Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Vlad took a deep breath to calm his fraying nerves. He could do this. He would do this. Because she had to feel it too, right? That intangible flicker of something between them, the subtle hint at the possibility of more…Maddie had to feel it too. He wasn’t crazy. They had a connection. Or the chance at one, anyway. Vlad had spent too many nights awake, replaying their every conversation until he was eventually lulled to sleep by the memory of her smile. It was time. Today was the day he asked Maddie out for dinner.

“Jack, did you forget to account for the potential heat output? These figures seem off…” Maddie pointed out distractedly. Pulling a pen from behind her ear, the love of Vlad’s life began dutifully correcting Jack’s mistakes. Again. Vlad stamped down on the annoyance that threatened to flare up. It wasn’t Jack’s fault that he was an idiot. If it wasn’t for Jack’s unwavering faith and abundant enthusiasm, Vlad wasn’t sure they could have made it as far as they had with the portal prototype. Jack, for all his bumbling, was a valued member of the team. Sure, Vlad and Maddie could have made exponentially more progress without him. But without Jack, would they have wanted to?

“Sorry Maddie,” Jack bellowed as he tinkered with the supports on the portal. “I musta gotten too excited. You know how I get when I start thinkin about ghosts.”

“I know Jack, but this is really important. There’s already so many variables and if we aren’t careful-”

“It’ll be fine,” Jack declared, waving his wrench around emphatically. “You and V-Man are the smartest people I know. If you guys can’t break into the ghostly dimension, then nobody can. I’ve got the legs reinforced and the cart is welded to the floor. Don’t tell maintenance about that part, they still haven’t forgiven me for the incident on the third floor-”

“That’s because you tried to remount all the door hinges on the bottom of the doors!” Vlad interrupted with a laugh.

“It just seemed more efficient that way,” Jack grumbled. Vlad caught Maddie’s eye over the top of the papers she was correcting, and they shared a secret little smile. She definitely felt it too, Vlad was certain. “When’s this puppy going to be ready for a test run?”

“Let me see,” Maddie muttered as she shuffled through the papers one more time, “We still have a few last-minute calculations, but everything should be ready to go by… tomorrow afternoon.”

Jack let out a whoop of joy and before Vlad could protest, the larger man had grabbed him and was twirling him around the room in glee. “Jack! What have I told you about grabbing me!” Vlad yelled, equal parts irritated and amused.

“Sorry V-man, next time I’ll-woops!” Jack knocked into a tray of ecto samples. Dropping Vlad unceremoniously onto the ground, Jack dove for the emergency shower in the corner of the room. Having no desire to see his best friend strip nude (he saw more than he wanted to in their dorm anyway), Vlad scrambled out of the room. He was pleased to note that Maddie immediately followed him. This was his chance.

Slamming the lab door shut behind them, Vlad collapsed against the wall. “So, I guess we’re done for today,” he said in what he hoped was a casual tone.

“Looks like it,” Maddie agreed with a chuckle. “Leave it to Jack, right? If there’s a mess to be made, he’ll be in the middle of it.”

“Try living with him,” Vlad sighed. Their room was an unholy pit of empty pizza boxes, dirty laundry, lab samples, and a glowing purple liquid that Vlad had decided not to examine too closely.

“It’s like he’s only comfortable when he’s in the middle of a vortex of chaos,” Maddie mused, staring at the door fondly.

“Something like that,” Vlad muttered nervously. He could do this. “Maddie, I wanted to ask you something.”

“Sure Vlad, what’s on your mind?”

“Would you like to have dinner with me?” he asked as calmly as he was able. Vlad was proud that he didn’t stammer, considering how fast his heart was racing.

Maddie tilted her head sideways in confusion. She was the most beautiful, intelligent woman that Vlad had ever met, and every little gesture just left him more smitten. “We go to dinner every night after we’re done in the lab,” she pointed out sweetly.

“I meant just you and me,” he clarified quickly, “No Jack. Just you and me. Like a date?”

“OH!” Maddie exclaimed, eyes wide. “Oh. Um, thank you Vlad, that’s very flattering but…”

Bile rose in his throat as a wave of nausea crashed through him. Maddie wasn’t interested. This was just another case of Vlad obsessing over subtext that didn’t actually exist. Normal people didn’t dissect every social interaction alone in their rooms at night, searching for connections and meanings that obviously weren’t there. “I’m sorry Maddie I thought-”

“It’s not that I wouldn’t be interested!” Maddie interrupted. Her face was flushed red in embarrassment and Vlad almost felt sorry for her. Almost. Her embarrassment was nothing in comparison with his utter mortification. “It’s just that I never thought about it. I mean, you’ve got a Soul Mark, and I don’t. It wouldn’t have been right to even consider it since you’re meant for someone else.”

Vlad scowled. Most of the time, he could pointedly ignore the pale grey pinprick on the top of his right arm. An Indeterminate Soul Mark: the sign that the universe was still considering whether or not Vlad deserved to have a Soulmate. The fact that Maddie believed in such nonsense was both disappointing and unsurprising; between her love of the supernatural and her innate goodness, how could she not?

“It’s just an Indeterminate Mark,” he muttered, shifting so his Marked arm was away from Maddie. “Nothing is ever going to come of it.”

“Vlad how can you say that?” Maddie demanded, utterly scandalized. “There are so many reasons why your Mark isn’t Determinate yet. They could still be a minor, or the circumstances aren’t set yet, or—"

“Or they aren’t even born yet, yes, I know. I’m aware of all the contingencies surrounding a Soul Mark, Maddie,” Vlad snapped. “Can you blame me for wanting something, someone a little more tangible than the promise that maybe someday someone might love me?”

Maddie was already vigorously shaking her head. “Vlad your Mark is a gift,” she insisted. “Ever since I saw it, I’ve been a little jealous. You’re part of the twelve percent of the population that has an actual Soulmate! When you find that person who understands you better than anyone else-”

“I thought I already had,” Vlad interrupted, then immediately wished he could take the words back. Maddie’s pitiful look was mortifying.

“No. I’m sorry Vlad, but even if I did feel the same, I wouldn’t be able to accept your invitation. I believe in Soulmates, even if you don’t. You’ll thank me for this, someday.”

Before Vlad could formulate a response, Jack opened the laboratory door and poked his dripping wet head out. “Why aren’t there emergency towels to go with the emergency shower?”

Neither Vlad nor Maddie had an answer for that uncharacteristically insightful question, but it was enough to break through the uncomfortable tension that Vlad had brought upon himself. Jack’s good-natured bumbling was preferable to Vlad’s continued humiliation. As the two of them searched for something to dry Jack off with, Maddie offered Vlad another pitying smile. Vlad tried to smile back, but he was pretty sure it came across as a grimace.

This was all his Soulmate’s fault, wherever they were.

Vlad couldn’t see anything. His face felt like someone had peeled it down layer by layer and then set the exposed nerves on fire. The agony was quickly spreading down from his face to his neck and upper chest. Breathing was becoming more and more difficult. Vlad almost felt like there was a mist filling his lungs, preventing air from getting in. Dying young had never been the plan, but even if it had been, this was not the way that Vlad Masters wanted to die.

When the pain reached the lower part of his abdomen, Vlad finally passed out.

For a while, Vlad floated in and out of consciousness. Voices he didn’t recognize drifted in and out of his awareness. The sharp agony faded into a dull pain eventually; Vlad had no way to mark the passage of time. He slept like the dead for what could have been centuries for all he knew.

At one point, light filtered into his world of darkness. Steeling himself, Vlad cracked an eye open. It hurt, but not with the same white-out pain as before. As his vision came back into focus Vlad could see the sterile white room he was in. A hospital room. Given the amount of pain he had been in, Vlad almost thought he’d be waking up in a morgue.

A nurse in light blue scrubs appeared at the foot of his bed. “Mr. Masters, can you hear me?” she asked.

“Yes,” he rasped, or tried to. The nurse hurried around the bed and brought a straw up to his lips. Vlad sucked the water down eagerly. A little too eager, in fact, as he went into a coughing fit. A plume of red smoke floated from his mouth and dissipated with every cough. Vlad choked again, eyes wide in shock. What was going on?

“Mr. Masters, there was a lab accident three months ago. You’ve been in critical care ever since. Do you remember anything?” the nurse asked bluntly as she placed the cup back on the bedside table.

Vlad was reeling. Three months? He had been incapacitated for three whole months? “Jack had turned the portal on without doing a final check of the calculations,” Vlad managed to force out haltingly. “What happened to me?”

“The doctor will be in soon to discuss the unique nature of your predicament, Mr. Masters. Now that you’re awake, I’m here to help you fill out some forms. The university was kind enough to send over copies of your medical records and insurance card but there are a few things we need for you to clarify, if you’re feeling up to it.”

“Maddie and Jack couldn’t have done this already?”

The nurse stared at him vacantly. “Mr. Masters, you’ve not had any visitors. We’ve been working on the information given to us by student health services. Are Maddie and Jack your emergency contacts?”

Vlad could feel anger bubbling up inside him like hot tar. He had been unconscious for three whole months, and his so-called friends had just left him there to rot. How could they? “No,” he answered curtly.

“What about your Soulmate? Would you like them to be contacted in the event something should-”

“I don’t have a Soulmate,” Vlad interrupted as forcefully as he could manage while lying helpless in a hospital gown.

“Not yet,” the nurse agreed calmly, “But your Mark is Determinate and if your Soulmate comes of age while you’re still in our care then legally we can-”

Rolling his head to the side, Vlad stared down in shock at his right arm. Amongst the angry red welts and blisters was a single dot, larger than it had been but still no bigger than a freckle. It was pure black. A Determinate Soul Mark. Vlad ignored the nurse who had started droning on and on about the legal rights of Soulmates. One of the devices he was connected to began beeping. Vlad could hear and watch his blood pressure rise as he realized the truth of his situation.

Vlad’s life was over. They had abandoned him! Jack turned on the portal too soon, this was his fault, and they couldn’t even be bothered to check on him! Maddie had rejected his love, and worse, she had been right. Something happened in the last three months that caused his Mark to become Determinate. Vlad had a Soulmate floating around in the universe, and they were just as much to blame as Jack and Maddie. Somehow, someday, Vlad would make them all pay for this.

Chapter Text

24 years later…

Life as Danny knew it was pretty much over. Sure, he had thought the end had come a few years ago when he developed ghost powers, but that had arguably worked out pretty well. After nearly four years, Danny was totally getting the hang of his powers. Everything was smooth on that front. In fact, Danny had been putting so much time and effort into his ghostly double life that he had completely forgotten about his old favorite topic to stress about: the Determinate Soul Mark on his left arm.

Until his life had been unwillingly swallowed up by his parents’ weird hobby, Danny had stressed constantly about his Mark and inevitable Soulmate. His mother had made it clear to him early on just how lucky Danny had been to be born with a Determinate Soul Mark. “Not everyone gets to have your certainty about it, Danny,” she would scold him whenever he would start to complain. Danny didn’t want certainty. He didn’t want to be part of that special twelve percent of the population. He absolutely didn’t want some random person suddenly falling into his life and feeling entitled to all his innermost thoughts and emotions. For one, the entire thing sounded horribly violating for everyone involved. And two, Danny was absolutely certain that whoever got stuck with him was going to be horribly disappointed.

But now, after years of successfully not thinking about it, Danny’s mom had reminded him in the middle of breakfast. “Less than a week until you turn eighteen, Danny! Are you excited?” she asked.

“Sure, voting sounds great,” he replied sarcastically while buttering his waffles. As far as Danny was concerned, the most important day in his life had already come and gone when he was fourteen. Most people would be depressed about peaking so early in life, but Danny found it comforting in a “things can’t really get worse now” kind of way. Being half dead really put things like that into perspective.

“No interest in cigarettes, gambling, and disreputable magazines?” Jazz teased, deigning to glance up from behind the morning paper.

“I mean, if I just happen to have the opportunity…”

“Oh no you don’t young man,” his mother interjected firmly. “You’ll be spending your 18^th birthday at the courthouse registering your Mark.”

“My what?” Danny asked through a mouthful of waffles, syrup dripping down his chin.

“Your Determinate Soul Mark? Honestly Danny how could you forget something so important?”

Danny choked on his waffles. How could he have possibly forgotten about his Soul Mark?

For four years he had had better things to stress about than a stupid black dot on his arm that would blossom into a glorious symbol meant to guide him to his perfect partner or whatever the stupid pamphlets said. Danny didn’t want a Replete Mark taking up half his arm. Hiding the Indeterminate Mark wasn’t hard. By high school, nobody cared about Marks unless something dramatic happened liked a student and teacher being Soulmates.

Hiding a Replete Mark could almost be impossible. They could take any shape; sometimes they had words, some were images, and some were just blobs. They could be as tiny as the dot of a determinate Mark or take up the entirety of a person’s forearm.

In some states, it was actually illegal to cover or hide a Soul Mark, regardless of its stage. Most states required the registration of Replete Marks in a registry. Danny’s mom had, of course, always wanted him to register the mark, but thankfully they didn’t live in a place that required it. If the universe really wanted Danny to find his soulmate then it would have to drag them together kicking and screaming.

A week later, Danny had moved on from the angry denial stage to the full-blown panic stage. His birthday was in less than twelve hours. Twelve hours. Half a day. Danny had less than half a day as a free man. No, boy. A free boy. He would never be a free man because once he turned eighteen his own arm would turn against him and snatch his freedom away before he even got to enjoy it. And at the same exact moment when Danny’s Mark became Replete, his Soulmate’s would too. Some unsuspecting stranger was about to have their freedom ripped away, too.

“Danny, you need to calm down,” Sam whisper-hissed across the cafeteria table.

“I am calm!” he hissed back. Danny was calm. Mostly. Sure, his hands had a tremor, and his left leg wouldn’t stop bouncing and the idea of eating the cafeteria lunch was more nauseating than usual, but that was an improvement over how he had been that morning.

Rolling her eyes, Sam shoved Danny’s unopened soda closer to him. “Drink that, maybe it’ll help you stop shaking.”

“I’ve never understood what the big deal was,” Tucker admitted as he picked some cold fries off of Danny’s untouched plate. “So, you’ve got a soulmate. Big deal. It doesn’t mean your life is automatically ruined by being bound to another person for all eternity. I mean, that’s kinda dramatic even for you, dude.”

“Are you even listening to yourself? Of course it does!” Danny snapped as he popped the tab on his soda. Taking a few sips didn’t really do anything for Danny’s shattered nerves but at least it gave his hands something to do. “Wait, why am I even listening to you?”

“You’ve made us read every single pamphlet, handout, and book about your stupid obsession, remember? Remember when you had to take that class at the rec center in middle school, ‘Your Mark and You’? We listened to your paranoid ranting for weeks after without complaint.”

“Without complaint?” Danny retorted, fiddling with the pull-tab on the can. “You told me that if I didn’t stop talking about it you’d – wait a minute, what do you mean paranoid?”

Sam and Tucker exchanged a look. It was the ‘how do we explain to Danny that he’s crazy’ look. Danny hated that look. He wasn’t crazy or paranoid or any of the other names they called him when they thought he wasn’t paying attention. Danny’s concerns were legitimate, and he deserved to have his fears respected. Part of his soul literally lived in the body of a person he had never met. Who would want that? Who would choose that for themselves?

“People find their soulmates every day, Danny,” Sam began slowly. Great, this was the part where they tried to placate him with statistics. “It’s just a thing that happens. You’re born, you die, and sometimes if you’re really lucky, in between those two absolutes is someone who, with a little effort, can understand you like no one else ever will. You know there’s no stopping a Determinate Mark so maybe, just this once, you could just…stop fighting it?”

“Besides,” Tucker cut in, “You could be the older partner, and nothing happens until they turn eighteen. You could be panicking for nothing.”

“I’m not,” Danny sighed, then froze. How did he know that? It was like as soon as Tucker had mentioned it, Danny had instinctively known that he was wrong. Some people could get a sense of their soulmate before the Mark revealed itself, but it took meditation and dedication and a positive outlook that Danny lacked and had no interest in cultivating. “I’m the younger soul,” Danny said slowly, furrowing his brows in concentration.

“Whatever dude,” Sam sighed, completely oblivious to Danny’s uncomfortable epiphany. “Just wait it out a few more hours and then it’ll all be over.”

A few hours later it was most certainly not over. In fact, it had yet to begin. Danny sat alone in his room. The door was locked to keep his well-meaning family from barging in on him. His mom in particular could barely contain her excitement. She had already knocked on the door three times and it wasn’t even midnight yet. Danny was determined to keep the stupid Mark hidden until absolutely necessary and if that meant behaving like he was doing what teenage boys do alone in their bedrooms at night then so be it.

At this point, Danny felt that being caught masturbating would be less mortifying than letting his family see the Replete Mark.

It wasn’t even Danny’s soul on display! Some poor stranger out there in the world was about to have their night interrupted by Danny’s soul bursting out of their arm. The entire thing was invasive and mortifying. But Sam was right: it happened to people everyday and no one paid it as much obsessive attention as Danny had. It was a commonly accepted phenomenon. There were people out there who thought this was normal, or worse, who envied Marked people like Danny.

Danny checked the countdown timer on his phone that Tucker had set up for him. Twenty seconds to go. Danny felt numb. This was it. The time had come. Nearly two decades of panic and now that the moment had arrived, Danny couldn’t even muster up a little anxiety.

Eight seconds. Danny stared down at his left arm. He had to watch it, had to see the shape that would ruin his life as it unfurled.

Three, two, one…

A blinding light filled the room.

Vlad glared at the crackling fireplace. He had been in a foul mood for days with no discernable cause. The businesses were doing well, his experiments were producing results, and the Ghost Zone was calm. Vlad himself had never felt better, although he rarely felt ill. One of the many perks of ghost powers was physical fitness and immunity to human disease. A subtle power, but invaluable for a man of his habits.

Even a glass of wine and a decent book had failed to ameliorate his stormy disposition. Vlad had no issue with being moody; he tended to swing between volatile extremes with nary a concern. But every mood had a definite cause to which he could lay blame. This strange mixture of anger and anxiety had Vlad’s head buzzing.

Glancing at the clock, Vlad sighed. Midnight. He had a meeting in a few hours with the investors for his latest invention out of Axiom. It was time to put down the book he had been pretending to read and head upstairs so he could pretend to sleep. Maybe if he took a triple dose of aspirin, it would alleviate the tension climbing up his neck.

As Vlad lifted his wine glass to drain the remainder of its contents, a strange buzzing, almost electrical sensation ran up right arm. He placed the glass on the arm of the chair he had just vacated. Another buzz followed immediately after the first, this time trailing in a loop from fingertip to elbow. Puzzled, Vlad began rolling up his sleeve.

Vlad stumbled back, falling into his chair and knocking the glass to the floor. Vlad paid it no mind as he watched, completely transfixed, as the single black dot on his arm began to stretch. And glow. A blinding, ghostly green light filled the room as Vlad’s Mark became Replete. A sensation like cold sparks raced up and down his arm. It was entrancing and horrifying at the same time.

The Mark stopped growing after only. It had consumed his entire hand and forearm, only ending just below his elbow. The line between pale skin and shimmering light wasn’t static; it seemed to have a pulse of its own.

It was unlike anything Vlad had seen or read. Replete Soul Marks were solid black and depicted a single image or concept. The Mark was a barred portion of the partner’s soul. The image itself didn’t matter; apparently a person would know, on a metaphysical level, that they were looking at their own soul. That was why, the experts said, Marks were monochrome and often relatively plain.

Marks were not supposed to glow green. Marks were not supposed to move after their initial formation. And they certainly were not supposed to engulf the entire limb.

Vlad made a mental note to cancel his morning meeting as he headed down to the lab. For the first time in his life, Vlad’s Soulmate had his undivided attention.

Of all the worst-case scenarios that Danny had imagined over the years when he thought about what his Replete Soul Mark would look like, none of his speculations had come close to the horror show that was currently taking up half of his arm. Even in the midst of his most paranoid spiraling, Danny could never have predicted that his Mark would glow. Soul Marks weren’t supposed to glow. Or be warm. Or keep moving and shifting after they had already formed. And it was in color! Shades of magenta swirled across his skin in a way that reminded him of the sky in parts of the Ghost Zone.

Something had gone terribly, horribly wrong. That was the only explanation. Nothing, in any class he had ever taken or book he had read, ever mentioned a Mark like this. Of course Danny had managed to screw up something as simple and mundane as getting his Soul Mark. That’s just how his life seemed to work. Social outcast, freaky ghost powers, now a busted Soul Mark. Just another day in the life of Danny Fenton.

As soon as he finished panicking, Danny was going to call Sam and Tucker and explain to them in exquisite detail just how wrong they had been. It was going to be the most satisfying I-told-you-so conversation in the history of the universe. Once he had his breathing under control and his limbs didn’t feel as useless as jelly, he was going to give them a piece of his mind.

There was a tapping at his door. There might have been a tapping at his door for the last several minutes, but Danny was too absorbed in his own panic to know for sure. “Danny?” his mom asked through the door. She didn’t sound concerned at his lack of answer; she was still so excited about the whole thing that Danny wanted to hurl. “Is it done? Can we see?”

“NO!” Danny yelped, diving for the rattling doorknob to make sure it was still locked. No one could see his Mark. EVER. “I mean-yeah, it’s done, but you can’t see it.”

There was a pause. The doorknob stopped jostling. “Danny?” she asked again, more cautiously this time. That was not what he had intended at all. “Are you alright? Is there something wrong with the Mark?”

So many things were wrong with the Mark that Danny had to choke back a hysterical giggle. Danny had to get his mom to leave without pressing the issue. If she saw the Mark, she’d want to run tests, and if she ran tests then she would inevitably discover his other secret. Luckily, Danny had become a master of good, old-fashioned lying. “It’s just, I hadn’t really realized what it meant to have someone else’s soul living in my skin,” he hedged, wiping his sweaty palms on his jeans. The Marked left hand felt significantly warmer than his right hand. “I just don’t think anyone should see it without their permission. Like, it doesn’t belong to me. It’s not really my Mark, you know?”

Silence. Danny held his breath, hoping with every fiber of his being that his mom would be willing to swallow just one more lie.

“Oh Danny,” she choked out with a sob. Great, now he had made his mother cry. Best birthday ever. “That’s the most considerate, compassionate thing I have ever heard.”

It was actually one of the most selfish things that Danny had done in recent memory, but contradicting his mom would have been counterproductive. Danny knew just how invested his mom was in the concept of soul mates; lying to her about this felt even worse than his usual lies. “Yeah, it’s just…not how I expected it to be.” That was perhaps the most truthful understatement of his life.

“I’m heading to bed now, sweetheart. We can talk more about it in the morning, if you’d like. Happy birthday!”

“Thanks mom,” he replied, sagging against the door and sliding to the floor. His mother’s muffled footsteps on the carpet down the hall soon faded, and Danny was left alone once again with his Mark.

Danny took a few more moments to sit on the floor and wallow in misery. Eventually, he checked his phone. It was nearly one in the morning. Danny groaned as he pushed off the floor, using the doorknob to keep his balance against the pins-and-needles feeling in his legs.

He needed to make a plan. The strange Mark was arguably only the second worst thing to ever happen to him, and at least this time Danny had been expecting it. Not the specific details, but he had always known that his Mark would ruin his life.

The first thing he had to do was cover the stupid thing up. There was no way he was going to be able to walk through his own kitchen with the Mark glowing like that, let alone make it through a day at school. That was easy enough to do; the government center offered sleeves to cover Replete Marks for a variety of reasons. Normally people used them for religious reasons or to protect their partner for legal reasons and stuff. Occasionally, Marks formed that looked obscene or had profanity in them and therefore needed to be covered up. Covering up was rare, but it was a legitimate option, at least in the state that Danny lived in.

Next, he had to call Sam and Tucker. Gloating was a secondary objective; he needed their help running some tests on his Mark. Danny was starting to think, now that the initial panic was subsiding, that being half ghost had fucked up his partner’s soul in some way. That was the only explanation he could think of for why his arm was lit up like the Ghost Zone sunset.

He wondered how his soul had manifested on his partner’s arm and if it was just as freakish as what was happening to Danny’s arm. Whoever his soulmate was had probably just gotten the shock of their life, all because Danny was a little more dead inside than the average teenager.

The Mark not only looked strange, it was having a strange effect on Vlad’s physiology. Vlad had spent hours running test after test and going through every book he could find. The only definitive data was that his right arm now ran a precise 13.07°F cooler than his left arm. That sort of temperature difference would have been alarming to a human; for Vlad it was even more concerning. His ghost powers should have been able to regulate the temperature in his wayward limb. The thought of whoever’s soul had taken up residence in his arm being more powerful than his ghost powers was…disconcerting.

Finally, after yet another blood test showed nothing abnormal, Vlad decided it was time to take a break. His arm was not going anywhere; he had the rest of eternity to run as many tests as he wanted. Of course, that would require him to figure out what other tests could produce beneficial data.

Vlad leaned back from his microscope and stretched, humming contentedly when his back cracked. Productive time in the lab seemed to have been just what the doctor ordered to shake off whatever malaise had consumed him. Vlad hadn’t felt so refreshed in a long time. The thought of sleep was actually appealing for once.

The warning tone from his Ghost Portal interrupted Vlad’s plans for milk and cookies before bed. Sighing, Vlad willed the transformation from man to monster. As the black transformation rings dissipated, Vlad floated over to his Ghost Portal and pressed the button to allow his unexpected guest to enter. Ghosts had no sense of propriety; no one with even an ounce of courtesy would call upon someone at such a late hour.

“I know you don’t like it when I interrupt your weak human slumber, but-” Skulker began as he pulled his bulk through the portal, hauling a sack behind him, “I thought you’d want this sooner rather than later.”

“And what, pray tell, is this?” Vlad demanded, glaring at the lumpy burlap sack that was carelessly tossed over the ghost’s shoulder. Holding out his hand expectantly, Vlad stared down his unwanted guest. Skulker was usually worth the money that Vlad paid him, but at times like this when Vlad had other things to do, it was difficult to remember the bounty hunter’s worth.

Skulker blatantly ignored Vlad’s words in favor of staring, jaw literally dropped, at Vlad’s outstretched hand. The Mark, he had forgotten about the Mark! Of all the stupid-

“Congratulations,” Skulker managed to finally cough out. Vlad’s desire for violence was increasing by the second as Skulker continued to stare in complete awe and befuddlement at Vlad’s glowing green arm. His sleeve and glove were not enough to block out the light it produced; Vlad had not thought to check how the Mark would manifest in his ghostly form. “I had no idea that you were Conjoined. My apologies.”

“Conjoined?” Vlad demanded, retracting his arm and tucking it carefully in the fold of his cape.

“Humans call them soul matches or something equally primitive. Ghosts can become Conjoined with one another, a melding of our most base elements,” Skulker explained, finally rediscovering his manners and turning away to fuss with his bag. “It’s not something one typically…flaunts.”

Apparently, Vlad’s irregular Soul Mark was the ghostly equivalent of flashing one’s genitals. Of course it was. Tucking his cape even more tightly around his scandalous Mark, Vlad pondered this new realm of possibilities. Perhaps his Soulmate was a ghost; the Mark might not be a function of Vlad’s biology at all, but rather that of his partner. The thought of having a ghost for a soul mate was somehow even less appealing than having a human soul mate. Ghosts were idiots. Powerful and eternal, yes, but still complete and utter idiots. Most ghosts were a single facet of a personality, driven by one primary desire. It was their greatest weakness. Vlad despised weakness.

“You are going to tell me everything you know about this Conjoining business. In return, I won’t maim you for disturbing my slumber,” Vlad threatened, barring his fangs and flashing his eyes. Skulker nodded vigorously; he had been on the receiving end of his employer’s displeasure before.

Vlad grabbed a pad of paper and a pencil from his lab table. All traces of his previous drowsiness had vanished. Skulker was about to earn his paycheck.

In order to cover up the Mark well enough so that no one could see it glowing ended up requiring two black Mark sleeves and a thick leather glove to cover his hand. Both of those were courtesy of the government center. Thankfully, Danny had planned ahead and picked up the sleeves from the government center years ago. Just to be safe, Danny put on a hoodie as well. He was paranoid that the upper edge of the sleeve would shift and some of the glow would escape. Or the Mark would shift just a little higher up his elbow and everyone would get a view of the world’s most cursed Soul Mark.

“And you’re saying it glows?” Sam asked eagerly after Danny had finished explaining just how awful his eighteenth birthday was turning out to be. Sam leaned across the lunchroom table, trying to catch a peek of the Mark. “Like, what kind of glow? Glow stick? Firefly? Strobe light? Could we have a rave with your Soul Mark?”

“NO!” Danny squawked a little too loudly. Thankfully, the rest of the student body of Casper High already knew he was a freak, so his outburst was ignored. It was one of the few perks of being at the bottom of the social ladder. “Sorry. It’s like, a ghostly glow? But not green like my powers. It’s magenta, and it takes up my entire freaking arm. On top of that, it keeps moving around.”

“I wanna see it,” Sam declared, making another lunge across the table. After four years of fighting ghosts, Danny’s reflexes were prone to overreacting. He ended up toppling backwards off the cafeteria bench in an attempt to stay away from Sam’s grabbing hands.

“Lay off, Sam,” Tucker intervened as he helped Danny off the floor. “If he wanted everyone to see it, he wouldn’t have it covered up!”

“Alright, alright,” she conceded, picking her turf-wich back up and taking a mulish bite out of it. “You can’t just tell me that your Mark is unlike every other Mark in existence, glows and moves, and not expect me to want to see it immediately. Have you met me?”

“Unfortunately,” Danny sighed, pushing something that might once had been carrots around his plate with a fork. His friends hadn’t been contrite when he told them how screwed up his Mark was; they were ecstatic. “Come over to my place after school and I’ll show it to you. That way you can get a better sense of just how completely fucked I am.”

“Language, Mr. Fenton!” Mr. Lancer cried from three tables away. Danny froze. Hopefully, that was the only part of the conversation that their teacher had heard. “Such profanity merits a detention, wouldn’t you agree? This afternoon.”

“Sorry sir, I was just telling Sam and Tucker what my Replete Soul Mark says and why I have to keep it covered up,” Danny lied quickly. He heard Sam and Tucker gasp and ignored them. There were two important rules when bullshitting Lancer: never break eye contact and don’t let him see that you’re nervous. Sometimes Danny felt bad that he was such a skilled liar. Keeping his family at arm’s length and unable to keep more than two friends was lonely. When it came to Lancer though, Danny had almost made a sport out of it.

“Ah, well,” Lancer coughed awkwardly. Danny tried to keep his face bland and sincere so that his teacher couldn’t see how smug he actually felt. Lancer could not, legally, ask to see Danny’s Mark to prove whether or not Danny was lying. Everyone knew that Danny had a Determinate Soul Mark, and students’ birthdays were posted on the bulletin board in the school office for everyone to see. “Just, keep it to yourself from now on Mr. Fenton. And happy birthday.”

As the teacher walked away, Danny let out a sigh of relief. Telling people that his Mark had profanity in it was actually a really good idea. It would explain him wanting to keep it covered so completely.

“Wow Danny,” Tucker said as they all turned their attentions back to their respective lunches. “That was ballsy. But now people are gunna think your Mark is obscene or something. Yeah, that’ll keep the teachers away, but what about everybody else? If people hear that your Mark is potentially bad ass, they’re gunna wanna see it.”

“I can handle it,” Danny said with a shrug. It’s not like he wasn’t already bullied. “Besides, if anyone tries to rip the sleeve off, I can stop them with my powers. And then press charges,” Danny added as an afterthought. The forced baring of a Soul Mark was punishable by federal law, after all. That should keep people like Dash, who was relying on a football scholarship for college, from doing anything too stupid.

Sam and Tucker exchanged a concerned look, but Danny ignored them. The Mark might be more manageable than Danny had feared.

“That is literally the coolest thing I have ever seen, including your ghost powers,” Sam declared. Other than the minor kerfuffle with Mr. Lancer during lunch, Danny’s first day with a Replete Soul Mark had gone pretty smoothly. Things could certainly have been a lot worse; hopefully that was an indication of things to come.

“It’s so warm,” Tucker said with his hands hovering just above Danny’s left forearm. “Like, really warm. I thought you were running pretty cold these days with your ice core.”

“Yeah, that’s something else I don’t understand,” Danny admitted as he grabbed an infrared thermometer off the lab table. “Look. Most of my body is somewhere in the low eighties, high seventies temperature-wise while I’m in my human form. But look at how hot my left arm is.”

Tucker and Sam came around behind Danny to watch the display as he pointed the thermometer at his Marked arm. “111.67°F?” Sam exclaimed, yanking the device out of Danny’s hand. “That’s like, thirteen degrees warmer than average body temperature! I thought you said you were fine?”

“I am! It doesn’t feel weird at all,” Danny promised quickly. “You’d think my core would be freaking out, or cooling it off or something, but it’s fine. Just another weird thing about this busted Mark.”

“That’s gotta be like, really offensive to your Soulmate to keep calling the Mark stuff like that, dude,” Tucker pointed out. “You’re basically saying that their soul is a piece of crap.”

“Well, it is, but it’s not their fault. My ghost powers must have screwed up their soul somehow. I am going to have so much to apologize for if we ever meet,” Danny sighed, taking the thermometer out of Sam’s hand and putting it back on the overpacked shelf with the rest of his parents’ more mundane equipment.

“I wonder how their Mark looks,” Sam mused. She hopped up on the counter and began swinging her legs back and forth. “Like, how did your soul manifest? Is it just as unique? Or did they get the stereotypical Mark experience?”

“I hope it looks normal,” Danny admitted, toying absently with the parts in a box of broken lab equipment. That had been eating him up inside; he already knew that his soulmate was going to be disappointed with him but knowing that he had messed up their Marks just by existing was a little more heavy than Danny had bargained for. “Imagine being a normal person and suddenly waking up one morning with a freakish, glowing green arm. If they’re not from Amity Park, they’re going to be so confused. And if they are from Amity Park, they’re going to be completely terrified that their soulmate is a ghost. I don’t know which is worse.”

“How do you know it’ll be green?” Tucker asked. Danny went still, the broken thermos cap he had been playing with falling from his hand. How did he know it would be green? Just like at lunch the other day, when Danny had known that he was younger soul in the pair. All soulmate bonds were created equal; there was no such thing as a strong bond or a weak bond. But sometimes, with enough focus and positive intentions, people were able to glean information about their soulmates. Danny had never had a single positive thought about his Mark or soulmate, and he certainly wasn’t concentrating on them very hard. So why was he getting flashes of insight into his potential partner?

“That’s what color my powers are,” Danny hedged. “I just assumed-”

*BEEP*BEEP*BEEP*

Tucker’s PDA, for once, went off at a convenient time. Danny didn’t want to explain to his friends that a gut feeling was the only reason he knew what color his soulmate’s Mark would be. If they knew he was getting flashes of information, they’d press him to search for more.

“It’s Technus, he’s taken over the new automatic shopper kiosk in the mall and has a bunch of people hostage,” Tucker said, turning the screen around so Sam and Danny could see the news feed.

“I’m going ghost!” Danny shouted, transforming mid jump and speeding out through the ceiling. This was turning into the worst birthday Danny had ever had.

Vlad woke from his nap feeling refreshed. Rejuvenated. And most importantly, he was motivated. His conversation with Skulker had been…enlightening. And entertaining; the topic of Conjoining was apparently delicate for ghosts, almost like sex-ed in its own way.

Ghosts Conjoined for any number of reasons. Usually, it was spontaneous after centuries of near constant contact; Johnny and Kitty were the example that the bounty hunter had used. The spectral embodiment of forbidden lovers, inextricably tied for all time.

Love, companionship, power…the reasons for Conjoining were infinite. And Vlad had consented to none of them. Vlad had not spent enough time around any other ghost for Conjoining to occur. As far as he could tell, his Mark was somewhere between a Replete Soul Mark and a very powerful Conjoining. Which made sense, seeing as he was both ghost and human.

There was a downside, of course. Other than the fact that Vlad had been saddled with such an invasive fate to begin with. The Mark was a physical manifestation of another ghost’s ectosignature. Vlad had direct access to the core of another ghost. Under the right circumstances, he would have no qualms about exploiting such a connection. Unfortunately, it seemed to be a two-way street. Some undeserving cretin was floating around with Vlad’s ectosignature on their arm, able to use his powers at will.

Vlad had to find his soulmate immediately. The amount of destruction they could cause was unfathomable. Halfas were more than the sum of their parts; even Daniel, at his young age with such minimal experience, was more powerful than almost any pure ghost Vlad had ever met. Vlad himself was a magnificent, powerful specimen. His powers would undoubtedly overwhelm a lesser being. Whomever Vlad’s powers had been bestowed upon was, without a doubt, unworthy of him. They had to be captured. Vlad would figure out what to do with them once they were safely locked down in his lab. Intentionally using inflicting physical harm on your Soulmate was impossible, but Vlad would go as far as he could to impress the importance of never using Vlad’s power or accessing his core.

“Technus, this isn’t what they meant when they advertised for an electronic shopper,” Danny quipped as he dodged a barrage of toasters. He’d never gotten in a fight in a kitchen appliance store, but there was a first time for everything. “The entire point is that someone else does the work, and you stay the hell away from my town!”

Danny let off a barrage of green blasts, hitting Technus squarely in the chest. Unfortunately, his chest was currently made of several adjustable bed frames and their mattresses, so the blow didn’t really do anything.

“Ghost child!” Technus wailed, bringing the toasters back around for another pass. “Your language is getting more foul the older you get. Your parents should be ashamed!”

Which was a fair point, and Danny definitely had a suitably scathing comeback to mask his discomfort over the fact that his parents would definitely be ashamed of a lot of stuff he did these days, except he had to dive through a wall to avoid being turned into toast.

Taking a moment to catch his breath, Danny glanced down to make sure his Mark was still covered. The barest flicker of pinkish-red glow could be seen around his elbow, but other than that everything was still under wraps. If someone made the connection that Danny Fenton and Danny Phantom had the same Marks, his life was pretty much over. Literally, since his parents would then peel him down layer by layer in their lab. Danny liked to think that being their son would at least spare him the indignity of a public molecular peeling.

“Where are you, ghost child?” Technus bellowed, blasting through the wall that Danny was currently hiding behind.

Without thinking, Dany held up his left arm to shield himself. Instead of his usual green energy field, a solid magenta barrier formed, surrounding Danny and protecting him from the blast. Danny stared down at his hand in horror. That wasn’t his ectosignature. That was- Danny couldn’t-

Another blast from Technus sent Danny careening down into the food court two floors below.

“Well, well, well,” Technus taunted smugly as he floated down. It was unfair just how well a ghost who was currently made up of as-seen-on-TV junk could still smirk. “The ghost child went and got Conjoined. Congratulations! And you’ve kept the Mark covered. Maybe you’re not so bad after all, for a young whippersnapper.”

“I literally have no idea what you’re talking about,” Danny panted as he hauled himself off the broken table he had landed on. Behind his back as discreetly as he could, Danny unhooked the Fenton Thermos from his belt. ‘Conjoined’ was probably the ghost version of having a Soulmate. Danny’s Soulmate had to be a ghost. It wasn’t his fault that the Mark was fucked up; it was his Soulmate’s fault. Danny couldn’t decide if that was comforting or not. He’d think through it more once he had Technus secured in the thermos. “And I’m pretty much done with this conversation.”

Yanking the cap off the Thermos, Danny captured Technus in the beam of blue light. He really had to start using the thermos before causing massive property damage.

With Technus safely contained, Danny turned his attention to his hand. The ectosignature of barrier he had made felt so familiar…

That night, after dumping Technus back into the Ghost Zone and suffering through cake and presents with his family, Danny finally found himself alone in his room. Danny hated everything about his eighteenth birthday. It wasn’t the worst individual day of his life, but it had certainly been the worst birthday Danny had ever had.

Now that he was finally alone for the first time that day, Danny pulled off the sleeves and glove that covered his Mark. A magenta glow filled the dark room. The lower part of his left arm was a swirling mass of glowing, ghostly energy that Danny felt he should have been able to recognize immediately. There was just something about the color that made Danny think that he had seen it before.

If Danny was able to use the powers of whatever ghost this energy belonged to, then they were probably able to use his too. Given how strong the barrier had been, Danny wasn’t too concerned about his powers overwhelming his Soulmate. Halfas were stronger than both humans and ghosts, but whoever this ectosignature belonged to was more than a match for Danny. That was fine, he was used to having his ass kicked. The problem was that having access to his ectosignature gave this unknown ghost direct access to his core. That was definitely a bad thing.

Danny stared at the Mark. He knew he was the younger of the pair. He knew what his partner’s Mark would look like. He knew what their ectosignature was. Danny had learned all of that without even trying. Maybe, if he put some effort into it, Danny would be able to find something that identified his soulmate.

Accidentally gleaning information was one thing, but the thought of purposefully looking for answers left Danny feeling a little queasy. He had spent his entire life hating the Mark and dreading meeting his soulmate. In order to get the information he needed, information that was probably vital to his survival, Danny would have to give up his life-long contempt for the entire soulmate phenomenon.

This was definitely the worst eighteenth birthday in the history of eighteenth birthdays.

Vlad was sitting in his favorite office chair in his lab, eyes closed and waiting for his breathing to even out. He had never attempted to learn anything about his Soulmate before, but that didn’t mean he was ignorant of the process. With dedication and determination, a person had the potential to glean certain facts about their partner. Most of the literature on Soulmates said that such a task required a positive outlook and a genuine desire to find their other half. Vlad did not have either of those qualities, but he was stubborn and motivated, which in his experience could make up the difference for just about anything.

Focusing on the ectosignature embedded in his right arm, Vlad mentally took stock of what he was sensing. The energy was constantly in rapid motion, tugging and pushing at the line where Vlad’s skin ended and the Mark began. It felt like it wanted to consume Vlad, as though it was trying to rejoin with something that it had lost.

The ectosignature stilled for a moment, seeming to feel Vlad’s attention, which was completely ridiculous but Vlad forced himself to go with it. The other presence seemed…excited.

Vlad allowed himself to be pulled deeper into the foreign presence on his arm, getting caught up in its enthusiasm. He was finally there, with them, and they were so happy to see him! They were sorry that he had to wait so long, so lonely without them. But it was going to be okay, because now they could be together again! Just like they were meant to be. Completely intertwined, no way to tell where one began and the other ended. Whole.

But first, Vlad had to see something. It was imperative, the presence insisted as it urged him deeper. If they were going to be together like Vlad wanted, then Vlad had to understand. Vlad had to see. Vlad had to accept.

Completely caught up in the sensation of nearly being whole (and how had Vlad not realized before just how broken and lonely he was?) Vlad consented immediately. The presence wouldn’t hurt him. It adored him, it needed him. Vlad would do whatever it asked of him. That pleased the presence, even more than his attention had.

Here, the presence said. This is what you need to see. This is our inner most self. This is who we are, the missing part of you.

A biting cold sensation swept through Vlad, starting with his right arm and sweeping rapidly across his entire body. It left pins and needles in its wake before eventually even those faded into complete numbness. Vlad couldn’t breathe, his lungs were filled with air that was too cold to use. In his mind’s eye, Vlad saw a dark cavern. Sharp spires of ice rose up jaggedly to meet Vlad, like the maw of a beast trying to snare it in its jaws. Pain lanced through his body as the shards of ice bit through his mind-flesh.

Vlad opened his mouth to scream, to call for help-

All at once he was back in his lab. The foreign ectosignature in his arm buzzed contentedly before going silent.

The experience had left Vlad with more questions than answers, but at least he had learned one concrete fact: his soulmate was obscenely powerful.

Danny took a deep breath. He could do this. He had already done it, kinda. The ectosignature was already so familiar, Danny just needed a little more information. A little more and he’d be able to find the partner he never wanted.

How had he done it the other times? Tucker had said something, and Danny had immediately been able to tell if he was right or wrong. So he had to play Twenty Questions alone in his room. With his arm. That wasn’t weird at all.

“Okay,” he said out loud. All the other times had been spoken, and Danny didn’t see any reason to mess with a formula that worked. “I’m the younger soul.”

Nothing. Danny already knew that, but he was hoping for confirmation as a baseline test, or something. Danny wasn’t actually an idiot; data collection and comparison was a skill he had no choice but to develop.

“I know the person whose ectosignature is on my arm,” Danny tried. Again, nothing, but that had to mean that it was true. Right?

“My soulmate is freaked out that their arm is glowing green,” he said. No, that wasn’t quite right. They weren’t freaked out, they were pissed.

“Okay, that’s progress,” he muttered, flexing his glowing fingers. They felt like they were getting warmer. “My soulmate is a ghost, and I know them.”

Not quite.

“Not quite?” Danny repeated in frustration. The warmth increased again. “Either they are, or they aren’t! I know them, or I don’t!”

Not. Quite.

Danny growled in frustration. What kind of bullshit answer was “not quite”? It was a simple yes or no! Even his own subconscious was out to get him. The only thing close to being not quite a ghost was being a-

Say it.

“No,” Danny whispered, absolutely horrified. There was no way. It was impossible.

You know them. They are older. You know their ectosignature. You know they bear your ectosignature. They are like you, not quite one or the other. Say it.

The warmth spread up his arm through the rest of his body, like drinking hot chocolate in front of a fire on a winter’s day.

“My soulmate is Vlad Masters,” Danny whispered, so quietly that he could barely hear it.

Yes.

Chapter Text

“Huh,” was all Sam had to say when Danny broke the news to them at school the next day. “I guess all your freaking out was justified after all.”

“Not helping,” he snapped, picking at the upper edge of his sleeve, double checking that nothing had slipped in the thirty seconds since he had last fussed with the covering. After his session with the Mark the night before, Danny still felt too warm. Wearing a hoodie wasn’t an option unless he wanted to pass out. “What am I supposed to do now?”

“Since you know who it is, you can just avoid him,” Tucker said carelessly. Shoving a handful of potato chips into his mouth, he continued, “I mean, yeah it sucks. But this just seems to be your kind of luck, doesn’t it? Crazy parents -no offense- and ghost powers and all the other weird stuff you deal with…Vlad being your soulmate just sounds like another crappy thing that’s happened to you in a long line of crappy things.”

Danny wanted to strangle them both. “I can’t just avoid him, remember? Knowing who your soulmate is ramps up the pull by like, a thousand. I literally have his soul in my arm, and it wants to get back to him. Sitting through class today without fidgeting was a nightmare. I can’t imagine going through the rest of my life like this.”

“Well, it’s not like you can tell him,” Sam reasoned, stealing one of Tucker’s chips. “He’d skin you alive.”

“Also, he’s like twice your age and it’d be weird.”

Those were all things that Danny had already thought of. What he needed was a solution, not a rehashed list of all his problems. “I knew I was the younger one, that’s not the weird part,” Danny muttered.

“He literally went to college with your parents,” Sam deadpanned, “It’s more than a little weird.”

“He’s tried to kill me on several occasions, that’s the weirder part,” Danny countered stubbornly. It was amazing how discovering that his archenemy was his Soulmate was all it took for Danny to reassess his opinion of the entire concept. A random stranger having his soul trapped in their body was looking better all the time. Knowing his soulmate before the Mark became Replete, especially the way he knew Vlad, was turning into a special kind of awkward.

“Danny, you’re not listening to me. It’s done, it’s all finished. Your Mark is Replete, you know who your Soulmate is, case closed. You don’t have to have anything else to do with it,” Tucker explained. Why had Danny bothered to make them read all that literature if they were going to completely disregard everything? After a decade of having Dany’s anxious obsession forced on him, Tucker should have known better.

“It. Doesn’t. Work. Like. That,” Danny gritted out slowly. Losing his temper with his friends would be counterproductive. They were the only ones he could confide in about this whole mess. “I have to tell him. I don’t want to, but I feel like I’m going to vibrate out of my skin if I don’t go after him.”

“Yeah, but he’ll kill you,” Sam repeated. Danny was very much aware of what Vlad would do to him, she didn’t need to keep repeating it. Every time she mentioned how negative his reaction would be, Danny’s stomach knotted up. “Now that your Marks are Replete, he’ll never be able to lay a hand on you again. I guess he’ll have to pay someone else to kill you.”

“Yeah, but after that he can still perform sadistic experiments on my corpse himself before selling my pelt to Skulker,” Danny said, glaring down at his untouched lunch.

“You know, he hasn’t actually done anything to us in a few years,” Tucker pointed out. “It’s been a while since Plasmius showed his face, and Vlad’s been pretty well behaved every time he’s visited your parents.”

“What, now you want me to tell him?”

“I’m not saying that,” Tucker said, holding his hands up in a placating gesture, “I still don’t think you’ll have any trouble keeping it from him. The guy lives in Wisconsin, it’s not like you see him all the time. But, like, if he does find out, he’ll probably want to avoid you, y’know?”

“Tuck might be right,” Sam conceded slowly, “I mean, that would probably look really bad for Vlad. A billionaire who used to hold public office suddenly having an eighteen-year-old soulmate? A male soulmate? Who happens to be the son of his best friends? The press would have a field day with that. Or they’d try to, anyway, if that sort of thing wasn’t one big lawsuit in the making.”

“Even if Vlad didn’t want to tear me apart molecule by molecule, what do you think my parents would have to say about this?” Danny demanded. “How do I tell them that Vlad and I are soulmates because, woops, we’re the only two of our kind and it’s kinda your fault that we exist at all?”

“I wouldn’t phrase it like that…” Sam trailed off, “But you’re going to have to tell your parents eventually. About your powers, and about Vlad.”

“Ugh, no way,” Danny groaned, shoving his lunch tray aside and hiding his head in his arms. “My mom would be ecstatic that Vlad and I are soulmates. She’s all about this stuff.”

“Maddie, how lovely to hear from you,” Vlad murmured distractedly into the phone. The Mark on his arm was acting up again, pulling and tugging so hard that it was beginning to impact his concentration. Vlad had been unable to gather any more information since his previous attempt to commune with the Mark. Apparently, it thought it had given him all the information that was necessary to find his mate. Vlad politely disagreed.

“-he’s been hiding in his room, and I just don’t know what to do, Vlad!” Maddie wailed, drawing Vlad’s attention away from his Mark. “He won’t talk about it. I’m worried about him.”

There were only two people to whom Maddie could be referring, but Vlad had no idea which one was the culprit this time. Taking a vague guess, he replied, “Maddie, darling, Daniel has always been a bit…reclusive. He’s not usually one to want to talk about the things that are bothering him.”

“I know,” she said with a sigh. “I just wish he’d let me help. Or his father, or Jazz, anyone. But ever since his Mark turned Replete-”

Vlad fumbled to catch his phone as it slipped from his suddenly lax grip. He hadn’t even realized that Daniel had a Soul Mark. How deliciously intriguing…

“I happen to know a bit about Soul Marks,” Vlad admitted modestly as he put the phone back to his ear, interrupting whatever Maddie had been explaining. The understatement almost made him chuckle. “Would you feel better if I tried talking with him?”

“Oh, would you?” she gushed. Vlad could practically feel her relief radiating through the phone.

It was impossible to stop the mean little grin that took over his features, but thankfully Maddie wasn’t there to see his face. “I would like nothing more,” Vlad declared with perfect sincerity. It had been far too long since he had seen Daniel, after all. Perhaps the time had come to check in on his little badger.

Maddie continued to prattle on for a few minutes, but Vlad barely spared her any attention. His mind was whirling with new possibilities. Given the depth of his intimate knowledge of Daniel, Vlad was shocked to discover that there was something about the younger halfa which he did not already know. What did Daniel’s Mark look like? Would he even allow Vlad to see it? If it were anything like Vlad’s…

Few things were as satisfactory as Vlad’s sample size suddenly doubling.

Danny’s life settled into a paranoid routine. Wake up, make sure the sleeve hadn’t slipped. Get ready, make sure the sleeve hadn’t slipped. Go to school, make sure the sleeve didn’t slip. Thankfully, there hadn’t been any ghost activity since Technus in the mall a few weeks before. Danny had no idea how he was supposed to keep his Mark covered while fighting if there were more spectators watching his every move.

Keeping the Mark covered while fighting wasn’t his only concern. Danny didn’t want to accidentally use Vlad’s powers again. The idea that he had access to Vlad’s core and power arsenal was terrifying. Danny wanted absolutely nothing to do with that. When Vlad found out that it was Danny who had access to his core, Danny was as good as dead.

…It was sort of tempting. Vlad could do all sorts of things that Danny had never even tried. Just one of the many perks of having had his powers for over twenty years, or so Vlad liked to boast. Danny wasn’t really concerned about Vlad having access to his powers and core; he doubted Vlad would ever bother to use them. Danny had very few powers that Vlad hadn’t already mastered.

“I’m home!” Danny yelled as he kicked the front door shut behind him and slung his bookbag carelessly on the hook. Homework could wait; Danny was starving. The cafeteria lunch had been completely inedible and there were leftovers calling his name.

As he walked through the living room towards the kitchen, only silence greeted him. That was odd. Normally, his dad would be yelling at him to bring something down to the lab or his mom would have a list of chores for him. Maybe they had been called out on an “emergency ghost call” or they were getting the oil changed in the Fenton Assault Vehicle. Either way, Danny wasn’t mad at having the house to himself. Maybe he could take the stupid sleeve off his arm for a bit. The only time he took it off was to shower. Keeping it on for so long was probably bad for his circulation.

Blue vapor rising from his throat and out his nose dashed all his food related dreams. There was a ghost in the house. Creeping forward slowly, Danny began heading to the kitchen as quietly as he could. He had a spare thermos in the cabinet, hidden among the non-ghost-catching thermoses. If he could just get to-

“Hello, Daniel,” a voice called from the kitchen. Danny’s blood ran cold. No! No, no, no, it couldn’t be. That was the exact opposite of what Danny needed at the moment. “No need to sneak around your own home, it’s just me.”

Taking a deep breath to brace himself, Danny stepped into the kitchen like he was heading to the hangman’s noose. “Vlad,” he greeted his Soulmate cautiously. He was a dead man. Vlad had figured it out, and he had come to collect Danny’s pelt to sell to Skulker. There was so much that Danny had never gotten to do! He hadn’t graduated high school, never became an astronaut, and there were still so many things he didn’t know about his powers! Dying young was so unfair!

“Your mother called me,” Vlad in a tone that was meant to explain everything without actually explaining anything. So, his mother snitched that Danny’s Mark had become Replete, and Vlad put the pieces together. Vlad was smart like that.

That didn’t mean Danny had to give in to him so easily, though. “Did she? What for?” he asked, heading to the fridge for the leftovers he had been dreaming of all day. If he was going to die, it wasn’t going to be on an empty stomach.

“Don’t be coy, Daniel, I can see the sleeve on your arm as easily as you can see the glove on mine,” Vlad said, adjusting the sleeve of his coat and the glove that mirrored Danny’s own. “I never knew that you had a Soul Mark.”

“Yeah well, same to you.”

“To think, we’ve had even more in common this entire time. I suppose congratulations are in order, as well as belated birthday wishes.”

Danny scowled. “You can keep your platitudes,” he muttered as he closed the refrigerator door. His dad must have eaten the rest of the leftovers. Leaning against the counter with his arms crossed he continued, “I’ve had this stupid Determinate Mark since I was born. I didn’t ask for it, I don’t want it, and having it become Replete has been a bigger pain in the ass than I could possibly imagine. Why don’t you tell me what you want so I can tell you no and you can get out of my house?”

Instead of losing his temper the way Danny had hoped, Vlad grinned. “This might be the first time you and I have agreed on anything, little badger. My Mark recently became Replete as well, and I would love nothing more than to be rid of it. But alas, such a thing is not possible. What is possible is mitigating its effect on your life.”

“What are you talking about?” Danny demanded, clutching his arm closer to his chest. “If you’re offering to cut my arm off and let it grow back, Rosenthaul already disproved that theory in his 1971 study on Vietnam War veterans who had been-”

“You’re familiar with Rosenthaul’s work?” Vlad interrupted, wide eyed before composing himself. Danny refused to allow the warm feeling that threatened to envelop him at Vlad’s accidental regard. “What I mean is, no, I am not offering to dismember you. I wish to run a few tests to see if your Mark has manifested in a similar way to my own.”

“What tests? And how did yours ‘manifest’?” Danny hedged. Either Vlad was dragging this out —which was a viable option considering the man’s love of cat and mouse games— or Vlad didn’t know that Danny was his Soul Mate.

“You’re being very forthright today,” Vlad remarked as he checked his sleeve once more. Danny mirrored the action, thumbing nervously at the sleeve’s upper seam.

“I haven’t told you anything.”

“No, but you’re asking direct, relevant questions. Intelligent questions, even. Normally we chase each other around in circles until one of us loses their temper.

“All right then, cards on the table: my Mark glows,” Vlad declared neutrally, but Danny could tell by the tightness around his eyes and the involuntary clenching of his jaw that saying that had taken a great deal of effort. Vlad must want to examine Danny’s Mark really badly.

What did Danny want? Danny wanted to not be killed in horrible and terrifying ways by his Soulmate. Danny also wanted to see what Vlad was going to do. For the first time, Danny wasn’t Vlad’s target. Vlad’s attention and ire were focused on what he believed to be some random, unknown person. Danny might have the upper hand. It was a rare enough occasion that he was curious to see how far he could push his luck. This poor impulse control was probably going to blow up spectacularly in his face, but if someone wanted to ask Danny about it later he would blame the pins and needles feeling in his Marked arm that were practically dragging him towards Vlad.

“Mine too. And it moves. Like, it swirls the way the Ghost Zone Portal does, but the line that separates the Mark from the rest of my arm also fluctuates.”

“It would appear we are in a similar state. If you would just allow me to run a few tests…”

“You have to tell me everything you’re going to do. And you can’t see my Mark,” Danny insisted, not so subtly hiding his Marked arm behind his back. Soulmates knew their Marks instinctively; the moment Vlad saw his arm, Danny would be in an unimaginable amount of trouble.

“I accept your terms. Perhaps we should take this discussion down to the lab to prevent any eavesdropping?”

Daniel had been more amenable to Vlad’s testing than Vlad had dared to hope. The vultures had been put on standby, ready to kidnap the younger halfa when Daniel inevitably resisted, but their services had not been necessary. Daniel was cautious, but Vlad could hardly blame him for that. Their history, despite several years of detente, had not been a pleasant one. Vlad felt a pang of regret at that but quashed it. They had made their choices years ago and rehashing old arguments was not the reason Vlad had darkened the Fentons’ doorstep that day.

Still, watching Daniel flit around the lab grabbing instruments and papers while keeping a running commentary on Vlad’s every action was a welcomed change to the clinical sterility of his own lab in Wisconsin.

“So, I’ve already checked the temperature of the Marked arm in comparison with my other arm as well as my human core temperature and ghost core temperature. It’s hotter than the rest of my body and my core is doing nothing to cool it down, you can read the data yourself,” Daniel rambled as he shoved a neatly arranged folder into Vlad’s hand.  Vlad dutifully read through the pages as Daniel continued to talk. The boy was right. More importantly, his data matched Vlad’s own findings. The only difference was Vlad’s baseline was at the hotter end of the temperature spectrum and his Mark was cooler instead of warmer. They even had the same temperature disparity: thirteen degrees off from their baseline.

Daniel had also done a few rudimentary DNA tests, checked his blood cells, and measured his ectoplasmic output potential in comparison with a test he had apparently done several months previously. That last test made Vlad pause.

“Daniel,” he interrupted what had been a truly unique interpretation of Barbury’s 13 Laws of Soulmates, “Your ectoplasmic output data is off by a magnitude of four.”

“Gimme,” Daniel ordered, brows furrowed as he yanked the paper from Vlad’s hand. Vlad tamped down the flash of irritation that surged through him. Daniel was being more cooperative and helpful than Vlad had ever dreamed possible. Vlad could play nice as long as he was still getting what he wanted.

“No, this looks fine,” Daniel muttered as he flipped through the sheaf of papers before handing them back to Vlad. “The math is good, it was the standard version of the test, the equipment was in working order…What’s wrong with it?”

“The results. You shouldn’t be capable of that level of output at your age, given the number of years you’ve had your powers,” Vlad explained as he double checked Daniel’s work.

“And how’d’ya figure that?” Daniel demanded, crossing his arms and staring Vlad down. Daniel’s legendary tenacity was raising its head for the first time in years, and Vlad was surprised to feel delighted rather than annoyed. After moving back to Wisconsin, it was a rare occasion to argue with someone as pugnacious as Daniel. “Just because you weren’t able to do it at my age-”

“I didn’t have my powers at your age,” Vlad interrupted pedantically.

“At four years of having powers, you know what I mean,” Daniel said, rolling his eyes as he waved the technicality aside, “Just because we’re both halfas doesn’t mean our abilities are going to manifest in the exact same ways.”

Vlad had never given the idea any serious thought before. A great many of their early interactions were based on Vlad’s unexamined belief that Daniel would develop in the exact same manner that Vlad had. It was unexpected and uncomfortable to suddenly have that belief questioned. If they were more different than previously thought, would any data that showed similarities between their Soul Marks even be relevant? Or would that just be coincidental? It wasn’t as if there was a large sample size to draw from.

Rather than reveal how much Daniel had perturbed him, Vlad took a seat on one of the only chairs that wasn’t covered in paperwork or other unnamed substances and gestured for Daniel to explain.

To Vlad’s surprise, Daniel grabbed another chair, dumped the paperwork onto the floor, and spun it around so he was sitting right across from Vlad. Being eye to eye with Daniel, both literally and figuratively, was another new sensation. The boy had grown up.

“So, you got your powers when my parents screwed up their first ghost portal, right?” Danny began rhetorically. They both knew how Vlad had acquired his powers; he had blackmailed Daniel into helping him cure his resurgent case of ectoacne, after all. “It was basically like an infection and your body ended up accepting the invasion because it couldn’t fight it back. Except since the infection was ecto-biological matter, it began attacking and transforming your cells one by one. Which had to suck, by the way.”

“More than you could possibly imagine,” Vlad muttered. For a moment he was back in the hospital bed, every nerve on fire as his body—on a cellular level—fought a futile battle against the results of his former friends’ carelessness.

Shaking himself free of the memory, Vlad elaborated, “It was excruciating. The parts I can remember, anyway.”

Daniel nodded in agreement. There was no pity in the gesture, which Vlad appreciated. Vlad wasn’t sure why he was telling Daniel such an intimate detail beyond the fact that Daniel was the only one on earth or beyond who could understand the experience. Not even Vlad’s Soulmate, whoever they were, would be able to understand that aspect of his existence.

“Same, kinda. That’s where I was going with this. You had a long, slow, painful process. Mine was instantaneous. I turned the portal on,” Daniel jerked his thumb back over his shoulder to indicate the Ghost Portal mounted against the far wall, “While standing inside it. The Ghost Zone opened through me, ripped me apart and put me back together with new DNA. I still have nightmares about it. But my point is, what if that difference also influences how our powers develop?”

“You think the speed of the process influenced the speed of the reaction,” Vlad summarized. The idea wasn’t…completely unsound. It was rather clever, actually. “There are other variables, of course. You had to develop certain powers more quickly to defend yourself while I spent several years studying my abilities in peace. And you had other ghosts, myself included, whom you could analyze and copy.”

“You probably ended up teaching me more that way than if I had agreed to become your protégé,” Daniel said with a toothy grin. Vlad raised an eyebrow at the jab but let it slide.

“While your theory is fascinating and may prove to be relevant to our current situation, we’ve allowed ourselves to become distracted,” Vlad said. “I will take the data you’ve given me today and examine it further. When I have results, I will contact you.”

“Are you staying in town or heading back to Wisconsin?” Daniel asked. He was looking around the room and his tone was far too casual. Daniel was somehow both a terrible actor and a fantastic liar.

The boy was obviously concerned that their cordiality would not last if they remained in close contact. Vlad had concerns about that himself; Daniel was everything he remembered and more. Vlad was loathe to admit it, but their conversation had been enjoyable. Age must have mellowed both of them. In spite of these pleasantly unexpected developments, it would be foolish to think that suspending hostilities for a single afternoon could lead towards a greater trend of reconciliation between the two of them.

“I’m staying in town until we have the necessary data to create a plan to deal with our Soulmates. I understand that being in such close proximity has been historically disastrous for the two of us, but with this common goal upon which we can focus our ire, we should be able to manage a few weeks without destroying the town.”

“Yeah, I guess,” Daniel muttered before hopping out of his chair so gracelessly that it toppled to the floor. Vlad frowned. He had assumed that the afternoon had gone rather well, all things considered, but perhaps Daniel was having difficulty putting their animosity behind them. Or perhaps he was still a moody teenager, prone to hormonal outbursts that no one would ever understand.

“Your parents have invited me to dinner Friday evening,” Vlad began cautiously, “but if you’d rather I…” He tapered off uncertainly. Why was he offering to cancel? To make Daniel feel better? Pleasant conversation was one thing, but Vlad had never cared over much about Daniel’s thoughts and feelings.

Oblivious to Vlad’s internal dilemma, Daniel had visibly brightened, grinning at Vlad. Teenage outburst, that was the only explanation for Daniel’s mood swings. “Disappointing my parents is my job, not yours. My dad would be heartbroken if you canceled. I’m sure he’s already pulled out his favorite V-Man short for the occasion,” Daniel teased. Vlad grimaced, knowing the boy was right about the second point at least.

“At least we will have to suffer through your mother’s pestering about Soul Marks together,” Vlad sighed.

“So, you just decided to throw the ‘avoid your soulmate for your own safety’ plan out the window, huh?” Tucker said as he dug around for a notebook in his locker.

“I can’t believe your mom called him,” Sam groaned. On that, they were all in agreement. “Especially after all the shit he used to put us through. She must really be worried about you, which means she’s paying closer attention to what you’re doing. You need to be even more careful than usual.”

Danny slumped back against the row of lockers. He was getting used to the utter lack of sympathy from his friends. “I know, I know,” he muttered. Constant vigilance had been his life for the past four years, but now the stakes were even higher. If his parents saw his Mark, they’d figure out he was a ghost and he’d be torn apart in the name of science. If Vlad found out Danny was his Soulmate, the older halfa would probably find a way to kill him. And if Vlad didn’t figure out that they were Soulmates, Danny would go insane from the stress of it all.

Talking with Vlad in the lab yesterday had been easy. Too easy, so easy it was scary. Danny had actually enjoyed talking to the older halfa. Vlad hadn’t even mocked him once! Maybe time and distance had mellowed them both out, at least a little. A single afternoon’s ceasefire wasn’t a good enough reason to spill the beans, but it was enough to plant the seed of temptation. Spending a little time with the only other half-ghost in existence wasn’t such a terrible idea, right?

“How did we not know about Vlad’s Mark?” Tucker asked, shutting the locker door and banging on it twice to make sure it locked. “That seems like the sort of thing he’d have been creepy about.”

“He didn’t know about Danny’s either,” Sam pointed out as they made their way through the crowded hallway. “It is kinda weird that it never came up.”

“Neither of us are very fond of the concept,” Danny explained shortly. That particular similarity didn’t surprise Danny at all; neither of them liked being ordered around, by the universe or anyone else.

“And you’re sure he has no idea that you two are…?” Tucker asked awkwardly. Danny was tempted to make Tucker finish his sentence. What was he going to say? Soulmates? Destined for each other? Two parts of the same whole? He had heard them all before, and they still sounded stupid and unpleasant even after his Mark became Replete.

Instead of forcing Tucker to finish his uncomfortable sentence, Danny explained, “Not yet, but it’s only a matter of time. He’s running tests, gathering data, all sorts of stuff. Eventually he’ll realize that his Mark became Replete on my birthday and connect the dots from there. Vlad might be a lot of things, most of them awful, but he’s not an idiot.”

*bzzzzz bzzzzz* *bzzzzz bzzzzz*

Danny pulled his phone out of his pocket and answered without looking at the caller ID. According to all the research Danny had consumed over the years, soulmates couldn’t read each other’s minds. Despite all the evidence saying it was impossible, Danny knew exactly who was calling him.

“You know I’m at school, right?” he asked rhetorically. Danny couldn’t afford to have his phone confiscated by Lancer. That would lead to his parents being called, which would make his mother even more concerned.

“Most people say hello as a greeting,” Vlad snarked, “It’s considered polite.”

“So, you forgot that I’m still in school?”

The annoyed huff from the other end of the line made Danny grin until he saw Sam and Tucker’s faces. Their wide-eyed stares were a were a necessary reminder to take this more seriously. His life was actively in danger every moment he and Vlad were in contact.

“Of course not,” Vlad covered irritably, “But, in the unlikely event that I had forgotten, what time will you be free this afternoon?”

“Did you find something?” Danny demanded, ignoring the way his heart seized painfully in his chest. He didn’t know which was the greater fear: that Vlad had figured it out, or that he hadn’t.

“If I had, I would have said as much. I intend to apply myself to some research tonight and, given your apparent depth of knowledge on the topic, elected to offer you the opportunity to join me,” Vlad explained in his usual long-winded way. Danny used to wonder if the man kept a thesaurus in his pocket just to help him sound more pretentious.

This was a terrible idea. The more contact Danny had with Vlad, the more chances there were for something to go terribly wrong. But it was so tempting! Especially when Vlad had just admitted that Danny knew a lot about Soulmates. Compliments to his intelligence were rare, even more so coming from Vlad.

“School lets out at 3,” Danny said.

“What are you doing?!?” Sam hissed, lunging for Danny’s arm to pull the phone away. Danny sidestepped away from her grabby hands and held up a single finger, asking her to give him a moment.

“Excellent!” Vlad declared warmly. Too warmly. So warmly that Danny could feel a faint blush climbing up his neck. “That will give me enough time to set up a few things in the lab. Will you be arriving through the front door or the backdoor?”

‘Backdoor’ obviously meant the Ghost Zone. Going home first was a terrible idea. Danny’s parents would ask too many questions. His mom would be ecstatic to hear he was spending time with Vlad, bonding over Soul Marks. That would only break her heart more when the truth inevitably came out. “Front door,” he decided.

“Excellent.” Vlad hung up without another word, which was convenient as Lancer had just rounded the corner, on the prowl for rulebreakers. Danny quickly jammed his phone back into his pocket.

“Are you actually out of your mind?!?” Sam demanded, landing a solid punch to his upper arm. “What are you thinking?”

He was thinking that he wanted to spend time with Vlad, to see if they could get along as well as they had the night before. Admitting that he wanted to spend time with Vlad would not strengthen his case for mental stability. Danny couldn’t reconcile all the conflicting emotions that had jumbled up inside him after the Mark became Replete: he wanted to be near Vlad, he was scared to be near Vlad, he was terrified of his parents finding out about everything…it was a lot for an already stressed eighteen-year-old to deal with. Most of all, he hated that any choice he made was going to be the wrong one. This situation made his usual problems look like a walk in the park.

“I’ll be fine,” he promised with more confidence than he actually felt. Sam and Tucker shared another dubious look.

“If you say so,” Tucker said skeptically.

“Your Mark, your decisions. We just wanna make sure you’re safe,” Sam added.

Danny laughed, but there wasn’t any real humor in it. “I haven’t been safe since the lab accident,” he reminded them as they headed down the hallway towards their next class, “But I appreciate the sentiment.”

Calling Daniel had been impulsive and unnecessary, but Vlad had greatly enjoyed their previous conversation and wanted to see if the experience could be repeated. While Daniel’s help wasn’t vital to his evening plans, it was simple enough to justify the request. Beyond his personal investment in the proceedings, Daniel was familiar with the functions of an ectobiology lab and was possessed of a great deal of knowledge regarding Soul Marks.

What was Daniel’s Soulmate like? Their shared powers had always placed Daniel a slight cut above the common riffraff in Vlad’s esteem, even when their fighting had been at its worst. The younger halfa deserved someone who was worthy of him. Vlad doubted that would be the case; life rarely gave people what they deserved.

Daniel’s disdain for his Soulmate had come as somewhat of a surprise. Vlad had assumed that Maddie’s influence would have shaped Daniel into a romantic fool, besotted with the notion of finding the one true love that destiny had ordained for him. All of that was utter rot in Vlad’s opinion, but it was an informed opinion based on his personal life experiences. What could have possibly happened to Daniel to make him so bitter about love at such a young age?

It occurred to Vlad that, if he was careful and went about it in a circuitous fashion, he could ask Daniel this evening.

“What happened to ‘your Mark, your decisions’?” Danny grumbled as he hefted his backpack higher on his hunched shoulders.

“This is entirely your decision,” Sam promised, linking one of her arms through Danny’s as they meandered down the sidewalk. Danny had intended to fly to Vlad’s mansion. The three of them looked suspicious and out of place in the posh neighborhood where Vlad’s Amity Park residence was located. Danny wondered how many people in the neighborhood could recognized them from all of their previous stunts involving Vlad’s mansion.

Tucker sped up so he could take the position on Danny’s other arm. “Yep, this is all you. We’re just here for moral support. We’re not going to stop you from doing something stupid, we’re going to support your stupidity the whole way through.”

“But if our presence just happens to deter certain…choices,” Sam continued, jostling the three of them until they were also stepping in time with one another, “yours or his, well, that’s just a happy coincidence, isn’t it?”

“It’s not like we brought the spare Thermos or anything,” Tucker added, patting his backpack with his free hand to indicate that they very much had brough the spare Fenton Thermos.

“Thanks guys,” Danny sighed.

“Anytime, dude.”

“Happy to help!”

Danny was, on a certain level, happy that his friends had forcibly inserted themselves into his evening. They were right; hopefully, their presence would keep him from doing something spectacularly stupid. If he truly hadn’t wanted them to come with him, Danny could have used his powers to ditch them. On the other hand, spending time alone with Vlad was appealing. Danny wasn’t foolish enough to think he could ever change Vlad’s mind about Soulmates, but maybe he could…convince him not to murder his Soulmate? Danny was personally invested in not being murdered, after all, and if he could just convince Vlad that he wasn’t a threat and that they never had to have any contact ever again if Vlad would just let him live…

His heart ached at the thought of never seeing his Soulmate again, but Danny quashed the feeling as best he could. According to multiple studies, that was a general reaction that all Marked individuals felt at the thought of being separated from their Soulmate. Danny didn’t actually feel sad about never seeing Vlad again. Self-preservation was Danny’s number one priority. Happily-ever-after didn’t exist, or if it did then it wasn’t meant for him.

Vlad’s face when he answered the door and found the three of them, arm in arm, was priceless. He looked like he had gotten a whiff of something moldy. “Ms Manson, Mr Foley, how unexpected,” Vlad recovered quickly, greeting them with only the barest hint of irritation. Had he been looking forward to an evening alone as much as Danny had? No, that was stupid. Vlad had probably wanted to get some actual lab work done, not entertaining two extra teenagers.

“Sup Vlad,” Sam greeted flippantly, “We’re here to make sure you don’t skin Danny alive and sell his pelt to Skulker.”

“That’s cool with you, right?” Tucker asked. Without waiting for a response from their host, Sam and Tucker shoved Danny through the door before following him inside. Vlad caught Danny as he stumbled, and Danny thought he was going to jump out of his skin. He immediately stepped back to check his sleeve. Thankfully, it hadn’t slipped.

With a put-upon sigh, Vlad closed the door behind them. “I should have expected this,” he muttered before saying, “That is not an…unreasonable request, given our history. Come along, then.”

Vlad escorted them through the mansion, down several hallways, two flights of stairs, and a secret door that led to a secret study with another secret door that finally led to the lab.

“We’re going to work on our physics homework, don’t mind us,” Sam declared with the same slightly manic, forced cheer she had used at the door. She and Tucker dropped their bags onto the floor and followed them down, settling in the corner of the room closest to the door.

Danny decided he was going to ignore them as best he could. “So, what’re we doing?” he asked as he slid his own backpack across the floor into the pile with Sam and Tucker’s.

“I had thought to do a variation on a basic metabolic panel using our ectoplasm. We will transform, take a sample from the Marked arm, and then run the test on that sample,” Vlad explained as he headed towards the counter with the sink in it.

“What are you hoping to find?” Danny asked, following a few steps behind. His curiosity couldn’t quite distract him from the rolling sensation in the pit of his stomach, but it came close. “Blood tests don’t work that way for human soulmates. And a metabolic panel would just show basic bodily function.”

“Human Soul Marks are nothing like ours,” Vlad reminded him, as though Danny needed the reminder. For a moment, Danny thought Vlad was going to remove his glove to wash his hands and panicked. Instead, the older halfa slipped a latex glove over the one he was already wearing to conceal his Mark and proceeded to wash his hands. Danny followed suit, grateful that disaster had been momentarily avoided. “They are a decent baseline, for lack of any other comparison, but I feel we need to look elsewhere for our answers. The temperature difference between the Marked arm and the unmarked arm made me think that there might be other physiological differences that we have thus far overlooked. Assuming our Soulmates are ghosts, there should be vast differences between the chemical makeup of our ectoplasm and the chemical makeup of theirs.”

“And the breakdown of how much of what can give us a clue to which ghosts we’re looking for,” Danny continued, picking up on Vlad’s line of thought. It was a pretty good theory. If Danny didn’t already know it was going to be useless, he would have been impressed. “Do you wanna go first, or me?”

“Guests first,” Vlad offered. “Give me a moment to grab two syringes and some fresh needles.”

While Vlad gathered the supplies, Danny transformed. “Ready?” Vlad asked, needle poised over Danny’s forearm. Thankfully, their ghostly biology didn’t rely on a circulatory system, so finding a vein was irrelevant. It was also perfectly safe to insert the needle through his suit and sleeve, which meant Danny could keep his Mark covered. Vlad had probably planned it that way; he was even less keen than Danny about the whole situation. What had happened to Vlad to make him hate the idea of Soulmates so much?

“Go ahead,” Danny said, shaking himself slightly. Now was not the time for introspection. He could always ask Vlad about it later. Firmly back in the present, Danny watched, fascinated, as the vial filled with glowing green ectoplasm. “Your turn?”

Vlad nodded and transformed without any warning. Danny had to fight the immediate instinct to punch Plasmius in the face. That wouldn’t have been well received. The pins-and-needles racing up and down his Marked arm reminded him that he couldn’t intentionally harm Plasmius anymore. That could have accidentally revealed the whole thing.

“You’re sure you trust me with this?” Danny asked, half joking as he prepared the other syringe.

“I hope you’re as surprised as I am to find the answer is yes, I believe this to be well within your range of capabilities,” Vlad admitted wryly. “I wouldn’t have asked you if I believed you to be incompetent.”

“True, I guess,” Danny said with a laugh to shake off his nervousness, “Still kinda weird though.”

“But not unpleasantly so,” Vlad added in a voice that Danny refused to interpret as hopeful.

“You’re not so bad, I guess, when you’re not trying to ruin my life,” Danny admitted and then immediately wished he hadn’t. Why had he done that? He could practically feel Sam and Tucker’s disapproval from across the room, but he wasn’t about to break the moment with Vlad to acknowledge them.

“And you’re infinitely more tolerable when we have a mutual goal. I would be interested in seeing if this détente is still possible after the Soulmate situation has been resolved.”

Danny smiled weakly and stabbed Vlad with the needle, causing the older man to let out a sharp hiss. Danny winced in sympathy, but he had to nip that line of conversation in the bud. Vlad wasn’t intentionally trying to be cruel. He had no idea that what he was offering was impossible. The thought that Vlad wanted to see him after everything was said and done made his heart stutter in his chest. Danny couldn’t decide if it was a good or bad feeling. Either way, for the Soulmate situation to be “resolved”, as Vlad put it, Danny would probably have to be dead, sealed away, or something equally unpleasant.

“All done,” Danny said, handing the vial off to Vlad to be put in the machine with Danny’s sample. “How long until they’re ready?”

“Several hours. I’m serious, Daniel. I am beginning to think we got off on the wrong foot all those years ago.”

“Gee, ya think?” Danny asked sarcastically.

“Perhaps that is putting it too mildly, but I stand by my statement. For research, if nothing else. Between our Marks and our powers, the possibilities are endless.” Danny opened his mouth to immediately refuse, but Vlad stopped him with a raised hand. “Just—consider it. We still have this Soulmate conundrum to unravel, after all. Plenty of time for you to mull over my proposition.”

Danny scrutinized Vlad’s face, looking for even the barest hint of duplicity, but no. Vlad’s offer was genuine. Or as genuine as he knew how to be, anyway. Unable to take anything at face value even when it was his heart’s desire, Danny argued, “What proposition? You haven’t actually—”

“Uh, guys?” Tucker interrupted. Danny jerked away from Vlad to glare at Tucker. How had he forgotten that Sam and Tucker were there? They were supposed to prevent conversations like that, not let Danny wander into verbal minefields! That was the entire reason he let them come with him! “We’ve got a problem.”

Turning the volume up on his phone, Tucker held it aloft for Danny to hear.

“BREAKING NEWS: Citizens of Amity Park are encouraged to remain in their homes until the situation in the warehouse district has been resolved. An unidentified ghost has taken control of multiple shipping containers, causing mass property damage—”

“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” Danny groaned, “Box Ghost? Really?”

“Yet another reason I did not seek reelection,” Vlad commented glibly.

“I’ve gotta go,” Danny told Vlad as he flew over to grab Sam and Tucker. Leaving them alone in Vlad’s lab was an idea so terrible that even Danny wasn’t willing to risk it. “Call me when the test is done!”

Without waiting for a reply and ignoring his friends’ protests, Danny flew up through the ceiling and towards the warehouse district.

This was not how Vlad had expected the evening to go, although he should have expected such an interruption. Another interruption, he amended, remembering the unpleasant shock he felt when Daniel’s friends barged into his home uninvited. He had wanted to spend more time alone with Daniel to see if their previous cordiality had been a fluke or if it was something that could be repeated.

The samples would not be ready for another day and a half. Vlad had lied to Daniel about the time frame, but it was a small fib, easily forgiven. Could Vlad truly be blamed for wanting to have a conversation with someone as unexpectedly knowledgeable as Daniel? Who else had such extensive knowledge of soulmates and ectobiology, as well as the lived experience of being one of the only two halfas in existence?

Perhaps it was the potential that intrigued Vlad. He acknowledged that he was likely expecting too much of someone who had only just turned eighteen. But what was there could easily be cultivated into a sharp mind worthy of Vlad’s time and attention. Good academic marks weren’t the only measure of intelligence. Maddie had once said that Daniel’s grades plummeted in high school, coinciding with the lab accident. That trauma would have negatively impacted him even without having to learn to control his powers and defend himself.

So yes, Vlad might be expecting too much of Daniel’s intellect at this point in time. Daniel’s mastery of his powers, however, had data to back them up.

Vlad pulled his phone from his pocket. With a few swipes, he found the same news station that Tucker had been watching. Daniel and the Box Ghost were engaged in combat, though it was difficult to discern what exactly was happening as the camera man and reporter were dodging falling debris.

Propping his phone up on the counter, Vlad listened as he began cleaning up the lab equipment.

“It looks like—” CRASH “It looks like Inviso-Bill is having a tough time with this ghost due to its sheer size!” the reporter cried as a sheet of metal whizzed by, barely missing her head as it passed.

Vlad scoffed. Difficulty? With the Box Ghost? Unlikely. The only reason Daniel was having any difficulties was because he was far too kind for his own good. Assuming the paperwork he had shown Vlad was correct, Daniel was more than powerful enough to—

“Well, that’s new!” the reporter cried, just as the cold pins-and-needles feeling raced through Vlad’s Marked arm.

Vlad looked up from the glassware he was moving just in time to see the magenta shield around Daniel dissipate.

Somewhere in the distance, through the sudden pounding rush of blood in his ears, Vlad heard the glassware shatter.

Daniel had been playing him for a fool the entire time.

Danny slammed the cap back on the Fenton Thermos with a sigh of relief. Normally, the Box Ghost was barely even a threat. He hadn’t even really been a threat this time, just a slightly larger pain in the ass. If any of those shipping containers had fallen on a building or car, they would have done serious damage.

Sam and Tucker were already waiting for Danny at their usual spot. A few passes over the area just to make sure there was no damage that the city couldn’t handle, and then Danny would be home free. He really needed to figure out how to avoid using Vlad’s powers before his next fight. If Vlad ever caught—

“Going somewhere, little badger?” the man in question asked, materializing in the air in front of Danny from a cloud of pink smoke.

“Vlad!” Danny squawked. He nearly dropped the Fenton Thermos in shock. Fumbling to attach it to his belt, Danny continued, “What’s wrong? Are the samples—”

A black gloved hand bunched the front of this hazmat suit and yanked him forward. Danny yelped and jerked his head to the side at the last second so his face didn’t collide with Vlad’s. From that close, the only things Danny could see were Vlad’s eyes glowing red with malice. Shit.

“You have three seconds to give me a reason not to blast you apart,” Vlad snarled.

Several response options flitted through Danny’s mind, each discarded as quickly as it arose. Vlad knew, and no amount of lying or avoiding was going to fix it. How had he figured it out? Danny had been so careful! So, so fucking careful and it was all for nothing, just like everything else he did. Why did Danny ever think that this was going to work out well for him? He had been playing with fire and now it was time to get burnt.

Of course Vlad was reacting like this, Danny had been a fool for hoping otherwise. He hadn’t even realized how much he had been holding onto that hope until it was so unceremoniously ripped from him.

“You can’t,” Danny reminded him, his voice raspy from Vlad’s iron grip. Correct, the mark confirmed, the bond making itself known for the first time in weeks. Danny didn’t need the confirmation. He knew in his bones, in his core, that few things in his life would ever be as true as that: Vlad couldn’t physically hurt him.

Magenta glowed under Danny’s chin as Vlad gathered his power. Danny looked him directly in the eyes, unflinching. The light went out and Vlad dropped Danny, jerking his arm back like he had been electrocuted.

Vlad looked back and forth several times from Danny to his arm, eyes wide as he cradled his Marked arm to his chest. He was scared, Danny realized uncomfortably. Being bonded to Danny scared him. As if hearing Danny’s epiphany, Vlad tucked his Marked arm into his cape and scowled.

“If you ever use my powers or access my core again, I will find a way to rip you molecule from molecule, Soul Marks be damned,” Vlad said, floating forward to jab Danny in the chest with a single finger. His Marked arm remained firmly behind his back, as far from Danny as he could manage. “Have I made myself clear?”

“I didn’t mean to—”

“Am. I. Clear?” he repeated slowly through gritted fangs.

“Yeah,” Danny sighed. It wasn’t like he had much choice. What were they going to do? Fight about it? Not exactly an option anymore.

Vlad glared at him a few seconds longer before pulling his hand back. “I should have known. How else could we have gotten along so well without the Soulmarks acting as an opiate? I loathe you, I should have realized immediately—”

“That’s not how it works!” Danny cut in hotly, bolstered by the Mark’s indignation at Vlad being wrong about it, “The Marks don’t—"

“Enough!” Vlad snarled, “It doesn’t matter how they function because they will never be given the opportunity. I’ve sacrificed too much to be tied to an idiotic, impertinent teenager more than half my age. If you think I’m about to let you ruin my life because of a Mark granted by the whims of fate or chance, you’re sorely mistaken.”

With that, Vlad disappeared into another pink cloud of smoke.

There were other kinds of pain beyond the physical that Vlad could still inflict on him, Danny admitted silently as he flew home, ignoring the wetness streaming down his cheeks.

Vlad’s arm stung for days after his confrontation with Daniel. The icy pins-and-needles sensation refused to fade. Sleep was nearly impossible. The rest of his body seemed to be acting up in solidarity with the Mark’s punishment. No matter what Vlad tried, he couldn’t get warm. Showers, his powers, sitting in front of the fireplace, nothing could chase away the chill.

In his more sensible moments, when he wasn’t raging against the injustice and indignity of it all, Vlad had to admit that the reaction made sense. Regular Soul Marks also prevented bonded humans from hurting each other, but their bond (and that phrase still made him nauseous and uneasy) was anything but ordinary. The part of Daniel’s ice core that resided in Vlad dictated the threat response. Had the situation been reversed, Vlad was sure that Daniel would suffer from invisible burns.

For the first time in many years, Vlad wasn’t certain what he should do. Cutting all ties with Daniel seemed to be the obvious choice. Vlad refused to be manipulated or forced by anyone or anything, especially not Daniel.

Even if they never saw each other ever again, they were still left with the issue of being able to access each other’s cores. As violently as he had reacted to Daniel using his powers, Vlad was surprised to find himself interested in…peeking at Daniel’s. Just a small look. The Mark had made his Soulmate out to be vast, powerful, ice cold and unforgiving. Daniel was none of those things. Except perhaps unforgiving, but Vlad suspected that treatment was exclusively reserved for him.

The ectosignature of the Mark was familiar, now that Vlad knew to whom it belonged. He felt foolish for not recognizing it sooner. That was probably how Daniel had figured it out before Vlad.

Perhaps Vlad had been too hasty. Daniel had given in far too easily for there to be an underlying master plan, as Vlad had originally feared. It was unlikely that Daniel had used his powers on purpose, there was no malice in the action. In fact, for the safety of both of them, a thorough study of their Marks was in their best interest. Neither of them could afford any other accidents rooted in ignorance, their luck wouldn’t hold out.

The only thing stopping Vlad from saying as much to Daniel was his pride. Specifically, having to swallow his pride and admit that he might have been too harsh. An apology was likely in order.

Another wave of cold pinpricks spiraled down Vlad’s Marked arm.

Yes, clearly an apology was in order, if for no other reason that to finally get some peace from the blasted chunk of Daniel’s soul in his arm.

*BZZZT* *BZZZT* *BZZ—*

Vlad grabbed his phone, unlocking it with his thumb as he flipped it over.

“Breaking News: Another ghost attack, and it is not looking good for Inviso-Bill!” the reporter said breathlessly as she and the cameraman dodged falling debris. The footage was shaky and slightly out of focus, but Vlad could make out the flitting black-white-green blur that was Daniel fighting some sort of technological giant.

Why was anyone willing to be an on-the-scene reporter in Amity Park?

The giant swatted at Daniel, slamming him into the asphalt thirty feet below with enough force to crack the road. Vlad couldn’t breathe as the hand came down again. Daniel raised his arm in what Vlad knew was the necessary gesture to make a shield, but his foe’s hand made contact before even a flicker of green could form.

The reporter was talking again, but it might as well have been static. Daniel wasn’t getting up. Of all the times for the cheeky brat to actually listen to him!

Several tense minutes later, the telltale flash of the Fenton Thermos’ tractor beam signaled that the fight was over. The cameraman had spent more time running for his life instead of filming, so Vlad had no idea how Daniel had managed yet another victory. All he could see was that single clear image of Daniel lying still and prone, crushed into the pavement.

That was unacceptable.

Danny landed on the roof of Fenton Works with even less grace than usual. He skidded to a stop, tripping over his own feet. After some wobbling and flailing, he managed one more miracle for the night by staying upright. Barely. Danny decided to count that as a win. He needed a win after the absolute shit storm of the past few weeks.

Dragging his aching body towards the section of roof right above his bed was exhausting. The stress of everything was finally taking its toll, mentally and physically. He needed at least twelve hours of uninterrupted sleep to function as a normal person again. Addressing the issues that were draining him would take at least another nine hours of sleep even begin processing. Thankfully, it was the weekend. All Danny needed to do was fall through the roof and he’d be in his bed. He’d probably be asleep before he even hit the mattress.

“What were you thinking?” A firm hand on his shoulder spun Danny around. His focus was scattered and his vision was more than a little hazy, but Danny would recognize that angry voice anywhere.

“I wasn’t,” Danny sighed. Did they have to do this right now? Couldn’t Vlad see how exhausted he was?

“Obviously,” Vlad retorted curtly. His hand was still gripping Danny’s shoulder hard enough to bruise, but since it was the only thing keeping Danny upright at the moment, he decided to leave it alone. It’s not like he was in much of a condition to protest.

“Can we do this later?” Danny begged. Black spots danced across his vision. His control of his powers was slipping; if Danny didn’t get to bed soon, he’d be sleeping on the roof. Again.

“Given your shoddy performance today, there might not be a later,” Vlad growled, giving Danny a shake. “I had thought you more capable-”

“Well, that was your mistake,” Danny interrupted, exhaustion making him bold, “And just so you know, I’m about to disappoint you again.” Before Vlad could respond, Danny’s powers fizzled out.

Danny felt himself sway back and forth. “Daniel?” Vlad asked, but Danny couldn’t respond as the dark spots rapidly overtook his vision. The last thing Danny saw was Vlad’s wide red eyes as he fell.

This isn’t exactly what I meant by thirteen hours of uninterrupted sleep, Danny thought groggily. Had he fallen asleep on a pile of cinderblocks? His back was twisted, his ear was shoved against one of his shoulders, and he couldn’t even tell what his legs were doing. He might have accidentally phased one of them through the mattress in his sleep again.

It was so unfair to feel worse waking up than he did before he fell asleep. Danny slept, he drank water, he usually remembered to eat, and yet his body continually betrayed him anyway. What more did it want from him?

It took several attempts for Danny to open his eyes because they were crusted shut. The pale grey light coming in through the window was unhelpful; Danny couldn’t tell if it was morning or evening. Hopefully he had thought to place his cellphone on the bedside table because he couldn’t feel it in his pocket. Sam and Tucker were probably worried about him.

Rolling over with a groan, Danny found that his phone was not on his bedside table. It was on the computer desk, which was the least interesting thing about the computer desk given that the chair in front of the computer was occupied by the a sleeping Vlad Masters.

He looked even more uncomfortable than Danny felt, slouched down in the chair with his legs stretched out and head lolled over the back at a terrible angle. The image did not compute. Danny was not rested enough, was not in the proper mental state to process Vlad’s presence in his bedroom. He vaguely remembered Vlad showing up on the roof the night before in a foul mood, ready to tear Danny a new one. Danny assumed Vlad would have left him on the roof unconscious; it wouldn’t have been the first time.

Vlad groaned. Danny’s heart pounded erratically in his chest. He wasn’t ready for this conversation.

“Oh butter biscuit, my neck,” he groaned, rolling his head to the side to ease out the tension in his muscles.

“The roof would have been more comfortable,” Danny said, then grimaced. His voice sounded like gravel in a blender and his mouth tasted terrible. What a great way to start the conversation.

“I was not about to sleep on the roof,” Vlad retorted, sitting upright as best he could after such a terrible night’s sleep. Danny squashed the feeling of sympathy that was trying to pop up; Vlad was the idiot who chose to stay and sleep in the chair, he could reap the consequences of his actions.

“It’s not the worst, I’ve done it before.”

Vlad opened his mouth like he was going to tell Danny exactly what he thought about that, then appeared to think better of it and snapped his mouth shut with a disappointed shake of his head.

“Seriously, I’ve done it dozens of times. You could have just left me there, I would have been fine,” Danny insisted.

“A little gratitude wouldn’t be misplaced in this situation,” Vlad grunted as he pulled his cellphone out of his pocket. “I have been waiting nearly six hours to make sure you were unharmed. I had to carry you—"

“Nobody asked you to do that!” Danny interrupted as he sat up. How dare Vlad make it sound like he did this for Danny’s benefit! “That was your choice, I would have been just fine—"

“Like how you were ‘just fine’ yesterday? You could have been seriously injured, or worse!”

“Why do you care?” Danny demanded.

Vlad ignored him. “You’re not so powerful that you can afford to be careless. You should have—” the older halfa cut himself off, his mouth stretched into a grim line. Staring at the wall over Danny’s shoulder, he continued, “Why didn’t you use my powers?”

“You told me not to,” Danny reminded him acerbically. “You threatened me within an inch of my life to never, ever use them again, remember? Besides, why do you care? If I had lost yesterday, it would have solved this whole soulmate problem for you. No need to keep searching for a way to rip me molecule from molecule, I’m sure I’ll do it to myself eventually.”

Vlad had stopped moving about halfway through Danny’s tirade. It was hard to tell if he was even breathing. For a while all he did was sit there and stare at Danny with an expression that, on anyone else, Danny would have described as horrified.

“Oh Daniel,” he finally said, leaning back in his chair and continuing to stare. He did not elaborate further. Danny couldn’t help fidgeting under the scrutiny. This wasn’t how he expected the conversation to go. If he was being honest, he didn’t expect there to ever be another conversation with Vlad, let alone one like this. Whatever this was. “This is my fault.”

“Excuse you,” Danny said, not caring where that statement came from or where it was going, “I am perfectly capable of fucking up my own life, I don’t need you taking the credit away from me.”

“That’s exactly what I’m talking about,” Vlad muttered, wiping a tired hand down his face.

“What are you even doing here?”

“You know why I’m here.”

“Not really? Last time we were near each other you made it very clear what would happen if you ever saw me again. So, are you here to kick my ass? Can it wait until I’ve had a little more sleep?”

“Perhaps I was a bit hasty the last time we spoke…”

Danny snorted. “Nope, try again,” he said, “You’ve been telling me for weeks how much you hate your soulmate and what you were going to do to them when you found them. You said you’ve felt that way for years, so don’t say it was ‘hasty’ like you haven’t—”

“That was before!” Vlad snapped.

“Before what?” Danny demanded.

“Before it was you,” Vlad ground out through clenched teeth.

“Whatever,” Danny scoffed, “Like that doesn’t make it a thousand times worse. You’re stuck with the one person in the world who knows exactly what you are, and I don’t mean your powers. And you know me too well, too. I’d be pissed to have me as a soulmate.”

Vlad would have looked less shocked if Danny had reached out and slapped him. “I suppose there is a certain benefit to your low opinion of me.”

“Yeah, well, same to you,” Danny muttered.

“I think we’ve gone about this in the worst way possible,” Vlad admitted.

“What other choice was there? Was I supposed to tell you as soon as I figured it out?” Danny asked. Vlad pursed his lips, then shook his head. “Exactly. I never wanted a Soulmate. Then you showed up in my kitchen saying the exact same thing, trying to figure out how to avoid being stuck with them, with me. So, what was I supposed to do?”

Vlad ran a tired hand over his face. “What would make you want this? Or at least make the situation more tolerable?”

“Not being skinned and sold to Skulker would be a good place to start,” Danny said immediately. “Or experimented on. Or killed.”

“Done,” Vlad said with more sincerity than Danny thought him capable of, but Danny found that he needed the reassurance. “What else?”

“I don’t know,” Danny admitted. “It’s not something I’ve given much thought to, beyond the existential dread. What about you? I know you don’t want me using your powers, but what else?”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,” Vlad said, “The damage you could cause me by injudiciously accessing my core would be immeasurable. It would be unwise to attempt it before we have the opportunity to run more tests. It is more logical, and infinitely safer, for us to figure out how to manage our situation rather than avoiding it. However, in a life-or-death situation like the one you found yourself in yesterday, I would prefer you alive over the alternative.”

“Are you sure? You were pretty freaked out over me accessing your core last time, I don’t want to do anything you’re uncomfortable with,” Danny said. Vlad tended to lash out when he was uncomfortable.

“Daniel, you are my soulmate. You. The only other halfa in existence, who is over twenty years younger than me, and the son of my former dearest friends from college, whom I have attempted to murder on several occasions. There is nothing comfortable about this situation.”

“Okay, how do we make it more comfortable? Or at least tolerable,” Danny asked as he rolled so he was sitting upright on the edge of the bed closest to Vlad. “Preferably without my parents finding out. How well we get along won’t matter if we’re being dissected.”

“Now is not the time for jokes, Daniel,” Vlad scolded, frowning, “Though I agree with the sentiment. I would rather put off telling Jack and Maddie for as long as possible. Indefinitely, even.”

Explaining that he was, pardon the pun, dead serious about his fear of dissection would have taken far too long, so Danny let it slide for the moment. They needed time, time to figure out how their bond worked and how to navigate their lives around it.

“The gap year!” Danny said with a snap of his fingers. “We could do the gap year thing. My parents wouldn’t be able to bother us, and it would give us a whole year to figure this mess out.”

Vlad nodded pensively, stroking his chin while he thought. “And that wouldn’t be suspicious? The gap year was a little old fashioned even when I was young.”

“Mom would be over the moon if I told her I was taking a gap year,” Danny insisted, warming to his plan and deliberately ignoring the opportunity to make a jab at Vlad’s age. “Getting to know my soulmate before introducing them to the family? She’d think that was the most romantic thing in the world.”

“And it won’t interfere with your college plans?”

“Yeah, because I totally had those,” Danny chuckled sarcastically, “Good one.”

Vlad looked concerned again for a moment before shaking his head. “We’ll discuss that later. We’ll certainly have enough time to do so with only each other for company. For an entire year. In the Wisconsin wilderness. Alone.”

“You don’t have to phrase it that way, I know what I’m getting myself into,” Danny scowled. Standing up, Danny stretched, raising his arms above his head and bending his back until several vertebrae popped. He closed his eyes, trying to focus on the pain-pleasure pulling at his muscles and not the headache that came from dealing with Vlad.

“Do you?” Vlad asked in a light, mocking voice.

“Yeah, asshole, I—” Danny began angrily, turning to let the older man have it, but Vlad was already gone. Great.

Despite what Vlad thought, Danny really did know what he was getting himself into. The gap year was their best option. It gave them the time they needed to figure out their Marks and distance from his parents. And yes, they would be stuck together for a year which would normally be a death sentence. Danny wasn’t stupid; even with the Marks, they were going to fight. It was inevitable. The Marks meant that they couldn’t inflict bodily harm on each other, but there were other types of damage to worry about.

Of all the Soulmate scenarios that Danny had been dreading, he had ended up with something worse than any nightmare he could have possibly imagined. That’s how he had felt a few weeks ago —Ancients, had it really been less than a month? But now, the uncertainty of who his Soulmate was had been replaced with the uncertainty of what they were going to do about the situation. Danny actually preferred it that way.

Chapter Text

Four years ago, the first time Danny had been to Vlad’s Dairy King Mansion, he had been in awe of it. The building was huge, bigger than any home he had ever been in before. It sprawled like a sleeping stone giant amongst the evergreens, miles away from civilization. The maze of halls and secret passages led to more rooms than one person could practically use. There were libraries, studies, guest rooms, billiard rooms…so many types of rooms that Danny didn’t even know the names for all of them. Why were there six parlors? What was a parlor, anyway? The term ‘mansion’ hardly did the building justice; it was basically a castle.

With all of those rooms and acres of land outside to explore, Danny had, at first, believed he’d be able to entertain himself indefinitely. Vlad had actual adult things to do, like business stuff and millionaire things. Or something. Danny wasn’t exactly sure what Vlad did, he had only seen his Soulmate maybe twice in the two weeks since they had arrived. Which was fine, honestly. The less they saw of each other, the less likely they were to get into an argument.

Except, after two weeks on his own, Danny was starting to feel bored. And lonely, but the boredom was much less embarrassing to admit to. Sam and Tucker usually alleviated both of those feelings. The three of them were always doing something to keep busy, be it school or ghost hunting or loitering outside the Nasty Burger. Their little trio, arm in arm against the world. Despite spending years spent agonizing over the ways that his Soulmate would ruin his life, Danny hadn’t considered the impact it would have on his closest friendships. He had willingly and knowingly traded their company for—what? A Soulmate who could barely stand the sight of him and a year in one of the most isolated places in the country. Great plan, Fenton. Another stellar example of his brilliant decision-making skills.

And the worst part? Sam and Tucker approved. Not immediately; Danny had to explain what went down four different times because they kept interrupting. But when they wished him the best, they meant it. If the cat was out of the bag and everyone had to make the best of it, they wanted him to have the textbook alloromantic Soulmate experience. Even if that meant they would no longer be the most important people in his life. Danny didn’t deserve that kind of support and selflessness. He was pretty sure he wouldn’t have been able to extend the same courtesy if he had been in their shoes.

Danny rounded a corner, so completely lost in his own thoughts that he failed to notice that the only other person in the castle was coming the opposite way. “Ooof!” Danny grunted, stumbling backwards but managing to maintain his balance.

“Careful!” Vlad exclaimed. His hands were raised awkwardly like he had considered grabbing Danny but didn’t know if it would be a good idea.

The silence that followed had Danny shifting uneasily. Darting looks at Vlad and then away again, Danny scrambled for an appropriate response. Should he say something? Apologize for running into him? Ask what the point of the gap year was if they weren’t going to spend any time together?

“Daniel—”

“Sorry!” Danny squeaked, face suddenly hot. He darted around Vlad and hurried down the hall. Once he was sure that Vlad wasn’t going to follow, Danny slipped through the floor to the hallway below, which connected to the wing where his room was located.

The room was massive. Even the king size bed complete with four posts and a thick green brocade canopy looked dwarfed in the space. Danny threw himself onto the bed and buried his head in the mountain of pillows. Everything was going fan-fucking-tastic.

At the three and a half week mark, after being in the mansion for nearly a month and only seeing Vlad a few times, Danny decided it was time to take matters into his own hands. Avoiding each other was counterproductive; they would never figure out how to manage their bond if they continued on like this. Danny needed to stop letting his nerves get the better of him. It was just Vlad. Danny could count on one hand the number of times that Vlad had genuinely scared him.

Unfortunately, one of those instances was recent and left a lingering unease. Vlad had grabbed him by the collar and tried to blast Danny’s head off for using Vlad’s powers. Danny knew for a fact that Vlad, as his Soulmate, couldn’t ever intentionally harm him like that ever again. But the look on Vlad’s face when he did it, the rage and loathing…

Danny couldn’t help the adrenaline spike that shot through him every time he accidentally ran into Vlad. Hopefully, it would fade with time and exposure. Vlad had seemed genuinely remorseful after finding Danny nearly passed out on the roof. He had stayed with Danny for hours and then agreed to the gap year. Vlad was willing to try, Danny reminded himself. It was time for Danny to start doing the same.

He put his hand on the doorknob of the lab where Vlad was currently working and took a deep breath.

At the end of the gap year, Danny would have to introduce his Soulmate to his family. That, above all the other reasons he had come up with, gave him the push he needed to open the door.

Vlad was sitting at one of the steel-topped lab tables with reference books and sheets of notebook paper strewn everywhere. He looked up as Danny entered the room, his expression wary. That look was exactly what Danny was trying to fix.

“Whatcha doing?” Danny asked.

“Is something wrong?”

“No? I just wanted to see what you were doing.”

Vlad scowled and opened his mouth, undoubtedly to say something scathing, before changing his mind. Shaking his head, he said, “Pardon my skepticism. I didn’t expect—”

“Yeah, I’ve been…or I guess I haven’t really been holding up my end of the deal,” Danny admitted with a shrug. This was fine, everything was going fine. “And before all of this—” Danny waved a hand around vaguely, “you had asked me to help in the lab. So, I figured I’d better start trying.”

“And what led to this change of heart?” Vlad asked.

Danny couldn’t blame him for being wary, but that didn’t mean it was time to put all of his cards on the table. “I’ve already wasted nearly a month. That leaves eleven months before my parents are going to start demanding to meet you.”

“You were motivated by the inexorable march of time,” Vlad nodded.

He was still frowning slightly, so Danny added a cheeky, “Well, I also got bored.”

That pulled a short snort out of his Soulmate. “That, I believe.

“So, again, what are you doing?” Danny reiterated, walking closer to see what Vlad had been writing.

Vlad gestured at the papers, silently inviting Danny to investigate. Handwritten notes on Vlad’s interpretations of the laws of the 13 Laws of Soulmates. Some of the commentary mentioned a few points that Danny remembered rambling at Vlad in his parents’ lab all those months ago.

“Nothing of use at the moment,” Vlad said with a shrug. “Or rather, nothing we don’t already know. As far as I can tell, all of the regular laws surrounding Replete Soul Marks still apply to us. Unable to harm each other, drawn together, able to learn vital information about the other prior to meeting—”

“You were able to communicate with the Mark?” Danny asked in surprise.

“Were you not?”

“I was, I just didn’t expect you to have tried.”

“I had thought that my Soulmate was a ghost with unrestricted access to my core,” Vlad reminded him. “I had a vested interest in locating them quickly. The information wasn’t helpful in that regard. I’m not sure I would have been able to connect you with the information given to me by the Mark.”

“What did it tell you?”

“It showed me something.”

Danny waited, desperately wanting to pry but unsure of how far he could push Vlad. Vlad looked pensive, stroking his beard absently while staring at the papers covering the table.

“Cold.”

“That’s it? Cold?” Danny laughed. Vlad’s head snapped up to glare at Danny. “I mean, I have ice powers, but that was the vaguest thing it could possibly have given you. All the ghosts in the Realm of the Far Frozen have ice powers, I’m not special.”

“And what did your Mark show you that allowed you to divine what I could not?” Vlad asked peevishly.

“I played twenty questions with it,” Danny explained. Vlad’s disbelief prompted him to explain, “Every time I made an assumption about my Soulmate, the Mark would tell me if I was right or not. I found that out accidentally, I mentioned offhand to Tucker that I was younger than my Soulmate without having any reason to know that.”

Vlad nodded slightly. Grabbing a blank sheet of paper and a pencil, he gestured for Danny to continue.

“I recognized your ectosignature, so that meant I had at least met my Soulmate before. I assumed you were as freaked out about the Mark as I was, but you were actually furious. That’s part of why I didn’t want to tell you,” Danny added.

Vlad paused his writing, his shoulders tensing. Danny pushed on, hoping to distract them both.

“Just like you, I had kinda figured out that my Soulmate was a ghost after something that Technus had said. So, it had to be a ghost that I knew. The Mark kept saying ‘not quite’ so I was partially correct. Either my Soulmate was a ghost or they weren’t, I knew them or I didn’t. My Soulmate isn’t quite a ghost, he’s only half. And you’re the only one who fit all of those criteria.”

The scratch of pencil on paper was the only sound for several minutes. Danny forced himself to stay still and not fidget. He had not meant to overshare like that, but clearly Vlad thought that the information was important.

Eventually, Vlad put down his pencil. “What are your plans for tomorrow?" he asked. Danny gave him what he hoped was a pointed look. “Of course, silly me. Meet me tomorrow evening here in the lab after dinner.”

“What are you thinking?"

“As you said, we are on a short time frame,” Vlad said. “There’s no point in procrastinating further; we have to begin testing just how much access we have to each other’s cores.”

Vlad should have hung up on his Axion manager and then fired the man. If the rest of the board of directors hadn’t been on the call as well, Vlad would have done just that. He made it very clear that he had a pressing appointment that evening that he could not miss. Despite this, the manager insisted on going over each data table individually, explaining the entire process. Vlad despised having information explained to him like that. The entire meeting could have been an email.

The man had been doing it for the benefit of the board, Vlad was aware. Amongst the lawyers and businessmen, Vlad was the only one with a master’s degree in biomedical engineering. Just because he understood the reasoning did not mean that he appreciated it.

Vlad reached for the doorknob of the lab only to have it yanked out of his grip. Daniel stumbled to a stop, once again nearly colliding with Vlad. They had nearly crashed together several times, which was strange as they were the only non-staff individuals in the whole manor.

“You’re here!” Daniel blurted, taking a few awkward steps backwards into the lab. Glancing over Daniel’s shoulder, Vlad noticed that the books and papers were exactly where he left them. Despite this, he was absolutely certain that Daniel had read through all of them. Vlad found that he didn’t mind.

“I apologize for my tardiness,” Vlad said, pushing past Daniel. Technically, they had all the time they wanted or needed to perform their experiments, but Vlad had a timeframe in mind and they were already behind.

“It’s fine,” Danny shrugged. “I’ve been here for like forty-five minutes because I was afraid I’d be the one who showed up late.”

“Not an unreasonable concern,” Vlad agreed dryly.

Daniel stuck his tongue out, which Vlad refused to dignify with a response. Instead, he took off his suit coat and hung it on the back of the chair. Rolling up the sleeve of his white shirt, he turned to Daniel and said, “Take off your sweatshirt.”

“What are we doing?” Daniel asked rather than complying.

“We have no reason to keep the Marks covered now,” Vlad said.

“I thought we were going to test—”

“We are,” Vlad interrupted. “But most people don’t know they are Soulmates until they see the other person’s Mark. We already know that you can access my powers. I want to see if there is any change after we’ve seen each other’s Marks.”

That was a load of fudge nuggets that Vlad came up with on the spot. His curiosity had simply gotten the better of him. Part of his soul was embedded in Daniel’s arm. No amount of description was enough; he needed to see it with his own eyes.

Daniel frowned, but grabbed the back of his sweatshirt and pulled it up over his head. This made the shirt underneath ride up, revealing a lower abdomen with sparse black hair. Vlad swallowed at the unexpected feeling that he refused to name. That was not an option, nor was it the purpose of the exercise.

“On the count of three?” Danny asked. Vlad nodded. “One, two, three.”

Vlad blindly pulled off the glove and then the two sleeves covering his Mark while Daniel did the same. Both were more invested in what the other was doing to care about finesse.

“Oh, wow,” Daniel whispered. Vlad paid him no mind.

He shouldn’t have been surprised. The way Daniel had described his Mark was the exact same as Vlad’s, just a different color. And yet, seeing the magenta of his powers, his core, swirling across Daniel’s skin made his throat tighten. This is what all the poets and romantics had meant when they said that seeing your Soul Mark for the first time was like finding completion without knowing you had ever been without it.

Vlad looked from Daniel’s Mark back to his own. Going entirely off of a gut feeling, Vlad pulled forth an icy chill that definitely wasn’t his own. Frost formed around his unmarked hand. It was beautiful, and nearly endless. The Mark hadn’t lied to him; Vlad felt like he could plunge all of Wisconsin into the deepest, harshest winter it had ever seen. Daniel had this inside him all the time. And now Vlad did too, in a way.

The thought terrified him. His fear wasn’t of the amount of power, but rather how much access he had to Daniel’s core. He couldn’t harm his Soulmate intentionally, but what about accidentally? Humans couldn’t, but this was where their similarities with human Soul Marks likely ended.

“Wow,” Daniel repeated again with just as much awe as the first time. When Vlad looked over at him, he wasn’t actually doing anything.

“Daniel?”

“Your core is electric,” Danny said, eyes still unfocused. “I thought it would be fire because it’s so warm.”

“Lightning is five times hotter than the surface of the sun,” Vlad explained, even though there hadn’t really been a question.

“It never felt like lightning, just warmth.”

The Mark showed Daniel warmth and comfort while Vlad’s showed him an endless icy abyss. Vlad wondered what that meant.

“Can you use any of my powers differently than you could before?” Vlad asked, trying to get Daniel back on task.

“I don’t think….” Danny screwed up his face in concentration for a moment before summoning a ghost stinger in both hands. In the Marked hand he held a magenta bolt, in the other was his usual green bolt. “I don’t think it’s about using your powers. We can do a lot of the same things, you’re just better at them than I am.” Danny let the stingers dissipate, then summoned them again but in opposite hands. “I can make a ghost stinger, yours are just more powerful because of your core. I can make fire, but not as well as ice. I think this is more about sharing energy than individual powers.”

Vlad summoned the frost again. “I have never been able to use cryokinesis,” he maintained.

“Yeah, but have you ever really tried?” Daniel countered, “Or been put in a situation where it you had to figure it out or die? My core is used to it, and you’re using my energy to make it.”

Vlad chose to remain silent. The number of times Daniel had been in situations like that was alarming. And of that number, how many had been caused by Vlad himself?

“This would imply that eventually, we’ll be able to pool our knowledge and use every ability in our collective arsenal by drawing on either core.”

“Maybe? That sounds like a lot of power for two people to have,” Daniel said with a frown.

Vlad made a non-committal noise. The icy chasm of Daniel’s power was still fresh in his mind.

“Was ice the only thing you wanted to try?” Daniel asked. He made a sword and shield ectoconstruct using Vlad’s energy before allowing them to dissipate and re-form into a yoyo.

“There was one other thing,” Vlad admitted. Now that he had seen the Mark, he had the inexplicable urge to touch it. Would it feel like touching regular skin? Would the piece of his Soul that resided in Daniel recognize him?

Vlad explained his thoughts to Daniel.

“Why not?” the younger man shrugged. He held out his arm expectantly.

Vlad returned the gesture and grasped Daniel’s forearm.

They knew immediately that they had made a mistake.

Vlad had never been so aware of another person as he was of Daniel in that moment. Their souls weren’t just Mated; for the brief moment they were connected before Daniel ripped them apart, they were a single entity.

Daniel stared at Vlad wide eyed for only a second before bolting from the lab.

The intimacy was mortifying, no wonder Daniel had fled. Vlad shared his embarrassment.

The connection had left Vlad disoriented. He had felt Daniel, all that he was and the seeds of all that he would be. Immensely powerful, yes, that had already been established. But it placed the things that Vlad already knew about Daniel in a new light. He was more than Vlad deserved.

The thought of Daniel knowing Vlad so intimately was nauseating; he could only guess what horrors Daniel had sensed that caused him to flee. If what Daniel had felt was anything akin to what Vlad had experienced, he had no idea how they were going to be near each other ever again.

The chilly spark of Daniel’s power traveled up and down Vlad’s arm in a continuous loop. Vlad did not deserve Daniel. Powerful, stubborn, sarcastic Daniel who would inevitably love Vlad anyway. And Vlad, who was selfish to his literal core, would take everything from him and still demand more. The universe was cruel to yoke them so unequally.

This self-awareness didn’t stop the aching want from consuming Vlad.

D: I’ve never been so embarrassed IN MY LIFE

S: ???

T: dude what happened

D: we touched cores, kind of

S: kinky

T: kinky

S: jinx you owe me a soda

D: GUYS

S: was it a sex thing?

T: explain it to us lowly humans without soulmarks

T: unless it was a sex thing, then I don’t want to know

S: liar

T: well maybe a little

D: Not a sex thing, just

D: intimate? Personal? It was like I could see all the pieces that make up Vlad and he could see me

S:ah the mortifying ordeal of being known

D: not helpful

T: did you make it weird? Did he?

S: of course Danny made it weird, he probably panicked since that’s the part of having a soulmate that’s always freaked him out

Danny pressed and held the power button on his phone until it turned off. He needed support, not to have Sam read him for filth.

The downstairs rec room was silent and dark which was exactly what Danny needed. Snuggling down into the couch cushions, Danny closed his eyes.

Danny wasn’t completely lacking in self-awareness. He wasn’t very smart, he had childhood trauma by the bucketful, he was a liar, a loser, and had the worst luck of anyone he had ever met. No one, not even Vlad who had his own set of flaws, deserved to be stuck with Danny as a soulmate.

Danny had thought Vlad had been avoiding him before? Hah! After seeing whatever he saw in Danny’s core, Vlad probably wouldn’t show his face for the rest of the gap year. And Danny wouldn’t blame him at all. It was too much, too soon.

Twisting to the side, Danny wedged himself into the gap between the couch cushions and the back of the couch. Wrong, the Mark whispered as he drifted off, entirely wrong, but Danny ignored it.

Sometime later, a steady rocking motion woke Danny from his nap. He lifted his head groggily, squinting in the low light. What time was it?

“It’s late,” a soft voice murmured in response. Had he asked that out loud?

“Vlad?” Danny asked, some of his sleepy haze lifting. Two strong arms were wrapped around him, one under his knees and the other under his upper back.

“Go back to sleep.”

“No, I can—" Danny wiggled, but Vlad’s grip tightened.

“Shhhh, go back to sleep, little badger.”

Danny sighed and let his head flop onto Vlad’s shoulder, forehead pressed against the older man’s neck. The last thing he remembered was the vibration of Vlad speaking and the smell of his cologne.