracle that he can even use ectoplasm at all, though not so much of a miracle for them.

What is his goal here? Sam wonders.

Why put Phantom through all of this? Why not just kill him and be done with it? 

Another memory floats to her, an image of Phantom anxiously floating around Tucker’s ceiling fan and resolutely not looking either of them in the eye.

‘His plans change from time to time, but right now he’s trying to… reveal my secrets to everyone in Amity. He needs to catch me to do it ’

If that was really Plasmius’s goal here, then why confront them at all? Why not float up to Amity and yell all of Phantom’s secrets from the rooftops if he’s already in control? 

Unless…

Unless he’s waiting for Phantom to reveal them himself. Unless he’s waiting for Phantom to do something, or show something, forcing him into a corner until he has no choice but to reveal everything to everyone.

He must be targeting Sam and the rest of them because of their ties to Phantom, trying to make him feel threatened by putting them in danger. But there has to be something more to it, right? There has to be something that Sam is missing. Why does it feel like there’s something waiting on the tip of her tongue, a memory just out of reach?

Big sister…

Phantom’s left hand raises, green energy gathering and aimed at them. His right hand tries to clamp down on his wrist to stop himself, but Plasmius fights him and seems to be winning. He turns to aim for Jazz, but Phantom’s teeth sink into his arm and yank it away at the last second, sending the blast into a wall instead.

“Get out!” he mumbles through the arm stuck under his teeth.

His eyes change as Plasmius wrestles control back, wrenching his fangs out of his arm to laugh and kick off into a float, hovering above them. 

“This fighting is pointless, Badger. Your core is already giving up, so you might as well take some people with you to the afterlife.”

He lunges for Sam next, but something about the way he’s moving makes her want to stand her ground. 

Plasmius hasn’t been able to do all that much with Phantom holding him back, and despite all of this, Sam is finding it harder and harder to be scared of someone who’s only wanted to protect her, Tucker, and Jazz all this time. If Phantom really is in there fighting, then Sam has to have faith that he will win.

Tucker yells out to her as Phantom moves closer, claws at the ready and aimed for her throat, but Sam grits her teeth and stays right where she is. It feels like staring down a charging tiger, a ghost who’s small and protective but deadly. But she stays, and she can see the moment that his eyes change.

His claws stop right before her collarbone, she doesn’t dare look down to see how close the sharpened ends are to cutting her to ribbons. Instead she keeps her eyes firmly locked on Phantom’s, and she can practically see all the warring emotions and personalities mixing inside them.

“You can do this Phantom,” she tells him. “You can beat him. I know you can.” 

She takes a breath, remembers days spent with a ghost’s sharp smile hovering over their shoulders in a way that should have been terrifying but was actually more than a little reassuring. She remembers claws tinkering with screws and bits of metal she never bothered to learn the names of as he and Tucker built the thermos together. And she remembers the wispy kind of wonder in his ghostly green eyes when Sam and him teased each other, like he was remembering something fond. 

Phantom is stronger than this. He’s more than this, she knows he is. He’s always been so much more than the people of Amity Park have ever given him credit for. Well, Sam isn’t going to continue that trend any longer. 

“You just have to remember that you’re not alone.”

Phantom twitches, squinting at her in a way that makes it difficult to tell exactly what he’s thinking. 

Then he abruptly pulls back, both hands reaching up to grip at his head as he doubles over in pain. His eyes somehow manage to glow brighter than normal, casting an eerie green glow on the otherwise shadowy red walls. He coughs, devolving into hacking again as more red ectoplasm spills from his mouth. It gathers from his eyes too, spilling down his cheeks like he’s crying blood. 

His mouth opens in a silent scream that soon turns into a real one. The double voice makes it sound louder than it is, and a staticky noise follows as the lights flicker overhead and the room suddenly grows cold.

“GET OUT!”

All at once, Phantom does a full-body spasm like he’s about to throw up before Plasmius is flying up out of his head in a flash of white and red. Maddie immediately trains her ecto-gun on the much more threatening ghost, but Sam keeps her own eyes on Phantom.

Like a puppet with his strings cut, Phantom’s limbs give up beneath him and he falls. Sam is there to catch him, holding up a ghost who barely weighs a thing. He falls feather-light onto her shoulders, labored panting and wheezing hitting her neck as ectoplasm starts to soak into her shirt. 

He’s running too warm. His normally frigid temperature has risen so much that her hands are nearly burning. Probably the only thing keeping him awake and somewhat standing at this point is adrenaline and his Obsession to protect.

Plasmius hums where he hovers above them, his bright red eyes watching Phantom with a sort of mad glee. “I’m surprised you managed to kick me out at all.”

Phantom’s breath stutters. Sam can see clearly just how much effort it takes for him to do something as simple as lift his head, but once he manages to focus bleary eyes on Plasmius, he lets out a defiant growl. 

Plasmius chuckles and holds his hands up to gather his own red ectoplasm blast at his fingertips. “Be careful who you challenge, Little Badger. You might just bite off more than you can chew.”

Phantom slowly unsticks himself from Sam, shaking where he stands but still standing up to a ghost three times his size. It’s what he’s always done, the dedicated protector of Amity Park against every other ghost who only wants destruction. 

If there’s one thing that Phantom is good at, it’s biting off more than he can chew and winning.

Sam sees movement, and when she looks around, she can see the ghosts trapped in their rooms all pressed against the glass and watching intently. A sense of deja vu passes over her when she notices that they’re moving in and out with Phantom’s breathing, just like they did at the abandoned playground months ago.

Not a single one of them looks to Plasmius or anyone else. No, they all look to him.

Phantom looks like he could fall over at any second, ectoplasm still dripping down his face, but his voice is solid and determined when he says “I won’t let you hurt them.”

And this time the echo is entirely his own.

Chapter Text

Phantom’s world is a blurry smear.

His entire body burns, but his limbs are heavy and sluggish at the same time. It takes far too much effort just to keep his eyes open and trained on Plasmius’s floating form, though he can’t make out many details.

The world tilts, and Phantom corrects his balance by just floating instead, but that seems to be all the invitation that Plasmius needs because then he’s being rushed at. 

As Plasmius slams him into the nearest wall, a maniacal grin on his ugly face, Sam’s words ring out in his head.

“You just have to remember that you’re not alone.”

He grits his teeth, ectoplasm still spilling from his mouth, and uses all the meager strength he has to shove Plasmius back. He quickly adopts the same kind of technique that Plasmius always uses for his fights; striking hard and fast, never giving the opponent enough time to think. If he’s going to survive this, he has no choice.

An ectoplasm-charge punch is aimed right for Plasmius’s face with a snarl. He gets thrown into the ground, the cement cracking in a spiderweb pattern around him. Phantom is too busy with more important things to marvel at the feat of strength that he didn’t know he was capable of. The serum and broken core should be making him weaker, and he certainly feels ready to pass out at any second, but he hits harder than he ever has before.

“You just have to remember that you’re not alone.”

It’s strange, relying on people again after so long. Having spent time with them in the bell tower and then the hospital, it doesn’t feel like it’s gotten any easier, despite his craving for comfort and closeness only getting more intense with each passing day.

It used to be easy, back before he was Phantom. Before he turned on that stupid portal and ruined everything for everyone. It used to be easy, talking to Sam and Tucker and Jazz and his parents when he didn’t have the threat of ghostly attacks hanging over his head like a guillotine ready to fall.

Plasmius grabs his wrist hard enough for Phantom to feel his bones struggling not to snap, and swings him around to toss him further down the hall. Phantom tries to correct himself midair, but his reflexes are sluggish and he hits the ground anyway. 

He coughs up more ectoplasm and pushes through the burst of pain in his ribs to go after Plasmius again. Maddie spots an opening while Plasmius is focused on him and shoots for his back. It barely moves him at all, but the annoyed growl he sends her way gives Phantom the perfect time to strike.

“You’re not alone.”

Something in his chest shifts, and Phantom is startled enough by it that he nearly misses. But when his fist connects with Plasmius’s face, his knuckles are coated in ice, and Plasmius goes flying much farther than he would have thought he would.

Plasmius goes flying a few dozen feet, his back slamming up against the glass of an empty cell. It doesn’t crack, the glass too strong for that, but there’s a patch of frost flaking from his chin when he looks up to snarl.

Phantom doesn’t take longer than a moment to acknowledge that he’s somehow regained his ice. He rushes over his friends’ heads towards Plasmius, but he does wonder.

Why does it feel like I’m stronger?

Ice spreads from his knuckles down his hands, adding an extra, sharpened layer to his claws. He drives them into Plasmius’s shoulder the same way he had done to Phantom before. It earns him a snake-like hiss for his efforts, and then Plasmius raises his other hand, heated with red ectoplasm, and aims for his throat.

Red clashes with green, as Phantom meets his hand halfway with his own charged ectoplasm. The two powers mingle together, clashing violently in the small space they’ve been shoved into, until a small explosion sends them both apart.

Through the smoke, Maddie shoots Plasmius’s way aimlessly, but it’s enough to give Phantom a brief moment to float further away and think.

He’s not going to be able to beat Plasmius if it comes down to stamina. He needs to end this quickly, with an attack too strong for him to counter. His ice is coming back, but it’s never packed enough punch to put out Plasmius’s flames. He needs something else.

Phantom’s gaze scours his surroundings, until he locks on to exactly what he needs. His legs turn into a tail as he zooms down to grab ahold of a handful of bright yellow sprites floating above Jazz and Tucker’s heads. His stomach turns as he swallows as many as he can before Plasmius comes for him again. It won’t add a lot of energy, and the worry that created the sprites in the first place are already filling him with anxiety, but it’s definitely better than nothing. 

“Phantom!” Tucker calls up to him, and when he looks down he sees Tucker fishing something out of his pockets.

He’s forced to dodge out of Plasmius’s warpath as Tucker hurls something small to him. He catches it easily, opening his hand to reveal one of the vials of liquid diet that Tucker had designed for him. They haven’t had the time to properly test it out yet, at least not during a fight, but it’ll do.

He pops the cap off with his teeth and downs it in one go, although he almost coughs it all up when Plasmius catches him around the waist at the same time and then both of them are tumbling down in a mess of snapping fangs and limbs to the floor.

“You’re not alone.”

Plasmius never fights like this, has always been a ghost who likes to think of himself as better than everyone else around him. Just the fact that he’s stooping low enough to get into a brawl like this is proof that Phantom has done enough damage to royally piss him off. Whether that’s a good or a bad thing remains to be seen. 

The food fills him with energy, but he conserves it instead of using it immediately, which earns him a deep bite to the shoulder. Phantom slashes at Plasmius’s face and chest while the larger ghost raises a clawed hand and brings it down on his head with all the force of a jackhammer. Dazed but still in the fight, Phantom wraps his tail around one of Plasmius’s legs and trips him up, launching himself further up in the air at the same time as they both break apart.

Maddie shoots again, and now Jack has picked up the other gun to join her in the assault. Plasmius snarls and whirls on them, dramatically throwing his cape aside as he goes for Jack next. Phantom is faster, and takes a sharp turn in the air to use the momentum from his tail to lash out and send Plasmius lurching to the side instead. 

Boxed in on three sides now, Plasmius rights himself and goes intangible to avoid more ecto-blasts, glaring up at Phantom. 

“You will regret that, Phantom.”

He doesn’t get a chance to shoot his own verbal jab back. As soon as he opens his mouth to respond, suddenly Plasmius is there. All the breath leaves him lungs in a wheeze of pain as Plasmius smashes right into his already broken ribs. He carries them both down the hallway, Phantom being pushed back with such force that he can’t do anything in retaliation. 

His back hits something solid, a shrieking noise echoing through the hallway, and then glass is shattering around them as they go tumbling into an empty room. 

Conserve energy, Phantom thinks desperately, blinking away black spots and struggling to make his arms work properly beyond the pain and nausea weighing him down. Remember that you aren’t alone.

With an agonizing wheeze, he sees Plasmius stomping towards him and can’t move fast enough to stop him from grabbing the front of Phantom’s suit and lifting him up, sneering at the smaller ghost.

“It is admirable that you’ve lasted this long, but it is far past time to end this pointless dance.”

Phantom coughs, delighting in the way he stains Plasmius’s gloves green, though it doesn’t really evoke any reaction. He’s falling apart from the inside out, can feel the blood blossom choking the life out of his body as it slithers around his core and constricts. 

In the peripherals of his vision, he can see his friends and family sneaking up on Plasmius from behind, and he twists his face into a wide grin as a distraction.

“Aww, but I was hoping to see you do the Macarena,” he says, smiling genuinely at Plasmius’s scowl.

I’m not alone, he thinks and starts to make himself believe. 

“You can do this Phantom. You can beat him. I know you can.” 

After struggling on his own for so long, who knew how far just a little extra help could go? 

Jazz is the one to finally spring the trap. She takes the shot, aimed at the back of Plasmius’s knee so that he immediately crumples with a bitten-off shout. And then both Jack and Maddie rush over to grab him by the cape and flip him over their heads back into the hallway. Phantom is dropped in the process, and once everyone has cleared out of the way and Tucker yells “Now!”, he takes a deep breath in…

Sparing no expense, Phantom burns up every last drop of energy he has and pours it all into a single ghostly wail. The shriek that bounces off the walls and forms cracks along concrete is deafening, sending Plasmius and everyone else to their knees. 

Lights flicker overhead and eventually go out completely. Glass cracks and shatters. The ground underneath Plasmius’s shoes forms a spiderweb that soon turns into a crater as he’s driven further down, until soon enough it becomes difficult to see him at all behind the rocks and dust falling from the ceiling. Plasmius tries to push against it, but soon he’s pressed to the ground as the sheer force of the sound subdues him completely.

Dark spots dance in his eyes as the wail peters off. He sinks several feet lower in the air and sucks in a breath, suddenly exhausted and light-headed after what was probably the strongest wail he’s ever done. His ears pop, and he drags tired eyes back up to see what’s become of his opponent, trying his best to focus blurry vision.

Plasmius is in a heap in the small hole in the floor, one hand grasping onto the edge of the cement to pry himself up. He’s sneering, but it’s taking some effort just to drag himself semi-upright. His clothes are tattered, stained, and torn, his normally perfect hair frazzled and sticking in multiple directions. 

For a moment, silence permeates through the darkened hall. Silence only broken by Phantom’s heaving gasps and the barely heard shuffle of living people behind him. 

He just actually won a fight against Plasmius, Phantom thinks with glee. He’s never seen the larger ghost look so stricken before, like he’s only just now considering Phantom a real threat. 

He did that.

And then, just as quickly as it appeared, the spell is broken. 

Dozens, hundreds of ghosts begin to whisper and murmur among themselves as they leave their broken cells behind. They spill into the hallway and around all of them like a river through a bursting dam, illuminating everything in green. 

Something in Phantom’s chest shifts.

He yelps, his tail reforming into legs as he touches down on the cracked ground again, clutching at his torso. A fire reappears there, burning under his skin and reaching ever deeper. He coughs and more ectoplasm comes out, and he can barely hear Jazz’s worried shouting for him from behind layers of static in his ears.

He used up all of his energy. Which, in hindsight, probably wasn’t the best idea. 

His core, having endured so much abuse already and now running on empty, is helpless before the blood blossom trying to bloom inside him. There’s nothing stopping it’s rampage now, spreading quickly from his chest and neck to his limbs and head, wrapping around his skull and squeezing until it feels like it’s going to pop.

Through the pressing and nudging of all the bodies floating past him, he feels a hand make its way between his shoulders, figures the low droning must be some kind of comforting words that he can’t hear.

He doesn’t have the presence of mind to stop the white ring from appearing around his midsection, not until it’s already too late.

His body, in one last desperate bid to save itself, forces the transformation onto him. Black and white becomes white and black, glowing green eyes burning away into a normal blue tint, wispy white hair turning dark and falling flat. Claws and fangs recede and disappear, and for the first time in over one year, he can feel his heart beating once again. 

He gasps, jerking forward as he’s forced to obey gravity again, feeling far too heavy and dull without the use of heightened senses.

He wheezes, and then the realization hits. 

Stiff as a board and suddenly all too aware of the company just behind him, he can hear the grinding of tense muscle and bone as he slowly turns his head to look over his shoulder.

And there, his parents, Jazz, and his two best friends, the people he’s been hiding this secret from since he first turned that portal on, are all staring at him with confusion, then disbelief, and finally dawning realization.

“Danny?”

Chapter Text

Jack is the first one to break the silence. A whispered, broken, forgotten name on his tongue that jolts Tucker’s mind into overdrive.

Danny.

The name bounces around in his head, pulling up emotions and memories that he can’t quite see or feel, floating just out of reach even as they sit right there. He recognizes Phantom’s new face, but he doesn’t recall learning it. He remembers someone being there, a third person to his and Sam’s duo, but can’t make out the shape or face past blurry images and faded lines.

Phantom—Danny stares at them, terrified in the same way that he was when they first brought him to the hospital, or seeing him up in the bell tower, or just before passing out in his last fight with Plasmius. Except his eyes are very much human and blue instead of green now. 

He recognizes those eyes, but doesn’t know from where. Memories of school lunches and summer nights playing video games come to mind, but now that he’s looking for it he can see the things that are missing from them. An empty seat, an open space on the bed, a third bicycle with no rider, a third plate of food with no one to eat from it.

It’s there, but he can’t see it. 

Evidently, Jack, Maddie, and Jazz don’t have the same feeling. They’re looking at Danny like their entire world has just been shattered, like someone has just told them that they’re all dying and there’s nothing they can do about it. 

Who is he, and why can’t Tucker remember?

He can remember other things perfectly fine. Like how he’s seen those white rings before, knows that this must have been Plasmius’s plan all along, but where he had failed twice before he has finally succeeded now. He remembers Phantom saying and doing odd things. Saying that he wasn’t a normal ghost, being able to breathe, having an odd aversion not just to humans but also ghosts while at the same time protecting them. 

Tucker remembers wondering how Phantom had figured out where Sam and Tucker lived to come to them for help those first few times, but had chalked it up to him being just really familiar with the town. He had wondered why he was so against people taking and testing on his blood. And how Plasmius was able to overshadow him in the first place despite both of them being ghosts. 

He’s not a normal ghost, but then what exactly is he? How is he able to switch from dead to living? What exactly has he hidden from all of them? Who is he?

Danny flinches when Plasmius lets out a barking laugh, but despite the fight that had just ended only moments ago, Danny doesn’t spare a glance back at the ghost behind him. Trembling and clearly terrified, he keeps his eyes darting over each of them, from Sam and Tucker to Jazz to Jack and Maddie and back. 

“Your little charade is finally at an end now, Daniel. I do hope you come to appreciate the craftsmanship it took to get here. Until next time…”

With those hissed words, Plasmius phases through a nearby wall and disappears entirely, leaving a swarm of ghosts and all the aftermath of the drama he created behind.

Jazz starts forward, reaching a hand out, but stops when Danny flinches back and takes a step away from her. 

“Danny, I already knew—“

Her words are cut off by a piercing, pained noise from Danny. A range of emotions plays over his face in rapid succession. Betrayal, confusion, fear, and then a sudden blankness. 

Danny is there one moment, and then Tucker blinks and he’s gone the next, slipping into an endless sea of ghosts, away from them. 

“Wait—!” Jazz tries to yell after him, worry and frustration making themselves known as she tries to push through the crowd and gets nowhere. He disappears faster than anyone can catch up to him, and Jazz takes a moment to reach up to grip her hair and squeeze her eyes shut, taking in a deep breath and letting out an equally deep exhale. 

Tucker glances at Jazz’s parents, and the both of them look shellshocked, staring after Danny’s form like he’s still there. Tears fall from Maddie’s eyes, and Tucker looks away.

He looks to Sam next, and when she meets his eyes he knows exactly what she’s thinking with just the one look. She’s thinking the same thing as him. 

Who is he?

Who is Danny, and why can’t they remember?

Phantom gasps and heaves as he crashes through the nighttime wilderness. Sinister laughter echoes in his head, flooding his mind until there’s nothing left to think but run, run as fast and far as you can.

He stumbles, nearly pitches face-first into a tree as he winds through the forest, the red shoes that he hasn’t felt in over a year pounding away at the ground and carrying him further. 

Their faces appear behind his eyelids every time he blinks, shocked and despaired and knowing. Tears build up in the corners of his eyes the longer he forces them open. Something that would normally be natural for a ghost suddenly isn’t now, and the water flows down his face freely.

The longer he runs, the more the foreign feeling of thirst makes itself known. As a ghost, he’s only ever felt hunger. He hasn’t had to worry about drinking water for so long that he forgot the feeling, his throat running dry and ragged.

Phantom—no, Danny—no, Phantom trips over an exposed root, and this time he can’t correct himself in time. His knees skid along dirt and scrape against pebbles and sediment. The same thing happens to his hands as he tries to correct the fall, only to wind up on his face anyway. 

Pain feels different as a human. It’s not as sharp, not as localized to a single point, and not as controlled. He can’t heal as a human, at least not the way he’s used to as a ghost, and as beads of blood— red this time, not green—well up on his knees and palms he feels the delayed pain like a rolling storm under his skin. 

He stays there, on the ground. All the animals that might have been here before have fled with the noise by now, and the sudden silence strikes at his core—no, it’s his heart now—like a stab through the chest. 

He’s never felt this small before. Or maybe he has, but never so weak and small at the same time. 

Dragging dirt and twigs through his clothes—it’s strange to be wearing cloth instead of rubber for once, even stranger that he misses his death outfit at all—he curls his legs up to his chest and wraps his arms around them as the first sob catches in his throat.

He should have known from the start that getting closer to his old friends would have dropped him into a situation like this. He was naïve to think that he could keep these secrets for this long. He was already doomed the second that Sam found him out in the woods, and doomed again when he agreed to seek them out in the future. 

He’s been running from the consequences of his actions for a long time, and now they’ve finally caught up to him. He should have seen this coming, should have fled when he had the chance, should have been more careful. But even then, would it have been enough?

It was only a matter of time before Vlad finally succeeded. Only a matter of time before his friends and family realized something was wrong. Only a matter of time before Phantom—Danny couldn’t keep the mask on any longer. 

His family was always going to find out, eventually. And Danny was always going to run. 

Your fault, his own traitorous thoughts scream at him. All of this is your fault.

Will they hate him? Will they try to bring him back? Will they try to separate Danny from Phantom in their heads, until he ends up split in two all over again? Will they refuse to believe that they are one and the same? 

He once stopped his parents from taking things too far, but how would things change if he removed those limiters? 

You changed them, and the image of a graveyard forces its way to the front of his mind. They would have kept hating ghosts, but you changed them. Was it really for the better? 

Selfish, the voice hisses. 

You only did this for yourself.

Selfish. Unworthy. Pretender.

Liar.

And past the haze of tears clouding his vision and far too many thoughts and emotions swirling in his head, he can hear the shuffling of something moving through the forest, getting closer. Gasping and hiccuping, he looks up and is met with two pairs of eyes staring back at him, one glowing green and the other bright red.

An excited bark echoes around the small space, and a small green body comes darting out to greet him. It barrels into his stomach, and he shouts as his broken ribs are jostled, curling up tighter to protect them.

Cujo backs up with a whine, and in his own form of apology he sits down next to Danny’s head instead, licking a long stripe of slobber up his forehead into his hair. 

Danny huffs and gasps, squinting past the pain and blurred vision to give his favorite ghost dog a tentative smile and a pat on the head.

The other ghost comes out of the brush at a slower pace, sleek black fur cutting through the dark night. 

“Wulf,” Danny rasps, far more relieved to see both of them than he has any right to be.

Wulf curls around him gently, slips large clawed hands under Danny’s body to carefully lift him up and tuck him into his arms. 

Danny wheezes and shamelessly presses further into the warmth, making himself impossibly smaller in Wulf’s larger form. 

Wulf’s furred muzzle leans down to sniff at his hair, breathing in his scent. It’s something he does every time him and Danny meet, maybe as a form of reassurance that he really is the same person, or maybe as a simple greeting among werewolves. Danny never really thought to ask about it before. The familiar puff of breath over his face is so reassuring that it hurts.

Wulf and Cujo must have been trapped in the GIW building, now released after Phantom’s outburst broke all of the cells. Cujo had been missing for months, and Wulf for even longer. Danny had started to think that neither of them were coming back, but it turns out they were there the whole time.

He should have investigated the GIW sooner. He should have tried to help the ghosts around Amity more. His own cowardice had stopped him. Having no way to get in himself and afraid of the humans in town becoming fearful of him, he had never gotten any closer. He could have lost them, and it would have been entirely his fault.

Wulf pulls his head away and allows Cujo to stand up on his hind legs to press his front paws on Wulf’s arms, shuffling closer until his head rests on one of Danny’s legs. He whines again, his tail wagging when Danny huffs a chuckle and pats him on the head again.

“Pardonu, amiko,” Wulf rumbles. “Mi ne estis tie por helpi vin batali.”

It takes a few moments for Danny’s tired brain to catch up to what Wulf is saying.

Sorry, friend. I was not there to help you fight.

Danny grimaces and sinks further into Wulf’s arms.

“It’s not your fault. And I bet things still wouldn’t have ended well even if you were there.”

Wulf hums, neither agreeing nor denying. 

“Ripozu nun. Ni protektas.”

Rest now. We protect.

And how is he supposed to say no to that?

Cujo yips and pushes away from him, making a few quick circles in the grass before plopping down to face the rest of the forest. Like a guard dog, Danny realizes. 

Wulf settles down as well, leaning back against a tree and shifting one of his arms to act as a kind of blanket, almost completely hiding him beneath dark fur. 

He looks down at Danny and huffs out a breath, briefly blowing his hair out of his face in a way that brings a tired smile to his face.

“Ripozu,” he says again, more firm this time. 

“Okay,” Danny breathes, letting his eyes fall shut despite himself.

Cradled in warmth and well protected, Danny rests.

This isn’t the first time that Sam and Tucker have trekked through the woods looking for a ghost, and it probably won’t be the last. 

The similarities between now and that first time finding Phantom months ago are far too present, except where before they had discovered him by accident, now they follow a trail of scuffed shoe prints and broken branches, barely able to see anything using just the flashlight of Sam’s phone. It’s easier that it seems like Phantom had only run in a straight line, without stopping or changing direction even once. It makes it easier to follow the trail, but a pool of dread fills Sam’s stomach the longer they walk into the darkened forest. 

The image of Phantom’s very scared, very human face is burned into her head, and it’s what drives her forward through tangled branches and tripping feet. 

The silence lingering between the two of them is suffocating, but born out of mutual worry for their friend. They don’t need to say the words out loud to know what the both of them are thinking. 

Sam remembers the conversation they all had in the bell tower not too long ago, where Phantom explained how he overshadows people and makes them forget. And she can’t help but think of the words he used, the expressions he made, when she realizes that parts of her own memory are missing.

“Well, it’s really just a simple overshadowing. I just get in, tell them not to remember whatever happened, and get out. And then they just… don’t think about it, I guess.”

Sam had never even considered that there were things that she just didn’t think about. It’s difficult to even focus on the parts that aren’t there, like every time she tries to shine a light on the shadow at the edge of her vision it moves to a different corner before she can make out any details. 

She can remember other things around it though. A birthday party that had been really fun for her, but not being able to remember the kid’s name. A figurine in her room that she remembers was a gift from someone, but not from who. A sleepover with no extra person besides herself, an extra mattress pulled out with no one to sleep on it. Sometimes remembered words or phrases here and there, things that were meaningful to her, but the person that spoke them appearing as a blank spot in her memory.

It’s scary, that there are so many things she can’t remember that went unnoticed for so long. But more than that, she has an intense urge to know. She wants to see what Phantom has been keeping from them, remember what’s been forgotten. She can’t judge him for what she doesn’t know, can’t make assumptions without knowing why. 

And besides all of that, she’s worried about him. They both are. 

He spent all that time at the hospital letting his core slowly fall apart just to avoid telling them that at one point he knew them. He was part of their lives, had been the third special person to Sam and Tucker’s duo. 

Why would he want them to forget that? What happened that was so bad for him to sever all ties like this? Why can the Fentons remember but Sam and Tucker can’t? Why is he so scared of them? If they don’t chase Phantom down now, she’s fairly sure they’ll never find the answers.

They walk for a while, watching the half moon rise over the forest and begin the sink down again. Phantom’s trail leads deeper into the forest than either of them have ever been, but neither are willing to turn back now.

And finally, Sam’s phone light is rendered useless as they get closer to a dim green glow, illuminating their path until they come to a stop not far away from the source.

Hidden between trees and dense brush, a small ghostly dog raises its hackles and growls a warning to them. Behind it, the same werewolf they had seen before from inside the GIW basement lifts its head to look at them. Its piercing green eyes are eerily similar to Phantom’s as it levels a coldly curious gaze on them.

But as the wolf moves its head, Sam catches sight of something else. In the wolf’s arms, curled up and looking dead to the world, is Phantom. 

For a moment, she worries that these two ghosts are trying to eat him, but another moment and she realizes Phantom is being held too gently for that. 

Tucker jerks forward. “Phantom—“ 

The dog growls and stands up to stop Tucker from getting closer, but the wolf stops both of them in their tracks.

“Silentu,” it—he? says, gesturing to Phantom’s sleeping form. 

The dog’s growling tapers off and ends with a defensive huff. Tuckers stays where he is, mouth pressed into a thin line as he stops himself from speaking.

But despite how fast everything goes quiet again, Phantom begins to stir anyway. He makes a tiny noise and turns his head to blearily blink up at them. It would be adorable if Sam weren’t really worried about him freaking out and bolting again.

It takes a moment or two for him to recognize them, half lost in a haze of drowsiness, but when he does his eyes widen and he jolts in the wolf’s arms. Then he burrows further away from them, holding onto the wolf’s other arm that isn’t supporting him and using it like a sort of shield between him and them.

The wolf makes a rumbling sound almost like a chuckle, and Sam is struck by the way he glances down at Phantom so gently, like he’s holding a kitten and thinks it’s the most important thing in the world. And maybe to this wolf that’s exactly what he’s feeling, Sam wouldn’t know. 

“Phantom—“ Sam begins, only to stop and correct herself midway. “Danny—“

He flinches, averting his eyes to look at the forest to his left instead. She presses on.

“Why did you run away? How are you able to—to be alive again? Why—“

She glances at Tucker, sharing the same grim expression between them. When she looks back to Phantom, she has to take a breath to be able to ask the question in the first place.

“Why does it feel like we should remember you?”

There’s a haunted look on his face when he glances up at her again, memories that he can remember but they can’t warring in his eyes. It’s weird seeing them blue instead of green, but then again Sam has seen weirder. 

After all this time, she thought that they knew him pretty well. Despite him telling them that he had secrets, she never could have imagined just how big they would be. What happened to lead to this?

Phantom sucks in a breath and stretches out until the wolf opens his arms to release him. He looks almost too exhausted to walk as he touches down to the ground and nearly falls over with his first step. The wolf rises and lets him keep a hand on his arm for stability, helping Phantom move closer to them. 

His eyes are fixated on the ground as he stops a few feet away, and that haunted look never leaves his face as the same white rings from before appear around his body.

The transformation back into Phantom looks painful, his eyes screwing shut and a pained wheeze leaving his throat, but he pushes through it anyway, until he looks like he was never alive at all. 

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, pushing off the ground to float over to Sam. 

And before she can say anything in return, he’s phasing into her.

Sam has never been overshadowed before, and she’s also never met anyone else who has. It’s like she’s being submerged in frigid water, or a cloud of humidity so thick it becomes difficult to breathe. She can feel the way he slithers up her spine, curling around her skull almost gently. Her limbs don’t respond to her anymore, and all she can do is stare wide-eyed at the forest and ghosts in front of her, frozen to the spot. 

She can hear him speaking directly into her head, and she almost doesn’t recognize the sound that comes out of her own mouth as she unconsciously repeats the same words.

“Remember everything.”

And suddenly all the memories come rushing back.

Her life flashes before her eyes, going by so quickly and intensely that she barely feels him slipping out of her head to go for Tucker next. 

He yelps, and Phantom disappears into his chest, prompting the same words from him.

“Remember everything.”

And when he leaves them both, gasping as he reappears behind them, the transformation back into Danny is immediate. Sam doesn’t see the way his eyes roll up into his head and he falls to the forest floor with a thump, or the ghost wolf and dog rushing past them to his side.

What she does see, is everything else. 

And suddenly she knows exactly why he was so scared to tell them about all of this.

Sam and Tucker remember.

Chapter Text

Danny stands in a graveyard at the edge of town late one day, looking down at a headstone with his own name staring back at him.

It starts with a tired walk down into the lab, pressing a button he wasn’t meant to press. 

It starts with staying up all night fighting off ghosts and hunters until he’s collapsing from exhaustion and drooling on his desk at school. 

It starts with distancing himself, whether on purpose or accidentally, until his family barely notices when he disappears at night and his friends stop messaging him.

But what it really starts with, is weeks later when the GIW raids the town.

Danny’s not even sure if they’re some kind of fake government sect or a company with a lot of power, but what starts out as a bunch of amateurs spouting hate towards ghosts quickly turns into armed thugs shooting anything and everything that moves and looks vaguely green. It used to be easy for Danny and the other ghosts to avoid them, but somehow they had gotten ahold of his parents’ tech and recreated the ecto-gun and ecto-net, which has since hurt more people (ghost or otherwise) than Danny is able to count.

He abandons a history test to go out and meet a ghost that he never catches the name of, and after flying through the town to see the devastation the GIW left in their wake, he asks the other ghost what happened.

Gritting his teeth against the pain of the blast to his arm, he says “Here, you look fairly young for a ghost so I’ll show you something you’ve probably never seen before. It’ll be easier than explainin’ what went down anyway.”

And when he uses a jagged claw to cut his own palm open and instructs Danny to do the same, he doesn’t really think twice. The ghost slaps their palms together, and his vision blurs out as the scene around him changes. 

His memories, Danny realizes as he watches the scene from the night before as the GIW stormed the town and shot at anything they could see. A ghost lady gets shot in the back and falls, but he doesn’t stop running even as the screams behind him get louder.

“Get out of here, stupid creatures! And don’t come back!” he hears one man in white shout.

“Pests. It’s like shooting rats in a cage,” another mutters.

Danny feels the shot to his arm as if it really happened to him, an ache persisting there even as the other ghost rips his hand away and the vision fizzles out. He wipes the ectoplasm off on his raggedy clothes with a hiss, and tells Danny that sharing ectoplasm isn’t supposed to hurt like that. 

He thanks the ghost and heads back home, but instead of sleeping he goes down to the lab and does some testing. Turns out, just like how he can find ectoplasm mixed with his blood as a human, there’s also blood mixed with his ectoplasm as a ghost. 

He double and triple checks that he’s thoroughly gotten rid of all the samples he took from himself before he dares to go up to bed, and even then it’s impossible to sleep for the rest of the night.

It starts with coming up with plans to spend more of his time sabotaging ghost hunters and the GIW. Nobody notices or cares when he skips a few classes to go break some ecto-guns or disable traps in the woods. It’s funny how a year or two before he never would have considered skipping classes or major tests, even if he knew he wasn’t going to do well on them. But now it’s laughably easy to stop caring about his education entirely. When it comes to a decision between caring about his grades or caring about the lives of other people, he’s always going to choose the second option.

His parents become more active around the same time as the GIW, always trying to bring their technology to new heights. And of course they decide that the best way to test their inventions is on Danny himself, though they don’t know that it’s him. 

But that doesn’t make it easier when they shoot at him. It doesn’t make it easier when they call him an “it” and talk about him like he’s more of an insect to be picked apart and studied than a sentient being. And it doesn’t make it easier that he knows he could tell them that it’s him at any time, that there’s a chance they would listen to reason if he just said it the right way or eased them into it slowly. But the nightmarish image of his family’s terrified faces as he overshadowed each of them, the remembered pain of a blast of ectoplasm to his shoulder, and the lack of energy to try in the first place always manages to stop the thought from forming into action.

The first time he got caught, he erased his family’s memories and has been haunted by it ever since. The second time, he can barely even remember.

The ghost hunter catches him on a bad day, but then again lately all of his days are bad days. He stupidly walks right into a ghost-proof bear trap, and when a hunter pops out of the bushes to boast about how they had finally caught the ghost that’s been terrorizing everyone for so long, he kind of snaps.

The trap prevents him from going intangible, but the sudden rage coursing through him gives him enough strength to pry the two jaws apart, freeing his wounded ankle. He lunges for the hunter with a hiss and they both tumble to the ground. The ecto-gun is knocked aside, and Danny just barely manages to resist clawing the guy’s face open to overshadow him instead. Just like the first time, he tells him to forget, and the hunter goes blank and turns around to walk right back home like nothing ever happened. 

Danny breaks the gun and flies in the opposite direction, agitatedly growling under his breath and simultaneously feeling guilty for wanting to be so violent and wishing that he would have gone through with it at the same time. 

He doesn’t go home at all that night. He finds a spot in the old abandoned bell tower on top of the school and ignores all the dust and bird poop to curl up and sleep there. He doesn’t transform back until the next morning when he reluctantly heads back home for the weekend. Jazz asks him about his absence from dinner for the fourth time that week, and he shrugs her off like he always does. It doesn’t take much longer for her to stop asking at all, and for the whole weekend Danny wants nothing more than to go back to that bell tower. 

He gets used to overshadowing quickly. He learns through trial and error that precise wording is key after one or two accidental incidents of full amnesia. But after that he also learns that it can be easily undone. The memories are always there, it just depends on whether or not they can think about them. It’s a relief he didn’t know that he wanted to hear, until he remembers the memories he’s stolen from his family and suddenly it isn’t a relief anymore.

The more time he spends out, the more he learns about other things too. 

He learns all the natural sounds that ghosts make towards each other that mean different things. He learns how a growl with direct eye contact is different from a growl with an averted gaze, and that ghosts rely more on sounds and different forms of communication than posture, even more so than living people, which makes sense considering all the different body types, cultures, and disabilities from the wounds that killed them that ghosts have. 

He learns Ghostspeak as well, and revels in the quick ease of picking up a new language as a ghost. He had never been able to learn much Spanish as a kid even after three years of it, but something about his transformation had changed the way he thinks, so learning Ghostspeak comes as easily to him as learning to ride a bike.

He spends more and more time out learning from other ghosts and messing with ghost hunters that he frequently forgets that he has a human life at all, to the point where even his parents have had a few talks with him about how he’s skipping entire days of school and not showing up to the house anymore. They ask him what he’s doing and why, and he tells them what they want to hear and leaves it at that. 

Later that night he sees his parents with smiles on their faces as they chase down some poor innocent ghost that Danny has to go and rescue, and he doesn’t feel all that bad about lying to them when she cries on his shoulder and begs him to keep protecting them. He doesn’t make her any promises, but he’s starting to learn what Obsessions are and he knows that he wouldn’t be able to stop protecting everyone even if he tried. 

It starts when he gets into a fight with Box Ghost, the tiresome brawl distracting him for just long enough to allow his parents to sneak up behind both of them. They aim for Danny first, taking a sizeable chunk out of his back that sends him crashing to the ground while Box Ghost startles and flies away, leaving him to fend for himself. 

His mom smiles in a way that he can only describe as sadistic, leaning down to peer at the ghost like he’s a specimen on a table. His dad holds a still-smoking gun just behind her proudly, like he’s just caught a nice big fish instead of his own son.

Danny winces and tries to drag himself back away from them. Feeling far too exposed, he lies there in front of his parents, both of them recognizing him as a creature instead of a person.

“Aw, you don’t have to be afraid of us, dear,” Maddie says with a widening smile. She reaches into one of her pockets and pulls out a syringe and scalpel, inching towards him with all the intention of holding him down to study him. 

He remembers, abruptly, the tests he had done on his own blood. He knows that if they manage to get a sample from him, they’re going to notice the odd mixture, they’re going to test it themselves, and it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to say they’d be able to figure out that the ghost they’ve just shot is actually their own son. He’s already made them forget once, how many more times does he have to keep repeating the same cycle? 

“Promise you won’t feel a thing,” she says with a grin that makes Danny feel like a dead butterfly being pinned to a board. He’s not sure why he feels more terror in that moment than ghosts like Skulker have ever been able to make him feel. 

He manages to get his invisibility working past the panic rising in his throat, and ignores his parents’ disappointed faces as he slinks off into the night. 

And when he rises high enough to see his house in the distance, his room cold and uninviting, he comes to the realization that he can make a decision.

On his left, his house sits. His room is empty and barely lived in anymore, along with the looming uncomfortableness of his parents and Jazz’s constant displeasure with his one-word answers. Sam and Tucker haven’t texted him in over a week now, setting a new record, and he doesn’t particularly feel like picking up his phone only to see no new messages again.

But on his right…

The bell tower is empty and has no walls to speak of. It’s old and abandoned, serving no purpose other than to be there. The place itself isn’t much, but over there he knows that he can really let himself be a ghost. In a way, it’s almost become freeing to transform and go out into the night. The less he thinks about school and home, the more he actually enjoys his newfound abilities and wild nature. The more ghosts he meets, the more he learns and discovers the world around him and the people in it. On those rare occasions where he’s not getting beat up or out destroying traps, he talks to other people and he feels alive for the first time since the portal. Is it really so bad that he wants to keep that feeling?

It starts when he makes a choice, and heads away from the only home he’s ever known to go make himself a new one. Or maybe he just wants to get away. But when he heads right instead of left, it suddenly doesn’t feel like as much of a big deal as it did before. He makes a choice and ignores the pool of dread in his gut, focusing instead on the excitement of the unknown.

When he sleeps that night, he doesn’t realize that that very morning would be the last time he was human for a long time.

It starts with waking up and feeling fine, and wandering around the town with the relief of not having to worry about school or family. 

It starts with getting so involved with all the ghostly activity around town that he forgets there are still living people waiting for him at all, and ends up staying out another night.

It starts with two nights turning into three, into four and five and six…

Guilt gets the best of him after a week, and eventually he decides that he’s stayed out long enough and he needs to return home before everyone thinks he’s dead (even if he really is).

But when he swoops down, invisible, to see what’s going on around the house, he freezes when he sees a poster hanging up on the light pole outside. There’s a picture with his face on it, and below the picture it says “MISSING” and “Have You Seen Him?”

And as he’s frozen there, he sees Jazz come out of the front door, tears in her eyes, holding a whole stack of the same posters. Her hands shake as she closes the door behind her and heads out into the town, probably to go hand the papers out to other people.

And maybe it makes him a horrible person, but he doesn’t really feel anything as he phases inside the house and sees his parents sitting at the dinner table, hugging and whispering reassurances to each other. 

“Don’t worry, we’ll find him.”

“He has to pop up eventually. He’s probably just out being a teenager.”

And Danny can clearly hear the way they have to force the words out, like they’re trying to make themselves believe it too. 

He hates to admit that he flinches when his dad stands up without warning, alarm bells blaring in his head for a moment as he double checks that he’s still invisible. His dad never looks his way, heads to the stairs instead. His mom gets up to follow behind him, and only once they’re both gone does Danny settle down again.

He feels awful for it, for not just appearing and telling them that he’s not missing—he’s right here—and for not trusting them as his parents more.

But then, why would you? his traitorous mind whispers. The last time they figured out that he was a ghost they tried to kill him. And they’ve kept trying to kill him even without that extra knowledge that he’s somehow possessed and stolen their son.

He feels awful for it, but when he contemplates transforming and showing them that he’s still here and alive, he just… can’t.

He leaves quickly, retreating back to the bell tower to think about it some more. 

Seven days turns into nine when he finally gathers the courage to go out again.

He hears Jazz calling out his name in town and feels shame pool in his chest as he flies in the opposite direction. 

He hears hushed conversations about search parties getting sent into the woods and is more concerned with disabling traps to prevent injury than actually revealing himself to them. 

He sees posters with his face on it and stops being able to recognize his own likeness the more he stares. 

He doesn’t go back to the house, or his family. And he’s not sure why it suddenly becomes so difficult to feel anything. He figures he should be more guilty about it, more ashamed, more desperate to return. But he just feels… hollow.

Nine days turns into twelve when a tug of something finally gets the best of him and he visits the house. He goes in the dead of night when everyone is asleep, keeping a tight hold of invisibility all the while. He drifts through the living room silently, letting fond memories of watching TV shows with his family and eating nice dinners nearly every afternoon float to him. He only lingers on the plastered-over holes in the ceiling for a moment, more content with looking at all the pictures that are hung up on the fridge and remembering times where their food came to life. 

He sees the lab, but it’s more difficult to try to ignore the looming presence of the portal now than it used to be. It casts everything in an eerie green glow, making a noise like echoed wind that gets to him more than it really should. Down here, he remembers staying up late with his parents working on silly little inventions that were never really meant to function. His dad always loved building things, and Danny did too. His mom loved the more scientific aspects of their ghost research, wanting to figure out the chemical makeup of ectoplasm and how it would react to other things. What had started out as a hobby, an innocent curiosity, soon turned into something much worse for both of them.

He doesn’t linger down there for very long. 

He floats up to his own room, looking at all his little toys and trinkets apathetically. Most of them were gifts from his friends, and ironically it’s that thought that finally makes guilt twist in his gut before anything else.

They haven’t all hung out in a long time, but Danny can still remember all too clearly spending sleepovers and birthday parties here. Long nights back then were spent with Sam ranting about the horrors of the meat industry while Tucker played on his Game Boy and Danny read books about the stars. All of them with different interests but more than happy to spend time with each other anyway. 

He wonders if the two of them are out searching for him too, wonders if they’re checking his favorite spots or trying to tempt him back with promises of Nasty Burger. Or maybe when he stopped responding to their messages they stopped caring at all. The thought sits in his chest like a rock weighing him down. 

He doesn’t go into Jazz’s room, would feel too creepy watching her sleep, but he does float just outside her door, stuck in contemplation and warring decisions.

His sister has always tried her best, has always tried to be there for him. She’ll probably try to blame herself for this, thinking that she didn’t do enough to help him in a time of need. He doesn’t know how to tell her that there’s only so much she can do for someone who doesn’t want to be helped. He doesn’t know how to tell her that it’s not her fault, it was never anybody’s fault but his own. 

But he hovers there nonetheless, a hand unconsciously raising as if to knock and let her know that he’s still right here…

But…

…

He leaves the house what feels like hours later, still a ghost, still gone from his family’s lives. It’s the last time he’ll go inside the Fenton house for a long time. 

He doesn’t realize until he’s already leaving that this is him saying goodbye.

Three weeks pass, and Danny watches his family, friends, and neighbors gather in the graveyard at the edge of town. Practically everyone from school is there, and he’s surprised that not only is Dash there, but he also looks genuinely sad. The same goes for all his teachers, and the principal, and the few girls he got rejected by. He didn’t think half of them would show up for this, but it looks like more people are sad to see him go than he had assumed. Even the ghosts in the area gather around the living to pay their respects as well, all of them invisible so as not to startle anyone. They don’t bat an eye at Danny’s presence, probably used to this exact scenario by now. 

His family is closest to the headstone, a memorial for someone who isn’t technically even dead, and a plot of land with no body to put in it. There’s a lot of crying, and Danny hates how empty he feels as they give their speeches about how great of a son he was, how they have no idea what happened to him but they hope they’ll find him again some day (whether that be dead or alive). 

He doesn’t really feel anything as Jazz steps up to give her own words as well. She says that she always knew she wanted to go into some kind of health field, but after not being able to save Danny, she’s positive that she wants to go into psychology now. She wants to help people, so that nobody else has to go through what Danny and them are going through. 

And that statement actually hurts, somehow. Maybe it’s because he’s still alive, watching them cry over an empty grave even as he hovers just out of their sight. Maybe it’s just because he hates seeing his sister look so devastated. Jazz only ever wanted to help him, and this whole stunt he’s pulling is so selfish. He could have stopped this at any time, could have just come home, but he didn’t. He chose the ghosts over his own family, and he can’t say for sure whether it was a good choice or not. Or rather, he knows that it wasn’t a good choice, but he’s not sure if he’ll be able to be okay with it. 

But now they’re mourning for him. They think he’s dead (and maybe he is). And now it’s far too late to go back.

This is the grave he dug for himself, and now he has to lie in it.

Sam and Tucker don’t give speeches of their own, but that’s okay. They were crying too much to say anything anyway, and Danny isn’t sure if he would have been able to handle what they could have said. 

They put roses on his grave. Danny never really liked roses, but he appreciates the sentiment anyway. 

Everyone filters out of the graveyard eventually, leaving only Sam, Tucker, Jazz, and his parents left. 

Danny looks down at his clawed hands, feels the way his blindingly white hair sways in a wind that isn’t there. Flying around with a tail instead of legs has become as natural as breathing, and defending what he’s come to know as his haunt is second nature. His dad once said that ghosts are more like animals than objects or people, and only now that he’s become one does he see the partial truth in the statement. He feels wild, like the invisible leash that he didn’t know was there before is gone now. 

He’s not the same person that he was before. And he’s already gone this far, so why not indulge in a little bit more?

He floats closer to the small group and, with a pause to consider what he’s about to do, decides to go through with it. He phases not through but into his dad’s body first. The feeling of overshadowing is still kind of strange to him if he thinks about it, being able to feel someone else’s thoughts, to move their body as if it were his own. But after all this time, he’s gotten used to it, and it only takes a moment of hesitation before he’s reaching for what he’s looking for.

“Forget,” he whispers into his dad’s mind, making sure not to let him speak the words aloud. “Move on without your son. He’s in a better place. You don’t need to cry over him anymore.”

He pauses for a moment, contemplating.

“And be kind to the ghosts. They are people too.”

The tears stop soon after that, and Danny can feel the way everything clicks into place in a mind that isn’t his own. He knows it’s working, and he leaves his dad’s body to go to his mom’s next. He repeats the same thing to her, and then he moves on to Jazz.

“You don’t need to mourn your brother anymore. Move on and follow your dreams. He would be proud of you.”

He goes to Sam next, seeing through her eyes for the first and last time. 

“Forget about Danny. Forget the name Daniel Fenton. Forget about this funeral. And… just be yourself.”

And as he repeats the same thing to Tucker, he finds his voice cracking at the end. As he leaves their bodies, he watches their eyes blank out and the tears dry on their faces. They all turn around and head home collectively, probably to go to sleep and wake up the next morning without any significant memory of Danny left. 

It’s better this way, he tells himself. This way, they can live their lives to the fullest without him. This way, he can just be dead like fate wanted him to be all along. 

He tries to ignore the dampness of his face and the quivering of his shoulders.

Danny stands in a graveyard at the edge of town late one day, looking down at a headstone with a stranger’s name staring back at him.

It starts with a tired walk down into the lab, pressing a button he wasn’t meant to press, and it ends with him. 

Daniel Fenton is dead. In his place is only a Phantom.

Chapter Text

Amity Park Hospital makes a clear distinction between its two different wards. One side is exclusively for treating the living, and the other side is exclusively for the dead. Sometimes they’ll get people and ghosts wandering between the two sections, each one morbidly curious of the other, but the staff has learned how to avoid any unsavory incidents from occurring. 

Sometimes, very rarely, someone will die, become a ghost, and then return again. If Jazz is recalling correctly, she believes it’s only happened once over the year and a half that the ghost ward has existed. Dave had fought with everything he had, but he just didn’t make it. Jazz had never personally met him, but she did help treat the cracked core he came in for as a ghost months later. She had heard from the other staff that he was the same guy, and although he didn’t talk much about his experiences Jazz wished him well as he left anyway.

It’s only happened once so far, and she expects it to happen again if the ghost ward continues to function. But never in a million years could she have ever guessed that not only would someone be moved from the ghost ward to the living ward, but it would be her own brother. 

But then again, she’s currently even more surprised by the presence of an actual werewolf patiently waiting at the foot of Danny’s bed, with a small green bulldog dozing just beside him, so maybe she’s exaggerating just a little. 

Nobody in the hospital speaks Esperanto, but Jazz makes do with the first translator she can find online and figures out that his name is Wulf. He also says that he’s been friends with Phantom/Danny for a while and that he would have shown up in town to help him sooner if he hadn’t been caught. 

And after saying that he pauses, his previously wagging tail slowing to a halt as he looks down at Jazz consideringly. Even sitting down on the floor like he is, he’s still taller than Jazz, and each one of the claws he sports on his paws could eviscerate her in the blink of an eye, but he’s just so calm and tame that she’s not all that scared of the possibility. If Wulf is anything like Danny, then she’s guessing he prefers to only use violence against people who truly deserve it. 

His head tilts to the side, ears flopping over with gravity in a way that gives Jazz the sudden and intense urge to scratch his head. She barely manages to resist, pressing the audio button on the translator instead.

“Vi estas familio?”

And once the translator shows the words back to her in English, she nods at him. 

“I’m his sister. And the two people in hazmat suits are our parents.”

Wulf gives her a soft smile—or as soft as he can manage it with all those teeth—and turns to look at Danny.

Looking at him is a sobering experience that Jazz doesn’t really have words to describe. He looks so impossibly small lying under heaps of blankets and looking as pale as his ghostly counterpart. She’s been holding his hand with one of her own for hours, and still she hasn’t felt his temperature rise any higher than near-hypothermic. The hollowness of his face and the prominence of the sharp bits of his skull and collarbones speak of malnutrition, but the more emotional side of her takes that word and twists it into a huge beast in her head. Remembering what he had said before about barely eating sprites and mostly surviving off of his own energy had been concerning, but it’s nothing compared to actually seeing the damage now. 

He’s so young. Jazz will be eighteen this year, so Danny should be sixteen, but even after all this time it looks like he’s barely grown at all. He looks exactly like the fourteen-year-old that they lost, only a few months before his birthday. And that’s what really makes everything crash down around her. Not only did Jazz miss his fifteenth birthday, but she also missed his next birthday after that. So did his parents, and his best friends, and his school. Did he even celebrate at all? 

The silence of the room is only broken what feels like an eternity later when Cujo (Wulf had told her the dog’s name as well) picks his head up and gives a defensive ruff at the door.

It clicks open, and at the threshold stands Sam and Tucker. 

They look like they both got shoved into a shredder and spat back out again. Deep shadows under their eyes paired with outfits that Jazz knows neither of them have bothered to change since two days ago and the tense lining of their shoulders paints a pretty depressing picture. Not that Jazz herself is much better. She’s been staying by Danny’s since… She hasn’t been able to leave the room, too scared that he’ll wake up and leave again. She wouldn’t be able to stop him, she knows, but she’s not about to let her little brother go again without one hell of a fight.

Sam and Tucker filter into the room, Tucker leaning down to pat Cujo on the head as they go. The dog settles down again, ignoring them in favor of napping again, and they sit down on the opposite side of the bed as Jazz.

Just like the last two days, they look incredibly sad as they glance down at him, remembering a shared pain. 

Back then, after the funeral, Jazz had just assumed that the two of them were so caught up in grief that they had blocked Danny from their memory to protect themselves. It was only when they came back to the hospital, both of them frantic as Wulf carried an unconscious Danny through the front doors of the hospital and stuttered out a quick explanation for what happened that Jazz realized she had gotten it completely wrong.

Danny had made them forget. Maybe in an effort to protect them, or maybe to protect himself. Maybe it was something else entirely. 

He had been the reason why their parents had flipped their research on its head and unexpectedly began helping ghosts instead of hurting them. He had been the reason that Sam and Tucker never came over anymore, and stopped mentioning their third friend entirely. 

He had been the reason that Jazz has felt something missing within herself for a long time. So many nights she spent wondering why she struggled to mourn for her own brother at all, and she had turned to psychology in an effort to understand herself and Danny. She thought it was something mental, something she could manage with therapy and medication. Only to find out that it was her brother all along. 

When he said that he overshadowed people to make them forget, she should have known. But any anger that she might have felt by being lied to was immediately washed away by everything else. Because she understands why he did it, and she knows that more than anything he needs a helping hand right now. 

He had needed help before, and she hadn’t done enough for him to trust her with all these secrets. She won’t make the same mistake twice. She won’t let him leave again, not when she can finally do something about it.

His best friends look at him with matching haunted expressions, and Jazz understands. 

She’s been waiting here for two days already, and she’d keep waiting a thousand more if that’s what it would take. To see her brother give a carefree smile like he used to again, she would do anything.

It’s on the third day that he finally begins to stir. 

Jazz can feel the slight twitching of his fingers in her hand like an electric shock. She had been resting her eyes, her head pillowed on the edge of his bed, but the movement has her jolting upright, watching his face intently.

His brow furrows. He shifts ever so slightly. 

Jazz waits, barely even breathing as her heart hammers away in her chest.

His arm twitches and starts to pull away, but Jazz refuses to let go of his hand. His arm jolts to a stop, and then his eyes open.

Blue eyes stare up at the ceiling for a long few moments. He blinks several times, seemingly struggling just to keep them open and trying to make sense of the world around him slowly. 

His eyes trail down and fall on his friends first. They’re still both in the chairs on the opposite side of the bed, leaning against each other and fast asleep in a way that doesn’t look comfortable at all, but somehow they make it work. 

He sees Wulf and Cujo next, curling up in a fuzzy heap in the corner by the door. They most likely aren’t actually asleep, but they haven’t noticed Danny waking up yet like she has.

And he turns to look at Jazz next. The deep-set exhaustion is cut through by confusion, sadness, and then fear.

And it’s that expression that has something unpleasant twisting in her gut and bringing tentative tears to her eyes. After all this time, he’s still afraid of them. Still worried about the consequences, about their reactions, about everything and everyone except himself. 

“Danny…” she begins, whispered and shaking and struggling not to break down crying on him when he’s only just woken up.

“I’m so glad that you’re okay. And I’m—I’m so sorry for not being there for you when you needed it.”

He flinches, his head slumping further into the pillow as he stares at her in confusion again. It’s almost funny, the way he always stares without blinking even as a human. 

By now, Wulf and Cujo have woken up and are shuffling towards the bed. Cujo hops up onto the blankets by Danny’s feet, and Wulf hovers near Jazz’s shoulder.

Danny glances at them briefly before his eyes water and he forces himself to blink. As if he had forgotten how to. 

“Why?” he croaks, confused again as he looks down at their interlocked hands. “Wasn’t your fault.”

And despite the circumstances, those few words bring so much relief to Jazz that she has to take a second to wipe the water from her face before she’s confident enough to answer without shaking too badly.

“Well it wasn’t your fault either, idiot. You were scared and hurt and I know that our parents talking about ghost hunting all the time probably didn’t help at all—“

She cuts the beginnings of her rant short when he flinches again. It’s been over a year, but evidently those wounds have turned into lasting scars. No wonder he felt the need to resort to overshadowing to change it all, if this is how badly it affected him.

She lowers her voice again, trying to convey as much reassurance as she can through just her eyes alone. “I don’t know what happened to give you ghost abilities, but Danny, even if it was your fault for leaving, I don’t care. Because you know what? I’m your sister, and I refuse to lose you again.”

He gets a complicated look on his face, something full of sadness and reopened wounds, and for a moment she wonders if she’s said something wrong or if she should take it back. But then he closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, the beginnings of a smile twitching at the edges of his mouth. 

“You’re always so stubborn,” he huffs. And then he gives a hesitant squeeze to her hand, and she nearly starts crying again just from that.

By now, Sam and Tucker have started to wake up too. As soon as Tucker peeks his eyes open and sees that Danny is awake, he’s leaping up off the chair and dumping Sam behind him to throw himself halfway onto the bed. He wraps his arms around Danny immediately, who wheezes like he’s just had all the air knocked out of him and hesitantly raises his other arm to hug Tucker back.

“I hate you so much right now!” Tucker cries. 

Danny winces, looking genuinely hurt for all of a few seconds before Sam picks herself up from the sprawl that Tucker had thrown her into and clarifies to him.

“What he means to say—“ she yawns and rubs her eyes, scooting her chair closer to close her hand into a fist and gently bonk Danny on the head “—is that you’re a moron, and we both care about you a lot, but if you ever make us forget you again then we will absolutely hunt you down and make you regret it.”

Danny chuckles humorlessly, but something in his eyes melts as Tucker holds him closer and Danny holds him back. “You already did,” he rasps.

Sam frowns at him, slipping her hand from his head to his shoulder instead. She doesn’t reply, but she doesn’t need to. 

Danny breaks the silence all on his own, a distant look in his eyes as he begins to speak.

“You haven’t changed at all, y’know. None of you have, really. I think that’s what made it so hard to… to stay away. Because I knew that everyone was right there—right here, and I just—“

He sighs and moves his hand from Tucker’s back to scrub down his face. Tucker pulls back, watching him with concern. Danny looks at all of them and seems to balk at the prospect of speaking in front of so many people, so he closes his eyes and covers his face instead. His words become muffled but still plainly heard.

“I just wanted everyone to be okay, and I figured the best way to do that was to… not be there.”

And before anyone can think of a way to respond to that, the door clicks open. Everyone’s heads swivel in that direction at the same time that Danny drops the hand over his face to look as well. And there stands their parents, looking at him with an intense mix of sadness and relief.

“Danny,” Jack breathes, and then both of them are filtering into the room and stopping just short of reaching out for him. 

“We’re sorry—for everything. I should have recognized you sooner, or helped you more, or—“

He makes a frustrated noise, and Maddie puts a comforting hand on his back that seems to calm him down.

“Danny,” she begins gently. “Will you please tell us what happened? It doesn’t have to be now, just…”

Her words trail off, but they can all hear what she meant to say in the silence anyway.

We thought you were dead.

Danny sucks in a breath and lets it out slowly. 

“I guess now is as good a time as ever.”

And despite being exhausted and already emotionally worn out, he starts to explain from the beginning.

“It all started with the portal…”

“Some of the other ghosts, they call me a halfa. Half living, half ghost. When I’m human, I still have some ghost traits, like… ectoplasm mixed in with my blood. As a ghost, I have some human traits, like being able to breathe. There are only two of us that I know of, me and Vlad Masters, but he likes to call himself Plasmius these days.”

Jazz and Danny watch as their dad jolts in place, looking startled and distant as he remembers the name he had forgotten long ago. Jazz hasn’t heard all that much about Vlad from either of her parents, but she knows that he and Jack used to be partners, before arguments over Maddie split them apart. 

Danny knows more to the story, but he doesn’t have to spell it out for Jazz to understand the gist. If Danny was turned into a half ghost from a portal, then Vlad must have been transformed in the same way, meaning Jack is the reason for both his old partner and his son’s deaths…

They watch as the realization and then guilt pass over his face, steadying himself by gripping the bars at the end of the bed. 

“Vlad—he told me that the portal was unstable and that we shouldn’t turn it on, but I thought—he never said anything about—“

He clamps his mouth shut, pressing a hand to his face. He stares at Danny like a man drowning, waves of grief passing through hunched shoulders and unsaid words.

And Danny looks away, to some distant point over their heads towards the ceiling.

“It feels like dying,” he whispers. “Over and over again. All electricity and ectoplasm. Waking up as a ghost was… terrifying.”

He laughs, but it’s a broken hiccuped thing that shatters Jazz’s heart all over again.

“I don’t blame you,” he says, turning back to Jack and meeting his eyes with the expression of a pain still remembered. “Not anymore. I think Vlad still does.”

And Jazz watches their father fall apart before them, because saying ‘anymore’ means that at one point he did blame Jack for all this, and still decided to protect them from the grief of it all anyway. He still decided that it would be best for everyone else to leave and make them forget about him, to hide his identity for a year and stay as far away as possible all that time. Even when his core was breaking down with the weight of all his secrets, his fear always outweighed his anger.

Jack reaches out, offering his hand to be accepted or rejected, and in that small movement Jazz can see just how much he’s changed and matured over all this time. A silent request instead of a silent demand, more mindful of Danny’s discomfort than his own. 

And Danny also looks surprised by the offer, staring at his dad’s hand for a few long seconds. 

The old Jack would have thrown an arm around Danny’s shoulders without warning, or pat him on the back hard enough to send him stumbling forward. Ruffled hair here and random hugs there, shows of affection that were well-intentioned but we’re always more for Jack’s sake than Danny’s. Danny had always needed more than that, and Jack didn’t realize it until too late. 

He’s more mindful now. Now that they have Danny back. Now that he has a chance to make everything right again. 

Danny looks at his dad’s offered hand, and with a lot of silent hesitation, finally reaches out to take it in his own.

Jazz couldn’t be prouder of both of them.

Their dad holds Danny’s hand gently, and looks at him with such a deep sense of sadness that it’s suddenly hard to remember how boisterous and unendingly happy he used to be. 

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs, and Danny’s eyes widen a fraction.

“I never should have put you in such a dangerous situation. I should have kept you far away from that portal. You deserve so much better than this, Danny. And I’m… I’m truly sorry.”

Danny looks like he’s about to say something, but stops when he sees the tears start to fall. Their dad has always been the emotional type, Jazz thinks humorously. 

And then Maddie moves around to Jack’s other side, closer to Danny but seemingly hesitant to reach out herself. 

“And I’m sorry too,” she says, her voice going uncharacteristically quiet. “I didn’t know that you and Phantom were the same person, or that that was even possible, but I shouldn’t have been hunting ghosts in the first place.”

She pauses, reaching out to lay a tentative hand on his shoulder. He could shrug it off at any moment, but Danny seems to be shocked into stillness.

Their mom sighs, shoulders slumping. “We started the Ghost Ward and all the ghost research after you… after you died, because we wanted to make amends. Most of the ghosts have forgotten what we used to be, but a few still remember.”

And Jazz definitely remembers. She can still picture the visceral fear on Danny’s face when they first brought him here, when his core was breaking. He had been ready to defend himself tooth and nail, and still had trouble calming down even days and weeks later. He was so scared of anyone finding out who he was that he let himself break down entirely in the process.

Danny’s voice, small and broken, surprises all of them when he interrupts.

“But I overshadowed you.” He turns his head away, looking down at the blankets instead of at any of their faces. “It’s not like you guys are the only ones at fault, and I haven’t even shown you all the memories I took yet…”

He looks back up when Maddie laughs, tears falling down her face and smiling with fractures along the edges. She shakes her head.

“I don’t need to see or know everything to know that we hurt you, Danny. How am I going to be able to forgive myself, as your mother, for making you feel this way?”

And Jazz can see the moment that something inside Danny breaks all over again at the words. His mostly blank expression splinters and crumbles away, revealing the same little brother she’s always known and loved. 

None of them are really able to resist bringing him up for a hug after that. Jazz isn’t even sure who initiates it first, but it’s barely a few moments before Danny is being—gently—crushed in between his two parents and sister. 

Tears fall, and Sam and Tucker are quick to join in, along with Cujo weaseling into the middle and Wulf wrapping his own arms around all of them at once. The werewolf lays his head on top of all of theirs with a small huff, casting the group in comfortable shadows.

And wrapped in warmth on all sides like this, Jazz thinks that it’s actually pretty nice to cry as a family instead of alone for once.

Chapter Text

“The serum that you were injected with should be filtered out of your bloodstream fairly quickly. Normally your kidneys would be able to get rid of all of it in a matter of minutes, but we aren’t sure how the ectoplasm you say is present in your blood would react in your body. If you’re okay with it, we’d like to draw blood and run some tests, but overall the serum shouldn’t be of any concern.”

Danny sighs and sinks further into the bed. 

Still surrounded by friends and family, they had somehow managed to convince him that telling the senior doctor what he had told them would be best for his health. The doctor—named Alex—was apparently one of the only members of the hospital staff who had experience in both the living and ghost wards and was well versed in the biology of both types of people. And so, with Danny’s reluctant permission, they had given Alex a brief rundown of Danny’s… what does he even call it? A condition? An illness? The ability to be almost-dead-but-not-quite? In any case, Alex had reacted to it all with an expected amount of surprise and skepticism, but had taken it in stride. 

Now Danny closes his eyes against the uncomfortable twist in his gut at the doctor’s words. Even after spilling everything to his family, the thought of letting other people look at his blood still makes him uncomfortable, and he’s not really sure what to make of that. 

It probably won’t be necessary anyway. As a human, he can’t feel the effects of the blood blossom nearly as much as a ghost. His mom told him that he has a slight fever, and occasionally his arms or neck will get itchy, but it’s nothing compared to how it felt before.

Honestly he probably should have just transformed back into Danny before, but he had been so scared of his family somehow finding out that he never entertained the thought any further. Although, knowing his family and knowing himself, no matter what he had chosen to do they would have found out his identity anyway. 

The doctor continues.

“If what you claimed is true, then your core could still very well be broken, and it will need time to heal before any strenuous activity, although we have no idea if you need to transform into a ghost to let it heal or not. Personally, I would recommend staying as you are now until you feel confident enough to transform again. If something seems like it might be too much activity for you, then it probably is.

“Honestly, I’m more concerned about your ribs. Three were cracked and one was broken. You might have some difficulty taking deep breaths, and I would normally recommend bedrest for at least four weeks, but they’re already starting to heal at an alarming rate. As you are now, I’d say it’ll take two weeks to fully recover, and as a ghost it would probably be closer to five days. But, once again, you shouldn’t attempt to transform until you are confidently able to.”

He sighs and stuffs his hands into the pockets of his coat. “Until then, there isn’t much we can do without having more knowledge of your biology. Testing most likely won’t be necessary this time, but it would allow us to more effectively treat you in the future. Right now, I’m guessing there’s a lot that even you don’t know.”

Danny huffs and crosses his arms, immediately wanting to argue that actually he knows a lot, but when he stops to think about it he realizes that the doctor might actually be right. Even Danny doesn’t know if his core will heal while he’s transformed into a human, or how long it takes for living kidneys to filter blood blossom serum out of ectoplasm. He has some guesses, but nothing concrete, because it isn’t like he has anyone to grab references off of with Vlad being the way he is. Danny only has his own status as halfa to go off of, and he’s never had these problems before, so no research exists on the topic.

“Okay, maybe…” he mutters petulantly, admitting defeat. He does know a lot about ghosts, and the limits of his own abilities, and ecto-technology, so at least he’s not completely clueless. 

Alex smiles at him and excuses himself with an “I’ll leave you to it then”, leaving Danny once again with only himself and his family. 

Sam turns to him. “So what was it that actually made your core start breaking in the first place?”

Danny and Jazz wince at the same time. 

“Well…” he begins, lifting a hand to scratch the back of his neck, trying not to squirm in front of so many people. He’s already told them practically everything else, so what’s one more thing? It seems like Jazz already knows anyway, so it shouldn’t be so difficult, right?

“Well, I uh…”

But the words get lodged in his throat. 

It wasn’t too difficult to blame it all on his Obsession before, and maybe that had been part of it, but how is he supposed to tell his family that he wanted nothing more than comfort and safety from the people he loves most, but was far too ashamed to even consider the idea? 

It seems so silly now, with everyone here and not batting an eye at all these abilities nobody knew existed until today. His parents know that he’s alive and even knowing what he’s done they don’t hate him or consider him any less than. His friends and sister aren’t furious with him—as far as he can tell—and are just glad that he’s back in their lives. All of the problems that he had made seem impossibly big in his head have all but evaporated overnight. He doesn’t really know how to handle it.

It’s still difficult to talk about, and although he’s getting used to being alive again, thinking of himself as Danny brings a sour taste to his mouth. And now that he explores the thought further, a new itch rises under his skin, urging him to turn back into Phantom despite knowing that he isn’t ready yet. It scares him that the idea of turning into Phantom and running away again is so easy to conjure up even now, when it was exactly that same idea that led to all this. 

He must have stayed quiet for too long, because Jazz continues the sentence for him. 

“He’s been struggling with keeping these secrets for a while, and being around his friends and family again made them impossible to ignore any longer. His core was just responding to his emotional distress.”

Danny lets out a breath that’s a little too airy, his lungs feeling shallow as he speaks. “Yeah. It was difficult trying to keep everything to myself when everyone was right there. I was stuck between revealing the truth and ruining everything or letting myself shatter.”

“Danny, you’re echoing.”

He whips his head up to stare at Tucker.

“What?”

And he hears his own voice bouncing back at him, giving the same haunting cadence to his tone that he tends to have as Phantom. He jolts and clamps a hand over his mouth, feeling his face heating up as he resolutely looks away from everyone else.

“Sorry,” he mutters when he’s semi-confident the echo has gone away. 

He doesn’t see the concerned looks his friends and family shoot each other over his head, but he can feel their eyes on him making scorching paths over his skin. After so long being alone, it’s almost painful to be the center of attention now. 

Jazz lays a steady hand on his knee over the blankets, and he hesitantly glances up to meet her concerned gaze.

“Danny, you don’t have to be sorry. You said that you have ghost and human traits in either form, right?”

He silently nods, still not trusting his own voice.

She frowns, and the urge to turn ghost and fly away grows even stronger. 

“Then I’m assuming stuff like this is completely normal for a halfa. You don’t have to separate your two halves so strongly, and I promise none of us mind at all.”

And when he looks around, he doesn’t see any scared or disgusted expressions, only worried ones, but he still… doesn’t like it.

It’s almost funny how easy it is to fall back into old habits. Before, he had been terrified of his family seeing the strange mixture of ectoplasm that is his blood or the ever-present hunger that sharpened his fangs and made his stomach permanently empty. He didn’t have a problem with accidental echoing before, but he does now, and he’s still hesitant to accept that his family is truly supportive. 

They seem worried for his mental well-being now, but what happens when he turns into Phantom again? What happens when they learn that he prefers to sleep up high in the bell tower instead of in a bed? Or when they look a little too closely at how sharp his fangs and claws are, how cold his body temperature stays? What happens when he gets agitated and snaps at the wrong person, or spends a little too much time out fighting ghosts and forgets to come back? 

At what point does “it’s fine, Danny” turn into “Phantom, this is just too much”? He doesn’t know, and he would rather not find out.

He must have stayed silent for a few seconds too long, because Jazz gives him a hard searching look.

“It’s going to take an adjustment period,” she begins, and he winces. “But all of us have been around you long enough as Phantom to not be scared of you. It’s going to take time for everyone to get used to each other again, including you, and that’s absolutely fine with me.”

She sighs. “You’ve been gone for a year, Danny. I think I can speak for everyone when I say that we want to learn the person you’ve become. We aren’t just—just tolerating you.”

Danny hunches his shoulders and looks away. Somehow, his sister always manages to see right through him, even now. She’s always been especially good at that. She had even managed to figure out who he was as Phantom, despite him assuming that it would be one of his parents to find out the truth first. It’s such a pain… but also kind of endearing at the same time.

“Maybe you should get some more rest,” Jazz suggests slowly. 

And Danny opens his mouth to refute, but clicks his jaw closed again when a yawn threatens to come out. He wasn’t really thinking about it before, but he is still pretty tired…

“Maybe…” he mutters, thankful that he doesn’t echo this time. 

His dad moves closer to Jazz and lays a hand on her shoulder. “You should get some rest too, Jazz. You’ve been up for a while.”

She tilts her head back and sighs, slumping where she stands, and wordlessly nods an agreement. But she still manages to send Danny a worried and contemplative look. 

“We can stay here,” Sam says quickly, as if reading Jazz’s mind. 

But Danny can see the dark shadows under her and Tucker’s eyes, the stiffness of their shoulders and tired sets of their expressions. 

“You two need sleep too,” he says, ignoring the uncomfortable twist in his stomach. “I’ll be fine on my own for one night. And I still have Cujo.”

Wulf had left earlier in the day, ripping a portal open and disappearing inside it to go do whatever it is Wulf does when he’s not being harassed by other ghosts. Cujo had stayed behind, patiently sitting at the end of his bed to watch out for danger. Danny doesn’t know how long he’ll be staying for, but his presence seems to be enough to convince his friends that he isn’t going to up and die while they’re gone.

Sam and Tucker still hesitate, but he knows that they’re both tired, not to mention all the emotional turmoil of regaining their memories. He knows what they’re going to choose before even they do.

“Okay…” Tucker says, eyeing Danny skeptically. “But if anything happens then you’ll promise to come find us, right?”

Danny lets out a breath in some approximation of a chuckle. “Sure, I promise.”

Sam and Tucker nod decisively, and then everyone is turning to leave. 

His mom hangs back for a moment, coming to a silent decision with herself as she turns back to come up beside him again. Danny watches her, confused but unmoving, as she reaches out for his face and holds it steady with gentle hands. Then she leans over and presses a kiss to his forehead.

It’s so warm, he thinks distantly, beginning to melt into her hold without realizing. When she pulls back and smiles at him, he can see the affection shimmering in her eyes, and he doesn’t really know how to comprehend it. 

Where’s the hatred? The malice and fear? The grief and all the other pent up emotions from his faked death? Why are they so gentle with him, after everything he’s done? 

He doesn’t know. 

“Get some rest. We’ll be back to see you before you know it,” she murmurs to him. Her hands leave his face and he shivers in the sudden cold as they leave. 

The lights are turned off, and the door clicks shut behind them. Danny stares after them for longer than he cares to admit. 

Cujo gets up to shuffle closer to him, finding a comfortable spot by one of his legs to curl up in. He doesn’t sleep, but he pretends to anyway, and Danny finds himself smiling as he pats the ghost on the head and watches his small tail wag.

Danny lays back against his pillows and stares at the ceiling, wondering what’s going to happen to him now. 

Before he knows it, he’s being pulled under into the realm of sleep, and everything falls away behind him. 

He’s snapping awake mere hours later, already mid-transformation and too late to stop it from happening. 

The flash of white light blinds even him for a moment as claws and fangs return to his side. Rediscovering his core nestled beside his heart makes him gasp. After only two days or so being human again, it feels suddenly jarring to have it there again. 

Frost begins to spread along his arms and across the bed sheets, but as soon as he notices the ice it’s easy to reign it back in. He’s surprised when it actually listens.

He doesn’t feel any lingering fever or pain from the blood blossom, and he releases a breath he didn’t know he was holding once he realizes the serum has been flushed out. 

His core is a different story. He can’t see his core to be able to tell if it’s still cracked, but his ice being at full capacity is already much better than before. At the very least it must have been able to heal a bit, though he isn’t naive enough to believe that it’s fully recovered so quickly.

Jittery from the remnants of a dream he can’t remember, he contemplates turning back human but decides against it. He’s not going to be able to sleep like this. As a ghost, the urge to sleep is directly tied to his energy levels, and right now he has plenty to spare. Rest is going to be a far away concept until he can burn some of it off.

He’s phasing into the wall behind him without thinking, being released into the night air in a matter of moments. His cracked ribs begin to stitch themselves together in his chest at the same time Cujo comes running after him, tongue lolling out of his mouth. 

He takes a moment to breathe in, to get used to being Phantom again. It hasn’t been very long since his last transformation, but with all the new and terrifying changes in his life it feels like it was an eternity ago. Out here, without the pull of gravity and all the other limits his human side has, he feels free . It’s refreshing in a familiar and comfortable sort of way.

Cujo floats beside him, and Phantom reaches down to scratch his head absently, thinking on what he’s going to do next. 

They never managed to find anything in the GIW building that suggested there might be more blood blossoms there. If he went searching through all the files then he might find something related, but it’s also been days since they broke in and if Plasmius or another GIW agent really don’t want him to find anything then he’s not going to find it. Plus, searching through filing cabinets all day isn’t the kind of activity he needs to get rid of all this energy.

He could try searching for Plasmius’s den. He’s popped up often enough lately that he must have set up somewhere in town, or maybe just inside of the Ghost Zone. If he can find it, and if Plasmius really is the third party who brought the blood blossom into the living world, then Phantom could kill two birds with one stone by defeating Plasmius and ending his plot. 

“Think you can keep up with me boy?” he asks as he turns to Cujo, who barks and wags his tail in excitement.

Phantom smiles and, his mind made up, launches up into the air and begins flying over Amity with a little green dog just behind his tail. 

There are ghosts everywhere tonight. Walking down streets and slowly floating over houses, lighting up Amity Park with a haunting green glow that spans as far as the eye can see. He’s never really noticed just how many ghosts had disappeared until now, when suddenly nearly everyone is back again. It makes everything feel unusually crowded but also lively and exciting, and Phantom can feel his core surging in satisfaction at returning all of them to their rightful place. 

Some ghosts down below manage to catch sight of Phantom and wave or call out to him. He gives his own awkward, toothy smile back. Even after all this time he still doesn’t know how to deal with people recognizing him as a good guy. He’s spent his life following his Obsession to protect people, but somehow he never really expected others to acknowledge it. 

But the ghosts fall to the back of his mind as he goes intangible and begins to methodically examine the town. Having grown up here his entire life, he knows where most people live and rules out each house occupied by a human as Plasmius’s lair, focusing instead on all the other houses that he doesn’t know. 

There are a handful of people who moved to Amity from somewhere else in the last year, but he’s more concerned with all the empty or abandoned places dotted around town. If Vlad could choose his pick of the lot, Phantom is betting that he would go for the biggest, most gaudy house he could find.

There’s an abandoned mansion up on a hill tucked into the forest past the graveyard, and Phantom resolutely ignores the headstones he can see below as he goes to search there first. Searching through three floors that have caved in and rotted with time only takes a few minutes. There are a few other ghosts roaming around, and they pay no mind to each other or Phantom as he passes through, Cujo still right at his heels.

He doesn’t find Plasmius, and he doesn’t find any sign of him either. Disappointed but not surprised, he moves on to his other options.

A historic building that he thinks used to be a library before it got halfway burned down sits on the edge of town near a park. Phantom spends more time trying to get Cujo to stop slobbering all over the remains of the books left behind than he does searching for Plasmius, but he doesn’t find anything there either. 

Combing through abandoned houses goes by in far too short of a time, and even asking around for Plasmius from the other ghosts doesn’t get him anywhere. None of them have seen him since he disappeared from the GIW building, and Vlad left no clues behind.

Which means that he should probably check the GIW building again. The thought makes him shiver. The whole place should be cleared out, seeing as the lower levels aren’t structurally sound anymore, but there might still be some agents left, and if Plasmius is still there then Phantom isn’t confident enough in his recovery to get into another fight with him. 

Plus, he did actually manage to burn through enough energy just by flying around that he thinks he might be able to fall asleep again. So as much as he’d like to find Plasmius’s lair now, he knows he should wait for a better time. 

With a stretch and a small yawn, Phantom starts floating in a direction without thinking, Cujo excitedly trailing behind him. He doesn’t care much about where he’s going, until his eyes fall on the bell tower and he stops in his tracks.

It still looks exactly like how he left it, four sturdy and dusty pillars with a silent bell hanging above. All the scraps of old pillows and blankets are still strewn about haphazardly and dotted with the dried ectoplasm of wounds that were healed weeks ago. It’s still the same place it’s always been, but it feels different now.

Phantom drifts into his den listlessly, drifting his claws along the bed that he’s slept on for a year and the bricks that kept him safe all that time. This place has always simultaneously been his freedom and his cage, a safe haven that he used to run away from himself. 

It’s just as familiar as it’s always been, but now that he’s spent so much time in the hospital, now that his family knows and still wants him, it feels strangely… hollow. 

A house that was never really a home, and a den that was never more than a lonely tower. 

Cujo barks and nudges Phantom’s hand with his head, jolting him out of his thoughts. He huffs a tired laugh and takes a moment to scratch under the ghost dog’s chin, before Cujo leaps away and barks again, pointing his body towards the hospital in the distance.

Phantom takes a breath and floats up towards the bell, swirling around it a few times in contemplation.

“Yeah, I should probably head back.”

He thinks of Sam and Tucker, how they would probably be mad if he just up and disappeared from his bed only to show up right back where all of this started later. Not to mention what his sister and parents would think. Picturing Jazz’s face of disappointment makes him wince. Would they let him stay here, or try to drag him back to the hospital, he wonders?

Would they judge him for turning into Phantom again? Would they ask to see Danny instead? 

He had promised Tucker that he would come find them if anything happened. He wonders if that promise would extend to emotional struggles as well. Because looking down at this den and then at the hospital he came from not far away feels like something significant he can’t name. 

Should he go back or stay? Would it be best to still keep some distance between himself and his family or would he just be hurting them more? When Jazz said that they’re not just tolerating him and his ghost half, does she really mean that? And can he really say that he can keep them safe from all the dangers that being Phantom entails? 

Does he even want to be Danny again?

Cujo flies up to snatch his hand with his teeth, gently but resolutely pulling Phantom towards the hospital. He stops to let out a curious whine when Phantom still doesn’t move.

The bell hangs silent and looming above him. Another choice, to stay or to go. It shouldn’t be this difficult to make, but he hesitates anyway.

Until Cujo tugs on his hand again, and this time Phantom lets himself be led away. 

They drift over Amity Park slowly. Phantom could pull himself away at any moment, but he chooses not to, though he isn’t entirely sure why. The bell tower grows smaller behind them as the hospital comes further into view, the sky turning from an inky black to a deep blue. 

And as Cujo leads him through the walls back into the same white room from earlier in the night, he thinks that maybe he should at least try to see where things go from here. He should at least try to be Danny again. For his family’s sake, and so he can say that he tried. 

His core gives a final resonate hum before he transforms, turning back into Danny with a flash of light. Gravity still feels weird, but the transition is smoother this time, and it only takes him a moment to get used to his resuscitated heart before he leaps up onto the bed and buries himself beneath the covers. 

Cujo yips and settles at the foot of the bed, a loyal guard dog if Danny’s ever seen one. 

“Thanks, Cujo,” he murmurs. He hears the thumping sound of the dog’s tail hitting the mattress in response and smiles. 

The restless energy of before is replaced with a more tame sleepiness. Soon enough he shuts his eyes and returns to sleep, this time dreamless and unhaunted. A well deserved and peaceful rest. 

Chapter Text

Tucker is honestly really surprised that he’s the first one to notice.

When everyone piles into Danny’s recovery room the day after he wakes up, it’s just as crowded the second time around as they listen to Dr. Alex’s brief inspection of Danny’s health and his unusually fast recovery. Everyone is relieved to hear Danny say that the serum is fully gone with no lingering symptoms, though he’s still very hesitant to have his blood drawn so they can all see the tangible results. 

Tucker remembers Dr. Alex saying the day before that it would take close to five days for his ribs to fully heal, but when he asks Danny to lift up his shirt so he can poke at his sides, there are no bruises and Danny doesn’t so much as twitch. Perplexed, the doctor says if he didn’t know any better then he’d say Danny was fully healed, and the awkward laugh that Danny gives in return prompts Sam and Tucker to give each other The Look. Like a telepathic communication that only best friends can have, they glance at each other for barely a second and both of them know that Danny definitely turned into a ghost last night. 

But neither of them say anything, and the rest of the interaction is just Dr. Alex telling Danny to call for someone if he feels any significant pain or trouble breathing before he leaves to go tend to other patients. And then cue a very awkward minute or two of everyone standing around not knowing what to do or say to their revived son/best friend as he shuffles around in the bed and stares at them like they’re about to attack him or something. Jazz clears her throat, and Danny’s eyes snap to her so quickly that for a second Tucker forgets that he’s human right now and not a leopard ready to pounce. 

She says they should all play a game of Uno, to get everyone used to each other again. It’s a simultaneously horrible and brilliant idea, and nobody has any better ideas so there’s no objections.

The day drags by painfully slowly. Filled with board games, small talk, and not much else. At one point Jack tries to suggest to Danny that they all go on a walk, but Maddie is quick to interrupt and point out that nobody else besides Dr. Alex knows that Danny is alive and that he is also Phantom. The rest of the town thinks he’s been missing for over a year. If anyone were to see him they would almost certainly recognize him, and then he would be bombarded by townspeople, ghost hunters, and local news stations alike. 

Danny goes quiet for that part, and despite normally being quiet these days it’s still noticeable to Tucker now. He can’t imagine how difficult it was just to tell his friends and family that he was alive after basically faking his own death and hiding his identity the whole time, but to also tell the entire rest of the town? That must be a pretty awful thing to face. 

They don’t go on a walk, and the conversation is even more stilted after that. Eventually the adults have to get back to work, having put it off for several hours to spend more time with their son. Jazz stays for as long as she can, but eventually she’s called away for other things as well. Having just Sam and Tucker around seems to be more manageable for Danny, at least once they all figure out how to navigate around talking about all the memories he took and then restored. Complaining about school work is a language every kid understands. Danny hasn’t been in school for a while, but even he has a bunch of stories about other ghosts and their school adventures. Plus, living right on top of the school means he’s caught wind of plenty of drama from living kids as well. They fill him in on some of the details he was missing and get a few genuine smiles. 

Tucker takes each image and squirrels them away in his brain like an overeager chipmunk. With all his memories of Danny back, each interaction feels so much more important now. He couldn’t miss Danny when he was gone before because he couldn’t remember his friend even existed, but now even though he’s right in front of them Tucker finds himself missing Danny the entire time. It’s like he’s trying to make up for all the lost time, trying to reconcile this quieter, more tense version of Danny with the happy kid he remembers. He knows Sam is doing the same thing.

And then the sun starts dipping down and they both need to head home. Sam is the first to offer to stay with Danny here, to go drag another bed into the room and stick them together like they did before in the ghost ward. But Danny just shakes his head and gets a sad smile on his face that Tucker doesn’t know the meaning of.

He remembers a time when it wasn’t just him and Sam that could glance at each other and have a whole conversation with just a look. Danny used to be part of that too, but now it feels like he’s moved so far beyond them. So much lost time, so many experiences they weren’t a part of, so much new personality to take into account. He’s the same and different, familiar and new. 

Tucker has always been a naturally curious person, and now all he wants to do is explore all the facets of Danny’s mind. To learn the person he’s become and bring back that easy communication they all used to have.

But Danny shakes his head, and they both reluctantly head back to their respective houses. They don’t talk much on the way back. There’s nothing they could say that the other doesn’t already know anyway. Sam waves goodbye to him, and Tucker waves back before he shuts the door and heads up to his room.

He spends some time tinkering. Old and new inventions sprawled out across his “workspace”, which is really just code for his really messy bedroom. Normally he would pop some earbuds in and listen to music while he works, but tonight the silence feels more natural. 

With his curtains open he can see the green glow of ghosts appearing in the streets at the same time the moon begins to rise. Most people in Amity rush to their homes and shut their windows tight to avoid them, and Tucker used to be one of them, but ever since befriending Phantom he’s begun to see the ghosts in a different light. The glow is actually kind of pretty if he thinks about it. If people weren’t so terrified then it would be nice to walk through a town that’s so thoroughly lit up. 

And it’s maybe an hour later, when Tucker is just about to put his stuff away and head to bed, that he looks through his window and sees it. Flying higher above all the other ghosts, a speck of icy white against a sea of green, is Phantom. 

Tucker only sees him for a few seconds before he goes flying over the houses and disappears, but he seems to be doing fine and thankfully Cujo is with him. Danny had definitely gone out the night before and still decided to return, but now Tucker is worried about what might be going on in his friend’s head to prompt him to go out at night in secret like this.

Should he not say anything? Should he chase after Phantom and demand to help him with whatever he’s doing?

Tucker doesn’t really like either of those options, but realistically what can he do? 

He looks around his incredibly messy room for anything that might help, his eyes mostly falling on useless or half-built junk. The calming blankets had never seemed to work on Phantom, and Tucker wouldn’t be able to use the thermos even if he still had it in his possession. Researching equipment is really only useful inside the hospital…

But then he remembers his most recent invention. He takes a pack of them and shoves them into his pockets, then shoves his door open and rushes (quietly) down the stairs. He grabs his bike and hopes that the garage door doesn’t wake his parents up as he ignores literally all his usual sense of safety to ride out into the ghost-infested night to find his friend. 

He rides quickly at first, trying not to look too closely at anyone in case they somehow find his presence offensive and decide to get rid of him, but pretty quickly he realizes that none of the ghosts are interested in him.

Most of them meander around aimlessly, drifting on the wind or on some invisible set path that seems almost calming to them. A lot of them flicker in and out of invisibility, giving Tucker a sense of peaceful crowdedness, like there could be many more ghosts here than he can see but all of them are just floating by and not paying others any mind. 

There are a few that behave differently. There are some groups of ghosts speaking in various languages Tucker doesn’t understand, some he’s never heard before at all. Others are playing, either getting into mock fights with other ghosts or little kids running around causing mischief. Whenever a small ghost animal or a sprite zips by a bunch of ghosts go chasing after it, like a game of soccer except the goal is to eat the ball. After spending so much time with Phantom, the bared claws and fangs aren’t so intimidating anymore, especially when he knows that they aren’t aimed at him. 

He supposes it should have been obvious that the more he learns and understands about ghosts the less scared of them he’d be, but it wasn’t a lesson that really stuck in his head until now. 

It takes a while to catch wind of Phantom. He’s much faster as a ghost than he probably should be, and every time Tucker thinks he sees a flash of black and white then by the time he gets closer there’s nothing there. For about forty minutes, Tucker is transported back to a time before meeting Phantom in the woods that day, when he had been incredibly elusive and rarely ever sighted by humans. 

He manages to suck up his pride (and anxiety) to find a random ghost and ask them which way Phantom went. The ghost—a young man in a dirty suit and tie with glass shards stuck in his stomach—gives Tucker an empty look before slowly raising a hand to point further down the street. He thanks the ghost for his help and heads in that direction, determined to find Danny at some point tonight.

And he does. Once he gets to the end of the street he sees Danny flying out of some building and stops his bike to call out to him.

“Phantom!” he yells, watching Danny jolt and whirl around to face him.

“Tucker?”

Not giving him any time to wonder why Tucker is there, he reaches into his pockets and pulls out a bunch of leftover vials of liquid diet and tosses them as high as he can.

Danny has to swoop down and to the side to catch them, with Cujo snatching one in his mouth moments before it can hit the pavement. He holds them in clawed hands, peering down at them and Tucker in surprise and confusion.

With his job for the night finally done, Tucker nods at him and turns his bike around to head home. 

“Stay safe out there!” he throws behind his shoulder, to a Danny who’s still frozen and staring at him, and then rides off into the night.

It happens again the next night, though this time Tucker doesn't wait until he sees Danny to go out and find him. 

It doesn’t take nearly as long the second time around, and they catch sight of each other at the same time when Cujo makes an excited bark in Tucker’s direction. He kicks the stand down on his bike and Danny swoops down to greet him. 

“Tucker, what are you doing out here?”

Tucker snorts and crosses his arms in a near perfect mimicry of what he likes to call Sam’s sassy stance. 

“What are you doing out here?” he fires back, and only feels a little bad about it when Danny looks away guiltily.

It would be funny if it weren’t so heartbreaking, the way that Danny is so incapable of recognizing that his friends and family care about and want to help him. Danny, Sam, and Tucker have always been the introverted outcast kids, but they had found joy and safety in each other. After Danny left, he spared Sam and Tucker the pain but only made it worse for himself, turning shyness into avoidance and anxiety into deep-rooted fear.

Tucker doesn’t understand it all half as well as Jazz probably does, but he knows Danny well enough to see how scared he is that everyone is going to leave him one day. 

Which just means that Tucker is going to try extra hard to make sure Danny knows that he is cared for, no matter which form he decides to take. And the best way that he knows to do that is giving him more energy to keep being Phantom safely. Because if Danny is going to keep being an idiot and not eating, then Tucker is going to do whatever he can to remind him not to do that.

He lets out a slight huff as he reaches into his pockets and pulls out more vials of liquid diet for Danny to take. And he does take them, although with some hesitation. Honestly his puppy-dog eyes could rival Cujo’s.

“I’m your friend, Da—Phantom. I play video games and you fight ghosts, but if I can help you then I will. You’re not gonna get rid of me that easily.”

Tucker smiles and Danny somehow manages to look even more sad.

“I don’t want to get rid of you…” he murmurs sullenly.

And yet you go out at night without telling anyone? is what he doesn’t say, because he’s trying not to scare Danny away or make him feel worse than he already does. 

“I know,” he says instead, hopping back on his bike and kicking the stand back up. “So when you’re done fighting ghosts, then you can come over and be Player 2.”

He doesn’t wait around to see Danny’s expression. He already knows what he’s going to find there. Instead he rides back home, enjoying the green glow and friendly ghosts along the way. He figures that if he can learn to not be so afraid of ghosts, then Danny can learn to not be so afraid of people. And if Danny can help Tucker, then Tucker can do the same for him.

That same night, waking up after what seems like only minutes after falling asleep, Tucker hears a noise at his window.

Rubbing his tired face and still not fully connected to his body, he fumbles for the glasses on his bedside table. Things clatter to the floor as he misses several times, before his hand finally closes around the correct thing and he shoves the glasses onto his face to see what’s happening.

There’s white hair and piercing green eyes right outside his window, and when Danny sees that Tucker is awake he simply phases through the wall and appears not far away from Tucker’s bed. Maybe a few weeks ago he would have jumped or freaked out, but now Tucker is so used to ghost stuff that it doesn’t really phase him anymore. He just struggles to sit up in his bed and gives Danny the most flat questioning stare he can manage.

Cujo comes in after him, beginning to float in circles around Danny’s body. But Danny seems more interested in the carpet than Tucker, twiddling his claws and swishing his tail nervously as Tucker waits for him to say something.

“Sorry. I, uh…”

He sucks in a breath and brings a hand up to hold the back of his neck. It looks like it takes a monumental amount of effort to just look Tucker in the eye.

“Can I, um, stay here tonight?”

Tucker blinks. Out of all the things he thought Danny was going to say, that wasn’t really something he expected. Although, if he thinks about it, maybe he should have. It must be pretty awkward having to choose between sleeping at the hospital that he’s terrified of or sleeping in a house with the family he hasn’t spoken to in a year. 

Danny looks at him like he’s fully expecting and dreading Tucker to toss him out with every passing second. The room gets colder, but Tucker doesn’t really mind it when he has a bed and blanket to burrow back into.

“Of course you can dude,” he says finally, once his mouth catches up with his brain. “Just clear off the top bunk and you can have it.”

Danny visibly slumps in relief. He gathers Cujo up in his arms and floats up to the bunk above Tucker’s that he never uses. 

Or, well, he hasn’t used the other half of his bunk bed since Danny disappeared. Sam had always preferred her own bed at home, but Danny always got excited at the prospect of sleepovers where he could take the top bunk. With Tucker’s memories obscured, he had forgotten what his bunk bed was for in the first place, and started throwing random junk up there since it wasn’t useful for anything else. 

Tucker lays back down and watches Danny carefully move things from up above to the floor below, being unnecessarily gentle with junk that Tucker doesn’t actually care about. Cujo stays perched on the rails, tail wagging.

There’s probably some technical psychology term for the way that Danny simultaneously fears and craves closeness with others. Tucker doesn’t know the name for it if there is one, but he can see how it affects Danny and the people around him plainly. If he’s going to be secretly going out at night as Phantom, then the least Tucker can do is help him out and maybe encourage him to actually reconnect with people. 

Danny finishes moving things and then sets himself on the ground to transform. It’s the third time that Tucker has seen his transformation, and the blindingly bright ring of light that surrounds him is just as jarring as the other two times. Inverted colors return to the original, and Danny’s eyes linger on Tucker’s for several moments. There’s no expression on his face or emotion to be seen besides the trepidation visible in the way he hesitates. 

The moment is broken and Danny reaches for the ladder leading up to the top bunk, quickly disappearing over the ledge. Tucker hears the shuffling of blankets and takes his glasses off to set them back on the bedside table. They both settle in and get comfortable, until the room falls into a somewhat comfortable silence. Tucker is too tired to really mind at all. 

He closes his eyes, debating on whether he should break the silence to say goodnight or not before Danny ends up speaking first.

“Are you sure you're okay with this?” He speaks normally at first, but his voice is too loud in the peaceful night so he soon lowers it to a murmur instead. “With me going out as Phantom and… not telling anyone?”

Tucker keeps his eyes shut, his tired mind chugging along in a slow effort to conjure an answer that actually makes sense. 

“Hmm. I think you should tell people what you’re doing, ‘cause it’s dangerous out there, but that’s your choice or whatever. And going out as Phantom is normal for you, ‘ts not like it’s surprising.”

Danny makes a breathy sound and the blankets shift as if he’s turning over. 

“I know. It’s just that—I’m worried that I’m putting too much stress on you guys.”

Tucker chuckles , although it comes out as more of a ‘humph’ than a laugh. “If you were then we would tell you.”

Danny goes silent, but Tucker can hear the disbelief in the lack of response from a mile away. He sighs and rolls onto his back, squinting his eyes open to stare at the planks of wood supporting the top bunk above him. 

“Do you remember that one time in middle school where that English teacher was giving you grief because you weren’t turning your homework in on time?”

“… Yeah. Why?”

It was one of many times that a teacher targeted Danny for his bad grades or tardiness. He was the kid who sat at the back of the class and preferred not to participate in activities or questions, and so the teachers would assume that he was being lazy or wasn’t taking enough initiative in class. This English teacher stands out in their minds though, because she had gone ballistic. 

She tried to force Danny to the front of the class, tried to make him answer questions and would loudly ask him in front of everyone if he had understood the lesson, just to ‘make sure he got it’. It backfired on her though, because Danny’s grades actually got worse in her class after that, and then she tried to get him suspended on grounds of ‘being deliberately difficult’, as if he was trying to perform worse.

Other adults had gotten involved, and it was a whole mess from start to finish. Tucker definitely does not miss that teacher whatsoever.

“I don’t know if I ever told you, but she tried to get me to confess that you were flubbing your homework so that she could get you suspended. She said that if I didn’t tell the truth then I would get detention for two week.”

There’s a rustling noise, and then Tucker can see Danny poke his head out over the rails. His vision blurred without the use of his glasses, he can’t really make out what expression Danny is giving him, but the halo of glowing green from Cujo’s presence at least makes him clearly visible. 

“What?”

There’s a slight echo to his incredulous voice, not as strong as it was before but still noticeable. Tucker thinks it’s actually pretty cool. 

“What did you say then?”

“I think that was one of the few times where I’ve actually had the courage to stand up to someone. I was so mad at her for making you feel bad that I completely ignored the question and just told her that she was a terrible person and she should apologize to you for being so mean. She ended up giving me a week of detention instead of two, and she was still really mad about it up until she got fired.”

Danny moves to rest his chin against the rails, one of his arms dangling over the side. “I never knew. I wish you guys didn’t have to deal with that.”

Tuckers huffs. “You run right into the point and then still miss it.”

Danny tilts his head questioningly.

“My point is that I’ve got your back. I always have and I always will, because you—and Sam—are my best friends. No matter what you do, or how much stress you think you’re putting me under, I’m not about to just give up and leave now. I’m not as daring as Sam, but I can still do at least that much.”

Danny is still and silent for a while, a staring contest that Tucker quickly loses. 

Even as a human, Danny still isn’t quite normal. What had started as fear that first day in the forest then turned into tense apprehension and guardedness, never letting anyone closer than a certain distance (whether physically or emotionally). It took months of trust building and the threat of a breaking core to finally push him to sleep in the same room as another person. Now they know who he really is, and he’s more comfortable around everyone than he was before, but Tucker can still feel the distance between them like a physical barrier. It gets smaller every day, but it’s an achingly slow process.

The way he stares for as long as he can before his eyes begin to water and he glances away, and the unnatural stillness he has sometimes, the noises that aren’t quite human. It all reminds Tucker of what Danny had told them weeks ago. “ Ghosts are carnivores.” Sometimes Danny stares for a bit too long and Tucker sees a predator. 

But if that were enough to scare Tucker away then he would have done it a long time ago. He decided not to leave before and he’s not going anywhere now. Because Phantom has always been a protector, and Danny has always been his friend. So what if he’s supremely Weird? So are Sam and Tucker, and that hasn’t stopped them yet. 

And Tucker is going to keep repeating that until Danny finally understands. Until that barrier crumbles and he’s able to be himself around them again. It’s a slow process, and it’s unnerving at times, but Tucker has already made it farther than he thought possible.

“… I think you do a lot more than you give yourself credit for,” Danny mutters a bit sullenly, turning back to look at Tucker. 

Tucker grins up at him. “Pot, meet kettle.”

Danny snorts and goes silent for a few more moments. 

“Maybe tomorrow I can be Player 2,” he says, almost offhandedly as he disappears from Tucker’s view and settles back down again.

Tucker closes his dry eyes and knows that he’s going to be exhausted tomorrow. But if this conversation is the reason for it, then he’s pretty okay with that.

“Dude, you’re always Player 2.” 

A few more beats of silence.

“I guess I am.”

And Tucker thinks that that’s the end of it. Relaxing into the bed is as easy as breathing, and his thoughts start to smear together in anticipation of sleep.

…

“Hey Tucker?”

He makes a noise in some vague approximation of a “Yeah?” that sounds absolutely nothing like English. 

“… Thank you.”

What he’s saying thank you for, Tucker doesn’t know. Maybe the liquid diet, or offering a bed to rest in, or telling him that Tucker isn’t going anywhere. Maybe it’s for all of it at once. 

“No problem dude,” he murmurs, muffled by his pillow but hopefully still heard. 

If Danny says anything else then Tucker is too unconscious to hear it after that. He sleeps soundly, and he hopes that Danny does as well.

Chapter Text

It’s when Sam and Tucker are halfway through a math class that they both share that they start getting the texts. Sam feels her phone buzzing away in her pocket and tries to discreetly pull it out to look without the teacher seeing, only to find a frenzy of messages from both Jazz and Maddie asking if they’ve seen Danny anywhere.

Sam looks up and over to Tucker, who looks up from his own phone with a very guilt-stricken smile. She raises an unimpressed eyebrow at him and he looks away.

Sam sighs and manages to write a reply without looking, quickly sending it and pocketing her phone before the teacher can catch wind of it.

‘Danny’s with us, he’s fine’

And then her phone explodes into even more vibrating until she shuts it off completely. A few of her neighboring classmates give her looks and she ignores them, at least attempting to pay attention to the lesson.

The room drops a few degrees. It would be barely noticeable to anyone else, but Sam can feel the icy and invisible presence hovering over her shoulder and doesn’t shiver. 

She can already tell that today is going to be even more chaotic than usual.

Thankfully, the rest of the class passes quickly, and Sam grabs Tucker by the sleeve to drag him to the nearest hidden corner of the school for a talk. There’s an area by the gym that should be empty at around this time, so she heads straight for it. 

“You didn’t tell them?” Sam hisses once they make it there and she’s sure the coast is clear. 

Tucker squeaks. “I forgot!”

She rolls her eyes and goes to actually read the messages on her phone. Mostly it’s a long string of frantic worry from Maddie and a few more well worded but still panicked messages from Jazz. There’s a small handful from Jack as well. All of them are wondering why Danny vanished from his hospital room and why he’s with Sam and Tucker now. 

“It’s not just his fault,” an echoing voice says over both of their heads. Neither of them can see Danny, but they’ve known he was there since school began that morning. After his sleepover with Tucker the night before, the two of them had decided to all go to school together. With the GIW and Plasmius laying low, Danny doesn’t have much to do, so tagging along with his friends was the next best choice. 

“I should have told them where I was.” A chill slithers along her shoulders as he peers over her to read from her phone himself. The wince he gives when Sam scrolls down to the most recent texts from Maddie, all of them in all caps, is very much audible. 

“Local ghost boy forgets he has parents,” Sam mutters, prompting a startled laugh from Tucker and a drop in temperature from Danny. 

Sam shuts her phone off and puts it away again, crossing her arms with a sigh. “We need to get you a new phone. Preferably with some kind of tracker. That’s a joke, by the way. I’m just annoyed.”

She tunes out the small dispute that goes on between Danny and Tucker, choosing instead to tap her foot on the ground and think.

Should she send another message explaining the situation better, or should she just send Danny over to the hospital to talk to them himself? She would go for the second option, but even after revealing himself and having a whole crying session, he’s still not entirely comfortable with them. Sam can definitely see a scenario where Danny shows up to explain himself and then gets immediately overwhelmed by all the concern his family will project onto them. But then again, explaining the situation and making them stew in it for Danny’s sake might be even worse. What to do, what to do…

“Phantom,” she says, interrupting the other boys’ arguing before it can devolve further. “Do you need emotional support for a talk with your parents or would you rather go to them yourself?”

Because she’s fully expecting this simple misunderstanding to turn into a larger and more emotionally charged conversation. If she’s learned one thing over the course of the last week or so, it’s that the Fentons do a lot of crying.

Danny lets the silence sit for a while. Sam focuses her eyes vaguely over her shoulder where she thinks he’s hovering, though the only indication that he’s still there at all is the chill at the back of her neck. 

“I don’t know… I think I’d like to stay with you guys for a little longer…”

Tucker loses all the steam of whatever he was arguing about with a sigh while Sam nods decisively. 

“Alright, then we’ll just head over after school.”

With that settled, she sends another message to Jazz to explain the same thing and then starts back down the hallway. Tucker and Danny follow just behind. There’s only three classes left in the day, so it shouldn’t take very long, but if they don’t move now then they’ll be late.

Tucker splits off for his own classes and Danny follows Sam to her English class nearby. He seems to settle just over her left shoulder, though once she sits down and the class starts he likes to wander. 

Sam wonders if he’s planning on finishing school. She’s willing to bet that his family will want him to, but she’s not so sure that’s what Danny will agree to. Even after being revealed, he still prefers to be Phantom most of the time, either out of convenience, comfort, or maybe both. Will he even want to attempt to live like a human again, or is that some far-off dream now? 

She doesn’t know if he pays attention to the class or not, but she hopes that the occasional chill she feels means he is. 

By the time Sam and Tucker are finally released at the end of their shared last class, Danny has already gone on ahead. Neither of them know what they’re going to find when they arrive at the hospital and make their way towards the raised voices towards the end of the hall.

The family is all tucked into an empty room with the door cracked open, and Sam shoots Tucker a look when both of them can hear the slight echo at the end of Danny’s voice. The scene they find inside is even more worrying though.

Danny, still transformed and with a tail agitatedly lashing below him, faces his three family members with a deepening scowl on his face. His dad sits on the end of the bed while his mom leans against the side of it and Jazz stands more directly with crossed arms. She’s got an expression like a mix between frustration and worry that gives Sam the impression that the conversation is not going well so far.

“And I already said that I’m fine,” Danny says with a roll of his eyes. “I don’t have a single bruise, cut, or broken bone on me. Being a ghost means I heal faster, so wouldn’t it actually be better if I stayed like this?”

He says it rhetorically, expecting them to agree with him, but Jack’s brow furrows and Sam immediately knows that this isn’t going to be pretty. She closes the door behind her and watches Danny’s ear twitch but otherwise gets no reaction for the new guests in the room.

“Danny, your core is still cracked. You may heal faster like this but a damaged core doesn’t just fix itself overnight. I just think that you need more time to recover…”

Danny scowls and Jazz interrupts before he can say something. 

“We’re just worried about you. I think it would really ease our minds if you at least got a physical examination before going out on your own.”

“Plasmius is still out there somewhere,” Maddie says next. “With your core weakened, what’s stopping him from taking you away again? I just can’t allow that to happen.”

Sam squints at the same time Tucker frowns, and she knows they’re thinking the same thing. It seems like all three of them have slightly different worries and expectations, while Danny is only getting more frustrated that nobody is listening to him. She sees the tenseness of his shoulders and the angry flicking of his tail and knows that this probably isn’t going to end well if it isn't stopped soon.

Before she can think of a way to divert the oncoming storm though, Danny is already speaking.

“I can’t just sit here all day, and there’s no point in an examination when we all already know what’s going on. Plasmius is still out there, but that’s just all the more reason to find him before he recovers and tries to hurt more people. I beat him before even with half the strength that I have now, and it’s not like I’m alone all the time. I’m not going to get kidnapped.”

“But you don’t know that,” Maddie insists. “You were able to beat Plasmius before with help, and if he catches you alone and unaware then I don’t want to be told that my son is gone again.”

Danny flinches, quickly turning his head away. With clenched fists and a coiling tail, he goes silent, and Maddie gets a look like she got slapped in the face. She moves as if to reach out to him, but Danny’s ear twitches and he starts speaking again, stopping her in her tracks.

“I don’t want to stay here all day. I can recover just fine no matter where I am, and I need to find Plasmius before he makes up some new horrible plot. My Obsession demands that I protect as many people as I can, and I want to follow it.”

There’s a seething edge to his voice, clearly having trouble reigning in his anger and hurt at the situation. He stares at the wall instead of at his family, and Maddie looks heartbroken at just that small detail.

“Maybe we should all calm down for a second…” Tucker suggests, immediately balking when several eyes move to look at him.

“Danny, I swear we’re just worried—“ 

“You’re always worried!” 

The snap happens suddenly, and Sam jolts at the speed and anger held in Danny’s form as he whirls on Jazz. His family is just as surprised, wide-eyed and distinctly sad.

Danny only picks up more steam in the sudden silence, gesturing with claws and fangs first as he drifts back and forth through the air like he’s pacing.

“You’re all always worried, and only worried. It’s like you never do anything else but worry! I can’t just stop being me because you think it’s better for me. I’m telling you what’s better for me and you just don’t listen—“

Ice begins to spread down his arms and then across the walls, rapidly dropping the temperature. He doesn’t even seem to realize it’s happening, though everyone else does. 

Sam starts forward, thinking that maybe she can get his attention and encourage him to calm down. 

“Hey, Danny—“

She isn’t prepared for the way he whirls on her next, nearly falling as she stumbles back again. The green eyes are just as intimidating as they were when she first met Phantom, and this time he’s not holding back.

“I’m not Danny!”

The entire room flinches, but he’s not done yet.

“I’m not Danny. I’m not even human. How can I be when I don’t even remember what that feels like?”

Like flipping a switch, all the anger disappears from him in an instant at his own question. His eyes find a place glued to the floor, but he looks through it more than at it. Both of his hands find the back of his neck, and his furious expression quickly turns into a look of utter emptiness and despair.

“I don’t… I just… I—“

He glances up for only a second, shrinking in on himself when he sees everyone’s stunned and horrified faces.

“…Nevermind…”

Before anyone else can think to move or at least say something, he’s already gone. He phases through the wall and disappears, leaving only some frost and a lingering, suffocating silence behind him. 

It takes nearly two hours to find him. Sam shoves her way through the thicker parts of the forest on her own, with Tucker having stayed behind at the hospital in case Danny came back on his own.

Not caring about all the twigs gathering in her hair or the scratches of thorns on her arms, she trudges on, and in the end she only finds him because of the glow. With the sky starting to darken and the trees casting long shadows, the ghostly green is made more obvious, and as soon as she spots it she heads in that direction.

She finds him in a tiny clearing, just large enough to see through the tops of the trees and no larger. He must have turned his tail into legs at some point, and he has them pressed to his chest with his arms wrapped around them, staring up at the sky and nothing else. Sam has to crane her neck the closer she gets, because he’s sitting on the branch of a tree up high instead of the forest floor. 

She doesn’t bother with announcing herself. He already knows she’s there, and she knows he knows, so instead of speaking she just settles against the base of the tree and watches the sky with him. Whether he does or doesn’t want to speak to her is his choice.

The sun dips further down, giving the sky a deep orange and then purple hue. Sam isn’t worried about ghosts, animals, or hunters out here, not when she has Phantom with her. 

Birdsong gradually quiets around them as most of the birds return to their nests to sleep, and the rustling of squirrels gives way to cicadas instead. It’s a peaceful night out, only a handful of small clouds in the sky and the twinkling of only the brightest stars peeking through.

Danny doesn’t so much as break the silence as he eases into it. A shuffle here, a small adjustment that makes the branch supporting him creak and sway there. He uncurls slowly but surely, until his legs are dangling over the side and swinging slightly with the wind. Sam wonders if he was cramped up like that for the whole two hours she was searching for him or if he was flying around for part of that time. 

“I’m sorry,” he begins, a murmur that nearly blends in with all the other sounds of the forest around them. “I shouldn’t have snapped at you. I know you were just trying to help.”

Sam snorts and leans her head back against the tree. “It’s not like I blame you for it. You’ve always been a hissy little cat.”

Danny gives a throaty chuckle, and they both fall back into a brief moment of companionable quiet.

Then he sighs and drops his head a bit, looking more towards the forest than the sky. “I’m still sorry though. I shouldn’t have taken my frustration out on any of you. I just… don’t really know what to do with myself anymore.”

Sam hums, recognizing the rehearsed words for what they are but appreciating them anyway. 

“Y’know, you’re still doing exactly the same thing that your family told you not to do.”

Danny huffs and his legs cease their swinging. “What, like run off into the night on my own again? I can’t just stop doing that, Sam.”

“Actually, I don’t care about that. Me and Tucker have both seen how capable you are. Neither of us would try to stop you.”

Danny stops for a moment before finally glance down at her, looking surprised. She meets his eyes with a smile. The green seems a lot more calm now. 

“… So what are you talking about then?”

Honestly she should have figured that he wouldn’t remember. This is Danny she’s talking to after all.

“What I mean is that you’re still trying to separate your two halves.”

Danny’s brow furrows and he looks away. 

“What does that have to do with anything?”

Sam sighs. Sometimes her friend is just so dense, especially when it comes to his own health and happiness. 

“It has to do with everything, Danny. You keep trying to choose between either human or ghost, but it doesn’t work that way. You said so yourself, you are and always will be both, and getting rid of one destroys the other. Danny and Phantom don’t have to be two different people, because you are always you no matter what you happen to look like.”

“… I don’t understand.”

Sam huffs a laugh. 

“If you made a list of all the things that separate Danny and Phantom, what would you say Danny has that you don’t?”

Danny goes silent for a little while, thinking.

“Danny has… obligations. Responsibilities like school and sleeping in a real bed, listening to my family… As Phantom, my only responsibility is protecting people and ghosts. I know from experience that it’s way too difficult to juggle both.”

“That’s just a list of things to do. You can always ask for help with any of those. What I mean is what’s the real difference between Danny and Phantom?”

He pauses, looking at Sam like he’s coming to the dawning realization that he’s been thinking about it all backwards the entire time.

“I… don’t really know. Maybe there isn’t one.”

Sam lets him sit in the silence for a minute. She can practically see the gears turning in his head, trying to find the difference and coming up empty.

He’s always been the same person, it’ll just take some time for him to recognize that.

“Seeing your family again is probably really complicated and frustrating for you,” Sam begins. “But you don’t have to immediately jump back into your old life. You’re allowed to be hesitant and set boundaries and not want to do things that you did before. I mean, if I had ghost powers I wouldn’t want to sit still either.”

Danny gives a tired laugh.

“You can talk to them about it, and I’m sure they’ll listen. All they want is what’s best for you. I’m sure you can all work together to figure out what that is.”

Danny’s swinging legs go still. They both stare up at the starry sky and wonder about their complicated tangle of lives and ghosts. 

And then, in a flash, Danny pushes off the branch and flies down to Sam’s side, settling on a tangle of roots right beside her. A flash of white light, and then he’s human again. Still Danny, just without the claws.

He takes in a deep breath and lets it out as a sigh.

“Since when did you get so good at this?” he jokes.

Sam smiles. “I picked some things up from Jazz.”

He rolls his eyes. “Of course.”

“Do you want to head back now?”

He pauses, tilts his head like he’s playfully considering just staying out in the woods forever. He looks up at the stars again, and there’s a wistful, almost longing look on his face that makes Sam abruptly remember his old love of space. She wonders if he still reads books about it, or if he even has the time to.

When he turns back to her, he seems to steel himself and then nod his head. “Yeah. Let’s go back.”

Sam stands up first, and when she offers a hand Danny takes it. She lifts him up and they both dust some dirt off their clothes before heading back towards the town. 

The night is quiet and peaceful, only occasionally interrupted by the croaking of frogs and a rare owl hoot here and there. 

Danny picks his way through the brush much more efficiently than she does, but he never walks too far ahead. He always stops and waits for her to catch up, and at one point she gets close enough to bump his shoulder with her own and prompt a smile from him. 

When the hospital comes into view and they can see Maddie worriedly standing by the front doors scanning the treeline, he hesitates. Sam doesn’t push him or try to encourage him, just stands there and lets him work it out on his own. 

He stands and stares, frozen and silent. He's the same way in either form, has the same reactions and emotional turmoil. He just can’t really see it for himself. But that’s okay, because he has two best friends and a whole family to show him. Sam just hopes that he’ll stay long enough to listen.

He unsticks himself eventually, giving one last glance at Sam before making his way out of the forest, with his friend right behind him. 

Maddie spots them almost immediately and comes rushing over, already speaking in a barely comprehensible babble of words. She opens her arms and for a moment Sam is worried that she’s going to scoop Danny up and rattle him further, but she comes to a screeching halt just in front of him. He jolts at the suddenness, looking a lot like a startled cat.

“—really sorry and I know I should have just listened to you and Jazz from the start, oh I’m such a horrible mother! You were just trying to communicate with me and I have this bad habit of being so worried about you and—“

She cuts herself off when Danny suddenly lurches forward and takes her open-armed invitation. He wraps himself around her, holding on tight, and when she blinks and settles her arms over his shoulders it’s like all the tension flows out of him in an instant. Sam can’t help but think that he looks so small like this, all bundled up under someone else’s frame. Maddie is probably thinking the same thing, because she smiles gently and holds him that much closer.

“Sorry for the things I said. And sorry I left,” he mumbles into her abdomen. “I’m trying not to do that.” He pauses. “I think I have some bad habits too.”

“Danny…” she murmurs, a somber tone to her voice. 

Maddie meets Sam’s eyes over his head, and she can see gratefulness there. A wordless communication of ‘thank you for bringing my son back this time’ that Sam takes in stride. 

She nods and stuffs her hands in her pockets. She turns in the direction of her house and starts walking, intent on getting at least a few hours of much-needed sleep. She knows that Danny’s family can take care of him just fine from here.

“Hey Sam!” 

She stops and turns, seeing Danny pull away from Maddie. She keeps a hand on his shoulder, and Sam is only a little surprised that he lets her, though he might be a bit preoccupied by wiping some water away from his eyes.

“Thank you,” he says sincerely. 

Sam thinks it’s a bit unwarranted. It’s not like she did all that much, just followed him into the woods for a bit. It’s not like they didn’t do the same thing as kids a million times before. But she smiles anyway.

“Anytime Ghostboy,” she says back, already turning towards her house again.

She catches the edges of a grin on his face before she leaves, and as she walks through the town she finds that despite the crowdedness of all the ghosts, it’s actually pretty peaceful to walk under the stars again.

Chapter Text

“Hey, you know you don’t have to do this if you don’t want to, right?”

Danny shuffles awkwardly beside her, and Jazz watches him clench and unclench his fists intentionally. 

“I know. Just… give me a minute.”

They stand in a hallway, white walls as far as the eye can see (though that’s not really saying much in here). In front of them stands a door leading to a room that Jazz and her parents have all tried their best to avoid talking about around Danny, already knowing what his reaction to it would be. 

Danny is in his ghost form now, at Jazz’s request, although she didn’t really have to ask in the first place. Nurses and doctors of the Ghost Ward move past them, preoccupied with their own tasks and most not batting an eye at Phantom's presence anymore. But of course if he were to look like Danny instead, she’s sure that would turn a lot more heads, and Danny could do without that kind of attention for now. 

He’s only been to a handful of rooms in the hospital so far, but she can tell by the way he stares at the door, unblinking and unwavering, that this is the one he’s been studiously avoiding for much longer than anyone wants to admit. 

He doesn’t have to go in, but after the breakdown yesterday, he had insisted. Jazz had managed to convince their parents that them coming along as well would only overwhelm Danny further, so they’re reluctantly staying away to give him some space. Jazz is here for emotional support. It’s partially because nobody is entirely confident that Danny will agree to anything unless someone he trusts is with him, and partially because he had cast her the saddest puppy-dog eyes she’s ever seen as soon as he had brought the topic up. In any case, Jazz is glad that’s she’s here, even if it’s difficult to watch Danny struggle so hard with this.

He lets out a sigh so small Jazz almost doesn’t hear it at all. With an overly tense frame, he glances up at her briefly before starting towards the door. Jazz follows, swings it open for him when he hesitates to do it himself, and ushers them both inside. 

It’s a typical examination room, with one partially raised cot against one wall and a bunch of cabinets and a desk just across from it. There are various tools neatly organized on the counter, none of them very intimidating at all. There’s another door leading to what she knows is an MRI room for later. Jazz recognizes a core monitor and a heart monitor side by side by the head of the cot and not a single invasive thing in sight. 

Seeing the lack of sharp objects or ghost hunting equipment doesn’t seem to put Danny at ease though. He hovers unusually close to Jazz’s side, keeping close to the door behind him and looking out at the room like something is going to jump out at him any second now. With all the awful things the GIW has done in just the past year, she can’t really blame him.

“C’mon,” she urges gently, nudging his arm to lead him further into the room. He frowns and keeps his head low and alert but follows her anyway. “You should at least try to calm down before Dr. Alex gets here.”

She lets go when they’re closer to the cot, hoping that maybe sitting down will ease some of the tension from him. But Danny takes one look at the cot and wrinkles his nose. His legs mesh into a tail and then in the next moment he’s slithering his way underneath the cot to the metal bars keeping it up instead. He settles himself in there just like a snake curling around a bush, and it would be cute if the contortions weren’t completely inhuman and vaguely horrifying. 

‘It’s like he’s a cat at the vet’, Jazz thinks humorously. She crouches down to get closer to his eye level and watches as his face gets a slightly green hue in what she soon realizes is a blush of embarrassment before he glances away.

She can’t help the smile that finds its way to her face. “So is this what helps you keep calm?” she asks half-teasingly.

He flicks an invisible piece of dirt away. “Kinda, yeah,” he mumbles, trying not to meet her eyes and failing at it.

Jazz’s smile turns a bit sad at the edges. He’s clearly uneasy here, probably struggling not to just phase through a wall and leave, never to return again. She hates that what should be a simple examination has turned into such a horrible fear for him to conquer. But his insistence on finally doing an examination speaks to how far they’ve already come in a relatively short amount of time. The difference between his first visit to the hospital and now is staggering.

Thankfully it doesn’t take much longer for the door to click open and Dr. Alex to come into the room. He puts on the same bright smile he has for all of his patients as he closes the door behind him and takes Danny’s position under the bed with all the grace of an experienced member of staff. Having been between both hospital wards quite a few times over the past year, Jazz is willing to bet he’s seen much weirder before.

“Hello, Danny. Or actually, should I be referring to you as Phantom instead?”

Danny immediately shrinks under the weight of both Jazz’s and Alex’s gazes. 

“I… don’t know. Whichever name you want to use is fine.”

Alex looks to Jazz next, and she shrugs in absence of an answer for him. She’s just been calling him Danny, but besides his explosion yesterday he hasn’t said anything about having a name preference either way. She should probably ask him about that sometime soon, to make sure he’s comfortable.

Alex nods and continues. “Alright Phantom, I have a few tests I’d like to do with you today. And just a reminder that you can say no to any of them at any time and I will stop immediately. If at any point you feel uncomfortable or unsafe, then you can always opt out. Okay?”

Danny stares for a moment, then nods. Jazz wonders what he’s thinking, if he’s worried or not. 

“Okay,” Alex says with a cheerful clap of his hands. “If it’s alright with you then I’d like to start with a blood draw. That way we can send it to the researchers right next door and they can have the results back by the time we’re done with everything else. I’ll take one sample from each of your forms, and all the lab is going to do is examine how your blood and ectoplasm might be different from a normal person or ghost’s. Is that okay?”

Danny looks away and wrings his hands together. He takes a deep breath, then another, and finally nods as he floats out from underneath the cot to sit on top of it instead. “Right. Let’s do this.”

Alex smiles and moves towards the cabinets to find the syringes he’s looking for, and Jazz hops up on the cot beside Danny. 

“Y’know, I could go and find Cujo if he would help you feel better,” she offers.

He huffs. “He was with the GIW not too long ago, so I don’t know how he would react to testing and I don’t really want to find out.” He pauses. “But thanks for the offer. And for… being here.”

“Of course! You are my little baby brother after all.”

He playfully scowls at her and she sticks her tongue out in reply. But when Alex comes back with a needle in hand, the brief levity vanishes and Danny goes more still than normal. 

But after a moment he offers his arm out willingly, and Alex takes the opportunity to gently take the end of the white rubber glove and pull it down off his hand to reveal his wrist. But what the doctor and Jazz both expect to see beneath is not what they find.

Danny’s normally unmarred skin is crisscrossed with jagged scars that start from his palm and run up his arm, traveling further than they can see below the rest of his suit. They have a sort of dark greenish hue as they spread like tree branches over his hand and arm. 

All of them freeze when they see it, even Danny, as if he’s just as surprised as they are.

“Oh,” he says with an echo that lingers in the room. 

And Jazz realizes what they are at the same time. Lichtenberg figures. From the portal.

Almost curiously, Danny holds his arm up to his face and pulls his sleeve up to see more of it. And sure enough it spreads all the way up to his shoulder, crisscrossing and patterned like roots breaking through concrete. He stares off in thought, and Jazz feels like she’s going to be sick. 

He definitely doesn’t have those scars in his human form. But the fact that he has them at all is visual evidence that not only was his story of the portal very real, but he died that day. 

Jazz’s little brother died in their parents’ basement, and nobody noticed. Danny never said anything. Nobody was there to help him. The story he had told them was already awful, but it’s one thing to hear it and another thing entirely to see the scars before her now.

Jazz and Alex both know better than to comment on a ghost’s death wound, so no matter how much she wants to talk about it she keeps her mouth firmly shut instead. Alex shakes himself and gestures with the syringe, waiting for Danny to offer his arm again.

When he holds his wrist out for the doctor to take, he meets Jazz’s gaze blankly, almost frighteningly so. 

He didn’t even know that they were there, which is a whole other can of worms that Jazz was not prepared to open. He was Phantom for an entire year, getting beat up by ghosts and hunters constantly, and yet he never saw them? He never thought to pull off his gloves or look a little closer at a tear in his suit? Just how little regard did he have for himself?

Alex draws the ectoplasm from beneath his skin and moves away, capping the syringe and putting it off to the side for now. Danny’s worry is gone, replaced by a distant, contemplative look. He looks at her like he’s waiting for her to say something, but whatever words she might have had are suddenly caught in her throat.

“Sorry,” he says finally, after what feels like too many minutes have passed in silence. He moves his gaze towards the floor. “Didn’t know that was there.”

And Jazz knows that ghosts hate it when their death wound is mentioned. It makes them agitated and sometimes aggressive, defensively trying to hide the thing that humans view with pity. But Danny is a halfa, and he didn’t even know he had a death wound at all, so maybe talking about it won’t be horrible? At least, that’s what Jazz tells herself as she opens her mouth to refute his apology.

“You don’t have anything to be sorry for, Danny. Not with this.”

And she tries not to look at the scars again, but her eyes draw towards his arm anyway. She’s never seen anything like it before, and somehow the more hidden evidence of his death compared to other ghosts is even more horrifying because it’s him. Her own little brother. Danny never deserved any of this.

Danny stares, unblinking. She can see the stress built up in the tightness of his shoulders and hopes that he’ll have enough sense to call quits when he actually needs to.

Dr. Alex comes back with the next syringe in hand, looking only vaguely concerned but overall keeping a level of professionalism Jazz is grateful for. 

“Okay Phantom, now if you can transform I can take the other sample from your human side.”

Danny blinks, inhales sharply but quietly enough that Jazz barely hears it. He takes his glove and shoves it on his hand, not bothering with pulling his sleeve back down as the white rings appear and in a flash of light he’s human again. Jazz and Danny both look at his arm at the same time, as if expecting to see the scars there too now that they know they exist. But just like always, his arm is fine. No scars in sight. It’s not as relieving as it probably should be.

He offers out his arm again, and Alex takes the sample quickly and painlessly. When he’s done, Danny puts his hands in his lap and sort of curls in on himself. Shoulders hunched up to his ears and resolutely staring at the floor, Jazz can see him mentally retreating like a big red sign blaring in front of her, but she doesn’t know what to say to help him. What is she supposed to do after seeing the wound that killed her brother? 

Except…

She shakes her head vigorously, as if physically dispelling the thought. Danny isn’t dead, she has to remind herself. He’s not dead because he’s right here, with a beating heart and everything. Halfa and ghost are two different things, apparently, and by confusing the two she’s only hurting Danny further.

“Weird question,” she says suddenly, prompting a hesitant look from Danny beside her, “but are your heart and core separate or are they the same thing?”

Danny blinks, brow furrowing as he visibly gauges whether Jazz is serious or not. Then he straightens up a little, holding a hand over his chest.

“They’re separate. When I’m human, my core goes dormant and undetectable, and when I’m a ghost my heart stops beating.”

Alex hums in interest. “And the transition is seamless? I wonder what might cause each one to power off and on. Maybe they power each other or are connected in some physiological way?”

Danny shuffles in place and looks away, and Alex is quick to backtrack as soon as he sees the reaction.

“Oh, I apologize. I don’t mean to pry, I just find the subject of anatomy interesting. If you aren’t comfortable with my questions then I can stop.”

He shuffles some more, looking anywhere but at either of them. “What’s the next test?” he asks instead of addressing the statement.

“Ah, that would be measuring your weight in both forms. The scale is just over here.”

Danny hops off the cot and heads over, far too eager for it to be anything other than avoidance. But at least he’s participating, Jazz thinks ruefully. 

He steps up where Alex directs him to, and lets the doctor fidget with the various sliding weights to find the exact measurement. Once he finds the balance he hits the number down and then gestures for Danny to transform.

His weight shifts, and Alex moves the sliders again. Both him and Jazz are expecting him to weigh less in this form, but both are surprised when the difference isn’t as great as they would have thought. 

Alex hums and allows Danny to step off. “This is interesting. Based on your size, I thought you would be around 100 pounds, but you’re actually on the low end at 85. However, your ghost side is unexpectedly heavier. Most ghosts your size would be 40 pounds, but you reached 60. It could have something to do with your ability to float, or it could be bone structure, ectoplasm, or any number of other things.”

Danny squints at the scale and tilts his head, puzzling something out that Alex and Jazz aren’t privy to. 

Jazz finds it interesting that time and time again the two sides of Danny seem to be much closer than anyone would have guessed. If even small things like his weight are similar in each form, then there’s no telling just how many other things are intertwined as well. 

“The next test is for eyesight. We don’t have the same equipment that an eye doctor might have, but we can make do with eye charts. Jazz can help you with this one herself while I deliver these blood samples to the lab in the room next door.”

Alex picks up both syringes and then pauses, waiting for a moment to see if Danny will tell him to stop. But when he only floats in place and stares mostly blankly back, the doctor quietly takes his leave.

The door shuts with a click and then Jazz and Danny are alone, and by the awkward glance that both of them send to each other that fact is kind of intimidating right now. 

“Danny—“ she begins, but doesn’t really know where to go after that. 

He looks away and flicks his tail, beginning to drift back over to the cot, but on the opposite side as Jazz now. 

“Y’know, we don’t even need to do an eye test because I already know my vision as a ghost is way better. I’m like a hawk”

A deflection if she’s ever seen one, but one she doesn’t point out nonetheless. She sighs and tries to reign in her concern so Danny can continue.

He starts to gesture as he talks, eyes flitting nervously and not staying in one place for too long. At some point one hand makes its way to the back of his neck in a habit Jazz has recognized him do since childhood, and then again as Phantom.

“It’s like, my senses as a human are better than they were before, but when I transform it’s like I can hear and see for miles. And color is slightly distorted, but somehow that makes it easier to see ghosts from a distance because the lack of reds and yellows puts less strain on my eyes—“

Jazz blinks. “Hold on, are you saying you can’t see reds and yellows as a ghost?”

Danny’s mouth shuts and opens again quickly, surprised by the question. “Um, it’s not that I can’t see them, they’re just not as vibrant as I can see them as a human. It makes everything look very blue and green most of the time.”

Huh, she thinks distantly. She’s never heard any other ghosts mention anything like that, but then again maybe they just never noticed. She knows that a lot of colorblind people can go years without knowing they’re colorblind, so maybe it’s the same way with ghosts? 

“Wouldn’t that make it even more difficult to see? If most of the colors you do see are so similar?”

He shakes his head. “No. I don’t really know how to describe it, but it’s sort of like not having reds and yellows somehow makes all the other colors… more detailed? It’s like I can see more shades of them, or something… And plus, I think my ghost eyes are more attuned to fast movements. If something were to stop moving and hold really still, then I would probably see it better as a human than as a ghost.”

Jazz nods along, ignoring the fact that she’s absolutely falling for Danny’s distraction but too interested in the subject now. Do other ghosts have the same eyes as Phantom, or are his unique? He said he can still vaguely see warm colors, but does that apply to others as well or are they entirely blind to it? And just how much farther is he able to see? 

“Y’know, that makes sense considering ghosts are carnivores. They would need to be able to hunt effectively.”

She doesn’t fail to miss the way his shoulders tense and rise up to his ears, or the sudden silence as he no longer has anything to say on the subject. It should be an obvious statement, and something Phantom would be familiar with considering how much time he’s spent as a ghost, but he looks like he would rather be talking about anything else. 

During their last heated conversation, Danny had said that he wasn’t Danny, that he was a ghost and he didn’t know how to be human anymore, but time and time again Jazz has seen him reacting to things a normal ghost would do with avoidance and shame. He doesn’t want to be treated like the kid he was before, but he also doesn’t want to have the deeper instincts of a ghost, the things he thinks he shouldn’t be doing because he’s still (partially) human. 

Is he afraid of negative reactions from others, or is he afraid of himself? Jazz has a sneaking suspicion that it might be both. 

And yet, the bigger elephant in the room still lingers. Does she address the issue that’s been going on for a long time, or the newly discovered, vulnerable one? Both equally dangerous if left alone for too long, and both exceedingly uncomfortable for Danny to talk about, using one to avoid the other…

“Danny… about those scars—“

She sees the snap before it happens, smaller than last time and more expected. He growls under his breath and pushes off of the cot to float up towards the ceiling, making a jittery sort of figure eight. Jazz shivers in the sudden burst of cold, but it’s nothing compared to the near hypothermia she had received a few weeks prior. 

“I’ve never seen them before,” he mumbles, claws flexing and back tense. For what it’s worth, it does seem like he’s trying to stay calm this time, but then again the brief moments of forced relaxedness don’t look good. 

“You were a ghost for over a year,” Jazz says delicately, treading as carefully as she can manage. “How?”

A ghost’s death wound is integral to who they are. To die with unresolved issues or in traumatic ways is what creates a ghost in the first place. For Danny to not only be able to recount his own death to his family but not know that he has lasting scars from the incident is unheard of. 

How did he not know? Not see?

He twists around in midair, going faster or slower in random bursts. “I don’t know! I guess I just never—I didn’t think that—“ He cuts himself off with a frustrated hiss. 

He pauses and drifts down, turned away from Jazz but finally meeting her eyes again. He looks… tired.

“I usually just… try not to think about it. I mean, is it really that important?”

He says it like he’s really hoping it isn’t. And Jazz, well… 

Is it important? Maybe if his family hadn’t only very recently discovered that he was still alive, it wouldn’t be. He’s a halfa, alive and dead at the same time, with a death wound on one form but not the other and plenty of trauma to boot. The scars are a visual reminder of what happened that day and all the things that resulted from it. Are the scars themselves important? Maybe not. But his not-death and all the pain he went through to receive scars like that certainly are. 

Jazz doesn’t give an answer fast enough, and Danny curls away. But she’s had more than enough of Danny pulling away, and she hops off the cot to reach out to him. A tentative hand held between them, an offer he can accept or reject if he pleases, present but not too pushy. 

And he stares at her for a long few moments, a range of different emotions crossing his face before settling into a vaguely distant mask. He reaches out his own hand, claws hesitating just above her palm before finally grasping ahold. 

She smiles at him, trying to convey calm, and he uncurls slightly and lets himself be pulled back over to the cot listlessly. They both sit down, hand in hand and each trying their best to be a good sibling despite the complicated emotions and circumstances surrounding them. 

It takes a few minutes before Jazz can pick out the words she wants to say, and Danny waits patiently for her to speak first.

“Mom used to say that when you were really little you used to go out playing with friends and come back covered in mud and scratches, smiling as wide as you could.”

She feels him shift beside her, glancing over curiously. She takes a steadying breath.

“Whenever you had Sam and Tucker over, the three of you would always be so happy talking about the weirdest things. You loved building things with Dad in the basement, even if you got covered in ectoplasm or zapped by wires.”

Jazz can hear her own voice taking on a more melancholy tone, reminiscing on days long past and the messy future they’ve now found themselves in. 

“I used to worry about you, but no matter what happened you were always smiling. All of my fears were superficial, just little things here and there. And I scolded Mom and Dad a lot, but I think at some point it turned into silly banter instead of real criticism. I never worried about losing you, because I never thought that something like that could happen.”

Danny’s hand tightens around hers, and Jazz sighs. 

“And then I did lose you. I saw the signs and I worried about you a lot, but never in my wildest dream did I think that you would just be there one day and gone the next. The first day you didn’t come home, I wasn’t worried because I believed so firmly that you would always be there. And I kept trying to deny it right up until the funeral.”

Danny tenses, and when Jazz glances over at him she’s surprised to find blue eyes instead of green. He must have transformed at some point without her noticing, though she’s not sure how he managed to do it. 

There’s a wounded look in his eyes, lasting mental injuries that still haven’t healed. She wonders briefly what it was like, watching the proceedings from an outside perspective, a ghost watching his family mourn over a grave with his own name over it. 

“I hate that I didn’t know,” she confesses. “You were going through all of this, and you weren’t smiling through it like you always did, and I knew something was wrong but I just didn’t realize how bad it was until you were already long gone. And the idea that not even you knew that those scars were there is just like it was back then, where you get hurt and you don’t mind it because you’re smiling through the whole thing, except this time you aren’t smiling at all.”

She pauses, a sour taste at the back of her throat as she speaks. “And you weren’t smiling before you left either.”

Danny looks away, kicks his legs a little. He takes a deep breath and forces himself to relax a bit more, and at least it seems to be working better for him now than earlier. 

“I’m sorry,” he says eventually, the words quiet and with a wispy hint of an echo at the end. “I know that I should know myself better than this, but for the longest time all I thought about was protecting Amity… The more I thought about myself, the more I thought about all of you, and I—I couldn’t do that for very long.”

And yeah, that’s exactly what Jazz was worried about, that the reason he didn’t know was because he spent so much time being self-sacrificing that he just never paid attention to himself. They can all see the trend continuing even now, only made worse by his unfamiliarity with being human and his discomfort around his worried family. He doesn’t know how to fit into a world that he didn’t fit into before, so he tries to make everyone else as comfortable as possible to avoid thinking about and working on himself. It’s ironic that all he’s doing is making everyone else worry about him more. 

If only she could make him understand that the best way to help his family is to let them help him. 

Jazz releases his hand just long enough to wrap her arm around his shoulders and pull him close. He startles a bit, jumping in place before he realizes what she’s doing and lets himself be crushed against her side. Even as a human he still runs cold, but Jazz is starting to learn that that’s a good thing for him, and in a way it’s almost a comfortable coolness. 

“Do you want to take a break? We can always do the rest of the tests another time.”

With his head tucked down, she can’t see his face but she can hear his sniffle loud and clear. He gives a soft laugh and after a moment shakes his head.

“I uh—I kind of want to keep going. I know it would put you guys more at ease and… I guess I’m also kind of curious.”

A step in the right direction, she hopes. An opportunity for Danny to figure out who he is, and for the rest of his family to learn with him. 

“Hey Jazz?”

“Yeah?”

“You’re a great sister. I’ve always been lucky to have you.”

“You too, Danny.”

Chapter Text

The golden hours of the day drift by in a peaceful haze, casting the town of Amity Park in a bright display of oranges and yellows. Soon the night will be overtaken by glowing green, but for now the gentle light filters through windows and makes everything it touches feel warm and inviting. Out from one of the houses drifts a sweet scent of fruit and baked goods, a father at work making dinner for his family. 

Jack hums a tune he barely remembers as he pulls an apple pie from the oven and sets it on the stove to cool, turning his attention back to the hamburger patties so they don’t end up overcooked. He doesn’t usually do the cooking for the household, but he enjoys the task when he gets the opportunity. Just like Maddie and her mad sciences, he likes to think of cooking as just like building, but with food instead of possibly radioactive material. 

Maddie and Jazz should be home soon, he knows, and yet the little nagging ball of anxiety in his stomach doesn’t go away the more time passes. He figures the others are probably experiencing the same thing. Because, well, today they’re going to bring Danny with them.

Jack sighs and flips a patty absently, still attentive but with his thoughts elsewhere. It’s just strange, that for the longest time he and Maddie thought their son was dead, never to be seen again, and now over a year later he’s back but different, with far too many horrific stories for such a young boy to tell. He had stayed away from them intentionally, but they didn’t know he was still alive until recently. Danny coming back should be cause for celebration! But the Danny they knew isn’t the same one who came back.

Jack shakes his head, frowning. Or maybe Danny is the same person he always was, and Jack just never knew who that was, which is a lot more emotion to unpack than he honestly has time for today. But really, how is he supposed to deal with the fact that Danny is apprehensive about just stepping in his old home? Or even generally being around his parents? 

He doesn’t know, but supposedly Jazz does, which is why they’re having this dinner in the first place. A way to ease the tension, to reintroduce Danny to the idea of being human sometimes and to reintroduce them to him. Jazz had suggested it, and Jack and Maddie had agreed that it sounded like a good idea. Now the hardest part is just making it happen.

He checks the clock for what has to be the tenth time in the last thirty minutes, waiting for the familiar rattle of keys at the door. He doesn’t know how Danny is going to react, if he’s even going to agree to come at all. What do they do if he says no? Or if he stops at the doorway, says nevermind and then leaves? Or what if he has a reaction just like he did the first time at the hospital? What do they do? What do they say? 

It’s still so odd, to recognize and fall into familiar patterns with his son, but to still barely know him at all. He supposes that just comes with the territory of not knowing him for a year while he had so many drastic changes in his life. Jack wishes he had been there to help him through them. He wishes he wasn’t part of the reason Danny left. He wishes he knew what to do to fix it. He’s not knowledgeable like Jazz, or intuitive like Sam and Tucker. What he can do is build things and be positive. He just hopes that, with Jazz and Maddie’s guidance, that will be enough. 

By the time he’s transferring the patties onto their buns, it’s about fifteen minutes later than Maddie usually gets home when he finally hears it. The creak of the front porch and the jangle of keys in the lock. Immediately nervous but trying not to look like he is, Jack resolutely stares at his task even while all of his focus is suddenly on the door behind him. The door opens and Maddie calls out a greeting that Jack happily returns as he moves everything over to the table and chances a glance up.

The first thing he thinks is that Maddie looks tired. She has that tense, weary expression she gets when she’s spent too much time at the hospital but doesn’t yet have time to rest. The relief on her face when she sees all the food already made and laid out is clear as day, and when she comes over to take her usual seat Jack lays a hand on her shoulder comfortingly. 

Jazz comes in next, looking nervous and jittery as she holds the door open for the next person behind her, whispering something that Jack can’t hear. In comes an equally nervous Phantom, who sees Jack and Maddie at the table and immediately transforms into Danny as Jazz shuts the door behind them. He opens his mouth, hesitates, closes it, and then turns to look to Jazz for guidance. 

Jazz sighs and reaches for his hand, gently pulling him further into the dining room. “Come on, Danny. It’s just food.”

But Danny doesn’t look very convinced and huffs. “You know that’s not—nevermind.”

Jack watches not-so-subtly as Danny looks around the room, refamiliarizing himself with a place he hasn’t seen in far too long. His eyes linger on a few places. The pictures on the fridge, a new coffee machine that they didn’t have before, a dent in the ceiling. He glances back unexpectedly and locks eyes with Jack, startled by the attention being focused on him. He smiles, and Danny gives an awkward one back before quickly glancing away.

Meanwhile, Jack is already cursing at himself internally. It’s only been a few minutes and he’s already ruining everything! Why is it so difficult being a parent to a half-dead recently rediscovered son? Jack wishes there were some kind of guide book for this kind of thing…

They all sit down, and nobody misses the way that Danny hesitates at the chair he used to sit in every day, but they all pretend to not see it. Everyone grabs their own plates and starts making their own burgers, and Maddie is the first one to begin the awkward small talk that all of them are dreading.

She talks about work, the people she’s met and the stories she’s heard from the ghosts. Apparently since Danny defeated Vlad, many of the ghost hunters have disappeared, leaving the forests around town much more peaceful than they were before. There’s still a few stragglers, people who work for the thrill instead of the money the GIW gives them, but most of the ghosts in the area are well versed on how to avoid them. 

She asks about Jazz’s school, which launches her into an explanation of how online classes work and how she’s planning on going back in person later when things have settled down more. She tries to phrase it nicely, but Danny winces and guiltily scratches the back of his neck.

“So Danny, what are—um, nevermind.”

He blinks, looks at Maddie quizzically, and she takes a breath to think through her words before speaking then.

“Sorry, I was going to ask if you were interested in going back to school? You’ve missed a year so it would be difficult to catch up, but high school is important. If you don’t want to then I’m sure we can find some other solution, I was just wondering.”

Danny pauses in his meal, setting down a burger that’s only been nibbled on and pushed around his plate. He tilts his head in thought. 

“I don’t really know what I want to do. Everyone always says that school is important, but I was never very good at it, so…”

He looks away with a frown, and Jack and Maddie lock eyes over his head. Of course they had both known that Danny wasn’t doing well in school, but they’ve never heard him admit as much in such a… defeated tone. Maddie had been an excellent student, straight A’s as far as the eye could see, but she had never been interested in many of the subjects she was presented with and only paid attention to chemistry and biology for the most part. On the other hand, Jack had done pretty poorly in school, but he had been a good enough builder to get into college and become an engineer, meeting Maddie and Vlad in the process. 

Both of them had just assumed that eventually Danny would find a subject he liked and would stick to it like they did. And he had always been so knowledgeable about ghosts and ghost technology, so they had left it at that. So consumed with hunting ghosts and excited that their son was following in their footsteps, they forgot to really consider how Danny felt about it all. 

“You don’t have to be good at it,” Jazz insists, glancing at their parents for backup. “Grades aren’t nearly as important as learning. When we say that high school is important, what that really means is that it’s important to know the basics. It gives you foundational knowledge and time to find something that you really love. Plus, it’s a great place to make friends.”

Jack thinks Jazz has worded her mini-speech excellently, but at the mention of friends Danny immediately cringes. 

“You think someone like me can make friends at Casper High? No way. I’d have better luck at the graveyard.”

And Jack and Maddie exchange another look at those words. Even Jazz looks like a fish out of water, and Jack takes it upon himself to ask the question they’re all thinking.

“Someone like you?” 

Danny’s eyes snap over to him, and upon seeing Jack’s and then Maddie and Jazz’s concerned faces, he looks suddenly nervous. He abandons his plate and pushes further away from the table, bringing a hand up to the back of his neck while the other comes up to gesture almost frantically.

“Y’know, like—like a nerd. And like, I’ve never gotten good grades so I’ve gotten picked on a lot for that too. But especially being a—“

He freezes in place abruptly and then gets a different kind of nervous look on his face, if that’s even possible. 

“Nevermind,” he murmurs, visibly closing himself off.

Jazz crosses her arms and raises an eyebrow in a silent demand for an answer, but Danny only shoves his hands under the table and looks up towards the ceiling as if pretending not to see her at all, mouth held firmly shut.

“Danny…” Maddie begins, trying for a reassuring tone that only serves to shove Danny further into a corner. 

Jack may not be as intuitive or knowledgeable as his wife and daughter, but he does know that if they keep going on like this then all it’s going to do is push Danny into another explosion. He would rather not see that happen, so he goes for a different approach.

“Were you going to say ‘especially for being a Fenton?’”

Danny flinches, something like an anxious apology in his eyes that all but confirms the question.

And isn’t that just a slap in the face? Jack and Maddie came all this way to find a home in Amity Park so they could research and hunt ghosts, and they had never cared about the comments they had gotten about being the weirdos of the community, but apparently Danny had gotten the full brunt of it and they never knew. Or maybe, Jack thinks with a frown, maybe they knew and just weren’t paying enough attention. They put so much time and effort into making themselves happy, and meanwhile their son was getting bullied for it, and only now after all of this are they finally noticing.

He can tell in that very moment that it’s going to be a long night.

Danny’s room is almost exactly the same as he left it a year ago. The gray walls and neatly organized books and folders stuffed onto the shelves over his old desk makes the whole place seem empty. No color, almost no personality besides the ancient-looking chest at the foot of his bed and the satellite picture over the headboard. Danny had always preferred simplicity despite his personality being quite the opposite. Danny and his friends had been the pop of color that the room always needed, but the longer the room went unused the more Jack realized it felt just like the graveyard they put his name and memory in.

He hasn’t been in this room for months, but for Danny it’s been ever longer. When he swings the door open the emotions hit both of them at the same time. Jack grieves for the time he missed with his son, the memories they could have made if they hadn’t driven him away. He wonders what Danny grieves for, but is too unsure to ask.

They walk inside, hesitant for different reasons, and then they come to a stop in the middle of the rug, neither one really knowing what to say. Jack had a whole thing recited in his head, but as soon as he turned the doorknob it all flew out of his ears and hasn’t returned in the minutes since then. Not knowing what to say is the worst kind of torment when the awkward silence gets this long. 

Danny eventually moves past him and takes a seat on the edge of the bed, looking at his old clothes in the closet and the handful of figurines on his bedside table. 

Jack sighs lightly and resigns himself to floundering his way through a conversation. 

“Are you going to stay the night?” 

He tries to ask it lightly, but Danny tenses at the question anyway. He looks somewhere around Jack’s shoes, frowning. 

Jack makes his way to the opposite side of the bed, smiling as his weight dips the mattress down and Danny nearly falls back at the sudden shift, arms flailing to balance himself. 

“You don’t have to. I know you’ve always liked Tucker’s bunk bed, and… there are a lot of emotions here.”

A new kind of silence falls. The way Danny looks around the room is a mirror reflection of what Jack and Maddie looked like standing in here months ago. It breaks his heart to see such a young kid—his own son—bear such a heavy expression. 

Jack feels that he should have been there to protect Danny. To give him the love and joy a parent was supposed to bring. And instead…

“Do you still like space?”

Danny breathes out a chuckle and turns to look at him and then the satellite picture behind them. “Of course. Y’know, the Gh—“

He stops mid-sentence, glancing at Jack with a half-formed grimace before quickly looking away. “Um, sorry. Nevermind.”

Jack raises an eyebrow. He seemed excited there for all of a second before shutting down completely. If only Jack could know what goes through that head of his. 

“Danny, if it’s something that interests you then I’d like to hear about it.” He says it tentatively, trying not to sound demanding. He’s pretty certain that that wouldn’t help anybody. 

Danny shuffles, fidgeting with the threads of his jeans, glancing at Jack a few times until he seems to come to a decision and sighs.

“The um, the Ghost Zone sort of looks like space.”

Jack hums. “That does sound pretty cool. Have you been there before?”

Danny relaxes slightly, clearly relieved that Jack isn’t doing… whatever Danny thought he was going to do. Was he worried that Jack would tell him not to go into the Ghost Zone? Or maybe assumed that Jack would grill him about all the details? He’s not sure, but he doesn’t like the picture his son’s tension paints.

Danny nods. “A few times, but never very far. It’s all green and—and alive.”

There’s a sense of wonder in his voice that makes Jack smile. An admiration for space that’s been extended to the Ghost Zone’s equivalent, and a sign that they haven’t completely lost him. 

Jack nudges Danny’s elbow with his own and moves further up the bed to lay down, hands resting on his stomach. “Tell me about it?”

Danny blinks at him, a range of emotion flitting through his eyes before finally landing on a shy grin. He flops down on the bed beside Jack the opposite way, and when he holds his hands up he begins to paint the scene.

Floating pieces of land like planets and stars randomly spread through the Zone, each one a territory or kingdom housing hundreds. He describes the ever-expansive ectoplasm that makes up everything and saturates anything it touches with a childish glee. It’s like magic to him, and the way he talks about it makes Jack believe the same. 

He hesitates on some points. Information that the old Jack would have snatched up and immediately converted into a weapon to hunt other ghosts down now brings pause and careful decision-making. Every time he breezes past something is a stab in Jack’s gut, but every time he stops and then continues explaining anyway is a show of trust that brings a wave of relief and hope. 

The islands that the ghosts inhabit sound almost as precious as the ghosts themselves. Danny talks about them like he’s known them for years, every little detail like hoarded knowledge in a dragon’s den. He cares so much about them, and Jack’s heart aches as he remembers all the things he and Maddie used to say about the ghosts of Amity. They were wrong about so many things, and there’s still so much left to learn, so much more room to grow. And if Danny is willing to teach, then Jack wants to sit down and learn. 

To improve the hospital for ghosts everywhere, to make the people of Amity comfortable to walk at night again, and most importantly, to help his son feel safe and loved. 

But for now, it’s just a story. And when Danny’s gesturing peters out and his eyes begin to droop, Jack gets up to gently cover him with a blanket and ruffle his hair. Danny’s story ends with a yawn and he rolls onto his side, bringing the blanket up to his chin.

“I think I told a bedtime story to myself,” he murmurs in wry amusement.

And there’s a million things Jack could say to that. ‘I’m just glad that you still had something to be happy about all this time’. ‘I’m glad you feel safe enough to sleep here, despite everything’. ‘I’m sorry for making you feel like you couldn’t tell me anything’. ‘Thank you for coming back to us’.

But he doesn’t say any of that. He just gives Danny a pat on the shoulder and a gentle smile. “Looks like it, bud. Goodnight Danny.”

When he turns to leave, hand on a halfway open door, he hears a “Goodnight Dad” murmured back to him. It’s something so small, and yet…

Jack shuts the door with a small click, returning to his own room where Maddie is probably waiting for him. 

He ends up smiling for the rest of the night, because Danny is finally home.

Chapter Text

Hours after her shift, practically dead on her feet and almost ready to give up and go home, Maddie finds Danny on the hospital’s roof.

He’s lying on his back, arms spread wide on either side and his bright white hair swaying gently in a wind that doesn’t exist. Cujo is running around him, tongue lolling out and jumping far higher than a living dog would be able to go, snapping at insects and things she can’t see. 

She almost figures that Danny is asleep, but when she makes her way closer he tilts his head up to look at her and seems wide awake. He sends her a small, polite smile before leveraging himself up so he’s sitting. He reaches out a hand and Cujo immediately changes his path to place his head right under Danny’s palm, prompting a chuckle and head scratches for his efforts.

Maddie comes up beside him, and it takes her a second to sit down past all the aching joints. She’s been more involved with the nurse work of the hospital lately. It’s something she’s had to do often over the past year as their knowledge and ability to research ghosts naturally plateaus every now and then. Sometimes there just isn’t anything significantly scientific left to do, and when Maddie thinks she would be doing more good by helping the nurses and doctors instead then that’s what she does. But wow does it really do a number on her legs. 

Once she’s settled she lets out a wistful sigh at the beautiful expanse of colors painting the sky as the sun dips into the forest. It’s rare that she takes the time to appreciate the sky or nature anymore, always so focused on one thing or another. It’s nice to take a few breaths of fresh air and relax somewhere new for once.

“Are you okay?” 

When Maddie blinks and turns to look at Danny, he has a puzzled expression that almost makes her laugh. Here she thought they were both having a nice peaceful moment, but it seems like the brief silence was more awkward than anything for him.

“Yes Danny,” she assures him with a smile, turning back to the scene laid out before them. “I’m just winding down after a long day. I was looking for you for a while and couldn’t find you anywhere.”

She sees out of the corner of her eye the way he cringes back, leaning so far back that he just starts floating upside down. 

“Sorry, I was just out spending time with Cujo. It’s his Death Day tomorrow, so I wanted to give him something nice.”

Maddie’s brow furrows, and very quickly her appreciation of the scenery turns into distraction as her curiosity gets the better of her.

“Like a celebration? How does that work?”

Danny purses his lips and glances away a few times, doing a full 180 in the air as he thinks of an answer. “Are you sure you want to know? It’s kind of morbid.”

Maddie outright laughs at that. “Danny, I work at a hospital for ghosts . Not to mention all the things I’ve seen in the past month alone. You don’t have to worry about creeping me out. Yes, I’d like to know.”

Danny picks Cujo up and holds him to his chest, flying the dog in a slow figure eight over Maddie’s head that seems to make Cujo delighted. He kicks his legs like he’s trying to swim, tail wagging furiously. Danny continues on like that for a few minutes before actually speaking, but Maddie is content to wait until he’s ready. 

“Most ghosts don’t celebrate the birthday they had when they were living. Some still do, but it’s a pretty small minority, and usually they do it because it relates to their Obsession in some way. It’s just something that ghosts don’t really care about like they did before they became ghosts. But what they do care about is their Death Day.”

Maddie already knew that Death Days were important to ghosts, and everyone at the hospital had to be taught that commenting on it or the death wound was seriously offensive to a ghost, but the other stuff is new to her.

Back when her and Jack still hunted ghosts, she believed that ghosts had never been people in the first place, so of course they wouldn’t have birthdays or celebrations of any kind. After founding the Ghost Ward, she had assumed that ghosts would celebrate the same holidays that they did when they were living. Turns out she was wrong on both accounts. So what do ghosts celebrate then?

Danny sets Cujo down, both of them watching him run away and nearly clear off the edge of the roof before taking a sharp turn to run right back. Danny narrowly dodges the end of his tail out of the way as the dog barrels past them.

“The Death Day for a ghost is a time of mourning. There’s a lot of really intense emotions on that particular day, and a lot of ghosts will either hide away in their den or get really aggressive and want to take out their anger by fighting and destroying things. It’s different for everyone, but it’s common courtesy to leave a ghost alone when it’s their Death Day, even if they happen to be doing something stupid. Processing emotions is something that ghosts admire and respect, no matter what that processing looks like.”

“That sounds like it would cause some problems,” Maddie points out, watching Danny to make sure she hasn’t said something wrong.

He shrugs one shoulder and leans back like he’s sitting on a chair, his tail curling around like a snake. He avoids her eyes as he gathers some glowing ectoplasm on the tip of one of his fingers and traces circles in the air. He looks distant, preoccupied by thoughts or memories that she can’t see but wishes she could. 

“Maybe it does, but it’s kind of nice. Ghosts don’t judge in the same way that humans do. If you’re going through something, you don’t get weird looks or whispers behind your back, it’s just an accepted part of… being dead, I guess. Without intense emotions, ghosts wouldn’t exist in the first place. It’s a fundamental part of who we—um, who they are.”

Maddie frowns at the wording. Yesterday at the dinner table he had mentioned that he was bullied often enough that friends weren’t a possibility for him, and it seems like she’s accidentally found another piece of the story. He got picked on for being a nerd, for getting bad grades, for being a Fenton, and also for depression? 

Maddie’s heart is doused in ice water and alight with fury at the same time. The idea that her and Jack’s words and actions were responsible for that, that the kids at Casper High would be so cruel, that she didn’t know, is sickening. She should have known. She should have been there for him before he was gone, before she found herself standing over a headstone with no casket to bury. 

It was already devastating that she had lost her son. She’s going to be carrying the lingering grief from that for a long time. But it’s so much worse to know that she was partially responsible for that loss in the first place, and that’s something she suspects Danny is going to be carrying with himself for just as long. 

Danny shakes his head, dispelling a silence that Maddie hadn’t even realized had fallen between them. He clears his throat, but the next few words are shaky. 

“Anyway… I found out a while ago that sometimes, the day before a ghost’s Death Day, a bunch of their close friends and family will get together for parties and celebrations to make the actual day a little easier to handle. Whatever a ghost wants to do, their friends help them do it. It’s like an ultimate high right before an ultimate low, and the two days of the year with the highest emotions. I haven’t seen many celebrations like that, but I hear that some of them can get pretty crazy.”

He looks over to Cujo, who has stopped by Danny’s other side to lie down with his head pillowed on his paws. Danny reaches over to scratch behind his ears and Cujo starts floating off the ground in glee.

“Cujo used to be a guard dog before he died, and he never had any buddies besides his old trainer. So I looked up his info and found out the day he died, because I figured if nobody else was going to celebrate his existence then I would. The little guy has done a lot for me, and I wanted him to know how appreciated he is before tomorrow comes around.”

He chuckles and swipes the back of his unoccupied hand across his eyes. 

“I found him a bunch of animal bones in the forest and he chomped right through all of them. And I got him some squeaky toys too but he still prefers the ones he keeps from when he was alive. We played fetch a bit, and then I ran out of ideas so now we’re here. I’m just hoping today wasn’t super boring for him.”

His eyes start to water again, and he hunches over to wipe at them again. Cujo whines and climbs into his lap, prompting a wet laugh and some sniffles.

Maddie’s heart breaks for this child every passing day.

She moves closer and wraps an arm around his frigid shoulders, tucking him into her side. The noises he makes start to get warped and echoed, and her arm partially sinks into his semi-tangible body. And maybe any other person would have found it weird or pulled away, but Maddie only holds him closer, as if she can gather him up in her arms so that some of her warmth might become his own. 

“Sorry,” he tries to say, head still ducked and clearly trying to stop himself from crying. “I don’t—I don’t know why I’m—“

Maddie takes a deep breath and rests her chin on top of Danny’s head, feeling the way he relaxes under the closeness. His shoulders tremble with unshed tears, and in that moment Maddie understands his explanation of Death Day celebrations completely. Because she wants nothing more than to let him scream and cry and let it out, and she doesn’t know how long it’s been since he let himself do that. 

“You don’t have to be sorry, Danny,” she says gently. He leans further into her side, and she mourns the loss of all the times they could have had a moment like this in the many, many months he was gone. She wonders how many times he sat up in that lonely bell tower with nobody to comfort him, no mother to hold him like this. And she wonders how she ever could have forgotten what this feels like. 

She lifts her head to soothe a hand through his wild hair when the first sob slips out. He abandons his attempts at getting rid of the tears and instead clutches Cujo to his chest like something utterly precious. And with the way Danny talks about not just the ghostly dog but also all the other ghosts of Amity, she can’t imagine he feels any other way. Cujo licks at his jaw, and he laughs in a wispy, musical kind of way that Maddie wishes she could hear every day for the rest of her life.

My boy, she thinks. I’m so sorry I wasn’t there.

“You don’t have to be sorry,” she murmurs again. “Not anymore. Not with me.”

The sun dips beneath the trees and paints the sky with deep oranges and purples, eventually giving way to blue. The wind carries the smell of fresh forest air and ectoplasm. There are no clouds in the sky, but it rains anyway. 

And Maddie holds her son close. Whether Danny or Phantom, she’s promised herself to be here every step of the way from now on. To see him smile, to watch him fly. To be there for all the moments she thought she would never get. Her and Jack got so lucky with both of their amazing kids, and Maddie won’t be losing sight of that again.

Chapter Text

Danny has searched everywhere. 

The mayor’s office was a no go, and every single abandoned building across Amity is just as empty. There’s been no activity in the old GIW headquarters, and he’s checked it almost daily. He thought he knew every inch of the forest already but searching through it again and seeing nothing but trees in all directions made his brain melt. He checked underground, found a few basements he never knew existed (and evidently their owners don’t either if the spiders are anything to go by) but otherwise just blank concrete or dirt for miles. He even checked Sid’s mirror dimension in the school, and he wasn’t really expecting to find anything there of all places but it was still disappointing nonetheless.

Danny has checked everywhere, and he still can’t find any sign of Plasmius. The guy is putting a new meaning to the word ‘ghost’. 

But despite all the time he’s spent searching high and low through Amity, at least now he knows there’s only one place left to check…

“I’m going into the Ghost Zone today.”

Jazz and Tucker are the first ones to whirl on him, giving him equally incredulous looks as the others turn more slowly to shoot him mixed expressions of their own. 

“On your own? Absolutely not.” His mom’s raised eyebrow is almost as forceful as her words, and Danny has to clamp down on his initial instinct to get defensive. 

“Why would you need to go there? Has your core even finished healing yet?” Sam asks, looking him up and down with a frown.

Danny huffs and floats up towards the ceiling. They’re in the hospital, in the same room Sam and Tucker had taken before. It’s one of those days (days that he’s come to find are kind of rare) that all of their schedules line up to allow a conversation with everyone at once like this. They were having a nice conversation before this, though Danny wasn’t really paying attention to that, too preoccupied with how to let them know about his plan without causing uproar or panic. Seems like he managed to do that anyway…

“My core is basically healed. I have full control of all of my abilities and all that. And I need to go there because Plasmius is there. At least I think he is because if he’s actually still in Amity then he won’t even need to beat me up ‘cause I’ll do it myself. But anyway! It’s been—“ he checks his wrist for a watch that doesn’t actually exist “—well I don’t know how long it’s been, but it’s been long enough that if he still has access to blood blossoms then he could have made a lot more of that serum in all this time, and if I don’t find him soon that could mean the untimely passing on of every ghost in Amity. I’d like to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

He phrases it like a suggestion, but he knows—and he knows they know—that he’s going to do this anyway. It’s just a matter of how difficult his parents are going to be about it. And while the time he’s spent with them in the past week alone has flipped all his assumptions about them on its head, he’s still not sure how they’re going to react to something that’s going to put him in danger like this. This is a necessary part of being Phantom, and their reaction now is going to tell him a lot about how they’ll react to this stuff in the future. 

This is something he needs to do, and getting his family to understand that is a lot more important to him now than it used to be.

His parents exchange glances, but Danny is distracted from that by Jazz getting his attention.

“Basically healed? Danny, your core needs to be fully healed. Plasmius is one of the strongest ghosts you’ve ever fought, and last time it took all of us to help you out and he wasn’t even trying to kill you!”

Danny pouts at her and crosses his arms, hovering upside down. “‘Trying to kill me’ is subjective. Plus, I’ve been eating more—“

“Still not enough,” Jazz mutters petulantly.

“—and Amity is peaceful lately so I’ve been storing up more energy than usual. And I have the thermos that Tucker and I made—“

“That’s never been tested on a halfa!” Tucker objects.

“—so I’ll be fine. You guys worry too much.”

The room at large does not look very convinced, which is a shame because that was pretty much all of his talking points. 

He sighs heavily and throws his hands up. “Alright! What exactly would make all of you feel better about me doing this? What can I do to be safer?”

And that actually gets them to think about it. Two or three muttered conversations happen between them, and Danny waits for them by impatiently swirling around the ceiling. 

When he actually thinks more about it, his core is basically healed. The big spider web of cracks used to be very noticeable only a week or two ago. It felt like something had been taken out of him, like something important was missing and every second he didn’t have it was painful. But it got manageable and then it disappeared. It’s kind of strange to think about though, because now he feels normal, but he doesn’t exactly feel whole. 

But that doesn’t make any sense, because he’s at the same level physically and powers-wise as before all this stuff with Plasmius happened, so he should be fully healed, right? His core is fine, but it’s also kind of acting like it’s not. It’s weird. He’ll just have to deal with it though, because this is the best he’s going to get right now and Plasmius needs to be stopped as soon as possible. He can figure the rest out later.

His mom turns to look at him and Danny jolts to attention.

“I know Cujo isn’t available today, but don’t you have any ghost friends who would be willing to help you? Maybe Wulf from before?”

Danny tilts so he’s floating on his back and shrugs. “Wulf kind of comes and goes as he pleases, when he’s not being chased by other ghosts anyway. I don’t know where he is, and I’m betting it would take a while to find him, and I can’t afford to give Plasmius more time than he’s already gotten. Besides Wulf, I know a lot of ghosts but it’s rare to find one that’s willing to get involved in anything. The ones that do tend to be unpredictable and could just as likely turn on me instead.”

Sam frowns. “But a lot of ghosts helped you out when you fought him in front of the hospital.”

Danny winces and scratches the back of his neck. “I’m pretty sure that was a one time deal. Like I’m sure Box Ghost would love to help, but he’s the kind of ghost to get hit once and then immediately fly away, y’know? There’s Ember and Johnny 13, but like I said, they’re unpredictable. And the regular ghosts of Amity just want to be left alone. It’s just not a great idea.”

“And you can’t wait until tomorrow for Cujo to return?” his mom asks.

Danny shakes his head resolutely. “I’ve already put this off for longer than I wanted to. Besides, I’ve always worked alone. It’s not that big of a deal.”

But that statement seems to inspire the opposite of confidence in the group. Man, he’s really not convincing them, huh? He knew they didn’t like him not receiving help but this seems like a lot of anxiety for nothing. He might not even find Plasmius today! 

“We can’t test the thermos on Danny because he’s the only one who can use it, so that’s just up to luck and engineering,” Tucker mutters to himself. “No allies, and none of us can go with him… Oh! What about a phone?”

Danny scrunches his nose. “A phone in the Ghost Zone? Would that even work? I don’t think there’s any cell service or satellite in there.”

“What about a walkie-talkie then?” Sam puts out there instead. “Can radio waves travel through ectoplasm?”

And that’s… actually a really interesting question. Danny looks up to meet his parents’ eyes at the same time they find his, and the same idea passes between them. The best way to find out is to test it.

An hour or two later finds Danny and everyone else standing in the Fenton basement, the glowing green portal casting everything in eerie hues. Danny has a new belt clipped around his waist with the thermos hooked onto it, courtesy of his dad. And on the same belt on his left side there’s a walkie talkie easily reachable. The rest of the group shares three others; one for Sam and Tucker, one for his parents, and one for Jazz. 

Danny thinks that having a belt and tools is kind of cool. It makes him feel tactical and prepared, despite knowing that he is absolutely neither of those things. He does a little test to make sure that it stays on even when he has a tail instead of legs, and then he has nothing left to do but take the plunge.

His mom comes up beside him and lays a gentle hand on his shoulder, frowning.

“Promise me you’ll be safe?”

Danny frowns back. “You know I can’t promise that. Plasmius doesn’t leave much room for safety.”

She sighs and gives a faint smile. “Alright. How about, promise me you’ll come back.”

Both of them can hear the “this time” that she doesn’t say, and Danny has to close his eyes for a moment to settle the core twisting in his chest. 

He nods and tries to lighten the mood by bumping his shoulder with hers. “I promise,” he says with a confident grin. “I’ve been doing this for almost a year and a half now. I’ve got this.”

Her own smile is strained at the edges, but nobody comments on it. He understands that she’s worried, they all are, but once he finds Plasmius and finally catches the guy, then all of this will have been worth it. This is what he does best, and he’s already survived many encounters with Plasmius before. And now that he’s at full strength again it’ll be much easier to actually fight the guy.

His mom moves back to join the others and Danny turns to face them. And all of the sudden he’s struck with a sense of pride. His family and friends, the people that just a handful of months ago didn’t know who he was, the people he was avoiding and terrified of, are now standing here before him. They know that Danny and Phantom are one and the same, and they’re still here, still supportive in their own ways. 

For such a long time, he didn’t think this was possible. They burst through all his expectations and walls like they were made of paper, leaving Danny baffled each time. Every fanged smile and violent ghost fight would have scared anyone else off, but they stuck around anyway. They stuck around, and despite everything they’re still here. 

Danny couldn’t ask for a better place to call home. 

“I’ll see you guys soon,” he says, giving a two-finger salute as he tilts back towards the portal.

“We love you, Danny,” Jazz calls after him, before his head hits the rift between dimensions and the rest of him is pulled in after.

He comes out on the other side surrounded by green. Taking a deep breath fills his lungs with ectoplasm, and it takes a second to get used to the sensation again before he’s willing to move. He can already feel the tingly boost of power that being here gives him, and he hopes it’ll be enough. 

He unclips the walkie and floats a bit farther away to face the portal. 

“Hello? Does this thing work?”

There’s no response for a few seconds, and Danny starts to worry that he’ll be completely cut off from them when a burst of static noise breaks through. He can barely understand it beyond someone saying his name and a handful of other random words.

“I’m hearing words but not sentences, guys.”

Another pause, and then the next time he gets a response he can actually hear it. 

“Is it working now?” 

Danny grins. “Hey Tucker. Yeah, I can hear you now.”

There’s a longer pause this time, where he assumes they’re all on the other side cheering about how it actually worked. Danny turns away from the portal, picks a direction with some floating islands in the distance, and starts towards them.

“We need to see if it’ll still work at a distance.”

“Already on it.”

The islands he comes up to first are small territories that he’s already familiar with. The ghosts that live close to the portal are often the crankiest, and even as he clips the walkie to his belt and flies around them he sees a few of them peek out from their houses or dens to glare at him in warning. The old farmer he affectionately calls Steve catches sight of him in the middle of his tilling and promptly throws a rusty shovel at his head. Danny has no problems dodging it, seeing as he’s dodged the same shovel maybe a dozen times before. He gives a friendly wave and continues on his way.

It doesn’t take long to start finding islands he’s never seen before. After all, he hasn’t explored very much of the Ghost Zone, and the stuff he has seen is all only a short flight away from the portal and a few other points scattered here and there, like Skulker’s prison or Aragon’s Kingdom.

Eventually he comes to a tiny island in the middle of nowhere, holding nothing but a single dead oak tree and a tire swing hanging from it. There’s a woman sitting on one of the branches swinging her feet, and she looks friendly enough so Danny drifts closer.

“Hey,” he says, careful not to fly into the bounds of her territory. “You wouldn’t happen to know where I can find a ghost named Plasmius, would you? He’s got red eyes and a cape.”

She hums and tilts her head. Her legs stop swinging, and there’s a decently long pause before she answers. “Why would you be looking for a ghost like him?”

Danny frowns. There’s a lot of ways he could respond to that. Vlad has attacked him multiple times, forcibly outed his identity, threatened his family, put blood blossoms into the hands of the GIW, and was complicit in the containment and dissection of ghosts in their compound. At this point there isn’t much reason not to be looking for him. 

“He challenged my territory, and we have a score to settle,” is what he ultimately goes with. Because nothing gets to ghosts in the Zone more than a challenge for territory, and Danny has to admit that Plasmius’s disregard for his claim on Amity is more than a little infuriating. If he ignores Plasmius’s attempts on his family then that alone might have been enough to get Danny here. 

She considers him for a few moments, before she lifts an arm to point somewhere far off to her left. “His mansion is that way. You’ll see the vultures first.”

He nods and turns in that direction, sending a ‘thank you’ over his shoulder as he goes.

“You’re that ghost from Amity, right? Phantom or something?”

He pauses mid-flight and turns back to look at her. 

“Yeah…” he says hesitantly, “that’s me.”

She hums again. “He’s been looking for you too, y’know. He patrols around here often.” Another contemplative pause. “I’ve never heard of a ghost holding a territory in the Living World as big as yours for so long, and a territory that allows other ghosts and humans, too. You’re a strange one.”

Before he can think of something to say, she kicks her feet and gives him a cheshire grin that’s all sharp fangs and wicked delight. “I hope you win. Good luck, Phantom.”

He blinks, surprised, and then gives his own grin back. He nods, more determined now than he was before, and dives off in the direction she showed him. 

He takes up the walkie again on the way. He should be far enough away from the portal to put it to the test.

“Hey guys, I got some directions on where Plasmius is. He’s definitely in the Ghost Zone and I’m heading over there now.”

It takes a minute for Tucker to respond, and the words are more grainy than they were before but still understandable at least. 

“Well now we know the walkie works in the Ghost Zone.”

There’s a shuffling noise and then it clicks off before turning back on again. This time it isn’t Tucker that speaks but his mom.

“Be careful out there Danny. And please keep us updated.”

She sounds somehow more worried than usual, and the thought makes his gut twist unpleasantly. He promised them that he would come back, and he will, but he hates that his parents are so anxious for him. It must be pretty sucky to not be able to follow him into the Zone, sitting there worried for who knows how long while Danny deals with Plasmius on his own.

If he stops responding then they won’t know what happened to him. They won’t be able to come and back him up. All they can do is wait and listen. If he were in the same position he would call it torture.

“I will. And… can you guys do me a favor?”

Jazz’s voice is the one that answers him, and he winces at just how anxious they must be to have passed the walkie over to her.

“Yeah? What is it, Danny?”

“I want you guys to be prepared for something to come through the portal. I don’t know how this fight is going to go, and if I need to book it then Plasmius or his minions might follow me through. If you can, then be ready for anything.”

There’s a very long bout of silence. Danny flies on, maneuvering through a field of small, empty islands that increase in number the closer he gets to the giant purple storm cloud in the distance. He didn’t know that the Zone could have clouds or weather in it, and he scoffs internally at how melodramatic Vlad always is. Of all the territories he could have taken, of course this is the one he chose.

Sure enough, he sees the first of three vultures circling around the cloud, and he ducks behind the scattered islands to avoid being seen.

Sam’s voice crackles to life on the walkie next.

“We can do that. But you better come back, ghost boy.”

Danny chuckles and takes a moment to curl over the device protectively. 

“Hey, I made a promise, right?” he murmurs, and then hesitates on the next words, taking a deep breath to settle his own nerves. “I just got all of you guys back, and I’m not going to leave again.”

I’ve got a town to protect, an Obsession to chase, and a family to come home to. I will come back.

Tucker had made sure Danny was equipped with plenty of liquid diet before letting him leave, and he finds the pack on his belt to take one now. Eating to gain energy right before a fight is rare for Danny, although it’s common practice for practically every other ghost. But he promised his family he would make it back home, and he’s going to need it if he does confront Vlad in there.

He takes a deep breath, peeks out from behind his rock to watch and wait for the vultures to pass by, and then once the opportunity comes he turns invisible and books it. Even while invisible, other ghosts will be able to sense where he is if he gets close enough, so he makes sure to keep as much distance as he can as he dives headfirst into the swirling cloud and doesn’t look back.

The winds inside are violent and begin to steer him off course, pushing him this way and that until it’s difficult to tell what direction he’s facing, or if he’s still heading towards the center at all. Lightning strikes around him, and Danny winces away from one that gets a little too close for comfort. Trying to go intangible brings no change to his circumstances, which isn’t too strange because Plasmius can also still grab him while he’s intangible. He pushes on.

The storm only gets worse the farther he tries to go into it. Although there’s no rain, the thunder is deafening and the winds are more like a tornado than a regular cloud. Squinting and struggling to push through, Danny finally spies something up ahead. Until he reaches out, fingers brushing the very edge of the new surface, and when he goes intangible again to slip through it, all the tension of the storm snaps and he goes tumbling inside.

Screeching to a halt in the air, Danny blinks and looks around. 

He finds himself in what looks like the study of a very classy mansion. The warm, wooden tones make it seem almost homey, and the vases and other delicate trinkets that look like they would be worth more than his parents’ house make the whole place seem like he just came back to the Living World. It’s all strangely human. 

Danny drifts through to the adjacent rooms, following ancient-looking rugs and the taxidermied heads of creatures that definitely don’t exist anywhere near humans. He finds one that looks like a messed up deer, but its eyes are replaced with rows of teeth. He shivers and tries not to look at it.

Most of the rooms don’t have anything useful in them, just a random assortment of expensive items and decorative junk. He does manage to find a staircase leading to a second floor though, and when he looks up he sees many more floors after that, stretching so far that Danny can’t see the top. How big is this place? Or is it all just a trick?

The further into the mansion he goes, the weirder things get. Orange light turns into green. Vases and paintings float above their pedestals at odd angles. There are no windows anywhere that Danny can see, but in some rooms there are patches of false sunlight as if a window was supposed to be there, and the Ghost Zone doesn’t have a sun, which makes it even weirder. At one point he leaves a room and then passes by it again later, only to see that the entire room has turned upside down and now everything is stuck to the ceiling.

He stares at it as he picks up his walkie again, making sure to whisper in case Vlad is somewhere nearby.

“This mansion is so weird.”

Jack’s voice answers him, crackling and missing a few words. He must be getting close to going out of range. “Wha—oes that mean?”

“None of the rooms make any sense, and it has enough stories that I could explore this place forever. There has to be a trick to it, or a specific room somewhere, but I don’t know how to find it.”

There’s a pause that lasts long enough that Danny starts to worry he really did go out of range, until it crackles again and Tucker chimes in.

“You know Pl—us better tha—nyone. What w— he do?”

Moving away from the upside down room, Danny looks over the edge of the banister to the staircase below and the infinite floors above, thinking. 

If Vlad would go through all the trouble of guarding this place with vulture patrols, a storm so strong that even Danny had trouble with it, and an endless maze of rooms to get lost in on the inside, then this place must be important to him. But is it the entire mansion or just a specific room that he values? If it were a specific room then there has to be some kind of identifier, because Vlad just can’t resist showing off even when he’s trying to hide something. But how would he mark it? How subtle would he try to be?

Danny floats to the center and up, scanning his surroundings for anything that looks a little different. The lights alternate randomly between green and orange, the rooms sometimes floating or upside down and sometimes not. There are all kinds of paintings on the walls, ranging from abstract to something more Victorian, but once he gets high enough there’s another image that catches his eye.

There’s a painting of a woman with red hair that looks suspiciously like his mom, and he squints at it as he gets closer. She’s in a dress instead of the protective suit she usually wears, and her hair is slightly longer, but besides that the similarities are uncanny. Danny cringes and debates with himself for a moment on whether he should destroy it or not, because painting a picture of his mom without her consent and hanging it up in a freaky mansion is incredibly creepy. 

The longer he looks at it, the creepier it seems, until the decision is made and he takes his claws to rip straight through it. Beside it, though, is a door. And as he passes through it he finds himself hoping that there aren’t any other creepy paintings like that one. 

“Found the right room. Thanks Tucker.”

He hears a staticky “No problem” in reply and grins. 

The inside of this room is much larger than the others. There’s a sofa and a lit fireplace, although when Danny gets closer to it he finds that it isn’t producing any heat. There are even more sunlight spots with no windows, but at least the vases aren’t floating and the paintings are normal. That has to count for something.

There are other connected rooms beyond it, and Danny follows them deeper into the mansion. He quickly finds what he’s looking for.

One room has a row of tanks fit for a mad scientist. Each one has some kind of blue liquid in it, and floating in the liquid are creatures. Ghost animals that have been torn apart and stitched back together into strange hybrids, things that Danny has fought before. Vlad has way more than Danny first realized, but luckily most of them seem to still be growing and not big enough to pose a serious threat. He feels bad for them, but if he tries to set them free now then they’re more likely to turn on him than to escape. He’ll have to come back for them later. 

More pressing though is the table in the corner, where a black and red flower sits innocently inside a glass case. 

Found it.

He flies over to it, immediately noting that several of the petals have been plucked. There’s a range of laboratory equipment right beside it, with enough tools and beakers to fill a small chemistry lab. Only a few things are in use, and Danny is quickly drawn to the round glass with a petal floating in… something. There’s another, connected container with a red liquid inside that looks exactly like the serum he’s seen before. All of it looks like trouble.

He takes the walkie in one hand and gathers a blast of ectoplasm in the other.

“I found the blood blossom. I’m gonna destroy it now.”

He hears some kind of affirmative come through, but it’s so distorted he can barely understand it. If he goes much further then he’ll be completely out of range. Hopefully he can get this over with before then.

He raises his hand and backs up, aiming for the table and the flower sitting on it. But right as he’s about to fire, a chill runs up his spine and a cloud of frost slips out between his teeth. 

He whirls to the side, aiming for a new target. Familiar red eyes and a wide smile stare back at him.

“Hello, Daniel.”

Chapter Text

Vlad steps to the side, bringing his hands out from behind his back to bare his claws. He starts to circle around Danny, both of them ready to attack at the slightest provocation.

“I’ve been expecting you, Little Badger. Have you finally healed enough to give me a decent fight?”

Danny snorts and slips the walkie back into his belt, keeping his eyes intently trained on the other ghost. “Tough talk coming from someone who lost the last one.”

Vlad must have been expecting that comeback though, because he doesn’t bat an eye. Instead, he straightens a bit and hums. “But you don’t have your friends with you this time. Without them, you’re easy pickings.”

And Danny is just about to make a retort of his own, but then Vlad is unexpectedly rushing forward to meet him, and he has to bring ectoplasm-charged hands up to block the attack aimed for his face. Claws scrape against his own, and Danny shoves Vlad away to aim a blast for his side. He goes intangible to dodge it, and it burns a hole in the floor but otherwise doesn’t affect the ghost at all. Then Vlad is tangible again and lunging forward, fangs bared with a snake-like hiss. 

Danny ducks underneath him and sees the flower out of the corner of his eye again. That’s the real reason he’s here, so he raises an arm to aim for it, intent on destroying Vlad’s little project before the fight can get too bloody. But then Vlad wraps an arm around his neck and tackles him down, sending the shot too low and hitting the table instead. The equipment is jostled but remains intact, and Danny struggles to get out from underneath the larger ghost trying to pin him.

“Gah! Get off, you overgrown Dracula reject!”

Vlad growls above him, and Danny manages to get enough leverage to push forward and flip both of them. But Vlad doesn’t want to let go, and the two of them go tumbling across the floor in a mess of slashing claws and hissing. 

Danny stretches out his ice, letting it spread across his arms and gather on Vlad’s cape, before he sends a punch that shatters the ice and might have just broken a tooth with the way Vlad’s face crunches under his fist. Vlad hisses, and Danny is able to break away. 

He goes up, throwing more ice and ectoplasm down in an effort to keep Vlad there so he can destroy the flower. But through the cloud of ice steam and smoke, Vlad goes leaping up as well, a clawed hand reaching through. Danny jolts and goes intangible just fast enough for Vlad’s hand to go sailing through him harmlessly. With a short flare of his cape, the air is cleared. Vlad frowns at him, seemingly annoyed. 

“Why won’t you just sit still and let me end you? Hm, Phantom?”

Danny laughs and blocks a kick that still sends him flying a few feet back. When he glances around, he finds that he’s backed against a corner and Vlad has blocked off both the doorway out and the blood blossom. 

“Well I don’t see you volunteering to just keel over and fade away either, Fruit Loop.”

Vlad growls and tries to blast him, but Danny creates a copy of himself and both him and the clone go in opposite directions to avoid it. Last time he used this trick, Vlad was able to tell who the real Danny was instantly, so this time he doesn’t try to hide which one is which. Instead, he dives to attack Vlad directly while the clone makes an attempt to go around and get to the flower. 

Vlad roars as his own attempt to destroy the clone early with an ecto-blast fails when Danny goes crashing into him. He scrambles to pin Vlad’s arms down, putting himself in harm’s way just long enough for his plan to be successful. And in his peripherals he sees the clone reaching for the equipment—

Vlad rips one of his arms free and grabs Danny around the neck. Before Danny can make his own attempt to get free, Vlad growls and throws him directly at his own clone. 

The two versions of him crash and get sent to the floor. The clone disappears back into him, and Danny has just enough time to curse his failed plan before Vlad gets up and launches another attack.

“Don’t worry, I won’t kill you just yet,” Vlad insists, even while he’s in the middle of trying to skewer Danny on his claws like a kebab. “I have big plans for you, and for that blood blossom as well.”

Danny dives out of the way of an ecto-blast, trying and failing to find a way to go for the flower. His only option is to defeat Vlad first, it seems. 

“Too bad you’re never gonna see them happen. Have you ever crunched the numbers on how often your plans fail? Because I have, and it’s not a very flattering number.”

But no matter how slippery Danny can be, Vlad eventually lands a hit and grabs him. Once again, intangibility doesn’t work when Vlad is expecting it, and he isn’t able to get his wrist free before Vlad is throwing him into the floor so hard that the floor cracks around him. He wheezes, and Vlad hovers over him with a mocking grin.

“You can’t win, Phantom. This is my haunt.”

Right. They’re in the Ghost Zone, which already gives ghosts a boost in power from the sheer density of ectoplasm all around them, but they’re also in Vlad’s territory, which means his core and instincts are going to push him to fight twice as hard to defend it. It puts Danny at a disadvantage, and it’s probably why Vlad doesn’t seem as peeved about Danny invading his haunt as he should be. 

But there’s another interesting thing that Danny notices about this fight. For possibly the first time ever, Vlad is treating him like a real opponent. Calling him Phantom instead of Little Badger, and not attacking quickly and ruthlessly like he always does. He’s more considering this time, almost cautious. He knows that Danny has the power to defeat him and to destroy his plans, so he isn’t rushing in this time. 

Emboldened, Danny rolls out of the small dent in the floor and stands up to face him. Vlad is watching him, arms crossed and a default scowl on his face. The fact that he doesn’t immediately attack again is proof enough of Danny’s train of thought, and he smiles. Finally, a real fight.

Taking advantage of all the energy he stored up for this fight, Danny creates two new clones and a big ice spike from the floor. Vlad’s eyes widen minutely, and as he dodges the ice he’s swarmed by the clones next. Meanwhile, Danny takes a deep breath, aiming for the lab equipment not far away. 

“No!” Vlad shouts, growling as the clones grab onto his cape and try to drag him back. He catches one of them, disappearing in a pop of ectoplasm beneath his claws, but the other one is fast enough to dodge and continue the assault. 

And Danny has just enough time to scream. 

The ghostly wail shatters the container holding the blood blossom and the serum beside it, spilling red liquid across the floor. The lights flicker and his ice falls apart. 

He’s only trying to get rid of the serum, but Danny doesn’t account for just how strong even a small burst of his wail is, because not only does it destroy the equipment, it also destroys one of the large containers housing whatever monstrosities Vlad has cooked up there. And then another one shatters, and another. Even when the wail stops, it’s like a chain reaction that just keeps going until the floor is drowning in a mysterious blue liquid and glass crunches under the paws of dozens of beasts as they start to wake up. 

Oh boy, he thinks with a deepening sense of dread. This is not going to be fun.

His loss of concentration makes the clone disappear, and the next thing he knows Vlad is slamming into him with a furious growl. He scrambles against the stronger ghost as his back hits a wall, kicking out but getting nowhere. Vlad doesn’t have anything to lose now, and the difference in power from just a minute ago is staggering. 

“Foolish child,” he hisses in Danny’s ear. The sounds of other creatures dragging themselves upright and howling in indignation join him, and green eyes flick to the side to see the red gazes of all kinds of predators beginning to focus on him. 

“You don’t know what you’ve done!”

He’s about to make a quip, maybe something about how his impression of Frankenstein could use some work, but then Vlad grabs him by the scruff and drags him towards a container he didn’t notice before. This one is stronger, made mostly of metal with an unbroken window looking in. It was hidden behind some of the other containers until now, and Vlad looks like he’s about to shove Danny inside of it.

He struggles, using ice and claws and whatever he can pull up to the surface to get away as Vlad reaches for and opens the door. He barely bats an eye at any of Danny’s abilities, easily countering them with his own or easily ignoring the much smaller claws that are barely able to land a scratch on him. 

Vlad throws him inside and slams the door shut, glaring from the other side of the window as Danny bangs against the confines of the new space. He tries to go intangible, but whatever the container is made of has the same negating properties that the GIW uses, and nothing works. 

A sense of claustrophobia starts to set in, and Danny is still banging around and using his ice and clawing at the glass when Vlad turns his attention to something else. 

“Let me out! You’re gonna regret this!” he tries to shout, but he’s not even sure if Vlad can hear him at all, and the bluff is obvious even to his own ears. He has no power in here and they both know it. 

He inhales and opens his mouth for another wail, ignoring the risks of using it in a confined space at close range. But just as he’s about to let it out, his voice is stolen from him along with his hearing. Everything goes eerily silent, and he grips his throat with wide eyes when he realizes he can’t hear his own voice, or anything else. His mouth and tongue still move like he’s making words, but no sound comes out. He can see Vlad grinning, and he presses himself against the opposite wall in horror.

Whatever this thing is, Vlad must have made it specifically for him. This was planned. He knew that Danny would come for him and he was counting on it, not just for a rematch but for this. Whatever Vlad is planning on doing with him, it isn’t about revealing his identity anymore. This is something else, and that realization has an old brand of terror rising up in him again.

He had to deal with his parents hunting him down, talking about him like an animal or an object instead of a person. He’s had to deal with the GIW for a year now, has seen the devastation they’ve caused with his own eyes. He knows what it looks like when someone wants to pull him apart and examine his insides, and that’s the same exact look he sees on Plasmius now.

When he said he had big plans for Danny, he had no idea that this is what Vlad meant. 

Vlad starts talking, maybe talking to himself or maybe assuming that Danny can still hear his monologuing. Danny starts bashing against the door, hoping that maybe if he hits the same spot over and over again then he can weaken the structure enough to at least release the pressure keeping him silent. He tries ice as well, spreading it throughout the inner walls and trying to reach it out so he can attack Vlad or protect himself or something. But Vlad must have accounted for that too, because the ice never makes it out and Danny is still stuck there, almost completely defenseless. 

A button must be pushed at some point, because suddenly his ice begins to melt and that same blue liquid from the other containers begins to fill up inside. He floats up away from it, tries to freeze it to no avail, and although no sound comes out he still twists his face into a snarl in Vlad’s direction. 

Eventually he gives up on breaking out. Nothing is working and he can’t do anything but curl up with his tail at the top and watch his fate get closer. It rises high enough to touch him, and he hisses and jolts at the numb, tingly sensation it leaves behind. 

Vlad may not be trying to kill him, but this is almost worse. And he realizes abruptly that he’s not going to be able to make it back home as the liquid reaches his chest and then swallows him entirely. 

He tries to hold his breath as the numbness spreads across his body, but once he runs out of air the liquid rushes into his lungs and makes him lose feeling in his insides as well. He’s able to breathe just like he can breathe in ectoplasm, but he’s starting to sink to the bottom of the container and his eyes are closing and he can still see Vlad grinning at him—

I’m sorry I have to break my promise. I won’t be coming back.

Just as quickly as he’s submerged and his vision goes dark, he’s ripped right back out of that numbness when everything suddenly jerks to the side. He can’t hear a thing, but he can feel the BOOM! that shakes the foundation of the room and tears the door clean off its hinges. 

Sound and consciousness returns to him all at once as the liquid spills him onto the floor, mangled pieces of metal hitting the ground around him. He coughs and rises onto his elbows, soaking wet and confused as he looks up to see what’s happening.

A huge green mass swims into focus, a very angry Vlad and a dozen or so hybrids struggling against it. Vlad has been pinned, large teeth trying to close around him as the ghost does his best to pry the jaws open and get away, hands bleeding ectoplasm and inches away from getting eaten. A deep snarl echoes through the room, and when the huge form shakes its head, Danny lurches upright when he sees exactly who it is.

“Cujo?!”

The snarling is soon joined by many smaller variations, and Danny forms his tail into legs and gets up to stumble back from the pack of smallish hybrids surrounding him. The numbness is going away quickly but not quickly enough, and seeing Cujo here has disoriented him more than he’d like to admit. He counts eight creatures in front of him, with more starting to turn away from Cujo’s enlarged form and towards his own weaker, more vulnerable one instead, and he knows he won’t be able to fight off so many by himself. 

A mixture between a cat and a bird hisses and lunges at him, taloned feet slashing across his arm when he brings it up to block. An abnormally large rat with the head of a bear latches onto his leg, and Danny starts to panic when the rest start to converge—

A howl echoes out through the room, and Danny feels an immense surge of relief when Wulf comes charging through a portal. He crashes into the pack, jaws snapping and claws slashing as he rips the animals away from Danny and sets himself between him and them with a growl. Some of the animals cower in submission and fear while others rise up to the challenge, snarling right back. Danny ignores his relatively shallow wounds and moves to help, ectoplasm and ice gathering at his hands, but Wulf holds out an arm to stop him. 

He gives Danny a meaningful look over his shoulder, hiding his teeth only long enough to speak evenly.

“Kuru!” he tells Danny, kicking a dog-rabbit-deer aside when it gets too close.

Danny balks. “No! I’m not leaving you guys here to fight by yourselves!”

Cujo snarls and whips his head to the side, throwing Vlad against a wall closer to the two of them with a crash. Vlad growls and picks himself up, distracted from his opponent when he catches sight of Danny again. He looks furious. 

“Get back here, Daniel!”

Wulf growls and gets between them, blocking a punch with fire put behind it with obvious strain.

“Iru!” Wulf shouts, more insistent as he starts to bow under the pressure from Vlad.

Panicked, Danny looks between where Cujo is smashing his way through as many animals as possible, snarling and enraged and clearly still drifting on all the emotions his Death Day entails, and where Wulf is struggling to defend him. Both of them are putting Danny before themselves, but Danny is supposed to be the protector here! He’s the one who started this fight and he’s the one who needs to end it. The instincts given to him when he died demand it, and fleeing now would be seen as cowardly and a beacon to any other ghost around that his haunt—that Amity Park is being defended by a weak ghost and the territory is up for grabs. 

But Wulf is right. If he keeps fighting here then he’s going to lose, and who knows what Vlad is planning on doing with him or his family or his town when that happens. He did what he came here to do. He destroyed the blood blossom and at least everyone will be safe from that. Now he needs to get out of here before he runs out of chances to try.

“Iru,” Wulf says again, shakier this time as Vlad bears down on him with all his strength and anger, and Danny doesn’t need any more prompting before he turns tail and runs. 

Vlad shouts, furious as Wulf shoves him back away from Danny’s retreating form. He tries not to look back as he flies as fast as he can out of the room and through a wall, into the still raging storm beyond. Some of the hybrids make it past his allies, and they snap at his heels as they all struggle against the current. 

As soon as he breaks free of the storm clouds, there’s a loud squawk as the patrolling vultures spot him and dive down. He doesn’t stop and he doesn’t look back, narrowly dodging talons and teeth as he heads straight for the portal he came in from. 

He reaches for the walkie, intent on warning his family of the incoming danger so they might be more prepared, but his hand closes around nothing but air. He gasps and scrambles to find it, forced to stop when he almost gets speared in the back for his brief distraction. Cursing, he realizes he must have dropped it somewhere back at the mansion. He just hopes his parents still have a decently fast reaction time because they won’t be getting a warning. But hey, at least he gets to come back like he promised, right? If he dies today then at least it’ll be in the Living World!

He zooms by the old farmer and all the other grouchy ghosts as he dives headfirst into the portal. The change from Ghost Zone to his parent’s basement is abrupt and mildly disorienting. Ectoplasm giving way to open air changes the momentum of his flight, and as his family yelps and ducks down, he twists around and crashes back-first against the wall by the stairs, gasping and tense. 

“Sorry!” he yells out, hands quickly coming up with ectoplasm waiting to blast the first thing that comes through that portal, barely having enough time to even look at everyone else while he readies himself. “I brought guests!”

His mom and dad’s faces harden in resolution and a matching pair of ecto-guns direct themselves at the portal, with Jazz following suit not long after, although it looks like she really wants to say something. Sam and Tucker veer away for cover just before the snapping jaws of a wolf with the head and tail of a piranha comes rushing out, flanked by four other hybrids and three vultures. 

“Can you close the portal?!” Danny yells to either one of his parents as he socks the fish-dog in the jaw and freezes two more before they can lunge for him next. 

“That would take some time!” his dad shouts over the sound of him blasting creatures at random, him and Mom locking their backs together so neither of them can be surrounded. “Why does it need to be closed?!”

He stops another hybrid from lunging for Jazz and is about to give a brief explanation of what exactly is hunting him down on the other side of that portal, but then a chill goes up his spine and a small puff of frost leaves his mouth. Dread pools in his stomach when he realizes that he’s already too late, and he whirls around to stare wide-eyed at the new figure coming through.

Vlad’s grin is all malicious intent and sharpened teeth, not a hint of any actual joy on his face as he strolls through the portal with a kind of saunter that Danny can only describe as confident and predatory.

Oh he is so screwed. 

More ghost hybrids rush into the room, quickly surrounding Danny and his family, all of them scrambling to defend themselves against the onslaught. 

“I was trying to go easy on you, Daniel,” Vlad hisses, stalking forward. The ruined hairdo and partially shredded cape only makes him look twice as menacing. 

“But now you’ve made it personal. By the end of today, Amity Park will be mine!”