Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

He wrung his hands together. 

It wasn’t like him to do that. 

Jack Fenton was not a hand-wringing kind of guy, he wasn’t some nervous wreck who fell apart in a crisis. That wasn’t the Fenton way.

…But he didn’t exactly feel like he embodied the Fenton family values the way he thought he had. Not now they knew…

Not know HE knew what he’d been doing to his own son this whole time. What THEY had been doing.

Suddenly, every nervous twitch, every wide-eyed look, every recollection of the way Danny’s whole body would lock up as if unsure whether to run or not… every single instance was a damning sentence against them as parents.

He’d been SCARED of them.

Their boy, who had survived countless ghost attacks, gone up against some truly heinous ghosts, had fought an army without even hesitating, had fought the Ghost King himself, twice…

Their boy had been too afraid of them to let them know what had happened to him. ANY of it.

And it was THEIR fault.

Jack wrung his hands, glancing up at the clock on the wall, it’s ticking one of the few noises filling the silence in the faintly bleach-scented corridor. It had only been fifteen minutes since he last checked it.

Danny had been in surgery for five hours now.

They could probably go and sit in the main area of the waiting room, rather than this spill-over area. It was empty of everyone but them now, the only other people about being the nurses on the triage desk. 

But that would put them that little bit further away from the doors they’d taken Danny through, and none of them could bring themselves to do that.

It felt so strange, to know that there was a whole team of people and ghosts, not so far from them, fighting to keep Danny alive, and yet they couldn’t hear any of it.

Something so significant, so potentially life altering, happening with no fanfare. Just the waiting. And the silence.

It had been so chaotic at first, so nerve wracking, a blur of adrenalin fuelled panic. He barely remembered anything that had happened after he had lain Danny on a gurney and left him to the care of the emergency team. 

At some point he'd been steered into a shower of some sort, nurses checking him for shock while he insisted he was fine and that he just needed to know that Danny would be alright.

They couldn’t guarantee anything, of course. Just repeat over and over that the doctors were doing their best, the surgeons would do everything they could, he was in the best hands possible…

Jack frowned slightly at his hands, pulling at the material of his gloves, remembering what they had looked like, drenched in his son’s blood.

Red. It had been red. It had been human. Danny had FELT human. Even if Jack had seen him, suspended in the air and soaked in ectoplasm, eyes alight with a power that had buzzed against his skin, surrounded by an aura so potent it had made every hair on his body stand on end…

He still remembered the slight weight of him in his arms, moments later, completely limp and unresponsive. The image of blood pooling and pouring from his mouth would be seared into his mind forever. 

He didn’t remember running so fast in his whole life.

And now they were…

Now Danny was…

Were they fighting to keep him alive? Or was it a fight to keep him somewhere in between? How did it even work? How did DANNY even work, when everything about what he’d seen, what Sam and Tucker and Jazz had explained, seemed impossible?

It shouldn't be possible. It sure as hell shouldn't have happened TWICE.

And yet, the evidence had been right there, right in front of them, undeniable. Irrefutable.

Just like the evidence that ghosts were all nothing but evil had been undeniable… irrefutable…. So they’d thought. Until presented with a truth there was no denying.

Shame clenched tight in his gut, and Jack hung his head, letting out a quiet sigh.

Accepting that they had been wrong had been so much easier than he ever thought it would be.

If anyone had asked him that morning whether he had any doubt about his conviction that no ghost was good, he would have truthfully said no. So would Maddie. They both ‘knew’ what they had observed, ‘knew’ what all their research told them, ‘knew’ that the history of every ghost fight in town backed them up.

In truth they hadn’t ‘known’ a damn thing.

It had taken the barest amount of prodding and pulling for Jazz, Sam and Tucker to unravel their theories and convictions. They had introduced knowledge that suddenly turned everything they ‘knew’ about ghosts on its head. 

And then there was Danny…

Neither he nor Maddie could ever, EVER believe that Danny was evil. Two years since the accident he’d been under their roof, sleeping and breathing and eating and being himself. And they'd noticed nothing, because Danny had been Danny. 

Jack could never believe, no matter what mischief or trouble he got himself into, that Danny was evil.

Not even after witnessing what the Crown and Ring had nearly done to him, near the end.

Jack laced his hands together and clenched them tightly, the memory of Phantom plunging his sword into Pariah’s core playing over in his head.

He felt ashamed that his first feeling towards the memory was fear. Fear of his own Son’s capabilities… fear that he had it in him to destroy something so utterly. 

But on the tail of that fear came a sort of awed pride… his son had defeated THE Ghost King. The half-ghost son of Ghost Hunters had taken on the strongest ghost known to exist and WON.

No matter how gruesome of an achievement it might be, it still spoke volumes about his conviction. About his strength, and his drive, and determination.

The more he thought about what Danny had been doing, as Phantom… about what he’d REALLY been doing, now that he could strip away his biases and look at Phantom’s actions for what they were…

Danny had been amazing. 

Shame at his own actions burned alongside the pride that welled within him, a lump rising in his throat.

His boy HAD been a hero. No matter what he or Maddie had said about Phantom, Danny had pushed on anyway, had stuck to his guns and done the right thing. He’d fought everyone and anyone that threatened to hurt them or the town.

And not only had he been fighting the ghosts, he’d been fighting his own parents just to survive.

Jack couldn’t even begin to imagine how they were going to make it up to him. Surely there was no way to fix this… how could Danny forgive them everything they’d done? They’d SHOT at him, MULTIPLE times. He’d BOASTED to his son every time he’d come up with some new and terrible way to hurt ghosts… to hurt Phantom.

He’d ignored the flinches, which stuck out to him now as further, damning evidence of his failure as a parent. 

Jack had been actively setting out to destroy his own son, and Danny had…

He had…

Just gone along with it. 

He hadn’t run, or hidden, not even from the house rigged to hurt him, or the basement full of weapons designed specifically to cause him harm.

He’d lived in that for two years and… sure, he’d grown distant, they hadn’t failed to notice, but…

Danny could have left. He could have run away at any time, and Jack doubted he or Maddie could really have found him, if Danny didn’t want to be found.

But he’d stayed and held tight to his secret for two years.

Two years fighting ghosts, his own house, his parents, the terrible press, the other ghost hunters…

No wonder his grades had suffered. No wonder he’d pulled away from them. It was a miracle he even spoke to them at all.

Jack leant back in his chair and stared at the clock again. Only five minutes had passed since he last looked at it.

Memories churned in his head again. All the major attacks… every time the ghost boy had brought it under control… each time DANNY had gone out of his way to protect the town, to protect them… every excuse they’d found to justify their beliefs in direct contradiction to the evidence that was there the whole time. 

What if they’d caught him, like they wanted to? Like they’d TRIED to? What if they’d gotten him on their lab table…

They’d talked about it enough times, and in front of Danny, he MUST have thought about what he’d do in that situation… how he would stop them.

What could he have said? What would the two of them ever have believed before now that would have made them stop and listen to the ghost boy? Did he HAVE a plan for that? Or did he just… hope it would never come to be?

It hadn’t, true… thank whatever powers that be, he couldn’t remember them ever managing to get him in the lab like that, but not for lack of trying.

Jack ran his gloved hands over his eyes. If Danny woke up and never wanted to speak to them again, he wouldn’t blame him.

His face swam in the darkness of his closed eyelids, the face he’d made when he’d looked at them after saving Jazz…

White hair, white eyes, glowing and adorned with the trappings of the Ghost King… there had been fear. He was sure there had been fear, the moment he’d locked eyes, brief as it was, before Vlad had attacked.

A shiver worked its way down his spine at the memory of Vlad.

That was a whole other set of issues to unpack.

Looking past the part where Vlad was ALSO a half ghost… and the part where it was HIS fault… Jack had trouble containing his anger towards his ex-best-friend. 

Just because Vlad had suffered for his mistake, that would never be an excuse for whatever he’d been doing to Danny these last two years. Coming after him for the title of Ghost King, when he was already so badly hurt… that was low enough, but stating he would KILL him to get it, in front of everyone? Threatening Jazz’s life? In front of THEM? 

Whatever Vlad was now, he wasn’t the person Jack had known in college. The ghost powers had done something to him that they hadn’t done to Danny. CHANGED him in some fundamental way, turning him down a path so dark he’d become the epitome of a monster.

But…

But WAS that circumstance? Or was Vlad simply a window into the future any and all human-ghost-hybrids faced?

Would… would that happen to Danny? Would their boy slowly turn bad? 

After all, he hadn’t noticed with Vlad. Hadn’t realised until he was outed a few hours ago, just how bad he’d turned. What if the changes were so slow and so subtle that he’d miss the signs with Danny? …What were they willing to do, if their son turned bad?

The fact he was now possibly the most powerful ghost in existence didn’t help matters. Would that accelerate any ill effects of being a half-ghost? Would it corrupt him, the way Vlad kept saying?

Jack frowned and shook his head, staring back down at his hands. 

No. NO. he refused to believe his boy would become like Vlad… not when he’d been under so much pressure, when he had ample opportunity and power to become something terrible, but held onto his humanity even in the face of the literal ghost apocalypse. 

He could have joined the other side at any point, abandoned them and gone the easy route, used his power for personal gain and stopped living in worry or fear. 

But instead, he’d kept doing what he was doing before the accident. He stayed at home, he kept going to school, he kept close to his friends, and he took on the extra responsibility of trying to keep everyone safe from OTHER ghosts.

No matter what their opinion of ghosts, Danny was a GOOD boy. A good son. A better, truer Fenton than he was.

Even if he… if he didn’t pull through, if he lost his humanity and became all ghost…

Jack would stick by him. He would stick by his boy. He wanted to tell him… NEEDED to tell him, needed him to know he was loved and would be safe… or as safe as they could keep him.

But for the moment, all he could do was wait.

Chapter Text

It felt like the portal all over again. But this time stretched out, and involving a lot more people, and a lot more waiting to see if he was ACTUALLY going to be okay.

When the accident happened, everything was so fast. 

Even if the screaming had felt like it had gone on forever, it had really only been seconds, and then it was over and he was staggering out of the portal.

The sight of him lying on the lab floor was now super-imposed in his mind on the memory of seeing him crumple after the fighting. 

After he’d nearly lost himself.

After he’d dragged himself back from the brink when they’d called his name.

Were they REALLY the one thing that had stopped him from losing his fight against the Ring?

On the one hand, it seemed silly to think so. Outside of their run-ins with their own, limited powers, neither he nor Sam were particularly special. 

But on the other hand, he KNEW Danny… they both did, and Danny was an absolute sap. If ANYTHING was going to influence him and any sort of mind control trying to take him over, it was how much he cared about them…

Because he knew, even if they didn’t say it all that often, that they cared about him, too.

More than they could even articulate between the three of them, they all cared. There was a REASON they were inseparable, even if people would joke about it, that link was… it meant so much.

To him, to Sam, and definitely to Danny, if the way it would influence him was any indication.

Tucker sighed, closing his eyes, the events of a few hours ago playing on a constant loop in his head.

Vlad had picked Jazz because she’d been on the outside, easiest to yank away from the group. But he could have picked him, or Sam, and the effect would have been the same. 

Danny did NOT take well to his loved ones being threatened.

Tucker knew it was love, of a sort. He might have been sixteen, and completely inexperienced when it came to dating, but he knew what real love was. He knew the difference between the kind of infatuated love he held for people he lusted after, and the kind of affection that had him ride-or-die with the people that mattered most to him.

Until now though, he hadn’t really understood how much love could hurt.

He ACHED to know that Danny would be alright. He couldn’t stand to be there, not because it was a hospital (weirdly that part wasn’t freaking him out at all right now), but because he couldn’t stand the thought that he might not see Danny again.

He bit hard at his lip and swallowed the lump in his throat. Even the prospect of it was too much, tears welling in his eyes. He let them fall quietly, not looking at anyone, even though he knew they wouldn’t say anything about it.

They all felt the same. He could see it, in the way Sam and Jazz let their own silent tears fall. The way Mr. Fenton wrung his hands, the way Mrs. Fenton kept unnaturally still and stared at the doors they’d taken Danny through.

Of all of them, Maddie was the only one who had seen Danny in the operating theatre. She was the only one who really knew what state he was in, had been in, at least a few hours ago.

He wished SOMEONE could just… tell them something, ANYTHING, give them some HINT about how it was going. How he was going. If he would come out of this okay…

At least, relatively.

Nothing about what had happened to him was okay.

And it had definitely happened TO him. Danny never asked for any of this shit. He just took it as it came, dealt as best as he could…

Tucker shuddered, the memory of watching him plunge his sword into Pariah swimming in his mind.

None of them had had any time to process it. Not really.

Especially not Danny.

The look in his eyes when he’d come back, when he’d talked about the things Clockwork had said… Tucker had been focussing on his eyes to stop himself looking at the gash across his chest. If he’d looked at it too much, he would have thrown up for sure, and he hated throwing up.

Tucker had focussed on trying to figure out just how much emotional fallout they would be dealing with. The moment he’d seen Danny’s face, he’d known this was going to be bad. Even putting aside the fact Danny had been forced to destroy another ghost’s core, he’d been through a hell of an ordeal prior to that.

And then Vlad had put him through even more.

The thing Tucker was most concerned about… the thing that made him wonder if he’d watched his best friend since kindergarten die all over again in a more permanent way, was that bright green lightning that had traced across his body.

He knew the marks the moment they appeared, remembered seeing them the first time… remembered the way Danny had tried to hide how much they hurt, how they flared up on the first anniversary of his accident.

Did it mean he was no longer a halfa? Was he… was it just Danny Phantom, now? Or was his core going to destabilise if his human half died?

There was so much they didn’t know… didn’t WANT to know, because these were frightening questions, and they may not even have answers. Residents of the ghost zone had a name for what he and Vlad were, but they didn’t have much more than that, so far as they had found.

Halfas were so terribly rare, there was barely more than mentions of them in any ancient ghost texts they could get their hands on. Nothing about how their cores and bodies were linked, no way to know what was or wasn’t fully fatal to them.

Frostbite had been their best source of information to date, and even he knew frighteningly little. Which was why Danny had agreed to let SnowClaw study his biology in the first place. They needed to know SOMETHING, needed to have SOMEONE with even a hope of fixing him if something went direly wrong.

Like now.

Tucker screwed up his eyes, nails digging into his palms as he clenched his hands and forced himself to take deep, steadying breaths.

Danny was NOT going to go ghost permanently. He had the best surgeons from BOTH realms working on him. He couldn’t BE in more capable hands…

Tucker felt more tears well in his eyes and screwed them shut even tighter.

If they couldn’t save Danny… only one other person could.

And there were never any guarantees with Clockwork.

Chapter Text

The feeling of blood rushing over her hands wouldn’t go away.

It wasn’t as if Sam hadn’t had nightmares about it before. It wasn’t even as if she hadn’t felt Danny’s blood on her hands before, because she had, COUNTLESS times, far more than she wanted to think about.

…But it had never been like this. She’d never actually thought he was about to die in her arms.

Her stomach twisted with self-loathing and bitter amusement. What could be more gothic than having her half-dead friend bleed out in her arms… plenty of depressed Victorian poets would romanticise the idea, but the reality didn’t feel anything as sublime as they made it sound.

Terror didn’t feel very gothic. It just felt awful. SHE felt awful.

She would do ANYTHING to get the feeling to go away, her leg jiggled with unresolved tension, her brain screaming at her to damn the rules, run through the doors before her and force her way into the surgical suite to scream at Danny that he wasn’t ALLOWED to die the rest of the way.

She already felt guilty enough for getting him halfway there.

But that wouldn’t help him, It wouldn’t help anyone. It would probably get her kicked out, so she stayed in her uncomfortable, moulded plastic seat in the waiting room, alternating between jiggling her left and right legs.

Sam closed her eyes, sighing and thunking her head back against the wall behind her. Behind her eyelids, red and green swirled through her vision, pouring forth, white fading to black, skin paling to the wrong shade.

He was NOT going to die. He didn’t give up that easily, he wasn’t going to let VLAD of all people win, not after everything else that had happened today. 

Sam opened her eyes, unable to stop the visions burning in her mind's eye, deciding instead to try and distract herself with something else. The effort turned out to be somewhat futile, since the waiting room was fairly featureless.

She had already read over the pamphlets in their holder on the wall, she knew all about the influenza vaccines available next month, knew about the family planning services offered, knew about the palliative care options.

The other posters on the wall across from her were similarly themed, information she didn’t really need, didn’t really want, wasn’t proving enough to get her mind to stop replaying the way he crumpled against her…

Sam turned her head, glancing at Tucker out of the corner of her eye before looking forward again to afford him privacy. 

It wasn’t as if she was judging the tears pouring silently down his face. She’d already been there, she’d exhausted her supply, she felt too hollow and sick with churning anxiety to cry right now. She’d probably cycle back around to it, but for now, her eyes and face were dry.

Glancing to her other side, Jazz seemed to be in a similar frame of mind to her, though her gaze suggested she was lost in her thoughts. 

Sam could take a guess at what they were, she doubted it was much different to her own… but then, Jazz had very different insights than she did in situations like this. Jazz was far more knowledgeable about the mechanics surrounding grief and anxiety than the rest of them.

Maybe she was trying to coach herself through this, rationalise and compartmentalise to cope. Sam almost envied her. She couldn’t do anything quite as organised as that with her thoughts and feelings. 

She just weathered the storm inside her, hating every minute of it and aching with not knowing what would happen.

Beyond Jazz, the elder Fentons seemed to be dealing with things in their own ways. Jack looked more worried than Sam ever remembered seeing him, while in contrast, Maddie seemed like she was made of stone.

It was interesting, on some level, to see how they internalised or externalised their feelings in a situation like this.

…In THE situation, the one the four of them had worried over in the backs of their minds…

How would Jack and Maddie handle knowing the truth?

So far, the overall answer seemed to be ‘well’. Not two minutes after finding out what Danny was, they’d rallied to his side and desperately fought to save him.

Clearly, his half-ghost status didn’t change how much they loved him. Sam knew he’d been most worried about their rejection, more even than he’d worried about them wanting to experiment on him.

He didn’t really talk about it. The few times she or Tucker ever got him to open up about his thoughts or feelings on the matter, the insights they’d gleaned had been worrying.

Danny didn’t want to talk about it because it scared the hell out of him. Even though the benefits of them knowing, if they accepted him, were enormous… the risk if they DIDN’T had been far too high to chance. 

Without an unavoidable situation like the one they’d found themselves in, Sam doubted Danny would EVER have willingly told them. The stakes had been so very high, his anxiety about it so deep that he’d done everything he could to bury the feelings and avoid the subject altogether.

The looks on his parents' faces now were almost a relief. Clearly they loved him too much to let his half-ghost status get in the way of their worry over him. 

The downside, of course, was that they had to find out in a crisis situation. And Danny was in no position to talk it out with them… assuming he would ever get to.

Sam swallowed a frustrated growl that wanted to claw its way out of her throat. She didn’t WANT to feel this way. She didn’t WANT to think the worst, she wanted to tell herself that Danny would be fine, that they would laugh this off later, that he really WAS indestructible.

But she could still feel the mixture of warm and cool sliding over her hands. Could still smell the blood and ectoplasm, could still hear him choking on it as it filled his mouth and throat and lungs.

She couldn’t be sure of anything. She could only sit here with the others, bouncing her leg, waiting to find out if her world was about to collapse or not.