Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

William Lancer sat at his desk, quietly grading essays while his students worked on their exams, but he found it hard to focus, his eyes continually drifting up to one student in particular. Hunched over his desk and chewing the end of his pencil, Daniel Fenton squinted at the questions, rubbing his forehead occasionally as he slowly wrote down his answers. William’s expectations for Daniel’s exam were low. Even before the boy disappeared, his grades hovered around a C minus at best, so just before midterms, he asked Daniel to come and study with him twice a week after school, hoping to offer a quiet, safe place for him to do his work. Much as Daniel insisted there were no problems at home, William struggled to believe that after the last couple of years. The Fentons were well-meaning but absent-minded, their intense focus on ghosts and protecting Amity Park leaving them to occasionally put their children much lower on their list of priorities than appropriate, so while they might not be actively harming Daniel, he doubted they were doing much to support him, either, as he struggled with his schoolwork.

Daniel agreed to study with him, but the arrangement fell apart within days. During one of his classes, several ghosts appeared in William’s classroom, demanding Daniel be handed over to them. He tried to protect Daniel and failed, and the terror in the poor boy’s eyes as the ghosts dragged him away through a portal into the Ghost Zone haunted William even now. His family and friends were desperate to find him and bring him home, but the portal the Fentons built to the Ghost Zone stopped working within a day of Daniel’s disappearance. Ghosts still attacked as natural portals popped up all over town, but a rescue mission quickly became an impossibility, the natural portals far too unstable and unpredictable for humans to use.

William assumed that Daniel was gone for good, no doubt killed by the ghosts that wanted revenge on his parents for trapping and hunting so many of their kind. Like many high school teachers with a career spanning close to two decades, he had lost a couple of students before, but none stung quite as much as Daniel, his failure to protect him that day the very reason the boy was lost. Keeping his students safe was his responsibility, after all, despite there being very little William could do to stop the Fright Knight and the half-dozen skeletons that flanked him. 

And then on the first day of spring, the Fenton ghost portal sprang back to life, and Daniel Fenton returned.

The boy looked different. His skin was deathly pale after so much time spent away from the sun, and although he tried to hide it as much as he could beneath oversized hoodies, Daniel had lost a frightening amount of weight. His eyes appeared to have the faintest hint of green, apparently due to Daniel suffering from some ecto contamination after consuming food and water tainted with ectoplasm for three months. Despite his best efforts to hide it under his hair, Daniel’s ears were oddly pointed now, and several of his teeth were sharper, too, more like fangs than human canines. Sometimes the boy remained so still that once or twice William thought he stopped breathing, but the moment rarely lasted long enough for William to go over and check on him.

But his appearance was nothing compared to how it felt whenever Daniel was nearby. The room was always too cold, the shadows too long and dark, and there was a pervasive sense of being watched that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. It was worse when Daniel’s moods were particularly negative, the sense of danger not unlike finding oneself in the middle of an open field during a thunderstorm. It wasn’t an accident that most of the desks near Daniel were empty. The only two willing to sit within five feet of him were his friends Samantha and Tucker, who mostly seemed determined to prove to themselves that they weren’t afraid of their own friend.

The bell rang, ending the period, and his students hurried out of the classroom as they tossed their exams on William’s desk, a couple shooting uneasy looks at Daniel as he scribbled out one last answer. The return of a missing student should have been a joyous occasion, but every person who knew him took note of the odd changes, some going so far as to wonder if the boy was Daniel at all. “Mr. Fenton,” said William, and the boy's eyes snapped up, the unnatural green swirling within, and William forced himself to suppress a shiver. Whatever happened to Daniel, it was not his student’s fault. “I’m sorry, but you’re out of time.”

“Right.” His shoulders slumped as he picked up his bag, tucking his things away while his friends waited.

“I need to have a word with Daniel in private,” he said, looking at Samantha and Tucker. “It shouldn’t be long if you wish to wait outside.”

“Sure, we can wait,” said Samantha as she shared an uneasy look with Tucker. At least the two of them appeared to be faring better now that their friend was back, but he could see that they, too, worried greatly about Daniel after seeing the extent of the changes wrought upon him. “We’ll see you in a few?”

“Okay.” Grabbing his backpack, Daniel walked to the front of the class and handed William his exam. William looked it over quickly, cocking an eyebrow as Daniel watched him. Not a single answer was written in English, a strange blend of symbols and letters dotting the page and even the line for Daniel’s name. 

“What’s wrong?” asked Daniel as the last student filtered out of the room and shut the door with a quiet click. The odd, pervasive sense of cold seemed to burrow beneath his skin as he stood in front of William’s desk, and the faintest smell of ozone lingered now, too, the air charged and full of a strange sort of static that prickled along his skin.  Daniel’s arms were wrapped tightly around his notebook, his fingers gripping it like claws. 

“The first thing isn’t something I planned to talk to you about,” he said as he handed the test back to Daniel, doing his best to ignore his instincts to run. “Notice anything?”

Daniel took the page back with a shaking hand, biting his lip as he scanned the page. He blinked a few times and then winced. “It’s in ghost speech, isn’t it?”

“You didn’t notice?” Daniel shook his head as he handed the paper back. 

“No. I–I know I should be able to tell, but I really can’t unless I’m focusing,” he said. “I’m sorry, Mr. Lancer.”

“Can your parents translate it?” he asked as he scanned the symbols, looking for meaning in them despite knowing he couldn’t understand a word of it. William rubbed his temples, his head starting to ache after he stared at it for more than a few seconds before he put the paper down.

“No. I don’t know anyone who can read it besides the ghosts. And me now, I guess. I–I’m sorry. I actually felt kind of good about this test until now,” he said, face falling and shoulders drooping. “Does this mean I failed?”

“Of course not. But I’ll need to readminister it with different questions,” said William, “unless you want to stay right now and try to rewrite it or review it orally with me.”

Daniel glanced at the door, no doubt thinking of his friends that were waiting for him. “Not really.” 

“Right, then.” He paused for a moment, considering possible solutions. “Would this still happen if you used a computer?”

Daniel frowned at him as he rubbed the back of his neck. “They’re not programmed with ghost speech, so it shouldn’t, I think. But this stuff is weird sometimes and I haven’t really tested it much. I’m–I’m not sure I’d notice if it did.”

“Then let’s give it a try. How about we retake the test in the computer lab on Thursday during your free period?” said William. “If that fails, we’ll do the exam orally, but if it works, then we’ll see if we can get you a laptop for your assignments and for testing as an accommodation. It’s hardly your fault that this happens occasionally. We’ll still want to get you a formal 504 plan, though - have your parents talked to you about it since we last met?”

The 504 plan was already something he discussed with the Fentons last week, along with making up work during summer school given he missed a little over three months of classes. They considered waiting until next year to let him come back to school, but his parents wanted to help him find a sense of normalcy after such a traumatic event.  Daniel was far behind his peers, though, and his new, odd attributes meant that some things were simply not possible for him without some formal accommodations in place. He was already excused from his phys ed classes, given no one was entirely certain how the ecto contamination impacted his health well enough to have him risk taking part in any intense physical activity, and his odd habit of slipping into ghost speech was simply another part of his ongoing struggles. “Yeah, they did. Is this . . . was that what you wanted to talk about?”

“It’s part of it. When your parents and I met, we also discussed having you stay back a year given how much time you missed, too. I know it’s not what you want, but we don’t think it’s fair for you to take courses you might not be ready for. We haven’t made any kind of formal decision yet, but right now it’s looking like it might be the best option,”  said William gently, knowing it might be a touchy subject. While they were willing to do what they could to help Daniel continue on to his senior year with his peers, three months was a massive amount of time to miss. Summer classes alone might not be enough to make up for the lost time. 

“I don’t want to, but . . .” He let it hang for a moment, his head dropping. “I get it. I was gone for months, and I knew it would be close, even before getting, um, y’know . . . kidnapped.” He gestured vaguely, struggling to force out the last word as if he still couldn’t admit to himself what happened.  “But even if I do have to stay back a year, does the offer to work with you a couple of days after school each week still stand? I get it if it doesn’t, I don’t want you to do anything that you might not have time for or that you might not . . . that might put you in a bad spot or something, maybe. I don’t know.”

Daniel’s voice was strained, not wanting to put his real fears into words, but William knew what he meant. Some of Daniel’s other teachers reacted to him with intense hostility after his return, one of them requiring disciplinary action after loudly proclaiming he would not have that ‘ thing ’ in his classroom during a public meeting with the school board. He spent half the meeting screaming at William and the other administrators about how he could not understand how anyone could think that having something that was so clearly not Daniel there was safe, wondering how they could be so blind to the monster within their midst. 

The recording from the meeting spread quickly. No doubt Daniel saw it, too. Even though they immediately suspended the teacher in question (with termination likely after completing the investigation required by the union), he had to wonder how many others saw Daniel that way. His old bullies were giving him a wide berth, clearly terrified of him, and even his own friends appeared to have their doubts about whether the person that sat beside them in class now was honestly Daniel or not. 

But as William looked at the teenager in front of him, he knew without question that it was Daniel, the same boy who started in his classroom during his freshman year, and the same child who wanted to do well despite clearly struggling with something he would not share. “Of course. I wanted to ask, but I assumed you needed time to readjust. If you feel ready, you’re welcome to come by any afternoon besides Tuesday or Thursday.”

“Thanks,” said Daniel, his eyes lighting up as he looked back at him, his shoulders relaxing a little. “And if you have to hold me back next year, I don’t blame you. Really. I know you’ve already done a lot to try to help me, Mr. Lancer.”

“It doesn’t quite feel like enough,” he admitted as he glanced down at Daniel’s exam again. “I am so, so sorry, Daniel, that I let them take you that day.”

“It’s not your fault,” he said. “Even if you stopped them, they would have tried again and gotten me eventually.”

“Why–what did they want with you?” He shouldn’t push it, shouldn’t be asking, but the question bothered him and everyone else endlessly. 

“What do you think?” said Daniel as he gripped his books even tighter, his knuckles white. 

“To get revenge on your parents?” said William, since it was the obvious answer, and Daniel gave a small, affirmative hum. “But why let you go?”

“You’d have to ask the ghosts,” he said with a shrug. “I don’t really get it, either.” 

“But surely there must be a reason?” said William as he thought it over again. They all initially assumed the ghosts planned to kill Daniel or use him to lure his parents into a trap, but then he was gone for three months instead with nothing but silence in response to their hundreds of questions. Did the ghosts know how Daniel would be changed by his time within the Ghost Zone? Was their actual plan to make him more like the specters that attacked Amity Park, assuming his parents would reject him? That nothing could torture the Fentons so much as seeing their son twisted into something supernatural, something ghostly? The thought made him sick. Using a child that way and changing him against his will . . . he hoped Daniel was seeing a therapist. The boy seemed to be handling it better than he expected, but that kind of suffering left deep scars.

Daniel stared at his feet, biting his lip as he waited, and William realized he pushed too much. He shouldn’t force him to talk about this, not if he wasn’t ready. His curiosity was not nearly as crucial as Daniel’s own well-being. “It’s okay, Daniel. You don’t have to talk about it,” he said at last, and he saw the relief clearly on Daniel’s face. “I’m so sorry this happened to you, though, so if you ever do want to talk or if you ever need anything, please reach out, okay?”

“I–you’re already doing plenty,” said Daniel. “But I’ll let you know.”

“Very well, Daniel. Don’t forget - Thursday to retake the test. We’ll use the lab on the first floor by the cafeteria,” said William, dismissing him as he turned back to grading. 

“Right, thanks. See you tomorrow.” He left the classroom, his footsteps impossibly silent on the tiled floor, and the moment he left the room the chill in the air vanished, the lights overhead shining a little brighter. William could not deny the relief he felt when Daniel was gone, his body physically grateful for the reprieve from the way Daniel’s presence grated against his nerves, but his guilt over the sensation was overwhelming. It was genuinely not Daniel’s fault, and for all that he appeared to have some ghostly attributes now, the boy was still very much the same Daniel Fenton that William had come to know over the last few years. What he needed was help, not judgment. 

William took a long sip of his coffee, already ice cold despite being a relatively fresh cup, and then picked up his pen as he quietly went back to work and put Daniel’s exam to the side. 

Sam sat next to Tucker in the corner booth at the Nasty Burger, drinking a soy milkshake as Danny slowly ate his fries, his eyes locked on his phone. They used to sit outside or closer to the door, but now they tried to stay out of sight, the constant stares and whispers clearly making Danny uncomfortable. “Are you watching that video of Mr. Rose at the meeting again?” 

He turned his phone off and flipped it over onto the table as he slouched backward and tucked his hands into his pockets. “No.”

“Danny . . . come on. Please don’t lie to us, okay?” she sighed. 

“Fine,” he grumbled. “Yes, I’m watching it again. I just–do I seriously seem that different?”

Tucker’s eyes widened a fraction as he hastily took a bite of his burger. Of course, he wouldn’t want to answer Danny, who no doubt wanted reassurance that everything was fine and that he was exactly the same as he always was, yet both Tucker and Sam knew that wasn’t true. “I mean, not really, but we’re your friends,” she lied, feeling the tiniest hint of guilt after literally scolding Danny for his own dishonesty mere moments ago, but this was different. Danny needed reassurance from them right now more than anything else, and they couldn’t provide that if he wasn’t willing to be honest with them. “I think we got used to you being a little weird after the accident. Nobody else really paid attention until they had a reason to look for something to be wrong.”

That sounded reasonable, and Danny picked up a french fry, chewing it slowly as he mulled over her words. “She’s right,” offered Tucker, taking a quick sip of his soda as he lunged at her explanation like a drowning man grasping for a line thrown overboard. “I mean, the ghost speech stuff is new and your powers seem a little stronger than they used to be, but the rest of it? Meh.”

“I can’t believe I wrote my entire exam in ghost speech and didn’t notice,” he groaned as he rubbed his face with his hands. “I had to stare at it for like a full minute to figure out how I messed up after Mr. Lancer pointed it out. I’m lucky he didn’t just fail me.”

“Yeah, well, Mr. Lancer feels pretty guilty about you getting kidnapped from his class. You’ve probably got a lot of leeway there. Plus he’s actually a good teacher most of the time, unlike Mr. Rose,” said Tucker.

 “I still can’t believe what that jerk said,” said Sam, shaking her cup aggressively. “You shouldn’t worry about what happened at the school board meeting, okay?”

“I’d really, really like to not do that, but in case you somehow haven’t noticed, everyone else is worrying about it too much for me to forget it,” said Danny, and Sam shivered as the temperature in the booth dropped a few more degrees, and she could swear she saw hints of green specks swirling in his eyes. Although Danny’s accident changed him and he was always a little ghostly before, it was way more pronounced now, his supernatural attributes bleeding through constantly as if his human half could no longer contain it. “You know Kwan actually screamed the other day when I bumped into him?”

“Seriously?”

“He swore he’d beat me up if I told anyone,” said Danny, shrugging, “but I doubt he’d go through with it. Small favors, I guess, as long as he doesn’t take it out on someone else.”

“Nah, he and Dash mostly stopped bullying me and the other nerds after you disappeared. Everyone was pretty freaked out,” said Tucker as he and Sam shared a brief look. They both knew very little about what happened to Danny after the Fright Knight and a half-dozen of what appeared to be Pariah Dark’s old skeleton guards kidnapped him from class. Danny refused to put up a fight, too worried about blowing his secret identity in front of their peers and not wanting anyone to get hurt in the crossfire. He remained adamant that he didn’t know when he agreed to go that his parents' portal would seal shut or that he would be gone for three months.

“You know I’m still sorry, right?” 

“We know, Danny, and we know it wasn’t your fault. I just wi–I would like it if you would tell us more about what happened,” said Sam. They hadn’t pushed, the experience clearly leaving deep scars he kept trying to hide, but she felt like they deserved to know. The two of them and Jazz spent three months continuing to hide his secret as they tried to figure out a way to save him while constantly worrying that they were too late, that he was dead or gone forever or worse, only to have him walk back through the portal as if nothing ever happened. Well, almost nothing. He was different now, even if they wouldn’t fully admit that to him.

“There’s not much to talk about.” He picked up another fry, staring at it for a minute before dropping it back onto his tray as he pushed it away. 

“Not hungry?” said Tucker. He barely touched his food, most of the fries and half the burger left. Danny ate so little anymore, another small thing that shifted post-kidnapping, although he insisted it was from his parents’ neverending decontamination sequences making him nauseous and not something else.

“Of course he’s not,” interrupted someone, and looking over she saw Star and Paulina sit down at a nearby table, Paulina smirking at them. “Ghosts don’t need food, and he’s clearly dead now, isn’t he?”

“I’m not dead,” said Danny as he stubbornly picked up another fry and forced it down out of spite. “It’s just ecto contamination. I can’t help it.”

“Your Mama and Papa are lying to you. Even Val said she saw you stop breathing yesterday for like five minutes during Mr. Falluca’s class, and Dash swore that you put your hand through your locker a few days ago,” said Paulina, and Sam shot a glare at Val who didn’t see it, too busy ringing someone up at the counter. No doubt she was itching for any excuse to fire a blaster in Danny’s direction now that he didn’t fit her perfect little definition of human. “It’s okay, though. I don’t care if you’re a ghost. Any chance you can put me in touch with Phantom?”

Danny gritted his teeth, swirls of green in his eyes as the air became brittle, snapping like a frozen tree in the middle of winter. “No.” He stood up and grabbed his tray, tossing the remains in the trash while storming outside.

“Aren’t you going to follow your creepy boyfriend?” laughed Paulina as she pointed at him with her milkshake, her bracelets clinking together.

“Shove it, asshole,” snapped Sam. Paulina and Star laughed at her as she and Tucker cleared their own trays and hurried after Danny, and she tried not to let it get to her. Paulina’s opinions didn’t matter. Nothing she said or did mattered. Sam shouldn’t let what Paulina said upset her, and yet the comments from Paulina still managed to get beneath her skin because she could tell how much it hurt Danny.

They found him walking towards his house, hands shoved in his pockets, and his footsteps left little traces of frost on the sidewalk. “Danny,” she hissed, grabbing his shoulder, and she shivered violently, the cold he radiated almost unbearable when he was this upset. Being near him felt like being out at the beginning of a thunderstorm, a sense that lightning would strike nearby soon and that she should seek shelter and run. She never felt like this around Danny, not before, and her stomach churned as she ignored her instincts screaming at her to flee. “You need to try and calm down.”

“Right, because it’s so easy.” There was a trace of an echo and static in the words that made Sam wince. The words were still understandable, but at this rate, he would be talking in ghost speech if they couldn’t get him to calm down.

“Dude, seriously, you’re leaving icy footsteps behind you,” hissed Tucker, and Danny stopped, his shoulders tense as he stared at the ice in his wake. “I know that people know you’re like, a little weird now or whatever, but this might be too much if you don’t want them to know your secret.”

“Or if you really don’t want anyone else to start thinking you’re dead now, too,” added Sam, and she watched uneasily as Danny closed his eyes. He took a few long, slow breaths and counted to ten as he tried to calm down. The bite in the air eased up, the smell of ozone fading, and the prickling down her spine receded as the world tipped back on its axle, feeling not quite right but infinitely less threatening. 

“Sorry,” he choked out, staring at her as his lip trembled. “I just–Paulina, she–she’s just saying what everyone is thinking, isn’t she?” Sam dug her boot into the ground, trying to think of the best way to respond, but she waited too long, the silence from her and Tucker deafening. “Maybe I shouldn’t have come back.”

“Danny, don’t be ridiculous,” said Sam. “Paulina’s a jerk, and people–it’s–they’ll stop eventually, okay? You know they can’t keep this up.”

“Are you sure? It’s already been over three weeks,” he said as they started walking again. “It feels like it’s getting worse, not better. I thought it was hard to keep my secret before, but now?” He chuckled darkly. “I don’t know if I can hold this together. I’m lucky the ghost attacks haven’t been worse, but as soon as they realize the portal’s open again, they’ll be back and it might not be too hard for people to put together that the ghost using FentonWorks tech is me.”

“I don’t think so,” said Tucker. “You’ve been Phantom for over two years, but Danny Fenton has only been weird for a few weeks. There’s no reason they would assume you’re the same person.”

“Tucker’s got a point,” said Sam.

“Except that nobody paid attention to me before, and now I can’t walk down the street most days without being harassed by someone,” he argued, throwing his hands up. “Which means whenever I have to ditch class to go fight a ghost, people are going to notice.”

“They’ll probably just think you’re scared, dude. Anyone else would be terrified of the ghosts after what you went through,” said Tucker. “And it’s not like anyone even knows what happened to you after you were taken.”

“ Nothing happened , ” he groaned, wringing his head in his hands, and the hairs on her arms stood up, static prickling at her skin. “Seriously. I spent most of the time there sketching and reading books while trapped in Pariah Dark’s stupid keep.”

“What kind of books?” asked Sam. She hoped talking about something that seemed innocuous might help him calm down and open up a little bit more about everything.

“There were a bunch of history books, some stuff on different classifications of ghosts and how the Infinite Realms works, and these weird trashy romances that apparently Pariah Dark was super into way back,” said Danny with a grin, feeling so much like the old Danny that Sam felt her worries about him vanish for a moment. 

“Romances? Did you read any?”

“Like ten pages of one before I put it down. It was too cheesy for me and like, borderline propaganda or something. All about some fair ghostly maiden falling for a dashing, misunderstood ghost king. I’m sure it was just a coincidence that the ghost described in the book looked just like Pariah Dark,” he laughed, and then his smile vanished, his expression becoming more somber. “But seriously, I’m sorry about everything, I guess. I know it couldn’t have been easy for you two and Jazz. I wish I could’ve gotten a message to you.”

“Why couldn’t you?” asked Tucker. 

“The portals were closed,” said Danny softly. “And the Observants weren’t exactly interested in helping me. If they had it their way, I’d still be there right now and locked up in a tower like some crummy fairy tale princess.”

Sam blinked, trying to process. This was already way more information than she had ten minutes ago, but she felt like she was missing something important. “I still don’t get it, though. Why kidnap you and lock you up?”

“The Observants think I’m too much of a threat to every realm, apparently, as long as I’m allowed to walk around and do what I want, and they’re not the only ghosts that think so,” said Danny. “A lot of them think I’m too dangerous to be free.”

Three months ago before he vanished, Sam would have vehemently denied it. Danny’s powers were impressive and growing all the time, but dangerous was not something she thought of back then when she pictured Danny, knowing his heart was generally in the right place. But this Danny that returned to them? Whose fangs gleamed when he smiled, who felt so cold she sometimes feared getting frostbite from touching him? Who made the atmosphere flicker with his moods, whose presence felt like being caught in a snowstorm and knowing that, at any second, they could be buried beneath layers of ice and snow?

Dangerous might be an understatement.

“That’s no excuse to lock you away, though,” she said, and she meant it. Danny hadn’t done anything wrong. “And why did they let you go? Did you manage to convince them somehow that you’re not a monster?”

The words came out wrong. She knew it as soon as they were out of her mouth, the implication there that of course he was a monster, it was only natural for someone to fear him, and she winced as she tugged at her skirt uneasily. Danny quirked an eyebrow, but the temperature around them remained steady, at least, as he seemed to give her the benefit of the doubt that she didn’t mean for it to sound the way it did. “They didn’t really have a choice. It just took Clockwork to convince them and I–” He stopped, looking around the street, and she saw his ghost sense trigger a second later as he scowled. “Ugh, figures.”

“You want backup?” offered Tucker.

“Nah, it’s probably just an ectopus or something. I still haven’t seen any of the stronger ghosts since I’ve been back,” he said as he glanced around and then ducked behind a parked car, vanishing from sight and leaving the two of them alone. 

“So how much do you think he’s not telling us?” said Sam as they continued to walk, the bite to the air disappearing as Danny left.

“A lot, obviously. We’ll just have to keep prying it out of him a little at a time. It took like, what, over a year for him to tell us the truth about Danielle? We’ll get him to talk about it all eventually,” said Tucker as he pulled out his phone and scrolled through it. “Jeez, most of these are stories about Danny. Half of them are just reaction videos from the school board meeting with Mr. Rose. You’d think after a week they would move on.”

“Good or bad?”

He scanned a few quickly. “Based on these titles? Both. And there are a half-dozen videos about how Danny isn’t actually Danny anymore that I’ve seen popping up all day, too. As if any of them would even know. It’s not like they ever paid any attention to him before.”

Sam kicked a rock down the road with her boot, watching it skip loudly against the sidewalk. “Yeah, but he does seem different, doesn’t he?”

“He spent three months in the Ghost Zone, Sam. Anyone would be changed by something like that,” said Tucker with a shrug, and then he looked around for a moment before whispering, “But he’s definitely a bit off. Kind of . . . creepier, I guess? But it’s not a big deal, and I’d rather him not start thinking that we’re like, worried he’s a doppelganger or whatever too.”

“Are we sure he’s not?” She hated to ask, but they still hadn’t even discussed the possibility and given how long Danny vanished it made sense to consider it. 

Or so she thought. “Seriously, Sam?!”

“I just–it’s happened before, right? And he is different and acting so weird lately.” 

“Yeah, but I think either the two of us or Jazz would’ve figured it out by now,” argued Tucker. “C’mon, Sam, it’s still him. Three months in the Ghost Zone stuck in Pariah Dark’s keep would mess anyone up.”

“You’re right. It’s stupid. I’m just worried, I guess.” They were forced to come to terms with the fact that Danny might never come back the day he was taken away. Having him return after so long almost felt too good to be true, even with all the weird changes, and she felt like she was constantly waiting for everything to go horribly wrong.

“Think we should go to his house and wait for him?” asked Tucker.

“And deal with Mr. and Mrs. Fenton demanding to know why we left Danny alone? No thanks,” said Sam. Danny’s parents barely agreed to let them go to the Nasty Burger after school. They forced him to download one of those tracker apps on his phone ‘just in case,’ as if they were dealing with ordinary human criminals rather than ghosts, and they still expected him to check in with a quick text every hour. Sam understood it - she found it hard to let Danny out of her sight now, too - but things would never get back to normal if this kept up. 

“Fair enough,” said Tucker. “Then I’m going to go home, I guess. See you online?”

“Doomed?” They barely played when Danny was gone, too consumed by their efforts to try and find him, but now they had the time again and Danny could definitely stand to do something normal. All three of them could, for that matter. “I can message Danny, too.”

“Sounds good.”

Chapter Text

Jazz sat at the kitchen table, scrolling through Facebook and trying not to wince. Even now, almost four weeks later, dozens of videos continued to pop up about Danny. She looked up at him, his bowl of cereal untouched, eyes staring off into the distance, and she swallowed as she realized his chest did not move. Danny remained impossibly still, as if he were carved from marble rather than flesh, and she barely suppressed a shudder as she stared at him. “Danny?” 

The spell broke in an instant, a breath passing through his lips as he turned and blinked at her. “Yeah?”

“How’s school going so far?” Ugh, what a silly question to ask. She knew how it was going, and it definitely wasn’t what she wanted to talk to him about, but she didn’t know where to begin. Things were still so awkward between them since he came back. He raised an eyebrow but gave a half-smile, rolling his eyes.

“Fine, Jazz. The ghosts haven’t been attacking much,” he said, “so I’ve been able to get my homework done. Mr. Lancer’s giving me a quiet space and some help with my assignments a couple of days a week, too.”

“I can tutor you again, too, if you want,” offered Jazz. “I don’t have much to do until I go back to school next semester.” 

“You’re definitely going back, right?” 

“Tired of me already?” she teased.

“No, it’s just–if something like this were to happen again, I’d want you to keep living your life instead of worrying about me,” he said as he stared down and swirled the cereal around in his bowl with his spoon. “The world deserves to have a brilliant psychologist like you.”

She ignored the compliment, an attempted misdirection on Danny’s part. “You think it could happen again?” They knew so little about his disappearance, only that the Observants and Fright Knight kept him confined to Pariah Dark’s Keep, refusing to let him leave until Clockwork apparently convinced them to let him go. She still didn’t know a lot of the details, although she and Tucker and Sam were trying to keep each other in the loop since they knew he was hiding something from them. More than once she found herself occasionally waking up in the middle of the night, checking his room to make sure he was still there. Danny teased her about it, but he didn’t understand what it was like for them when he was gone, worrying endlessly as they wondered if he was alive or dead, if they should tell their parents his secret or not. They only chose not to because they had no way to prove it and at some point, it didn’t seem like it mattered if he was fully dead and gone.

He shrugged. “Anything’s possible, right?” 

That was definitely not the reassuring response she expected from him. “Right, but I thought Clockwork convinced them to let you go. Why would they kidnap you again?”

“It’s not like they’re always rational about this stuff, Jazz. And there was always a chance something like this might happen, or that some other ghost would come after me or something. I don’t exactly have a lot of friends in the Ghost Zone.” He forced himself to take a bite of his cereal, wincing slightly.

“Mom and Dad not giving up on the decontamination procedures?” 

“Nope. They’re going to do them until I’m fully dead, I think. They–they hate this,” he said, gesturing to himself. “They never noticed any of the weird stuff about me before, but now I can feel them staring at me all the time. Every little thing puts them on edge.”

“You do seem a little more ghostly since you came back,” said Jazz carefully. She knew Sam and Tucker were tiptoeing around it, not wanting to make things harder on Danny, but she felt like at this point he should know. At first, they thought that the weird atmospheric shifts and the other changes were temporary, just side effects from being in the Ghost Zone for so long, but after a month it was getting harder to believe there wasn’t more to it than that.

“Oh?” 

“You’ve been using ghost speech more,” she said, and he grunted as he shoved another spoonful of cereal into his mouth. “And you’re paler and the air around you feels . . . weird?”

“What?” His hand stopped mid-bite as he stared at her, his gaze so intense it made her squirm. 

“It’s like, um . . . cold?” She bit her lip, trying to think of how to explain it without getting him upset. “Most of the time it feels kind of like a snowstorm is coming, but sometimes there’s this kind of edge to it when you’re angry. Sam says it smells like a thunderstorm.”

“That’s great. Just great,” he groaned, dropping his spoon and putting his head in his hands, and sure enough, she could feel the chill worsen. She rubbed her arms, shivering as Danny scowled. “Am I doing it right now?”

“Yeah. Sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything.” She really hoped she could get a better handle on her own reaction so he wouldn’t notice next time, but surprisingly, Danny didn’t seem upset with her.

“No, no, it’s good to know,” he said as he took a deep breath, trying to calm himself. “That didn’t happen before?”

“I don’t think so.”

Danny picked up his spoon again, stirring his cereal, the colored pieces leaving rainbow swirls as the dye leached out into the milk. “Anything else?”

“You kind of forget to breathe sometimes, I think,” she said, and he seemed less surprised by that than she expected as he forced down another bite. “Like you get too still, and it’s . . . um . . .” 

“Freaky?” he finished bitterly, and Jazz winced. She tried so hard to avoid using that word, knowing how much it triggered him after Spectra. 

“I was going to say weird. Or maybe a little scary in the worried-about-you kind of way, not in the you-seem-scary kind of way,” said Jazz. “Maybe you’ve always done it since your accident, though. I didn't watch you this closely before you were kidnapped.”

“It’d be nice if you wouldn’t watch me so closely now,” he said as he stood up, putting his bowl next to the sink. At least he ate about half of his breakfast this time. She worried it wasn’t enough - he was so thin now - but she knew pointing out his weight only made him more upset and less likely to eat. It wasn’t his fault. She knew he was trying, but as long as her parents kept up the decontamination procedures, he would keep feeling too nauseous to get anything down.

“Sorry, Danny. I’m just–we’re all just worried, that’s all. We still don’t really know what happened to you.”

She felt the static charge in the air, his frustration bubbling over as he turned back to her. “Why does it matter?” 

“What?”

“It’s been a month. I want to go back to normal, okay?” He hugged himself, his arms trembling as his fingers dug into his sleeves. “I want to go to school, hang out with my friends, and play stupid board games with you and Mom and Dad on the weekends again. I want to go to the movies and go to the Humpty Dumpty concert next month. But I can’t get back to feeling like everything is fine again as long as Mom and Dad keep putting trackers on my phone and forcing me through endless decontamination procedures no matter how much I beg them to stop. And, like, even you and Tucker and Sam spend all your time examining me like you think I’m going to break or hurt someone if you stop watching me. I just–I want to be normal .”

Frost formed beneath his feet, spreading out in thin tendrils from him, and goosebumps prickled up and down her arms. She worried if this kept going that her parents would find him and assume the worst. “Sorry, Danny,” she apologized as she stood up, putting a hand on his shoulder even as the contact with him made her teeth ache from the cold. “We–we can try, okay? I can’t control what anyone else does, but I’ll do my best to give you some space until you’re ready to talk about it.”

He swatted her hand away. “And if I never want to talk about it?” He took a step back and looking at the floor he winced, running his hands through his hair. “Crud. Of course. I literally can’t even get through talking about being normal without being some kind of freak.”

“Danny–”

“--forget it, Jazz,” he said, stomping out of the kitchen and up the stairs as she watched him go. 

“Way to make it worse, Jazz,” she sighed to herself as she stared at the frost on the floor, wondering how on earth she could possibly clean it, but then she noticed it evaporating into a faint, blue mist. Sitting back down at the table as she waited for it to all dissipate just in case her parents came upstairs and she needed to distract them from it, Jazz picked up her phone and saw a new email from a student she used to tutor at Casper High. It was a request to sign some petition to . . . Oh.

‘Force Casper High to remove the ghostly threat from our school!’

She paused for a second before scrolling down to read the full description, dread pooling in her stomach.

‘Three months ago Daniel Fenton was kidnapped. We all rejoiced when we thought he was returned to us, but the thing sitting in class with our children is not Jack and Maddie Fenton’s missing child. Students have reported that it does not breathe or eat and that it uses its powers to make the classroom an inhospitable environment for learning. When concerns about the ghost posing as a former student were raised at the school board meeting this month, administrators dismissed the allegations and refused to listen to ( and EVEN SUSPENDED! ) the only teacher brave enough to speak up and defend their students! We have notified the Ghost Investigation Ward, but while they confirmed they have an active investigation ongoing, they are refusing to take the action needed NOW to protect our kids!

Will you sign and share this petition demanding that administrators remove this ghostly imposter from our schools?’

“Oh, no.” She doubted the petition had any real teeth. They could not demand Danny be forced out of school, or at least she didn’t think they could, but that mattered way less than the fact that it existed at all. Currently, there were just over three hundred signatures and counting, with comments from his classmates and local parents about Danny being an inhuman freak who should be locked away in a government facility or sent back to the Ghost Zone where he belonged. She seriously hoped Danny didn’t know about it. She couldn’t imagine how negatively this would impact his delicate psyche.

She needed to tell her parents, though. They should know, especially if they were talking to the school about Danny, and Jazz headed downstairs to the lab. Her Dad and Mom were sitting at a workbench reviewing some data printed out on a massive stack of paper, making occasional highlights as they scanned through it, and the doors to the portal were shut tightly, with a half-dozen new alarms attached to alert them to the presence of any ghost that might try to come through. Like everything they changed since Danny was taken, Jazz doubted it would stop the ghosts from kidnapping him again, but she didn’t say as much to her parents. They needed to feel some semblance of control, as if there were a way to prevent this from happening, and she wouldn’t take that from them since so far none of it was really hurting Danny, either. “Hey, sweetie,” said Mom, noticing her first. “You okay?”

Jazz shook her head as she handed her phone over with the email open. Leaning to the side, Dad peered over Mom’s shoulder as the two of them read it together, their expressions darkening as they finished it. She saw Mom scroll through the comments for a minute, biting her lip. “Oh, hon. They probably can’t expel him this way.”

“I know, but Danny’s already struggling with adjusting after everything,” said Jazz. “If he sees this, then I can’t imagine how traumatizing it would be.”

“His teachers mentioned that some of the other students are still getting used to him being back,” said Dad, which felt like an overly polite way to describe what was probably bullying or harassment directed at Danny by his peers. “We talked to Mr. Lancer about it at our meeting yesterday, and we’re working on a 504 plan for him. We can let his teacher know about the petition in case he hasn’t seen it.”

“Maybe we should look into counseling, too. Danny’s been opposed to seeing a therapist when we’ve brought it up, but it might be time to make it mandatory,” said Mom. After Spectra, Jazz doubted he would willingly get within a hundred feet of another therapist of any kind (something she tried not to take too personally), but there was no question Danny should be getting support from someone besides his family and friends. “I’ll ask his doctor for a referral after his appointment next week.”

“He’s going to the doctor?” They knew from the past couple of years that nothing really showed up in Danny’s check-ups beyond a reduced body temperature and heart rate, but she felt a twinge of uneasiness, worried this time would be different because of the changes.

“I think he’s losing weight. He says he’s nauseous all the time, most likely because of the ectoplasm in his system,” said Mom. “We hoped the decontamination procedures would work better, but the ecto contamination is incredibly pervasive. It’s altered him on a molecular level. We didn’t think that was even possible.”

Dad clenched his fists tightly as he scowled. “I never wanted our work to get you kids hurt like this. It’s not fair that the ghosts took him and changed him this way as some kind of sick revenge against us.”

Jazz blinked, her mind trying to catch up. “Wait, so you think the ghosts kidnapped him to make him more ghostly or something?” She knew that wasn’t it, but it wasn’t as if her parents knew Danny’s secret, so she couldn’t be surprised they were jumping to their own conclusions about the Fright Knight’s intentions. 

“Danny’s teacher suggested it, and honestly, what else could it be? They never insisted on anything from us, they didn’t kill him or demand we stop being ghost hunters in return for getting Danny back,” said Mom. “No doubt they hoped we would reject him or thought it would be funny to torment us by torturing Danny this way.” Jazz swallowed. What would they do now if they learned the truth? Getting their parents to accept Danny being Phantom would have been a challenge before even as they knew it was possible given the other timelines and realities Danny experienced, but now, after his kidnapping, it felt way more likely their parents would accuse him of being an imposter or something else instead.

Ugh, she was going to have to try to push back on this crazy idea, wasn’t she? She had no idea how to really do that without talking about Danny’s secret, though. “We don’t know for sure that’s what they were doing, Mom. They could have a dozen reasons for taking Danny that have nothing to do with the two of you.”

“Like what?” asked Dad. 

“Like maybe they thought he was the reincarnation of their old king or some ex-boyfriend or something,” she said. Oh, geez, that was a completely ridiculous idea, but Dad frowned, considering it for a moment despite the absurdity. “Or maybe they thought he was already a ghost and believed they were helping him. A lot of the ghosts aren’t monsters.”

“You’re seriously defending the creatures that kidnapped Danny?” Her voice was tense, Mom’s disgust evident as she scowled at her. “I know that you and a lot of the other teenagers in town think that they’re not all bad because of Phantom, but it’s a trick, hon. All ghosts are manipulative, vile creatures and liars. They don’t do good for the sake of helping others or out of some sense of altruism. They do it because they have some other motive, usually the fulfillment of an obsession like Phantom’s hero complex. I don’t doubt that Phantom’s caused half of the incidents he’s supposedly rescued you and everyone else from.”

“That’s ridiculous, Mom! Phantom’s never hurt anyone.”

“So the bank robberies and that time he shot the mayor were what, then? Accidents?” Jazz opened her mouth to argue and then stopped, biting her lip. They didn’t care what she would say. Mind control would sound like a convenient excuse, despite it being something they knew could happen since even Dad had been overshadowed before. But they weren’t willing to extend that same grace and understanding to the ghosts as they were to each other and Jazz knew it. 

“I think that we don’t have all the information we need to know for sure, and those are two incidents out of dozens, if not hundreds, at this point,” said Jazz carefully. “But even if you can’t find it in yourself to think that there might be a chance that not all ghosts are the monsters that you think they are, you should consider how it must sound for Danny right now to hear you say that. He’s clearly got a few ghostly traits, and while you might make a distinction between him and the ghosts, Danny might not do that himself. Hearing you talk about the ghosts like they’re past redemption might make him think you believe the same thing about himself.”

“Hmm. You might have a point,” said Dad. “We’ll try to be careful around him. It’s not his fault he’s been changed this way, and he’s still a good kid, no matter what those spooks did to him.”

Despite Dad’s willingness to consider it, though, Mom was quiet for a moment, clearly far less convinced. “Are we sure, though?” 

“What?” She didn’t get why Mom wouldn’t be willing to try and be kinder about it around Danny when it genuinely could hurt him. 

“The people in the petition saying that maybe this isn’t Danny. Maybe they’re right,” she said, and Jazz felt her blood boil at the very idea. “We’ve never seen anything like this before, where a normal human could become altered on this level from exposure to the ectoplasmic radiation in the Ghost Zone.”

“Mom, of course that’s Danny!” snapped Jazz, her tone harsher than she intended, but her parents deserved it. He didn’t need his family doubting him, not after everything.  “And not seeing anything like this before doesn’t mean it’s not possible. How many humans do you know that have spent three months in the Ghost Zone or that have even been exposed to that level of ectoplasm long-term without some kind of protection?”

“That’s fair, hon, but it still seems like a question we should ask, at least,” said Mom. “If we’re wrong about Danny being back, then it might mean that the real Danny’s still lost somewhere.”

“So what, then? Are you going to go upstairs and start quizzing him on every memory and making sure they line up perfectly with yours? Are you going to run experiments on him? Cut him open just to be sure?!” Dad flinched, but Mom remained stone faced as Jazz crossed her arms, her frustration bubbling up as she tried so hard to stay calm and talk to them rationally, but they were just so frustratingly stubborn and arrogant sometimes. “I can’t–do you know how much it’ll hurt him to hear you say this?! To even realize that you’re thinking this? Like, seriously, Mom, I just–are you literally so prejudiced against ghosts that you’d start pretending he’s not Danny to make yourself feel better or something?!”

“It’s not prejudiced to describe the ghosts as being precisely what they are, Jazz, but we have to take every possibility into consideration! You’ve seen how Danny is, how he–” She threw her hands up, shaking her head as she looked to Dad for support, but he remained quiet, an odd expression on his face. “How can you be so certain it’s Danny?”

“Because I know my brother, Mom! I know him better than either of you! You’ve barely paid attention to anything but the ghosts since that stupid portal opened! It took Danny getting kidnapped for you to even care about him again!” she shouted, and oh, she had not intended to say that out loud. Her hands flew to her mouth, her eyes wide, and Jazz could see the hurt reflected in her parents’ faces as tears burned in her own eyes. “I–I’m sorry. I didn’t–”

“You have no idea what we’ve sacrificed for the two of you,” said Mom coldly. “How much we’ve given up, how much of our time is spent on raising you and keeping you safe. To say that we don’t care about your brother, when everything we’re doing now is for his sake, has always been for his sake and yours . . . To act as if we don’t love you both dearly and wouldn’t give up everything for both of you. I–You’re an adult, Jasmine, so I can’t ground you or force you to go to your room. But maybe you should go and think about what you’ve said.” Dad tightly gripped Mom’s hand, so impossibly small and quiet then as he refused to look at Jazz, the hurt in his eyes clear as day. 

“I–fine,” she sputtered, turning away and storming up to her room, and she wiped the tears from her face on her sleeve as she sat down on her bed and held Bearbert tightly. She continued to cry despite her best efforts to stop. Crying always made her feel childish, even as she knew it was important to let emotions out, to release them and not push them down, but Jazz never really had the luxury of letting herself feel what she needed to over the years, not when she needed to take care of her brother and everything else in the house. She used to hope studying psychology would help her find a way to cope without crying or expressing herself, and found the science left her wanting, all the evidence pointing to how necessary it was to take these moments to process. 

But she still hated it, was still too accustomed to being ashamed of her own tears, and Jazz pushed her hair back and out of her face as she curled in on herself. It wasn’t right. She didn’t mean to throw out the accusation, didn’t mean to say out loud that she and Danny were always used to coming second until things were too late regardless of how true it was or not, but there was no taking it back now. And though it was harsh, she wouldn’t apologize again. She hated that she said it out loud, but Mom didn’t deserve another apology, not after the things she said about Danny. Not after accusing him of being an imposter.

Someone knocked at her door, and she wiped away the tears even as they stubbornly kept coming. Great. It was probably Dad, wanting to chide her for the way she spoke to Mom. “Go away, Dad. I don’t want to talk right now.” 

“It’s, um, not Dad,” said Danny, cracking it open and peeking in at her. “Are you okay?”

“Mom and I just had a small argument, that’s all,” said Jazz. Ugh, why couldn’t she stop crying? Danny walked over and gave her a long hug, his arms cold even through his hoodie, but she didn’t care. She needed it, then, and leaned into it for a moment as she forced herself to try and calm down, taking slow, deep breaths and counting silently to herself.

“You want to talk about it?” he asked as he released her and sat down on the bed beside her.

“No.” 

“Pfft, of course, you don’t. Always want me to open up but never want to do the same,” he teased, fingers picking at a loose thread on her bedspread, and she smiled despite herself. How could anyone think he wasn’t Danny? He might be a little stranger now because some of the supernatural aspects of his ghost half were more pronounced, but deep down, it was still him. Still the same obnoxious yet sweet brother she grew up with. “Sorry about before. In the kitchen. I shouldn’t have gotten mad at you, I know it’s not your fault and I just  . . . I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay, Danny.” And it was. Really. “And I’m sorry, too. I shouldn’t have pushed you.”

“Thanks,” he said as he continued to fidget, his eyes carefully locked on a spot on her floor. “Were you, um . . . was your fight with Mom about me?”  She could hear his voice breaking a little as the words came out, the air around them feeling like a thin sheet of ice coated everything. 

“Maybe.” She wanted to lie, but couldn’t bring herself to do it.

“Sorry,” he whispered again, and she could feel him shaking a little. “I feel like I just keep messing everything up.”

“It’s not your fault. None of this is, okay?” She reached over and gently squeezed his hand, ignoring how icy his fingers felt in hers. 

“Easy for you to say.” There was an edge of static and looping echoes behind his voice as he stared at the clock on her nightstand, mouth twisted into a bitter smile, and then he sighed, his shoulders relaxing as he looked back at her. “But I appreciate you sticking up for me with Mom and Dad.”

“How do you know I did?” 

He shrugged. “Because it’s you. I can’t imagine you doing anything else.” But he could imagine their parents not defending him all too easily, couldn’t he, and the thought made her heart break a little. She knew, despite what she said downstairs, that their parents did love them and care about them, but there was a not-so-tiny grain of truth buried in the resentment she felt as she remembered the last couple of years. How they never figured out that Danny was Phantom, even after all this time, despite the dozens and dozens of clues in front of them. How they never noticed how much she struggled to maintain her grades while taking care of him, making sure that both her and Danny were fed and that the house was cleaned and that he had support with his homework. She knew enough psychology and read enough articles to know it for what it was–parentification–but Jazz struggled to let herself feel upset or frustrated about it when there wasn’t any time for it.

And the end result of that was exactly what happened down in the lab, where she finally exploded and said something cruel she couldn’t take back even if it may have been a bit deserved. As a psychologist in training, she knew better. As a person, though, she still struggled to take the advice of the dozens of therapists and psychiatrists whose words she so admired and trusted. 

They sat in silence for a few minutes, and then Danny shivered, his breath fogging in front of him. “Ghost?”

“Yeah,” he sighed as he stood up. 

“I’m right here if you need help, okay?” she said, and he nodded as he transformed. She hadn’t seen him switch since he returned, but it was the same as she remembered. Black and white jumpsuit, white hair, and glowing green eyes. His aura seemed strangely brighter than usual, but she said nothing about it, not wanting to upset him. And no matter what her parents or anyone else might say, she knew it was definitely Danny in front of her now. It had to be.

“I’ll be fine, Jazz. Promise.”

She knew Danny was probably right, but she found herself watching the window anxiously, Bearbert in her lap as she waited for him to come back, unable to relax until he finally returned.

Chapter Text

Dozens of whispers and pointed fingers followed Danny as walked to his locker. He kept his head down, doing his best to ignore it as he spun the combination lock on autopilot. His next class was English with Mr. Lancer, so he grabbed his book and notebook as he dropped off his physics stuff from the last period. One more class today, and he could finally go home. Originally he planned to stay late with Lancer, but he felt exhausted and nauseous. Despite his pleas, his parents insisted on yet another decontamination process this morning along with a blood sample to check his contamination levels. He suspected that was what Jazz argued with them about this weekend, knowing she could tell how sick it made him and how little he was eating because of it, but instead of taking her words to heart, they doubled down even after a month’s worth of scans showed no improvement. 

They would never stop, would they?

Slamming his locker shut, he hurried down the hall to his class, and when he walked in he felt a half-dozen eyes lock in on him, Kwan and Dash whispering in the corner and snickering. Not good. Mr. Lancer wasn’t here yet, and there were a few minutes left before the bell would signal the start of the period. Walking to his seat by Sam and Tucker, Danny kept his head down and then felt his phone vibrate in his pocket, the laughter growing louder even as Kwan gestured at Dash and the others to hush.

Pulling out his phone, he saw a text from an unknown number and frowned. Given the snickers on the other side of the room, he knew it could be nothing good. Apparently his brief reprieve from being bullied was long over. “Danny?”

He said nothing in response to Sam, opening the text to find a link, and when he clicked on it he expected to see it bring him to the video of Mr. Rose at the school board meeting or some TikTok talking about how creepy he was. Instead, it opened up to a website for organizing protests and petitions, and his blood turned to ice as he read the words at the top of the screen.

Force Casper High to remove the ghostly threat from our school!

It was an online petition, apparently, to have him expelled and handed over to the Guys in White. He scrolled down slowly, reading the list of long comments from his classmates and their parents. Sam stood up, peering over his shoulder and saying something, but his ears were ringing, her words to him lost as he scanned the page. 

‘Even if it’s Danny, he’s clearly not human anymore. He’s going to attack us at some point, go all Carrie on us with his freaky ghost thing–’

‘--I saw him use his powers to beat up one of the football players, the teachers did NOTHING–’

‘--we can’t take the chance, not with something inhuman, that he won’t hurt us like all the other ghosts have–’ 

‘Mr. Rose was right! He deserves to keep his job and that creepy ghost should be shoved into the bottom of a thermos before he attacks us–’

‘I’ve been saying for years he’s a ghost but no one would listen to me! We should have let the Guys in White take him and lock him up in the darkest cell they have–’ 

He forced himself to breathe, biting his lip as he fought to keep his emotions and powers under control, but the lights flickered overhead despite his best efforts. Dash and Kwan paled, exchanging a worried glance as they were forced to ask themselves if maybe this was a mistake, but Danny didn’t want to prove them right. He didn’t want to hurt anyone. He knew he should try to stay calm, stay in class, and ignore it, but there were hundreds of signatures and dozens of comments, and everyone was staring at him and Wes was filming him as one of the fluorescent bulbs over his desk popped and blew out. No doubt they planned to use the video as ammunition to try and get him, the freaky, ghostly monster in their midst, kicked out and dissected, but even as he understood what they were doing, he couldn’t stop himself from reacting.

“Oh no,” said Sam. “That’s . . . Danny, you can’t–” 

“--I shouldn’t have come back,” he whispered, interrupting her as Mr. Lancer walked in and put his briefcase on the desk, and it was too much at once, the pressure building in his chest and threatening to burst as he started to hyperventilate. Standing up, he pushed past the other students and headed to the front of the room. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t think. He just needed to get out, needed to flee and run and for everyone to stop staring at him, he wasn’t a freak, he wasn’t–

“Daniel, what’s wrong?” asked Mr. Lancer as the lights flickered and the room no doubt grew colder, but Danny shook his head. He should talk to Mr. Lancer, tell him what happened and who was probably responsible, but the words stuck in his throat like molasses, and he couldn’t stay there for another second. Danny bolted, hearing his classmates' laughter in his head and Lancer calling after him as he ran down the hall and dove into the closest restroom, knowing he had no time as he rapidly lost control. 

The bathroom was empty, and sitting against the door he put his head in his hands, trying to force himself to stop hyperventilating as the pressure in his chest released, his powers spiraling chaotically as ice crept out from his hands and feet and coated the floor and walls. The lights overhead flickered and fizzled as Danny tried to focus, to push the negative thoughts down. It was fine, he was fine, everything was fine, but . . . but it wasn’t, was it? It hadn’t been in months, and he let out a choked sob that sounded so inhuman, so wrong that it made him want to cry even more.

There were over four hundred signatures on that petition. Some were parents and not students, but still, it meant that over four hundred people wanted him gone, banished back to the Infinite Realms with the other monsters.

The ice crept further, coating the mirrors and freezing the water in the toilets, the droplets on the sink. He needed to get himself under control. If someone saw this, saw him, it would all be over. The Guys in White would show up tomorrow and lock him away, his parents probably holding open the door for them so they could finally be rid of what they no doubt believed was an imposter pretending to be their son. But he couldn’t get it to stop, couldn’t pull his powers back as his entire body trembled and the tears threatened to pour out, and the ice continued to spread. 

The entire bathroom was frozen when he heard a knock on the door. Danny didn’t know how long had passed since he fled Mr. Lancer’s classroom, time somehow both shrinking and stretching out to impossible lengths as he broke down, but there was no one he wanted to talk to right now even if he could manage to speak right now. “Danny?” Tucker’s voice, and then a push against his back as Tucker tried the door, but Danny was too strong for Tucker to force it open. “I know you’re in there, I can feel the cold from out here. Come on, man, please let me in.”

“No.” He heard the static in his voice this time, the echo, the word almost certainly ghost speech as he forced it out. The lights above him flickered one last time and turned off, leaving him in darkness, but freak that he was, he could still easily see everything.

“I’m gonna assume that was a no?” Danny said nothing, burying his head in his arms as Tucker pushed on the door again, and then he heard him sit down outside and lean against it when Danny refused to let him in. “Listen, what Dash and the other A-listers did–”

“--it’s not just them,” interrupted Danny, forcing out the words as he tried hard not to let the echoes and static and noise infiltrate his speech and make it incomprehensible to Tucker, and he wasn’t sure he succeeded even now. He didn’t know why he couldn’t tell.  “That petition had hundreds of signatures.”

“And some of them are probably bots or duplicates or whatever, and a bunch are from people who don’t even go here or know you, man, and some of them are just flat-out lies that Dash and his buddies made up because they’re jerks,” said Tucker. “Look, if you were expecting everyone to like you, that’s never going to happen and you know it. It doesn’t matter what people like Dash think. Mr. Lancer’s grilling them right now about it, and he’s probably going to get a detention or suspension over it.”

Danny felt a tiny bit of gratitude, but it was snuffed out quickly as his mind raced through the consequences. Dash’s bullying would almost certainly get worse if any of the A-listers found themselves punished for it. That didn’t mean Lancer made the wrong call, but practically, it made nothing better for Danny. No doubt another comment and signature would be added to that petition about how he cost Casper High its star athlete now, too, if Dash did end up suspended.

“Please open the door, Danny,” begged Tucker when he didn’t respond. 

“My parents tried to kill me when I came back,” said Danny, his voice cracking as he refused to budge. No one knew about it besides him and his parents, not even Jazz. “I was so excited to see them, and then Dad and Mom both pulled an ecto blaster on me. Mom called me a monster.”

Danny originally planned to tell his family and friends everything, but when he walked back through the portal that day, there was no warm embrace. Instead, he found his parents staring at him in horror, Mom’s fingers twitching over her blaster, Dad’s hands covering his mouth, and then Mom accused him of being some kind of shapeshifting monstrosity taking advantage of their grief as Dad went for his blaster on his side, and she threatened to shoot him, too, if he didn’t tell them the truth. 

He managed to talk them down and convince them he was the real Danny. He told them memories of his childhood, focusing on special moments he shared with each of them. He showed them how the genetic lock on the portal recognized him, and he excitedly latched onto his Dad’s ecto contamination theory as an explanation for the changes when his Dad proposed it. But physically, nothing about Danny changed. The ears, the teeth, the pale skin - all of that was the same as it was before he was kidnapped, it had been that way since his accident, and he had dozens of pictures that confirmed it despite how much every person in his life seemed convinced that simply could not be the case.

They eventually hugged him but the initial rejection stung, haunting him and casting a shadow over the house that still remained. And when Danny saw the same fear and uneasiness in his sister and friend’s eyes, the very people who should know better, who should know him and recognize him? It crushed him. How could he possibly tell them the truth?

Tucker was silent for a long time, so much that if not for the gentle pressure on the door Danny would think he left. What was there to even say to something like that? Or worse, maybe Tucker agreed with his parents about him and didn’t have the guts to admit it. He could tell Sam and Tucker and Jazz all thought something was wrong with him, that he wasn’t himself, and the worst part was that they weren’t entirely wrong. He didn’t think of himself as a monster, but he was different now, too. He wasn’t entirely himself anymore. The boy who was taken by the Fright Knight was gone and would be forever. 

“I’m so sorry, Danny,” said Tucker at last. “But at least it seems like they got over it, right?”

Danny didn’t know if he wanted to laugh or cry. “They run me through a decontamination sequence every day. It makes me super nauseous, but they don’t care. I keep losing weight since I can’t keep food down afterward,” he said, digging his nails in as he hugged his knees tightly to his chest, a not-so-small part of him beginning to wonder how long he would need to starve before his parents would admit that they were slowly killing him. “So no, Tucker, they’re not over it. If anything it’s worse now. They hate what I am, and they don’t even know the truth about most of it.”

“Do you want to stay with me? My folks wouldn’t mind if you need to get away from it for a few days. Or, you know, longer if you needed it, too.” The ice in the room receded a little as he considered it, but he couldn’t drag the Foleys into his mess, and it would only make the distance between him and his parents grow. He knew his parents cared, knew they loved him and that they were just scared, but it still hurt to see how they looked at him now and to think about how much worse that would get if they found out everything.

“No, but thanks for offering. It means a lot,” he said, and then he swallowed, making a decision. Standing up, he carefully opened the door a crack, making sure the rest of the hallway was clear, and Tucker jumped to his feet, wincing at the room covered in ice behind Danny. 

“Oh, yikes, dude,” he whispered as Danny let him in, and Tucker shivered, rubbing his arms as Danny took his place back at the door. “This is . . . you haven’t had this much trouble controlling your powers since like freshman year.”

“I know.” Tucker sat down beside him, barely avoiding slipping on the ice, and his teeth chattered loudly. “You don’t have to stay.”

“Pretty sure I do,” he said, “but maybe I should start carrying an extra sweater if you’re going to keep freezing stuff all the time.”

“I’m not doing it on purpose!” 

“I didn’t say you were. It’s fine, Danny,” he said, leaning his head against the door as he shivered and continued rubbing his arms. “Look, maybe it doesn’t mean much right now, but Sam and Jazz and I, we’re all glad you’re back. You disappearing like that, us not knowing what happened?” He took his beret off and ran his fingers through his hair. “Worst three months of our lives. Like, right up there with your accident for the top five moments I would never want to live through again.”

“I’m sorry.” It wasn’t what he wanted to tell him. What he needed to tell him. But he couldn’t get the words out, terrified of how Tucker would react if he knew everything. He couldn’t lose anyone else, but eventually, they would learn the truth whether he told them or not. It would be better for it to come from him, to give them time to prepare. He knew it would.

But he still remained silent, the words not willing to come.

“It’s not your fault.” He picked at the edge of his beret, frowning at the frayed bits. “I really should get a new hat, huh?”

Danny blinked, caught off guard for a minute before he realized what Tucker was doing. “Probably. You’ve had that since what? Seventh grade?” 

“At least.” The ice receded more, the chill in the air diminishing slowly as it evaporated into blue mist, Tucker’s distraction helping him ignore the ache in his chest. “My mom still hates it, y’know.”

“So does Sam. But you won me over eventually,” said Danny as Tucker put it back on, carefully adjusting it. “I can’t picture you without it now.”

“Well if I can I’ll get an identical one, so don’t expect to see me without it any time soon,” said Tucker. He stopped rubbing his arms, the ice almost completely gone and the room nearly back to a normal temperature again as the lights overhead flickered back on. “Look, Danny, we know something happened that you’re not telling us. Clearly, the issues you’re having controlling your powers are happening again for a reason, even if we don’t know why. But I hope you’ll let us in at some point. Sam and Jazz and I, we’ll accept you no matter what, okay? We’re not–you don’t have to be afraid.” 

His mind flashed, picturing the ectoplasm dripping down his arms and face and chest, a cold iron Crown consumed by blue fire, a Ring with an impossibly blue stone on his finger, his sense of self splitting, and Clockwork’s words echoing in his mind.

This was the best possible timeline.

“Tucker, I–” he began, but the bell rang, cutting him off. The bathroom was back to normal, thankfully, and he stood up, holding out a hand to help Tucker back to his feet. “I’ll tell you guys, okay? Before I–I promise. Just not yet.”

“Okay. But I’m going to hold you to that,” said Tucker as he took his hand and stood up, and the two of them waited for a few minutes, letting the students filter out of the hallways as they left school for the day. Thankfully no one came in to use the bathroom, far more interested in going home, and he saw Tucker send a quick text to Sam. 

“I’m going to talk to Mr. Lancer and apologize for running off,” said Danny. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Sure.” Opening the door, he headed quickly back down the hallway, swallowing as he peeked into the classroom, but thankfully only Mr. Lancer remained, the rest of his classmates gone for the day. “Sir?” he said, clearing his throat, and the teacher looked at him, eyes widening a fraction as his mouth opened a little.

“Daniel? I didn’t expect you back today after what happened in class.”

“I–I just wanted to say I’m sorry. For running off like that.” Danny rubbed the back of his neck and then wrapped his arms tightly around himself, his fingers digging in a little too hard. The light over his desk was still off, likely broken because of him. “I–I shouldn’t have let it get to me.”

“Daniel, I can’t imagine anyone in your shoes seeing that petition and having it not upset them,” said Mr. Lancer. “Your reaction was understandable, considering the circumstances. Do you know who was responsible?” Danny shook his head, despite knowing without a doubt that it was Dash and Kwan and the other A-listers. “I see. I’ll keep looking into it, but if you do find out, please let me know. I’ll continue to investigate it on my end as well.”

“Okay.”

“And if anyone else does something similar, please let me know that, too. This kind of bullying won’t be tolerated,” said Mr. Lancer, although Danny knew that wasn’t exactly true given how many bruises Dash gave him over the last few years and how rarely any of the teachers intervened, some going as far as to pretend not to see it when Dash shoved him inside his locker. But even if he did want to take him at his word and believe him when he said they wouldn’t let them get away with it, Danny knew it wasn’t worth it. There were too many students waiting eagerly to push him out the door, even if making him miserable was the only way to do it.

“I will,“ he lied, swallowing. “But, um, I–if I wanted to drop out, maybe switch to being homeschooled–”

“--let’s not jump too far ahead of ourselves,” said Mr. Lancer. “You’re doing well since you came back. And I know your parents are busy with their research and defense of Amity Park, likely too much to provide you with an adequate education at home. Regardless of what that petition might make you believe, there are many of us here that are glad that you’re back, and we’re invested in your success.”

Well, that was a little true, at least. His parents would do a poor job homeschooling, too consumed by their own work, and he was doing well in most of his classes since he came back. The ghost attacks hadn’t really picked up yet, the ghosts no doubt aware of his return and what attacking him could mean now if they weren’t careful. Vlad made that abundantly clear the other day, at this point the only person in his life that knew everything aside from a few of the finer details.

Of course, that didn’t stop him from threatening Danny, and as if reading his mind his phone vibrated in his pocket. Pulling it out, he saw a missed call from Vlad. 

“Everything okay?”

“I, um, sorry, I have to go. I forgot about an appointment,” he lied. “And, um, thanks again. I’ll see if I can stay after Friday instead if that works for you?”

“Of course, Daniel.” 

His phone vibrated again as he walked out of the classroom, and gritting his teeth he answered it. “What?”

“You know what,” replied Vlad curtly. “You’ve had weeks now to take care of it.”

“I need access to your portal to fix it.”

“You didn’t need access to break it.”

“It’s easier to break it than to repair it. It’s unnatural. It wants to be broken,” he said, and thankfully, Vlad didn’t challenge him further.

“Fine. Then come now,” he demanded as he hung up.

Danny arrived at Vlad’s house in Amity shortly after. Although Vlad still owned the mansion in Wisconsin, his entire lab moved with him to Amity Park as he spent most of his time here now, and the portal couldn’t be left alone for very long due to the regular maintenance it required. Danny flew directly to Vlad’s lab underground, staying invisible as he briefly looked through it, confirming that at least Vlad didn’t appear to be up to anything too awful at the moment. There were no clones or other horrifying experiments, no evidence of some nightmarishly awful weapon he planned to use against him or his Dad, or anything else that might make it hard for Danny to sleep for the next month. 

Of course, he likely hid anything too incriminating before Danny arrived. 

“Are you done?” said Vlad, sitting at a nearby terminal as he took a long sip of tea. “My sensors picked up on your presence the moment you arrived. Or are you going to insist on poking around more first as if I wouldn’t notice somehow?”

“I’m done.” He dropped his invisibility, and Vlad smirked at him. 

“Still hiding the Crown and Ring, then?” he teased. “You would think you would want your friends to know that despite your poor academic performance you have at least achieved becoming the inconsequential king of the Ghost Zone.”

“Not that inconsequential, or I wouldn’t be here now, would I?” said Danny as he walked over to the portal, trying not to let Vlad bait him, and he felt his core resonate with the green mist that floated within it, the insubstantial echoes of the former connection between worlds whispering to him. Biting his lip, he let the vestments of his new office appear, the iron Crown on his head and heavy Ring on his finger, a black cape speckled with silver stars billowing out behind him as his eyes glowed bright blue instead of green. “Happy now?”

“Hardly. You look utterly foolish,” said Vlad, waving a hand dismissively at him. “Well? Get on with it.”

Danny swallowed, considering for a moment, but no. He wouldn’t inflict that on Vlad, at least not without warning him first. “You should leave. I’ve been told that seeing this can be bad. Like, madness-inducing-since-it-messes- with-your-understanding-of-the-universe levels of bad.”

Vlad rolled his eyes as he crossed his arms over his chest. “Please, Daniel. Do you think I’m naive? I won’t allow you access to my lab without my supervision.”

“Fine. Go ahead and lose your mind to prove me wrong, then,” said Danny with a shrug. He tried, after all, even if he hadn’t tried very hard. If Vlad wanted to risk being driven to insanity, so be it. It wasn’t as if he had far left to go. 

He let his fingers reach out into the gateway as he closed his eyes. The first few times he connected to the Infinite Realms he felt squeamish and uncertain, but little by little he found himself adapting to it the more he called out to it, the Realms as much a part of himself as he was a part of it. He extended his senses, reaching a hand to the zone itself, and it responded in kind as it grasped him, filling him and harmonizing with his core. Danny let himself breathe, becoming fully integrated with it as they exhaled, and they flowed together into the natural portals that speckled like stars within them. Reaching out, they nudged the portals gently, feeling what little they could through them of Earth. A chilly breeze and a bird’s song. A soft scent of flowers beginning to bloom. The scent of rain in the air, a storm coming soon. 

But no, he, Danny, did not come to check the natural gateways and pathways, they needed to focus on the portal, but it became so hard as Danny disconnected from his physical reality, subsumed by the Infinite Realms. The unnatural portal felt like a scar on their chest, and they winced, knowing they would need to open the wound once again lest Vlad make good on his threats. They breathed out slowly, letting a part of themselves flow into the portal, to open and to stretch to fill the sharp metal teeth that permanently bound it, unbreaking and unnatural but a necessary injury they must bear. And as they finished and Danny began to disentangle himself, the Infinite Realms whispered to him, begging him to stay and be whole with it. 

Soon , he promised. 

He opened his eyes slowly, blinking and trying not to freak out as he looked down. Whenever he fully connected with the Infinite Realms, his sense of self rapidly dissolved with it, his form becoming indistinct and shadowy and ever-present, filling every crack and corner even as it continued to press in on itself. Danny became something neither human nor ghost nor halfa but ancient, a part of the fabric of the Infinite Realms and impossible to perceive, both there and not, filling the space while simultaneously being absent from the very fabric of reality. 

Danny shuddered, his form solidifying as he remembered the heaviness of his own hands, his heart beating slowly in his chest, his lungs filling with air, and reality snapped like a rubber band as he locked firmly back into place. He did not remember transforming, but he stood there, human once more while the portal glowed in front of him, swirling with energy and quietly inviting. His hand lingered in the doorway for a moment, feeling the currents and eddies within the portal that were so welcoming and gentle, that whispered for him to return, before he finally forced himself to let go.

Turning, Danny froze for a minute when he saw Vlad. His face was white as a sheet, Vlad’s eyes wide as he mouthed something to himself over and over again, the actual words impossible to discern. He put one of his hands on Vlad’s shoulder. “I did try to warn you,” Danny said as he looked Vlad straight in the eyes, and then Danny snapped his fingers in front of the man’s face as Vlad shook his head a little. “Come on.”

The words came out of Vlad in a hiss of static and noise, of beakers clinking, of fizzing and popping. “I can’t–what–” 

Danny focused hard as he responded, his brain automatically wanting to switch to ghost speech to match, but right now that wasn’t what Vlad needed to hear. “English. You need to use English. Or Russian. Or Mandarin. Or whatever. Just not the language of the dead.” He could feel Vlad trembling, and leaving him for a moment, he grabbed the cup of tea nearby, pressing it into Vlad’s hands. “Have a sip. It’ll help. Seriously.”

Thankfully, the man managed to tip it back, some of the shock fading as he drank and the warmth flooded through him. Little reminders of being alive, of being human and grounded in the world, helped the most. “Breathe, Vlad.” 

“What happened?” he finally managed, only the tiniest hint of an echo. 

“Your portal is fixed, asshole,” said Danny, trying to provoke a reaction so he would stop thinking about it, and Vlad scowled at him. Good. “Next time I suggest you listen when I tell you to leave.”

“You didn’t explain.”

“Pretty sure I told you the important parts, and besides, do you seriously think I could?” he challenged, and the haunted look returned and Danny groaned, forcing him to take another sip of his tea. “Come on. Focus. Don’t think about it, like seriously focus on anything else, okay? I’ll come back and check on you tomorrow.”

“I’m not a child.” His voice cracked on the last word. 

Danny rolled his eyes. “Obviously. But you are sick, and I’m the only one that can help. So cancel your meetings, have some chicken noodle soup, don’t transform, and maybe watch some crappy reality shows on Netflix or whatever you do in your free time besides devising evil schemes around marrying my mom and killing my Dad and stalking me.”

He turned to go when he felt Vlad’s hand grab his arm, his nails digging in a little too hard. “Daniel?”

“What?” he sighed. 

“I’m sorry, for what it’s worth. That this happened to you,” he said, and Danny stared at him, not quite sure what to think. There was no denying Vlad held a fair bit of the blame, given that he was the one that woke Pariah Dark and forced Danny to clean up his mess, but it still felt wrong to hear him apologize at all, let alone for something that felt so inevitable.

“You seriously are a fruitloop now, huh? Apologizing to me. Besides,” said Danny as he glanced back at the portal, the Infinite Realms dangerously inviting as the static and noise of his own death echoed within his words despite how hard he tried not to use ghost speech. “It’s not that bad.”

Vlad laughed, the sound unearthly and inhuman and wrong. “Will you still be saying that in a couple of months when your family and friends ultimately reject you once they learn the whole truth? About your coronation and what you are now? About what that means for your future?” Danny said nothing as he stared at his sneakers. “No denials, then?”

Danny shook his head, swallowing. “No.”

“Ah.” Vlad tried to stand up, but his legs shook too badly and he fell back into his chair and sighed.

“Do you want help?” He moved to offer a hand, but Vlad swatted it away.

“Absolutely not,” said Vlad, and Danny rolled his eyes as he headed out. “But Daniel?”

He gritted his teeth, turning back once more. “Yeah?” 

“Do tell them something, at least. Dear Maddie . . . she was so terribly worried about you,” said Vlad. “Best not to let her burn the world down seeking you out when the time comes for you to leave again.”

Chapter Text

William didn’t like it.

He sat in his office, preparing for his meeting with Daniel and his parents. He already spoke to the Fentons a few days ago, and they seemed disappointingly thrilled by the idea. As if it were only natural to put a shackle on their son over a few flickering lights and a single broken bulb, but the school board was adamant given the video and subsequent visit from the Ghost Investigation Ward. William hated the government agents, who not so subtly threatened to throw his student into a very dark hole should they refuse what they considered a simple, reasonable request that felt too much like a trap for his liking.

Daniel arrived first, the air buzzing with cold and static as he stepped inside. “Hi, Mr. Lancer,” he said quietly, sitting in one of the three chairs in front of his desk in his cramped office. “I’m guessing this is good news, huh?” The sarcasm dripped from every word. 

“It’s . . . it could be worse, Daniel,” he settled on eventually, and Daniel let out a small grunt. “I was against it.”

“So I’m finally getting expelled?” He seemed sad but unsurprised, as if he anticipated this from the very moment he came back.

“I–not necessarily, no,” he said. “Please, Daniel. Let’s wait for your parents and we’ll go over everything then, okay?” Daniel said nothing, eyes staring off at the wall, that unnatural stillness overcoming him as the clock ticked away the minutes as they waited in silence for his parents. The Fentons were fifteen minutes late. Unsurprising, really. At least he knew Daniel’s attendance issues were an inherited trait.

“Sorry, Mr. Lancer. Jack and I ran into a ghost on the way here,” said Maddie as she and her husband took a seat in the empty chairs. “Have you filled Daniel in already?”

“I thought it best to wait,” he said. “But now that you’re here, we can continue. Do you want the good news or bad news first, Daniel?”

“Doesn’t matter,” he muttered, arms crossed as he continued to stare sullenly at the wall. 

“Good news, then.” If only because it was easier. “Your 504 plan has been finalized. We’ll have a laptop assigned to you next week for you to use for your assignments and quizzes, and you can have some extra time to complete them and your tests as well. You’ll remain exempt from the phys ed requirements given your ongoing medical issues. The details are here, and we can continue to discuss these accommodations on an ongoing basis as we develop your learning plan.” 

Daniel turned, blinking at him as he leaned forward and grabbed the folder, eyes skimming over the pages. “Oh. I–thanks. I guess.”

“I’ve also told your parents this already, but I’m impressed with the progress you’ve made since you’ve come back, Daniel,” added Mr. Lancer, “especially given the challenging circumstances. I’m feeling much more strongly that you may be able to move on to your senior year with your peers if this continues.”

“You said there was bad news?” said Daniel, his voice quiet as he twisted his fingers around in his lap, far less pleased than he expected, but he couldn’t blame Daniel for focusing on the worst at that moment. 

“Several school officials and the mayor had an urgent meeting the other day,” said William. “We were informed by the Ghost Investigation Ward that if we could not find a suitable way to keep the more concerning side effects of your current condition under control, then you would be forcibly taken into custody by them and run through a vigorous decontamination procedure until your ecto contamination was fixed.”

“And if you couldn’t find a way or if the decontamination process didn’t work?” asked Daniel uneasily, his full attention on him now.

“Then you would be placed in their custody indefinitely, for the safety of yourself and your peers,” said William.

Daniel sat up straight, his eyes wide as panic overtook him. “You–you can’t. Please. They can’t just take me and hold me forever, right? I haven’t even done anything wrong!” he said, glancing at his parents as the lights flickered overhead. It wasn’t his fault. Perhaps Daniel would even welcome their solution, given how much negative attention this brought him and how uncomfortable it must feel to constantly broadcast every emotion to those around him, but somehow William doubted it given that it wasn’t something Daniel requested.

“Of course not, hon. There are laws in place now that would prevent that, but we don’t need to worry about it since we already came up with a solution,” said Mrs. Fenton as she opened up her bag and pulled out a small box. Daniel swallowed, his eyes darting between his two parents as he bit his lower lip, one of his fangs poking out. 

“What’s that?”

“An inhibitor,” explained Mr. Fenton, and William cocked an eyebrow, surprised by the lack of their typical branding, but perhaps they at least had the decency not to be proud of this particular invention. “It won’t do anything for your, um, altered appearance, but the stuff like the lights flickering, the cold temperatures, all the ghostly powers and what not? It’ll suppress it. They won’t happen anymore. And as long as you wear it, son, the GIW will leave you alone.”

“But I’m not . . . this doesn’t hurt anyone,” said Daniel, and his parents exchanged an uncomfortable glance. That, of course, was William’s point as well. The cold around Daniel felt uncomfortable, but it was tolerable, and the flickering lights in the video shared could hardly cause harm to anyone. And despite the GIW’s claims, the law was on Daniel’s side. After the incident with several students being infected with a strange disease that temporarily gave them ghostly abilities, Mayor Masters effectively lobbied at the state level to push through a law protecting ecto-enhanced individuals, as he phrased it, preventing them from being indefinitely detained or experimented on against their will. Federal laws could potentially override it, but the GIW’s attempt to pass the Anti-Ecto Act last year was shot down, folks seeing it as a waste of time and taxpayer dollars since most people that lived outside their hometown and state thought the entire situation was an elaborate hoax created to increase tourism. 

If only.

“Not yet, but it’s possible that over time, the effects could become more pronounced,” said Mrs. Fenton. “I know you’d never intentionally hurt anyone, sweetie, but there’s a chance something could happen by accident. The GIW won’t take the chance. Neither will the school, for that matter, and I doubt you’d want to hurt any of your classmates.”

Daniel took the box and opened it, staring at the simple silver band in silence. “Do I have to wear it all the time or just at school?” 

“Currently you’re only required to wear it out in public. So anytime outside of our house, really, per the agreement we’ve made with the GIW,” said Maddie. “But why wouldn’t you want to wear it all the time? Surely you can’t like being this way.” She gestured to the flickering lights overhead, the chill in the air, and Daniel said nothing, his eyes locked on the band, as William tried not to scowl. It wasn’t how he would approach it, making presumptions about Daniel’s feelings, but he let it go, not wanting to make things harder on Daniel by getting into an argument with his parents in front of him. 

“So I can take it off myself?” he asked, not answering his mother’s question.  

“Of course,” said Jack.

“Will–will the decontamination procedures stop if I wear it?” His voice was quiet, the air tense with anticipation not unlike a soldier about to push the button on a grenade. William knew very little about the Fentons’ decontamination protocols, having only been subjected to the most basic level a couple of times before. He doubted it could rise to the level of abuse, and yet . . . He frowned, rubbing his temples, the Fentons too focused on each other to pay attention to him. Should he report it? Probably not. There wasn’t evidence of abuse, and the authorities in Amity Park would take one look at Daniel and assume any level of decontamination procedures would be the only logical course of action.

“I–this doesn’t change your ecto contamination levels, Dann-o, but we’re working on a new formula that we’re sure will work,” said Jack, clapping a hand on Daniel’s shoulder as Daniel deflated. “But give it a try, son! I’m sure you’ll feel back to normal once it’s on.”

“Right. Normal.” He let out a long breath, and then pulled it out and snapped it onto his wrist, twisting some small dial on the band. The effect was immediate. The oppressive cold vanished, the lights remained steady, and he saw the faint swirl of green in Daniel’s eyes disappear. Jack and Maddie smiled at each other, triumphant, but Daniel . . . his hand went to his chest, his eyes closed, and William’s concerns only grew. 

“How does it feel?” asked Jack curiously, smiling broadly at him. “Better?”

“Fine,” said Daniel, clearly lying, his teeth gritted as he curled in on himself. “Every day at school, right?”

“And in public,” added Maddie. “The arrangement is primarily with the GIW, but the school is insistent, too, that it be a mandatory part of your attendance here even if the GIW rescinds that demand. Correct, Mr. Lancer?”

“That’s correct,” he confirmed. Daniel’s parents seemed oblivious to their son’s discomfort, and at this point, he felt the need to intervene and check in with Daniel. “Thank you so much for coming in, of course. It means a lot to see two parents take such a firm interest in their child’s education. I think we’re all set now, but Daniel and I have a tutoring session this afternoon.”

Daniel looked up at him, a hint of confusion there, but said nothing as he realized that William wanted to talk to him alone, even if he didn’t know the reason why. 

“I’d be happy to bring him home now and help with his homework instead,” offered Maddie, clearly suspicious of his intentions, and her reaction startled him even as he tried hard not to show it. He couldn’t understand why she would be opposed to letting him tutor Daniel, unless she picked up on his concerns about his well-being, but even then, that shouldn’t trigger such a response if she wasn’t abusing him. And he didn’t think she would, though he’d met his fair share of abusive parents over the years that were so charming and sweet in person that one would never suspect the horrific things they did to their children. 

“I don’t think that’s necessary. I’ve no doubt you have lots of important things to take care of right now with the ghost attacks picking back up again,” said William, and she scowled at him. 

“Contrary to what you and others might believe, there’s nothing more important to me right now than my son and his education,” she said, her tone icy. Their tardiness to their appointment would suggest otherwise, but William did not dare to say as much to her, knowing it would only exacerbate things. He didn’t want Daniel to end up isolated if his mother was abusing him, didn’t want him to lose contact with the only adults in his life interested in his well-being. He didn’t know where Jack stood on all of this, if there was anything happening behind closed doors, and whether he was an active participant in Daniel’s abuse or not. But he was already getting ahead of himself, jumping to conclusions based on very little evidence. No doubt the Fentons were sensitive about their parenting after what happened to Daniel. William certainly felt that way about his own skills as an educator, even if aborting a violent kidnapping by a half-dozen malevolent specters wasn’t exactly part of his training. 

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Fenton. I didn’t mean to imply that there was,” apologized William, and he meant it. Mostly. “But we’re working on his homework for my class today. Perhaps you can assist him with his other assignments tonight? I’m not quite as skilled at pre-calculus or physics, whereas I know it’s a specialty of you and your husband’s.”

“Seriously, Mom,” said Daniel, rolling his eyes as he slumped in his chair, arms crossed, playing up the part of the annoyed teen so well that William wondered how often Daniel used the same tactic on him. “I don’t need you looming over my shoulder while I try to decipher gothic poetry.” 

“Well, if that’s the case, son, I can’t see why we ought to stay,” said Jack as he stood up, and although she looked like she wanted to argue, Maddie resisted the impulse and picked up her things as well. “Make sure you keep the inhibitor on, okay? I know it might feel weird after you’ve grown so accustomed to the side effects from the ecto contamination, but you’ll get used to feeling normal again in no time.”

“Right. Normal.” Perhaps Jack had noticed Daniel’s discomfort after all, despite his unfortunate choice of words.

“We’ll see you at home, hon. Let us know if you need a ride,” said Mrs. Fenton. “And thank you again, Mr. Lancer, for fighting so hard for Daniel.” She smiled, showing too many teeth, and William’s concern for Daniel returned, an uneasy fluttering in his gut. 

“It’s my job,” he said. How he kept his voice steady, he did not know.

“Bye, mom.” There were no goodbye hugs or kisses as they left, no shoulder touches or contact of any kind. Not unusual for most teens, but the Fentons were a family that generally leaned heavily on physical affection. Perhaps Daniel asked for some space after his return. He tried not to read too much into it but struggled not to after the odd, somewhat hostile interaction in his office just now.

As soon as his parents were gone, Daniel relaxed, his fingers tracing the silver cuff on his wrist. The Fentons designed it well, at least - it looked more like a bracelet than a handcuff - but it still made William queasy to see it. “We don’t have a tutoring session today. So what’s going on?”

“I wanted to make sure you were okay,” explained William. “Some students don’t feel comfortable saying some things in front of their parents, and I noticed you expressed some discomfort during our meeting. Are the decontamination procedures or anything else your parents are currently doing harming you?”

Daniel looked up, eyes widening a fraction as he clearly connected the dots. “What? N–no. I  mean, they make me nauseous, that’s all. It’s hard for me to eat. But medicine does that sometimes, right?” The point, while true, felt well-rehearsed. Like one he heard over and over again the last few weeks from a couple of caretakers obsessed with fixing something that very likely could not be fixed. More and more he became sure that he ought to make a report to child services, even if nothing would come of it. 

“Medicine is also supposed to help you feel better in the long term. Are any of your symptoms improving?” he asked, and Daniel slouched down, crossing his arms over his chest. “Right.”

“It’s not like you can get them to stop, Mr. Lancer. I’ll be fine,” said Daniel, waving his hand dismissively. “And nobody will see it as them doing something wrong, if that’s what you’re, like, implying here, I guess. It’s to try and help my body get rid of ecto contamination, so it’s not abuse, and besides, how could I possibly want to continue being like this?” He gestured at himself, the words a bitter mockery of his parents’ own. “And there’s nothing else going on, I swear.”

“Daniel,” he said, and then paused, wondering how to phrase what he wanted to say, but the question that came out wasn’t what he planned to ask. “Did you want this to happen?”

“What?”

“Being this way. Is it something you sought out?” His mind drifted to self-harm, but the signs weren’t quite there, the situation not quite right. He doubted anyone, let alone Daniel, could control the Fright Knight, or that he would willingly put a potential target on his back from his parents and the other ghost hunters in town. 

“No, of course not,” he said. “But I don't hate it, Mr. Lancer.”

“Oh?”

“It doesn’t feel wrong or bad. Just different,” he admitted. “I mean, I hate the way everyone keeps looking at me and treating me. And this stupid thing?” He held up his wrist, silver inhibitor gleaming as it caught the light from the window. “I get it. It’s way better than a GIW cell. But I don’t know. It’s . . . I should be grateful, I guess, that at least I get to keep going to school and stuff and that my parents are clearly trying to help me so much despite everything, but I’m–I’m just frustrated.”

“I can’t say I know what you’re going through, Daniel, but you don’t need to feel grateful for an ankle monitor just because you’re not in a jail cell,” said William bluntly. “Is it hurting you?”

Daniel started to shake his head and then stopped. “Not exactly? It’s more like it’s kind of uncomfortable. Like . . . like when you get a pebble in your shoe, y’know? You can ignore it and keep walking and it doesn’t really hurt, but you can’t forget it’s there, either. My Dad’s probably right, though. I bet I’ll get used to it eventually.”

“I see.” He watched him for a moment, considering, and although it was a stupid risk, something that could put his career in danger, he felt like he owed it to Daniel. This was his fault, after all. His student was changed because he couldn’t keep him safe. And if Daniel could learn to accept those changes with grace, then perhaps he should continue to try to do so as well and see if there was some way he could get through to his parents, too. “Daniel, if it ever becomes too much, I want you to know you have a space here in my office if you need it, whether I’m here or not.”

“What?”

“The inhibitor,” he clarified, gesturing towards the bracelet on his wrist. “You’re welcome to remove it in my office and during our tutoring sessions. I’d prefer you to be able to focus and feel comfortable. Unofficially, that is, as this hasn’t been approved by the school. Officially, though, if you’re caught–”

“--you’ll hang me out to dry. I get it,” he said, but there was no anger there, a half-smile on his face. “You seriously don’t mind being around me? Flickering lights and the cold and all?”

“I don’t. I won’t pretend it’s comfortable, Daniel, but my discomfort is not on you to manage, and let’s be clear–that’s all this is about. You’re correct that nothing you’ve done has harmed anyone, and I don’t see how a little cold or flickering lights could, but we do have to keep you safe from the GIW, if nothing else, since I don’t find them nearly as honorable nor the recent laws as iron clad as your parents think they are.”

“Yeah, Dad’s a big fan of the Guys in White. It’s not surprising, I guess, since like half their grants come from them and they’re the only official branch of the government that’s willing to acknowledge that ghosts even exist,” said Daniel, his fingers playing with the clasp for a moment, but he left it on. “I appreciate the offer, but I don’t think I’ll take you up on it. You’re the only teacher that seems to care about me right now, and maybe that’s because you feel guilty about the thing with the Fright Knight, but I’d rather not see you get fired because I can’t deal with a pebble.”

“Very well. Did you want to do an actual tutoring session today? I know I said I can’t normally do Thursdays, but the club I oversee canceled their meeting today, so I have time.”

“Not really, but we probably should. My parents will freak out if they think I skipped out on it, and I don’t want you to get in trouble with them,” said Daniel as he pulled his notebook and textbook out. “So where did we leave off?”

Chapter Text

“Are you sure we can’t skip it today?” Danny sat on the lab table, his sleeve rolled up as she carefully drew another blood sample and looked ready to run. He was antsy, squirming uncomfortably as soon as she withdrew the needle and applied a small bandaid to it, although she almost welcomed the change from how still he was these days. 

“We’ve figured out a new procedure, kiddo,” said Jack cheerfully. At least one of them remained optimistic, but at this point after almost seven weeks of carefully refined decontamination processes, there was little to no change with Danny beyond the illusion provided by the inhibitor. Even through her Hazmat suit, she could feel the unnatural chill in the air that emanated from him as he left the device turned off while they checked him over, not wanting to risk his readings being inaccurate due to any interference it might cause with their equipment. “I’m sure we’ll see some improvement this time.”

“You’ve said that every time,” he muttered, picking at the bandaid for a moment before letting his arms drop. “I just–I feel nauseous all the time.”

“That’s not from the decontamination procedures, hon. It’s the contamination making you sick, that’s why we need to do what we can to reduce it,” she explained, exhaustion creeping in. How many times did she have to go over this with him? 

“But maybe we could try to skip it for a few days and see if I feel better?” He wrapped his arms around himself, his fingernails digging in sharply, and yet again she couldn’t help but be reminded of claws when she saw his nails, the tips unnaturally long no matter how often Danny trimmed them. “Please? I–I didn’t feel this sick all the time before. When I was, um. You know. In the Ghost Zone.”

She bit her lip, hands trembling as she walked over to the cabinet to get the new mixture. They tried traditional methods first, of course. They destroyed his clothing, forced him to take multiple showers to wash any traces from his skin, and then provided him with a medication containing elements that normally bonded to ectoplasm, allowing it to pass through the body relatively harmlessly. Yet his levels remained stubbornly high, the percentage of ectoplasm in his blood well beyond safe thresholds. 

The last case she saw with ectoplasmic levels that were this extreme was Vlad, and the poor man spent years in the hospital because of it. There could be a couple of reasons why it appeared to be impacting Danny less, but she still wasn’t entirely sure. Her best guess was that it was a result of the long-term exposure to the substance over the years helping him to build a slight tolerance to it since a little contamination was inevitable with their basement laboratory, or Danny had a potential genetic abnormality that allowed him to handle higher amounts of ectoplasm than a typical human. Yet regardless of the reason why, the amount in his system should be decreasing instead of holding steady, especially well over a month and a half later. Grabbing the new medication, she saw his shoulders drop and he stared down at his feet swinging slowly back and forth as Jack tried to comfort him. “I’m sorry, hon. Even if you did feel better in the Ghost Zone, that doesn’t mean much. The longer it’s in your system, the more likely it is that you’ll begin to suffer even more adverse effects. We have to figure something out to bring your levels down so you can get back to normal.”

A smell like citrus tinged the air, a sense of static on her arms as her son gritted his teeth. “Mom, don’t you get it? I can’t–I’m not normal anymore, okay?” he said, and she could hear a faint echo there and noise within the words. She hated it when he started to slip into ghost speech. He wasn’t dead. It shouldn’t be possible for him to emit such a horrifying sound, for his words to become so lost beneath the static until they were nearly impossible to discern amidst the noise.  “But I don’t care. I just–please. I don’t want to keep doing this.”

The question nagged at her yet again as she stared at the boy in front of her. The boy who claimed to be her son, but whose teeth were too sharp, whose skin was too pale, whose ears were too pointed. Whose eyes glowed green in moments of stress, and even when calm she could see it sprinkled there, the tiny flecks of ectoplasm within his baby blues. Despite Jazz’s overwhelming confidence that this child was Danny, Maddie maintained a tiny bit of skepticism that a human could be so irrevocably corrupted in this way, that he could emit such horrific noises when distressed. 

But every test they did confirmed it. The portal recognized his genetic information. His blood type was the same. His memories were Danny’s, too. If she hadn’t heard his heartbeat for herself she might have simply wondered if he was dead, an actual ghost simply pretending to be human and alive, but no ghost could create such a convincing illusion of life. And the inhibitor, while not changing his too sharp teeth or pointed ears, helped to eliminate most of the noise, to make it clear that somehow, impossibly, this was still Danny. 

“Mads, maybe we should let his body rest for a day,” said Jack, and she saw Danny perk up, the sheer relief on his face almost making her cave in, but she knew this was for Danny’s own good. There was a reason Jack never took the kids to get their vaccinations when they were young, despite supporting it wholeheartedly. 

“We’ll talk about it after we’ve tried the new formula for a few days,” she said sternly as she handed it over. “You’ll need to drink this one, Danny.”

“The whole thing?” He winced, but at least he stopped trying to argue with them. 

“Yes, sweetie. The whole thing.” He sniffed it, his nose wrinkling. “If it works, we can try to figure out a way to make it taste and smell a little better without compromising the formula.”

“Sounds great,” he muttered sarcastically, but he tipped it back and chugged it, trying to get it down as fast as possible. “Can I go now? I have to interview Vlad for a school project. I promised I’d be there by nine.”

“Fine, sweetie, but have Jazz give you a ride. And make sure you take your phone and turn the inhibitor back on,” she insisted, and Danny opened his mouth as if he wanted to argue before snapping it shut and hurrying up the stairs. She could tell the new restrictions on his movements grated on him, but they would not take the chance of leaving him alone, not after what happened. Danny argued that being around people didn’t matter last time, but she didn’t care. It was still safer for him to be with others, even if it wasn’t a perfect defense. Ghosts weren’t the only thing Maddie was worried about, not after seeing that petition or hearing the whispers and rumors about her son. 

“Have you talked things out with Jazz yet?” asked Jack as he sat back down at his workstation. Things had been tense since the argument in the lab. Jazz barely whispered good morning to her and remained stubbornly silent during meals on the rare night when she didn’t skip them entirely, practically a ghost in her own right. She hated it, hated the argument and the tension and being in this position, but she wasn’t the one that needed to apologize. She wasn’t the one that did anything wrong, and Jazz was enough of an adult now that Maddie felt like she couldn’t always be the one to try to bridge the gap between them. 

“I tried again last night, but she still wouldn’t talk to me,” said Maddie as she began to prepare Danny’s blood sample. 

“She’ll come around. I doubt she meant it. Jazz knows we’ve always cared about her and Danny,” said Jack, but Maddie wasn’t so sure. The accusation that she neglected and thought nothing of Danny until he was stolen from them was demonstrably untrue, but she knew that Jazz clearly believed some part of it to say it at all. But it was Danny who pulled away from them before his kidnapping, who refused to sit at the table no matter how much she invited him to join them, who treated his curfew as a guideline instead of the rule it was. She offered to let him go to therapy when she realized he was struggling in school and with his friends and his peers, especially since he wouldn’t talk to them, but Danny adamantly refused to go.

And even if their ghost hunting took a priority at times, it wasn’t because they cared about their children any less. So much of this was for them. Maddie knew their home wouldn’t survive for long if she and Jack didn’t defend it.  They were the only truly skilled ghost hunters in Amity Park. The Red Huntress was passionate but inexperienced and unreliable, and Phantom? As if the ghost truly cared. She and Jack had yet to see him since the portal reopened, his ecto signature appearing only once or twice in brief blips on their scanners, but that might not be that strange on its own since so far the more powerful ghosts still seemed absent from Amity Park. The only thing Phantom cared about was a fight, a challenge, a way to make himself look heroic, and there was nothing terribly impressive about sucking up an ectopus into a thermos he stole from them. 

Everything they did was for their kids, and she hated that Jazz believed otherwise, but now that the idea had taken root she doubted she could convince her daughter that she was wrong. Questioning if the boy who claimed to be her son was really Danny was only natural given the extent of the changes. As a scientist, it was her responsibility to look at the evidence and not allow her own personal desires to dictate her results, and the evidence that he might be an imposter was impossible to ignore.

“You’re probably right, dear.” Jack knew Jazz best, after all, and the two of them were so close in a way she often envied given she no longer had a similar connection with Danny anymore. “Has she talked to you about it?”

“Not really. I think she’s mad at me, too,” he said. “Her heart’s in the right place, you know. She’s just worried about Danny, always has been. I don’t think she really meant what she said to us. I’ll see if I can talk to her tonight. Maybe it’ll help us open the door a crack and then she’ll be ready to apologize to you.”

“Thanks, dear.” She set the sample within the centrifuge. It would need to spin for at least an hour to fully separate out the ectoplasm within his bloodstream, and moving over to her own workstation she pulled up the information on Danny’s cell phone, the tracker confirming he was in town and at least headed in Vlad’s direction. Good. She found herself checking on him three or four times a day, at least, worried that one day it would disappear again and that this time there would be no miracle that brought him home. 

“You know, Mads . . . Danny might be right,” said Jack carefully, and she looked up at him and frowned. “About the decontamination procedures making him sick. They’re meant to help his body purge ectoplasm.”

“I might believe that if it was working, but so far his levels are remaining steady,” argued Maddie. “So unless the ectoplasm in his system keeps replenishing itself somehow, I don’t . . .” She trailed off, considering it for a moment. Could it be replenishing itself? With an actual ghost, there were several ways it could restore its ectoplasmic levels–absorbing ambient energy in the ghost zone, consuming ectoplasm directly, or having it slowly but naturally replaced by their core--but Danny lacked a core, and the amount of ectoplasm that occasionally contaminated their food would be insufficient to maintain such high levels of ecto contamination via ingestion. If his body adapted to it, though, during his time in the Ghost Zone, then perhaps he could pull it from the ambient ectoplasmic energy that floated freely throughout Amity Park. They could detect it all over the city, the highest levels within their home and close to the portal, but for ordinary humans it was harmless, no more deadly than any other low levels of background radiation they lived with day to day. 

“It can’t be, though,” said Jack as he realized what she was thinking. “He’s human. He can’t absorb ectoplasm that way.”

“Are we sure he still is? Human, I mean?” She ran her fingers through her hair. “Jack . . . we know he’s not entirely what he was before. We’ve assumed the changes were mostly surface level, that the shifts in his DNA primarily resulted in purely cosmetic shifts, but what if they’re deeper?”

“You think he’s developed a core?” Maddie hadn’t, her brain not willing to make that leap, but it made an uncomfortable amount of sense as she considered it. “We could check, but Mads, if that’s the case . . . I don’t see how we can fix him. It would suggest a level of blending with his biological systems that we might not be able to untangle.”

She refused to accept that. “We won’t know that for sure until we take a look. We’ll need to run a scan.” They would also need to convince Danny to go along with it. So far he barely tolerated the weekly blood tests and decontamination procedures, not to mention actively skipping out on his doctor’s appointment the other week and the therapy appointment they tried to schedule, but if the trade-off was that the decontamination procedures stopped, then maybe he would be more willing to undergo a scan.

Of course, if they were right and he needed to have the core surgically removed, she suspected it would be a different story. They would almost certainly need to call in someone else at that point, since the thought of operating on her own son was nauseating, her objectivity too compromised to be certain that she could perform such a delicate operation safely. The Ghost Investigation Ward would have scientists that could help, but there was also a strong chance they would simply reclassify him as an ecto entity and steal her poor son away to experiment on him. For all that Jazz believed Maddie could not see past her own blind hatred for ghosts, the agents at the Ghost Investigation Ward were by far, far worse.

They might not have a choice, though. Ecto scientists, and ecto biologists in particular, were incredibly rare. There were very, very few that had the professional qualifications necessary for such a delicate procedure, and most with the skill level required probably worked for the GIW. If they took that route, they would need to proceed carefully, potentially talking to Vlad about using one of his lawyers to negotiate a specific treatment protocol while ensuring his rights were protected beneath the existing laws protecting ecto-contaminated individuals. 

At least it was something, a possible step in the right direction. They could fix this. They could fix him. No one could stop her from saving her son.

Jazz clenched the steering wheel tightly as they parked in front of Vlad’s mansion. She could not begin to understand what they were possibly doing here, but she knew it couldn’t be good as Danny got out of the car, slamming the door behind him. “I’ll see you in a few hours. You don’t need to pick me up,” he said. 

Oh, no. Absolutely not. Turning the car off, she grabbed her wallet and keys and she jumped out, ignoring his scowl. “No way, little brother. I’m not letting you face Vlad alone, especially not after how messed up you were when you saw him a couple of weeks ago.”

“Jazz, I’ll be fine,” he insisted, the air pinging with a sense of unease. Jazz was beginning to get pretty good at reading her brother’s moods from the way the air felt and smelled and tasted, something he clearly hated. It felt a bit invasive to her, too, but it wasn’t as if she had a choice when he kept turning the inhibitor off, the shifts in the air impossible to ignore. Even her parents’ Hazmat suits didn’t fully block it out. 

“If you want me to believe that, you could at least tell me what we’re doing here.”

“He’s been sick for a bit. I’m just checking on him, okay? Now will you go home?” Of all the possible excuses he could give, it was hard for her to pick one that was less likely to be the truth. Danny wouldn’t care if Vlad was sick. And if Vlad actually did have some weird ghost illness, he would definitely want to stay far away. Something else was going on here, and she was not going to let him face it alone. 

“Nope. Either I come with you, or we go home together. You know Mom and Dad would be furious if I let you walk back by yourself. It’s not as if they know you can fly,” she said as she began to head towards the mansion. “Well? Are you coming?”

“I–fine,” he grumbled. “But you’ll be sorry. Vlad’s awful when he’s sick.”

“Still sticking to that excuse, huh?” she said as he caught up to her.

She expected him to ring the bell, at least, but instead, he opened the door and walked straight in. Jazz followed him to the living room, where Vlad sat in a lounge chair wearing a thick red bathrobe over a set of silk pajamas, feet up and a half-finished drink in hand as he snored loudly and the television played quietly in the background. 

“Is he . . . is he watching The Great British Baking Show ?” said Jazz, staring at the TV for a minute as her brain struggled to process everything. The Vlad sitting before her was so unlike the polished, poised billionaire she knew, the man who would be mortified to be caught by anyone while in this state, and there was no universe where she could imagine him watching TV much at all, let alone some reality show.

“Looks like it,” said Danny as he bent over in front of Vlad, gently touching his shoulder, and Vlad flinched, a hiss of static and tinkling glass as he spoke that made Jazz want to curl into a ball and slam her hands over her ears. She hated ghost speech. 

“Come on, Vlad. Living languages only right now, remember?” said Danny slowly, eyes locked on his. Vlad nodded, trying to speak a couple of times before the words finally came out in English and without any distortion. 

“Come to check on me again, little badger?” he slurred, holding up the drink. “As you can see, I’m perfectly fine.” He brought it to his mouth and Danny stopped him, hand on the glass. 

“Yeah, I definitely assume that when someone is drinking a glass of–what? Brandy? Whiskey?”

“Scotch,” he scoffed as if that ought to be obvious somehow despite both Danny and Jazz still being too young to drink.

“Right, that someone drinking scotch at nine in the morning is in a good mental state,” he said as he pried the glass from Vlad’s fingers. “I’m going to go get you some water, okay? Jazz will stay with you.” He turned to her, as if expecting her to protest. 

“Fine!” she huffed as she sat down in the chair beside him, her arms and legs crossed, and she forced out a breath as she regarded Vlad. “Ugh, you’re a mess. What happened–”

“--don’t ask that question,” said Danny curtly as he paused at the door. “It’ll make it worse.”

“Wait, what? That doesn’t make any sense!” she shouted as he walked out of the room, and she tried not to shudder as Vlad stared a little too intensely at her. 

“You take so much after my dearest Maddie,” he said quietly. “You look so much like she did when she was your age. It’s quite remarkable, really, that you managed to avoid inheriting any of your father’s lesser characteristics.”

“That’s not the compliment you think it is right now,” she muttered, and he cocked an eyebrow at her.

“Oh?” he said. “Your father did mention that you and your mother had a disagreement recently. Perhaps I can–”

“Nope, absolutely not. I don’t need you to get even more involved in my family’s life,” she insisted as she looked at the TV and saw a contestant panicking as the hosts gave the five minute warning and some overly dramatic music began to play. “I’m surprised you like this show. It seems like it would be beneath you somehow.”

“Your mother suggested it once,” he said with a half-shrug. “And if Maddie enjoys it, then it can’t be too horrible, even if it’s proved to be little more than brain-rotting nonsense so far.”

“Then why keep watching it if you already know you hate it?” asked Jazz, hoping he would explain what happened to him, but he didn’t. He was acting like a man with severe PTSD or depression, though Jazz lacked the information and technically the education to diagnose either in him at this point. Whatever caused this strange, unsettling shift in Vlad worried her, though. It had to be ghostly, judging from Danny’s reaction to Vlad using ghost speech, and that meant there was a very, very high chance it could happen to Danny, too. 

“Daniel insisted,” he said as if that were a remotely sufficient explanation.

“What?”

He stared mutely at the television until Danny returned with a glass of water and a couple of pills, refusing to engage with her even after she prodded him a few more times, and she sighed, leaning back in her chair as she pretended to watch the TV while watching the two of them. “Take these,” he urged, pushing them on Vlad, and the man rolled his eyes.

“I’m not–”

“--a child. Yeah, you’ve said that like fifty times in the last couple of weeks. I get it. Take these.” Another eye roll, then, but he still obeyed, drinking the whole glass of water with the pills. Ibuprofen, maybe, from the look of them. Hopefully not something more serious. 

“Happy now?” 

“No,” said Danny as he sat down in the chair on the other side of Vlad and put his feet up on an ottoman. “You really don’t have to stay, Jazz. I’m not doing anything except keeping an eye on him.”

“So you didn’t intend to bring your sister?” said Vlad as he ran his fingers around the rim of his glass before taking another sip with a scowl. 

“What do you think?” he grumbled, crossing his arms over his chest. “My parents are insisting on a babysitter, so Jazz got stuck watching me since they’re too busy coming up with new gross stuff for me to drink to get rid of my ‘ectoplasmic contamination’ or whatever.” 

“So you finally admit your father’s an idiot, then,” he laughed as Jazz tried not to bristle at the way the two of them talked as if she wasn’t even there. “Ecto contamination. What a fool.”

“I–no! He’s just–this is hard for them, okay? That’s all,” said Danny defensively. 

“And you really think they’ll come around again? Happily accept your ghost half and all that now entails?” Vlad laughed bitterly, and Danny’s eyes flashed green, a tinge of ozone in the air as the cold seemed to press in tightly around them. “You’re delusional, child, if you think they’ll still love you once they know the whole truth. There’s no way they can accept you. I don’t know if I can accept you after what’s happened to you, and I spent the last two years trying to make you my apprentice. But now? I haven’t worked in almost two weeks. I’ve drunk through more bottles of scotch than I can count. And I still feel like my mind is breaking every time I–” his words vanished, replaced by hissing and static and noise, and Jazz covered her ears and curled in on herself, tightly closing her eyes this time since she couldn’t take the sound as it seemed to burrow beneath her skin.

“English, Vlad!” insisted Danny again as he reached out and gripped the man’s hand tightly, and Vlad winced as he slowly breathed in and out. She wanted to interrupt, to demand an explanation because there was by far more happening here than what she knew, but she didn’t even know where to start. Nothing made any sense, and when Danny spoke, the words were so quiet she could barely hear them. “I’m sorry about this, you know. I didn’t mean to.”

“You warned me,” said Vlad bitterly as he picked up his glass, his disappointment palpable when he realized it was empty. “I’m not sure there are enough drinks in the house for this nonsense, though. Perhaps you could pour some more scotch for me, Jasmine?” 

“Absolutely not,” said Danny as he jumped to his feet and snatched the cup. “I’ll get you more water.” He left the room, refusing to look at her as he went back to the kitchen. 

“What the hell happened to you?” said Jazz when Danny was gone. She needed some kind of answers, and clearly, she wasn’t about to get those out of her brother.

“Wrong question, dear Jasmine,” he said. “That’s not what you care about. It’s not who you should care about, either, but a word of advice? If he tells you to look away, look away. Unless, of course, you like what you see here.” He gestured at himself, laughing hysterically, and Jazz could feel her hands trembling as her body screamed at her to run away, to leave. Something was seriously wrong with Vlad. Something she had a feeling that Danny may have caused, somehow, but she didn’t understand it. This wasn’t–Danny wouldn’t hurt people like this, not even Vlad. She didn’t think he could hurt someone this way, and yet it made an awful kind of sense given his apology. Why else would Danny be here now, taking care of him and trying to fix it, despite all of the horrible things Vlad had done to him over the last few years?

“What happened to Danny, then?” she asked softly as she glanced at the door. “You know, don’t you?”

“Better than anyone except perhaps young Daniel himself,” said Vlad. Another non-answer in what felt like an endless string of them lately. “Frustrating, isn’t it? Your brother is always impressively cowardly despite being so brave. Happy to throw himself into a fight even if it might mean his demise but completely unwilling to simply be honest and open with those that care about him the most. A shame.”  

“Like you can talk. How long have you been carrying a torch for my mom and hating my Dad without telling them? Twenty years, at least?” Jazz flinched. She didn’t even notice Danny walk into the room, but he was back, handing Vlad another glass of water, the air buzzing in a way that made her anxious, too.  How much did he hear?

“I’ve confessed my feelings to dear Maddie several times, though she has yet to reciprocate,” said Vlad as he took a sip. “But even if I hadn’t, I don’t go around playing the hero.”

“Whatever,” grumbled Danny as he flopped into his chair. “You really don’t need to stay, Jazz.”

“I’m fine, Danny. I don’t mind.” Where else would she go? She was still upset with Mom and Dad and had little to no interest in spending another day in the library this week. Most of her old friends were away at college, too, so there was no one else for her to spend time with, either. It was painful and lonely and frustrating, even as she knew she chose to be here, to take a semester off to deal with her own grief and fear and now to be here to support Danny. But Jazz didn’t know how to support him if he kept refusing to let them in and tell them the truth about what happened, and judging from Vlad’s current state of mind, it wasn’t something they could simply move on from and forget about. 

They sat quietly for a while, watching the TV with the captions running across the bottom and the volume on low. The whole thing felt so weird and wrong, if only because of how ordinary it should have been, but she spent too many years watching her brother and Vlad fight for any amount of peace between them to feel right. She leaned into the chair, feeling herself falling asleep despite her best efforts when she heard Vlad speak. 

“You should tell her the truth, Daniel.”

“Not right now,” said Danny, and she kept her eyes closed, letting them think she was resting. It felt dishonest, but Danny was still lying to her, and she knew whatever he was keeping from her and the others was too bad to let things stay the way they were. Much as she hated to agree with Vlad about anything, he was right that she needed to know the truth. 

“Little badger–”

“--don’t call me that. Things haven’t changed between us, okay? I’m here because this–what happened to you–it’s my fault.” The pressure in the air returned, an intense cold that made her want to run, but she stayed in her chair, forcing herself to ignore it as best she could, to resist the urge to hug herself more tightly or rub her arms. 

“Well, then, if things haven’t changed you should be celebrating rather than doting on me like a mother hen,” said Vlad. “Congratulations, child, on finally defeating me! It only took–” The words shifted into ghost speech and this time she couldn’t stop herself and she flinched, snapping her hands over her ears.

“Vlad. English,” snapped Danny, eyes glowing green as he stared at him, and the man fell silent, arms crossed as he laid back in his chair. “You okay, Jazz?”

“I’m fine,” she said sarcastically. “How could I not be? Everything here is totally normal, and my brother’s definitely not hiding some big secret while his arch-enemy literally suffers a severe mental breakdown while watching baking competitions.” The pressure in the air eased up, then, and she could see Danny shifting in his seat uneasily as she stood up. “You know what, Danny? You two want to keep being weird, you want to keep lying to me, then fine. I’m going home.”

It wasn’t the most mature response or the best response. She knew that. But her nerves were on edge, the whole situation with Vlad too off-putting, too unsettling for her to think straight. She hated that Danny was keeping more secrets from them. She hated that of all of them, Vlad was the only one that knew the truth about what was going on because of course he did. He always did, and it felt as unfair as it did frustratingly ordinary. 

“You should go, too, Daniel,” said Vlad, a slight echo behind his voice. “I need a shower, and I don’t think your presence is helping nearly as much as you think.”

“I–maybe you’re right. I’m sorry,” he said as he stood up, and then he stopped behind Jazz, gripping his left arm tightly with his right hand as he stared at the floor. “Um . . . would you rather I fly?”

“Even if I would, it doesn’t matter.  I don’t want a lecture from Mom and Dad about letting you go home by yourself,” she said, much as she didn’t want to be anywhere near him. It was better that she didn’t simply storm out and leave, even if that was the only thing she really wanted to do right now, her frustration with her parents and Danny and Vlad everything bubbling over. “So get in the car.” 

The two of them drove home in silence, barely saying a word until they were almost back. “I’m sorry,” said Danny eventually as he twisted the inhibitor back on, the unnatural chill vanishing, and she felt her entire body relax despite herself, the strange oppressive atmosphere that accompanied Danny gone. 

“I know.” She forced out a breath, trying to calm her nerves, to remind herself that getting mad at Danny would accomplish nothing, that if he was keeping secrets it was probably because he was scared or worried or trying to protect them. Her grip on the steering wheel eased up a little, her shoulders relaxing as she asked, “Will Vlad be okay, at least?” She didn’t care about him, not really, but she knew Danny did. Her brother couldn’t help himself. 

“Maybe,” he said. “I . . . He’s doing better than he was, hard as that might be to believe, but I don’t really know for sure.”

The house was dark as they pulled in, although the GAV was in the driveway. No doubt her parents were hard at work in the basement. Shutting the car off, she leaned her head back against the headrest, closing her eyes. “What happened?” It felt pointless, asking again when he seemed so hesitant to tell them anything. 

But then he spoke, the words quiet but there. “Vlad asked me to fix his portal.”

“It wasn’t fixed when ours was?” She realized only then that she didn’t know why the portal started working again, or how Danny timed his return so perfectly. The question seemed unimportant compared to her brother being back, even if it was something that in retrospect they should have been asking. 

“No.” There was no shift in the air while the inhibitor was on, but she could see his hands trembling in his lap. 

“Why would Vlad think you could fix it?” she asked. 

Danny swallowed. “That’s–it’s because I–I need to tell you something.”

“Okay.” She waited patiently, doing her best to keep silent as Danny considered his words carefully, and then he let out a slow breath. 

“But promise you won’t get mad?” he whispered, and she felt her stomach clench. 

“I–I promise I’ll try not to be mad, at least, but I can’t really promise how I’ll react without knowing what you’re going to say Danny,” she said. Better to be honest than to make a promise she couldn’t keep. She worried Danny wouldn’t continue, but instead, he glanced at her, smiling sadly.

“That’s fair,” he said, his eyes looking out the windshield once more as let out a shaky breath. “I’m the reason the portals stopped working. Vlad assumed I could fix his since I’m the one that broke them in the first place.”

She felt as if her heart stopped, and she didn’t know what to think. To feel. They assumed it was something the Observants or the Fright Knight did. The portals being closed meant they couldn’t try to go after him and rescue him after he was kidnapped. The natural portals were too unstable for them to follow, although they tried a few times anyway as they became more desperate, but it seemed like somehow they always shut at the worst possible moment, leaving them frustrated and stuck in this dimension while who knew what happened to her brother. She tried to remember her promise to him, to try not to get angry, but the tension and knot in her gut was there, threatening to boil over if she wasn’t careful. “What? Why?”

“It was an accident at first,” he continued. “I–I could feel them and I didn’t really know what was happening, just that they hurt and I wanted them gone. I didn’t realize what it meant, what I–” He stopped, biting his lip, and she could see his fingernails digging into his arms. “Sorry. But once I did it, I still . . . I still didn’t open them. I hoped it meant there would be fewer ghost attacks while I was gone. And I was scared of you finding me and getting hurt, of seeing me like–like–” he stuttered, shaking his head. 

“Danny, I don’t–you’re not making any sense.” 

“I know. I’m trying, I just–I don’t–I don’t want to accidentally hurt you, too,” he said. “I don’t want to keep lying to you and Sam and Tucker, either, but I’m–I’m scared and I don’t know how to talk about any of this because as soon as I start to think about it I want to reach out and connect and feel us and–and . . .” He trailed off, the words consumed by static and echoes as his eyes became strangely glassy, and despite the inhibitor, Jazz felt something twist as if the world were slowly swallowing her up, something unknowable and unthinkable and distinctly not her brother sitting next to her, a presence that was impossibly ancient and dangerous. She didn’t know what happened and she couldn’t think straight as her hand went to the door, scrabbling for the handle as her brain screamed that something was wrong, that she needed to get out get out get out NOW because she wasn’t safe, he wasn’t Danny, and she was going to die or get hurt or– 

And then she felt a hand on her shoulder, nails that were more like claws gripping her tightly, and she almost screamed. Her right hand froze on the door handle and she shivered violently, putting her left hand over her mouth as she tried to keep down the bile at the back of her throat. It took everything in her to turn, to look back at him even as she wanted to scream and wanted to run, but when she finally did, the glassy look was gone, the sense of wrongness dissipating as Danny stared at her, wide-eyed and terrified. 

He opened his mouth to speak, but his words were barely discernible amidst the static and echoes that filled them, his presence slowly overwhelming her again as the air remained bitterly cold and the hair on her arms stood on end. “Jazz, I–I’m sor–” 

She shook her head, and unable to help herself she bolted, shoving open the door and running inside the house without another word, leaving him alone as she ran to her room. She curled up on her bed, her heart beating rapidly in her chest, her palms sweating as she trembled and started to cry. She didn’t know if she wanted him to find her and talk to her or if she would prefer to never see him again, the latter thought repulsive but no less honest, and for the first time since he came home, she found herself doubting whether or not whoever was in the car just now ( whatever was in the car just now) was really Danny at all.

Chapter Text

Danny wasn’t surprised that Jazz didn’t speak to him for the rest of the weekend. He tried to knock on her door the next morning, but she refused to answer, and the one time he found her in the kitchen her eyes went wide, her mouth opening and closing for a minute before she quickly turned and headed back up the stairs before he could stop her. He hadn’t meant to scare her, to almost hurt her when he talked to her after visiting Vlad on Saturday, and yet his intentions amounted to nothing. The only saving grace was that it didn’t seem like she was exposed to enough of his other nature to break her. He didn’t–there was no way he could forgive himself if that happened. 

This was the best possible timeline. 

He found himself repeating the words like a mantra, trying to remind himself that as bad as things felt right now, they could potentially be much, much worse. But Danny could feel himself growing numb and exhausted, the regular day to day interactions grating on him as he forced himself to constantly tiptoe around his family and friends and peers, not wanting to frighten or hurt anyone. Tucker and Sam tried to reach out, offering to hang out or play video games online if he didn’t feel up to leaving the house, but he sent a vague, half-hearted response back to them. He promised Tucker almost two weeks ago that he would tell him and Sam the truth about everything, yet now he didn’t think that would be possible, not after what happened with Jazz. Danny thought he could control his connection to the Infinite Realms better, that the inhibitor might prevent it from happening at all, but apparently not. He wouldn’t risk hurting them and destroying their minds. The truth wasn’t worth it.

Danny wasn’t worth it. 

More and more he felt certain that coming back home was a mistake. He ignored his uneasiness about returning because of his own selfish desire to see his family and friends again, to hug them and let them know he still loved them and cared about them, to spend time with them, and to feel human despite being fairly certain that what little humanity he still held before his coronation was gone now. His recklessness was putting everyone in danger, and at this point, he needed to focus on minimizing any further harm.

Danny already needed to return to the Ghost Zone soon whether he wanted to or not. He swore to the Observants and Clockwork he would, and with his connection to the Infinite Realms he knew there was still a lot of work to be done to fix the damage caused by Pariah Dark, but this time when Danny left, he wasn’t sure he would be coming back again. He wanted to find a way. He knew how hard his disappearance must have hurt everyone. But he couldn’t pretend he was the same person that stepped through the portal that day, that he was nothing more than a half-ghost, half-human hybrid. There was no way to get Sam and Tucker and Jazz to fully understand how he changed, to be just the same Danny they once knew no matter how desperately all of them and that even Danny wanted himself to be. And no amount of extra tutoring sessions would help him pass high school. No job would tolerate him disappearing every three months in an endless cycle for his entire earthly life. 

And that didn’t even touch on how his parents would react. Even a fraction of the truth was too much, as the relentless decontamination sequences proved. To find out he was part ghost would be challenging enough, but to learn that Danny was literally part of the Infinite Realms itself in a way that no decontamination procedure or surgery could ever hope to change? That would be unacceptable. Knowing the truth would only prove to his parents that he was exactly the monster they assumed he was when he finally came home on the first day of spring. 

Yet as much as he felt himself slowly giving up on any sense of normalcy returning, he still woke up on Monday morning and trudged down to the basement for yet another round of forcing himself to swallow whatever concoction his parents came up with this time to eliminate his ecto contamination. “Oh, hey, there, Dann-o. Did you sleep well last night?”

No. 

“Yeah.” He walked over and sat down next to a lab bench near his Mom, his legs slowly swinging back and forth, his shoulders drooping and his back hunched. 

“You sure?” asked Mom, frowning at him as she put a hand on his head, seeing through his lie.

“I’m fine, Mom,” he insisted as he pushed her hand to the side. “Let’s just get this over with, okay?”

“Actually, Danny, we wanted to talk to you about that,” said Mom, and he looked up at her and frowned. “Instead of running another decontamination sequence today, we’re going to do a scan instead.”

“A scan? For what?” Dread pooled in his stomach as he considered what they suspected. What they knew. Did Jazz run to them after what happened and tell them the truth about him being Phantom? He doubted it, but he had shaken her pretty badly, even if it wasn’t on purpose, and maybe in a panic she ran to their parents for help. 

“Despite every decontamination sequence we’ve run on you, you’ve continued to maintain a consistent level of ectoplasm in your bloodstream,” explained Mom. “Your body would need to be absorbing it from the ambient ectoplasm in the air or creating it, but to create it, that would likely require you to have a core.”

Danny froze, his mouth opening and closing, not sure how to respond. His parents were smart–he knew that–but it was easy to forget when it came to his secret, especially given how long he managed to keep it from them. They missed so many clues, so many hints, but of course the thing that protected his identity the most was that even his parents would never assume someone could be both a ghost and a human, both living and dead and capable of perfectly walking the thin line between two diametrically opposed states of being. They had no reason to see a ghost when they looked at Danny before, yet now?

“Son?” He felt his Dad’s hand on his shoulder. “Listen, even if you do have a core, it’s–it’s okay. It doesn’t mean you’re a ghost, it just . . . well, we’re not entirely sure what it means yet, but we know you’re still you.” 

“What?” He was barely listening, his mind spiraling as he tried to consider what might happen if they confirmed their theory, gruesome visions of being experimented on playing over and over in his head. 

His Mom smiled at him. “What your father is trying to say is that it’ll be okay, Danny. Promise.”

Danny wanted to believe her. There had been other timelines and realities where they accepted him fully, where they continued to love and support him and believe in him even after learning the truth. But that reality wasn’t this one, where Danny was kidnapped by ghosts and gone for three months. In this reality, the ghosts stole their son away and replaced him with something else, a person so unrecognizable to them that they almost killed him on sight. Their hatred for ghosts was by far greater now, sharpened by their grief and anger and pain, and the very child they lost would be the one forced to bear the brunt of that blade.

“You’ll need to come over here,” said Dad, “and lay on the table and stay still for a few minutes for the scan to work properly. It won’t hurt.”

“I–but–that’s . . . ” he stuttered and then stopped, considering pushing back against it, but what was the point? They already suspected. The only thing refusing would do was confirm their worst fears, or maybe even amplify them. If he didn’t let them do the scan, then they might assume it was because he already knew what they would find and that he really was the imposter they feared all along trying to hide the truth from them. And it wasn’t as if he needed to stay. The more powerful ghosts probably wouldn’t attack anymore, and his parents and Val could more than handle the various little animal ghosts that cropped up from time to time. Besides, even if they were thinking about doing something drastic to try and cure him or fix him, they couldn’t stop him if he needed to get away. The inhibitor only suppressed his ghostly nature, and the moment in the car with Jazz confirmed that he could easily overpower it through his connection to the Infinite Realms, whether he intentionally tried to or not. “Okay.” 

Even knowing it was probably his best and only option, Danny doubted that there was any universe in which this ended well no matter what Clockwork said about this timeline. But he didn’t know what else to do or who, if anyone, he could even ask for help anymore after what he did to Vlad and Jazz. He would not risk hurting Sam and Tucker, too. 

Danny was quiet as he did his best to push down memories of his nightmares, of moments when his parents strapped him down here to cut him open and dissect him, as he laid down on the table. Resting his arms on his lap, he let out a shaky breath, trying to ignore his heart beating rapidly in his chest beside his humming core as his parents started the scan. Green light filled his vision and he closed his eyes, listening to the machine whir as it slowly passed over him. His parents whispered nearby but he tuned it out, too scared to hear what they were thinking as they no doubt saw his core clear as day on the screen in front of them even if they still didn’t fully understand the implications. 

He hadn’t seen an image of it since long before his coronation. Danny didn’t know if it would look any different now that it wasn’t just his own. The point of the Ghost King was never to rule or conquer, to command ghosts or armies of the dead. It was to provide the heart, the literal core of the Infinite Realms, without which it could no longer exist. It required a powerful ghost, which was why the responsibility was earned through a Trial by Combat and why the Ring and Crown existed at all. But he and the Infinite Realms were bound for eternity, no longer separate but connected until someone else challenged him and took on the burden, and even then the past rulers’ dreams remained imprinted on the Realms, echoing within it and Danny as he dreamed about lives and ghosts and humans he never met, of moments he never experienced yet he knew were more than mere figments of his own imagination.

“Everything okay?” he asked softly when a few minutes passed and his parents said nothing to him even though he knew the scan was long over.

“I–it’s fine,” Mom stuttered as he opened his eyes and looked over at her, and he could see her lips pressed together, her hand squeezing Dad’s a little too tightly. The lie was obvious, but he said nothing, knowing they needed some time to digest what they learned. “We’re going to need some time to review the data, okay, sweetie? Why don’t you finish getting ready for school?”

“Okay.” He stood up, hopping off the table and pausing for a moment, wondering if he ought to say or do anything else, but his parents were already ignoring him, their eyes locked on the screen in front of them. Turning he walked up the stairs and then stopped, becoming invisible before heading back down to hover over their shoulder and take a look, his curiosity finally winning out over his fears.

The image of his body on the screen was strangely beautiful and terrifying. His core was nestled beside his heart, a brilliant swirling spark of blue and white light on the monitor, and from it, there were dozens of glowing tendrils that extended throughout his chest and down his left arm to the palm of his hand. He recognized the pattern–it was a Lichtenberg figure, the same one that faded away a few days after his accident, but on some level it remained imprinted on him for eternity, an indelible mark proclaiming how he died to any who could see it. It made him feel strangely vulnerable and exposed, having his parents see it now, studying the image and the data that accompanied it with a level of care and understanding that they rarely showed while doing their normal research. He wondered if they would know what it meant, what happened to him and how long he’d been this way, and didn’t know if he wanted them to figure it out or not. 

“We can’t remove his core, Mads,” whispered Jack. “It’s too integrated with his other biological systems.”

Danny flinched and the lights overhead flickered as the temperature in the lab plummeted, making both of his parents pause. He managed to maintain his invisibility as he fled the basement before they could pick up the Fenton Finder or anything else that might reveal he was watching. On the one hand, he was glad that his Dad immediately realized removing his core wasn’t an option. On the other hand, it scared him to know that was ever a possibility at all, and he wondered what it meant for how far they might go to try and “fix” him even as they knew removing his core wouldn’t work. 

Sam walked alongside Tucker on the way to school, arms crossed over her chest as she scowled. The day started okay, with her Mom asking her to help in the greenhouse after school. Much as Sam loathed spending time with her Mom since she kept trying to force Sam into a box she never really fit inside of, gardening was something they managed to bond over during Danny’s disappearance. Most of the time Sam imagined her Mom was made of plastic, a perfect posable doll dressed in impeccably polished shoes and pristine dresses, so seeing her Mom wearing dirty gardening gloves and stained pants as her face lit up with one of her rare, genuine smiles as Sam taught her Mom everything she knew about the plants and flowers in the greenhouse made her feel closer to her Mom than she ever imagined possible.

It wasn’t a connection or relationship she thought she wanted, but now that it existed, she found herself wondering how she ever survived without it.

And it was a nice day today, too, the kind of early spring morning where the trees and flowers were starting to bud, where everything smelled as if it were bursting with life, and where even Sam found herself enjoying the bright sunshine despite her usual preference for the darkness and cool, quiet nights brimming with unseen life. She and Tucker chatted on their way to Danny’s, talking about the English test in a few days, and it felt blissfully normal and familiar, as if things were finally starting to feel right again after so long. 

But then they arrived at Danny’s house, and instead of him greeting them at the door to FentonWorks, they found Jazz inside alone, sitting at the kitchen table and slowly stirring her coffee as she stared blankly. Her hair was unbrushed and there were dark circles under her eyes, and she flinched when they walked into the kitchen. “Is Danny still upstairs?” asked Sam, a twinge of uneasiness in her gut. It wasn’t like Jazz to be such a mess in the morning. She thrived in the early hours of the day, but maybe she wasn’t feeling well. 

Jazz blinked, her eyes still strangely glassy. “Danny?”

“Yeah? Your younger brother? Dark hair, blue eyes, sometimes glows in the dark?” snarked Sam, but her smile disappeared as Jazz remained unfocused. Glancing at Tucker, she saw him shrug and shake his head. “Jazz? Are you okay?”

“Hmm?” Jazz blinked again, and this time the odd look vanished as she looked up at them as if only just noticing them despite having responded to Sam already. “Sorry. I–I slept pretty badly last night.” 

“Did Danny already leave?” asked Tucker, his concern obvious now since neither of them had ever seen Jazz like this before, and Sam was beginning to wonder if something terrible happened that no one told them about, and she wanted to scream as Jazz took what felt like an eternity to finally answer. 

“I don’t know,” said Jazz as she took a sip of coffee. “I think so?”

Jazz not knowing what Danny was up to or where he was set every alarm bell ringing now, all sense of things finally returning to normal vanishing. Jazz was an endless worry wart, too nosy and a bit overbearing at times, but she meant well and always had Danny’s best interest at heart. To see her so uncertain about where he was or what he was doing, let alone how she talked about it so nonchalantly, unnerved Sam. “Your parents let him go alone?” 

“They’re in the lab. They haven’t come up since Danny's decontamination procedure this morning,” said Jazz, seeming a little more alert with each second that passed, but she still seemed off. “I don’t think they know he went by himself.”

“I’ll send him a text,” offered Tucker, pulling out his phone and quickly typing out a message, and then he paused, clearly picking up on how weird Jazz was being, too. “But are you sure you’re really okay, Jazz?”

“I . . . have you noticed anything off about Danny?” she asked softly. 

“You mean besides him having trouble controlling his powers and being a bit more ghostly?” said Tucker, and Jazz nodded. “Not really. I mean, I know he’s not telling us everything, but that’s, like, normal for Danny. Why?”

Jazz took another sip of her coffee, her knuckles white as she clutched the cup, and Sam could see her trembling. “I went with Danny to Vlad’s on Saturday.”

“Wait, what?” said Sam. “Vlad as in Vlad Masters’ Vlad?”

“Do you know another one?” said Tucker, but Jazz ignored him. 

“Danny wanted to check up on him,” she explained as her eyes went to the basement door, pausing for a moment to listen, and when they heard no signs of her parents coming up from the lab she continued, keeping her voice quiet. “He told me Vlad was sick. I–I assumed he was lying, so I insisted on going with him, but he wasn’t. Vlad was–I don’t know how to describe it, but he wasn’t himself.”

“My parents mentioned the other day that he hasn’t been seen in public in like two weeks,” said Sam. She hadn’t thought much of it, assuming the man ran off to Wisconsin to enact some absurd scheme, but now she cursed herself for not looking into it or mentioning it to Danny sooner. “They said he keeps sending his assistant and deputy mayor to his meetings and events instead.”

“I’m not surprised. He seemed a little drunk when we were there,” said Jazz, “but that wasn’t the real problem. It was like his mind was broken. He kept spiraling and talking about things that didn’t make any sense, and he–he kept slipping into ghost speech.”

“Like Danny has been?” whispered Tucker, and she nodded. “Is that–does that mean Danny’s sick or something, too?”

“No. Danny–Danny said that whatever happened to Vlad, it was his fault,” said Jazz. She tried to pick up her cup to take another sip, but her hands were shaking too badly now and she put it back down for a moment as she forced herself to breathe, rubbing at her eyes with the heels of her hands. “I don’t know exactly what it was. He mentioned that Vlad saw Danny do something that–that messed him up. And while Danny was talking, he–I don’t know how to describe it. It didn’t feel like Danny in the car with me anymore, it felt like–like–”

She shook her head, finally managing to drink the last of her coffee before she looked up at both of them. “It scared me. It felt like something impossible, like just–like I was trapped in a car with not a predator, exactly, but like . . . I was so incredibly small. Insignificant. It was like I didn’t matter, somehow, and like I would be swallowed up if I stayed. I don’t know what was sitting next to me then, but it wasn’t Danny.”

Sam shivered, rubbing her arms, not sure what to say. She understood what Jazz meant to some extent. Danny felt dangerous to her in a way he never had before, though she was starting to forget it now that he was stuck wearing the inhibitor most of the time when they were together. It suppressed the weird, predatory air that hovered around him, the aura that spoke of an impossible amount of power that made her feel like she could easily be destroyed if Danny wasn’t careful, and without it she didn’t feel nearly as nervous around him as she had when he first came back. 

But she couldn’t forget that feeling entirely, either, or how she expressed her doubts about it being him at first, but little by little she became convinced as they spent more time together. Even though he was clearly changed by whatever he experienced, he was also too much like Danny not to be him, from the way that he laughed to how he played Doomed! But now, if even Jazz was questioning it . . . Sam didn’t want to end up in that place where she doubted who he was again, but she found herself being pulled that way regardless since she trusted Jazz’s opinion on the situation by far more than most. “What do you think it was?”

“I don’t know.”

“Is he possessed?” asked Tucker. 

“I–maybe? I don’t think so,” said Jazz. “I keep thinking that maybe whatever I thought I sensed or felt wasn’t real, that it was all in my head and that maybe just whatever was going on with Vlad messed with me, but–” She stopped and hugged herself as she let out a long, slow breath. “But it’s not. It’s like now that I know it’s there I can’t stop sensing it, like just being near him gives me goosebumps. I feel like I’m losing my mind.”

“What about your parents? Have they noticed anything?” asked Sam.

“They’ve been suspicious of him from the start,” said Jazz. “Mom’s been questioning if it’s him for weeks now. Dad . . . I don’t even know. We had a fight about it, too, and I–” She waved a hand. “--it doesn’t matter, I guess. I said something I probably shouldn’t have. But now I’m wondering if maybe they’re a little right, at least, about something being seriously wrong with Danny and if I just didn’t notice sooner because I didn’t want to see it.”

“Danny said that your parents tried to kill him when he came back,” said Tucker suddenly, and Sam’s eyes widened. Tucker hadn’t told her, despite promising to tell her and Jazz anything he learned. “That he had to convince them he was himself. I–look, maybe you’re right and some part of him isn’t Danny or whatever, but I know for sure that some part of him still is, too. There’s too much about him that’s just too Danny, that like nobody could reasonably fake.”

“I know that,” said Jazz, “but I also can’t ignore what I felt.”

“I wanted to try to give him time to tell us what’s going on, but I don’t think we can keep doing that,” said Tucker. “He promised he would talk to us and explain everything.”

“Even if he wants to, Tucker, I’m not sure that he can,” said Jazz. “I don’t think he meant to do whatever it was that happened in the car.”

“Vlad knows, though, doesn’t he?” asked Sam. 

“He does, but he’s not–I don’t think he can tell us, either. He can barely think straight right now, and every time he started to talk about whatever’s going on with Danny, he started talking in ghost speech,” said Jazz. “The only thing I really managed to figure out is that somehow, Danny’s the one responsible for the portals closing behind him after he was kidnapped. He said he didn’t mean to do it, that it was on reflex because they hurt, somehow, and he–that’s when he changed.”

Tucker’s phone buzzed, making Sam flinch. Her chest felt tight, her face hot as anger burned inside her. “It’s Danny,” said Tucker. “He’s at school already, which, uh, speaking of, we’re going to be late if we don’t go now.”

“But–” began Sam, and Tucker shook his head, cutting her off. She wanted to ask more about the portals, about Danny being responsible for closing them. She couldn’t understand. It didn’t make sense. Why would he stop them from finding him? From rescuing him? He said it was the Observants that kept him captive, and now . . . She wanted to scream. Danny not telling them things was depressingly ordinary, but this? He outright lied to them about something important, something crucial. And if he lied about this, then what else was he keeping from them? Was the entire kidnapping a lie, too? Had he wanted to be taken? To abandon them and leave them behind for good, to force them to grieve and mourn without ever knowing what happened to him?

“We’ll try to talk to Danny today,” promised Tucker, interrupting her rapidly spiraling thoughts. “We’ll let you know if we learn anything, okay?”

“Sure. But be careful. I don’t think he wants to hurt anyone, but . . .” she trailed off, tears brimming in the corners of her eyes. “Just be careful.”

“Always,” said Tucker. “Careful is my middle name.”

Sam rolled her eyes as they said their goodbyes and headed outside, hurrying to school, and she could no longer contain her frustration as she gritted her teeth, fists clenched at her side. “You realize what this means, right?”

“What what means?”

“The portals,” said Sam. “If Danny is the one that closed them, then that means he’es probably the one that fixed them, too. He could have come back whenever he wanted. He didn’t have to stay away for three months.” He didn’t have to make them endlessly worry about him, make them think he was finally, truly dead or a full ghost or being endlessly tortured by the Fright Knight or whoever else. The weeks they spent making up excuses, trying to protect his secret as the Fentons and everyone picked at the thread, trying to figure out why Danny was a target, why the ghosts went silent and demanded nothing in return, why he hadn’t come back. But none of that would’ve been necessary if Danny simply opened the portals back up and returned.  

Never mind the nightmares or hours she spent crying in her room. The week she spent refusing to get out of bed, staring at the ceiling as she realized he was probably gone for good, that dead or otherwise it didn’t matter since they would never see him again as long as the portals remained closed. The sheer grief and weight of the loss, of his being so close yet forever out of reach . . . 

“We don’t know that he could fix the portals after closing them,” said Tucker softly. “I–he said the Observants didn’t want to let him leave, right? That they thought he was too dangerous or whatever.”

“But if he’s so dangerous, then why couldn’t he escape?” argued Sam. “And how do we even know that’s true and not just an excuse?! He could have come home or at least sent a message to us to let us know he was okay!”

“You don’t have to yell at me, y’know,” said Tucker as he held up his hands. “I’m mad at him, too. But we should at least give him a chance to explain, right? We still don’t know anything for sure. He might have tried to come back and fix it. The Observants might have had a way to hold him we don’t know about, or maybe . . . I don’t know. But we can’t just start assuming the worst. We have to at least try and get him to talk to us.”

“You think he will?” scoffed Sam. 

“He should,” said Tucker, which wasn’t a real answer to her question. “But if what Jazz said is true, maybe he really can’t explain it. Maybe something is stopping him, and maybe that’s what prevented him from sending us a message or coming home, too.”

“So what then?”

“I don’t know.” He pulled out his phone, sending off a text before putting it back in his pocket. “But I want to at least give him a chance. Don’t you?”

Sam scowled, her nails digging into the straps of her backpack, and she honestly wasn’t sure what she wanted. She wanted to scream, to yell, to pull out her hair and let Danny know how much he hurt them. They hadn’t talked about it much, not wanting him to feel worse when he didn’t have any control over what happened, but now? Apparently they were wrong. No matter what Tucker insisted, Sam knew Danny must have had a choice, that if he didn’t then there was no reason he wouldn’t have simply told them the truth about the portals from the start, but he still hurt them, anyway, and while he might have a reason for it, she couldn’t imagine anything that would be enough to make it okay. 

“It’s not fair,” she hissed, her eyes burning as tears built up, but she forced it down. She wouldn’t cry. Not now.

“I know,” said Tucker. “But c’mon, let’s get to school and then we’ll find a way to make him tell us the truth. He promised he would.”

“I hope that’s enough.” But much as Sam wished she could have half as much faith in Danny as Tucker did, she couldn’t bring herself to believe he would tell them a damn thing. 

Chapter Text

Vlad did not know how many days passed after Daniel’s visit before he finally managed to force himself to take the shower he so desperately needed.

For over twenty years, Vlad Masters had carefully crafted his reputation. A remarkable businessman capable of finalizing deals even in the most challenging of circumstances, of leading companies to heights of success they never could have achieved prior to his leadership. A philanthropist that gave back to his community and to the world, who invested in clean energy, advanced technologies, and that could bridge the gap between the idealists and realists. A politician who helped Amity Park finally find some sense of peace and stability after years of ghost attacks, who earned the respect of the town’s oldest families who often not-so-subtly suggested they would happily continue to support his political career if he chose to pursue a position in public service beyond being the mere mayor of Amity Park. A would-be husband to his dearest Maddie, as well as a father to Daniel and Jasmine once he finally saw his revenge against Jack come to fruition. 

But everything that Vlad was, all of his ambitions and hopes and dreams for the future, had been ruthlessly crushed the day Daniel fixed his portal. 

He could not begin to describe what he saw, from the way the world seemed to shift and dissolve around him, to the way Daniel was both present yet not, to the feeling of insignificance and worthlessness, of a sense of being so much less than he was simply because the being that was both Daniel and not at all the child he had grown to know so well these last few years was impossibly so much more than himself. Every time he tried to think about it, to comprehend it, his thoughts rapidly swirled and descended into places he could not follow without losing himself.  The Greeks had myths that spoke about how seeing the true form of a god could irreparably harm and often destroy a man, and modern stories spoke of eldritch beings that drove one to madness if they bore witness for too long. Vlad scoffed at both before, the mere idea that anything could break a man such as himself so easily an absurdity, yet now? 

He understood on an impossible, visceral level what it meant. Because despite the universe being incomprehensibly vast, despite Daniel’s powers growing to a level so far beyond himself, it was all so intensely, incredibly fragile and easy to destroy in the mere blink of an eye. Both the Ghost Zone and their universe were suspended in the balance, inextricably linked together and now dependent on Daniel, and both could easily be shattered in a moment if the wrong person tampered with them. Both almost were destroyed under Pariah Dark, though Vlad failed to understand how close to oblivion both realms came because of the tyrant until the day Daniel fixed his portal. It was only then that he truly understood why the Ancients would have stepped in when they did given that most ghosts seemed to care so little about kings and rulers of any sort.

Because being a king was the least important thing about Pariah Dark, just as it was the least important thing about Daniel. What mattered was their core and connection to the Infinite Realms, their ability to bear the burden of providing the stability and will needed to survive supporting an entire dimension, and Daniel was now stuck in that role until another ghost came along and challenged him for it, likely one as oblivious as Vlad was as to what it meant. He was very, very fortunate he escaped Daniel’s fate. 

But he also felt permanently cursed for having inflicted it upon the boy. Much as Daniel might have denied it, the two of them had a connection, and Vlad did care deeply about him even if he struggled to show it. He truly never wanted to harm Daniel, and now he felt responsible for keeping him safe, for trying to help him maintain some sense of his life and the normalcy he always craved that Vlad’s actions stripped away from him for eternity, and taking a shuddering breath he finally stopped the water and stepped out of the shower. He needed to get himself together, because there was someone he needed to see. Vlad had spent too much time hiding and refusing to face reality, even if that reality was by far different from what he used to know.

For the first time in two weeks, he forced himself to get dressed in one of his suits, to focus on the old familiar habits to distract himself. The face in his mirror was pale and drawn, sick and haunted with dark circles around his eyes despite how much time he spent sleeping as he drowned everything out with alcohol and the noise of the television in a desperate bid to bring back the peace and confidence he once knew. He ignored it, though, and brushed his hair after using intangibility to dry it in an instant before pulling it back into his usual, neat ponytail. 

The suit was, in many ways, unnecessary. Vlad had no intention of engaging with other humans yet, but he wore it like armor, trying to put on the familiar costume to provide himself with a semblance of protection, though from what he could not quite say. “You are Vlad Masters,” he said sharply, staring at the man in the mirror with a scowl. “Act like it.”

Heading down to his basement lab, he felt his mind begin to drift as he looked at the portal, as he wondered to what extent the world within was Daniel, how–

“No,” he said sharply as he transformed. That didn’t matter, and he was strong enough to not allow himself to continue to descend into madness. He already spent too much time lost in a haze and broken. 

He took another deep breath, steadying himself, and then flew into the Ghost Zone. Despite the Infinite Realms looking the same as he remembered, it felt different, somehow right yet completely foreign and unfamiliar, shaped and altered as the one who held its core shifted the entire dimension to be more in tune with himself. But more than that, the Ghost Zone felt alive. 

The Infinite Realms always reminded him of death, of cold and ice and isolation and claustrophobia and his eventual grave. He thought little of it back then, assuming that it was only natural as it was a world full of literal ghosts, of the spirits of those who passed so long ago. Yet despite still being cold, there was a hum to it now, a sense of vibrancy and hope, of a world set right after many, many years spent wasting away on life support. And to Vlad’s surprise, it seemed to welcome him, to greet him with open arms despite Daniel’s own contempt for him. 

He tried to ignore it, focusing on his destination lest he get overwhelmed by it, and eventually the castle loomed on the horizon. Standing before it was the ghost he was seeking, clad in impossibly black armor with green eyes and purple flames spiraling down from his helm and shoulders. 

“Foolish as always, Plasmius,” the Fright Knight said, but there was a hint of joy there, too, of amusement that Vlad could not quite understand. “You should not have come here so soon after bearing witness to the heart of the Infinite Realms.”

So the Fright Knight did know what happened to him, then. He suspected as much, given he detected a presence in his mansion a few times in the last week, the ghost no doubt checking up on him based on an order from Daniel. “I have spent enough time drinking and hiding away in my mansion,” said Vlad. “The absolute nonsense Daniel suggested I watch was by far worse than anything else I might suffer by coming here.”

“Perhaps,” he said. “Why are you here?”

“I want the truth.”

“Oh?” The Fright Knight crossed his arms, eyeing him curiously. “What truth?”

“About you and Pariah Dark,” said Vlad. “The history of the Infinite Realms claims that you became his loyal knight, bestowing the Crown upon him when he took the throne by defeating the former King.”

“And you doubt this? Why?”

“Because you’re like me,” insisted Vlad. “I realized that long ago when we first met and you tried to help me overthrow Pariah Dark. You are not a man–or ghost, as the case may be–lacking ambition. But I didn’t realize how much we had in common until what happened when Daniel fixed my portal and I realized why you didn’t pursue the Crown for yourself, despite despising Pariah Dark as much as any other ghost. I thought it was because you were a slave, but you weren’t. You had as much freedom as any other.” His words descended into noise, filled with echoes of his near-demise, of static and electrical humming and glass shattering nearby, and he shuddered. He rarely spoke in Ghost Speech before, but since that day he found himself slipping more and more. “You understand what holding the Crown and Ring truly means, the chains it represents. You stayed by Pariah Dark’s side as his Knight because you knew better than anyone what might happen if he came to harm, even if he might deserve it.”

“I stayed by his side because he was my squire, and I felt duty bound to try and fix my own failure,” said the Fright Knight, and Vlad cocked an eyebrow, unable to hide his surprise. “He accompanied me when I made the challenge against the former ruler of the Infinite Realms. Like you, I did not know what that reality entailed when I challenged him, but it ultimately did not matter as I was defeated; however, Pariah stepped into the fight against the weakened king and won, and unlike your protege, Pariah Dark didn’t hesitate to finish the job.”

“I did not know the corruption that lived within Pariah’s core until he was Crowned,” said the Fright Knight. “But the coronation leaves no doubt as to the nature of the King who takes the throne. I knew what would happen to our realm and the human world should he ever be felled by someone that was not a ghost, as no one fully human can bear the burden. I chose to take up my sword and serve him, protect him, for the sake of our realms since I was at least partially to blame for his ascension.”

“But you opposed Pariah Dark when you met me,” said Vlad. 

“I thought that perhaps you would make a better king than the others that challenged him before who were all so alike in character to him that assisting them in taking the Crown would result in no benefit for either of our worlds,” said the Fright Knight. “But you, Plasmius, are strategic. You do not seek battle recklessly, instead favoring outwitting your opponents despite your skill in combat. You seemed capable of understanding how fragile our reality truly is, and how much you would ultimately play a part in preserving it, rather than Pariah Dark who thought himself the world and the rest of us not worthy of existence if he no longer survived.”

“Yet Daniel won the challenge instead.”

“He did,” confirmed the Fright Knight. “There was some dispute about that amongst the Observants, given he did not finish the fight, but it was clear the Infinite Realms considered him the victor and chose him to be the new King, and Daniel ended Pariah’s existence as instructed prior to the coronation.” 

“He what?” Despite the boy’s protests, Vlad knew that Daniel had a ruthless streak to him, but the idea that he would be willing to fully destroy another ghost? Vlad assumed he lacked the spine for it, his idealism and ethics preventing him from finishing a fight no matter how appropriate it might be. Until now, Vlad thought that Pariah Dark merely wasted away in his sarcophagus after losing the battle, or that he remained trapped there in stasis, quietly waiting and unaware of what transpired after Daniel’s victory.

“He destroyed him, Plasmius. It would be impossible for him to ascend to his position without doing so,” said the Fright Knight. “And even Phantom realized he had no choice. The Infinite Realms suffered greatly while Pariah Dark was locked away, barely subsisting, for while it may depend on a ghost to provide its core, it is still sentient, capable of expressing its wishes in ways that are not always clear to those of us who live within it. And when Phantom proved himself, that was sufficient for the Realms to choose him to be the next King. But the transfer could not be completed as long as Pariah Dark survived. To not end Pariah Dark would have meant the death of the Infinite Realms and the human world you both hold so dear, and even Phantom understood that there was no better alternative.”

“And now a boy who can be as reckless as Pariah himself is the heart of both our realms,” scoffed Vlad. Their motives might be different, Daniel desiring to protect others whereas Pariah Dark desired only power, but practically it mattered very little. Neither of them were well suited to the Crown. 

“He would not have been my choice,” admitted the Fright Knight as he echoed Vlad’s own thoughts, “But so far the Infinite Realms seems better for it. He has committed himself to healing this realm, even as it means sacrificing much of the human life he so desires, and I will do what I can to ensure his safety in this realm for the sake of both our worlds unless and until a better candidate reveals themselves.”

He paused, cocking his head to the side as he studied Vlad for a moment. “But much as I would support your efforts to overthrow him, I doubt you are volunteering, now that you know the truth of what it means.”

“Of course not. The power isn’t worth the price,” said Vlad. He wasn’t a fool. Though the Ring and Crown bestowed incredible power on its wearer, and though he could act as a King if he so chose, binding himself to this life, becoming responsible for the survival of everything in existence was not a weight any sane person would be willing to bear.

“Then what will you do, Plasmius?”

A not so small part of him wanted to insist that he would do nothing, that it was only logical at this point to wash his hands of the whole matter and step aside. And yet he wouldn’t be here, talking to the Fright Knight now, if that was what he truly intended to do. Much as Vlad believed himself to be a logical, practical person, deep down he knew that his emotions and passions ruled him. His core would not be so full of fire if he were half as coldly calculating as he pretended to be. “There are many in the human realm that would try to harm him if they knew the truth,” said Vlad softly, putting his hand against his chest and feeling his own core thrumming beneath it, the fire and electricity swirling under his fingers. “But I’m at least partially responsible for what happened to Daniel. He shouldn’t have been put in this position. And I know all too well that the boy lacks a self-preservation instinct. Destroying Pariah Dark is one thing, but there are some that would try to harm him that I don’t think he would fight against, even knowing what it would mean for everyone else if they succeeded.”

“But I have no such compunction,” said Vlad. He paused for a moment, considering his dearest Maddie. Jack he would easily dispose of in a heartbeat. He’d been trying to do so for years, after all. But Maddie? As wonderful as she was, as dear to his heart as she remained, she was not worth nearly as much as his own continued survival, or that of every other creature in existence. If he had to stop them from harming Daniel, then he would, no matter the cost.

Yet surely he could steer them away from taking any drastic action, help Daniel get them to understand the truth of his condition, and accept him as Phantom at the very least even if they could not accept everything else about him. Vlad doubted anyone in existence truly could. 

“So if you can protect him here, then I swear that I will do everything in my power to keep him safe in the human realm,” promised Vlad, and he flinched as something in his core seemed to lock into place, the world around him shimmering and shifting unpleasantly for a moment before righting itself.  

“Promises here and given in Ghost Speech carry more weight than those in the human world,” said Fright Knight, seeming unsurprised. “You won’t be able to break your word easily. But I doubt he would accept your help, given your past relationship, and he might relinquish you from your oath.”

“Ah, but as you and Daniel both know I don’t ask permission when I want something,” said Vlad with a small smirk. “I will be there to help him, regardless. I won’t see our worlds in ruin because of his childish idealism and recklessness.” He turned, ready to leave when he paused for a moment. “How often does he need to return?”

“The Realms suffered greatly beneath Pariah Dark, both because of his nature and because of his confinement within the Sarcophagus of Forever Sleep,” said Fright Knight. “For it to recover, Phantom will need to come back again every solstice and remain until the equinox for at least the next century. After that, he may have more flexibility in his travels, but I doubt he will have much of a connection to the human realm by that point.”

It was more than Vlad expected, almost certainly more than Daniel wanted, yet the stubborn boy would follow through on it, no doubt. The only question was whether or not any of his family or friends knew, but judging from how Jasmine reacted in his home the other day, he suspected they most definitely did not. Daniel likely hadn’t made any plans, either, to explain away what would become a series of recurrent absences. The boy was terrible at thinking ahead, always waiting until things were already an emergency before taking any course of action. 

Which meant, of course, that Vlad would need to do it for him. But at least it was something for him to do, to focus on that might help him remain in balance with his mind intact, though he felt himself slipping less into his half-aware state after making the oath to protect Daniel. It unsettled him, but he would research it more later. No doubt Skulker or one of his other contacts could provide more information. The Fright Knight was unlikely to be anymore forthcoming, at least for today, no matter their unusual friendship. 

“Thank you,” said Vlad sincerely. “I need to return to deal with some responsibilities I’ve been neglecting these past couple of weeks, but should Daniel insist you come by and check on me again, feel free to make yourself visible as long as no other humans are present. It’s rather annoying to have someone clearly nearby but hiding out of sight while I’m enjoying my supper.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“My sensors picked you up quite easily,” said Vlad. “And I find I actually enjoy your company. It would do well for me to learn more about . . . this situation and what to anticipate from the other parties involved.” 

The Fright Knight stared at him for a moment before laughing. “I really wish I had managed to make you King before you learned the truth,” he said. “But very well, Plasmius. I accept your terms.”

Tucker slammed his locker door shut as he headed to lunch, a hint of frustration bubbling beneath the surface. Although Danny shouldn’t know that he and Sam wanted to talk to him, Tucker swore that he was avoiding them, slipping in and out of class so quietly that he was convinced Danny had to be using his invisibility and intangibility even though he knew the inhibitor was still on since the odd, heavy atmosphere that lingered around Danny wasn’t present. They didn’t share all of their morning classes anymore and hadn’t really since freshman year, but their lunch periods were still the same and all three of them had English with Mr. Lancer at the end of the day. 

But English would be a lousy place to try and have a private conversation, and no doubt Danny would try to avoid them after class, so if they were going to have any kind of talk then it would need to be during lunch. Heading to the line, he waited patiently, trying to spot Sam and Danny. Talking to Danny was important, of course, but he wasn’t about to do it on an empty stomach, especially when it was meatloaf day and he knew that the food was probably going to be the only pleasant part of their conversation.

He spotted Danny outside, sitting beneath a tree and writing in his notebook, and then Sam walked over a few minutes later. So far, at least, Danny didn’t flee, instead choosing to seemingly ignore her as she started to eat lunch. “Come on,” he mumbled, looking ahead at the line. They already had so little time to eat, and he bounced on the balls of his feet, pulling out his phone as he anxiously glanced at the time.

Five minutes later he was finally done waiting, his tray full and lunch paid for as he hurried outside. The area around Sam and Danny was surprisingly empty despite the nice day, but he realized that was probably because of Danny. Even with the inhibitor on, most of their peers continued to give Danny a pretty wide berth, the video of him getting upset and blowing out the lights in Mr. Lancer’s class rapidly making the rounds and resulting in another couple hundred names being added to the petition to have him expelled. 

“Hey,” he said as he opened his milk, and Danny grunted in response. His entire notebook was covered in strange, swirling writing that seemed to blur as Tucker stared at it, his head eventually starting to ache. More ghost speech. He never liked it before, but he found he hated it now, the language just another sign of how wrong things were. “Are you done avoiding us?” 

“I’m not–” began Danny, glancing up at them, but he wilted under Sam’s glare, pausing to put down his pencil and run his fingers through his hair. “Sorry.”

“That’s better,” said Sam as she viciously stabbed a tomato and twirled a bit of pasta around her fork. “So why were you avoiding us?”

Tucker expected Danny to deflect or ignore the question completely, but to his surprise he saw him close his hands tightly, digging his nails into his palms. “I–I think it might be better if you don’t hang around me anymore,” he said eventually. 

“Because of what happened with Jazz and Vlad?” asked Sam, and Danny flinched, his eyes widening a fraction.

“How did you . . .?”

 “Jazz mentioned it this morning when we stopped by your house and you weren’t there,” said Sam. “She also mentioned that you’re the one that closed the portals after you were kidnapped.”

Danny curled in on himself, picking up his pencil again as if desperate to find something to distract him. “Oh.”

“Is that all you have to say?” snapped Sam. “Just ‘oh’?”

“What do you want me to say?” 

“We want you to give us an explanation,” said Tucker quickly, cutting off Sam before she could let her anger loose on Danny. He already heard her grumble about it the entire walk to school and then a dozen more times through text messages today, and while he understood it since he couldn’t help feeling frustrated with Danny, too, it wouldn’t help right now. “You promised you would, remember?”

“I know.” He clenched his teeth, letting out a breath. “But if you talked to Jazz, then I’m guessing she told you what happened when I tried to talk to her, didn’t she? I can’t–I don’t know if there’s a way for me to tell you the truth anymore. And I’m worried now that neither of you can be around me without getting hurt.”

“You said the same thing once you started ghost hunting seriously,” said Sam. “And I’ll tell you the same thing now that we did then: it’s our choice, Danny. You don’t get to decide for us. And we want to be there for you. You’re not getting rid of us that easily.”

“But it’s not the same,” he insisted. “I could have hurt Jazz really badly. I did hurt Vlad. I don’t want to risk hurting either of you. This isn’t like a ghost attack where you can run away or fight back. It’s just–there are moments when I–” He stopped, shaking his head as he squeezed his pencil tightly and let out another long breath. “This isn’t you getting hurt by a random ghost. It would be you getting hurt by me. And I don’t want that to happen.”

“Then don’t let it happen,” said Sam. “There are plenty of times you could have hurt us before with your powers but you never have, Danny. Stop acting like you don’t have any control.”

Danny said nothing as he stared down at his notebook, clearly disagreeing but not wanting to argue or discuss it any further, and Tucker tried not to snap at him, instead focusing on trying to figure out if there was some way they could still work this out. “Look, um, you said that talking about it was dangerous, so maybe we could guess? Like are you possessed or something?”

Danny groaned, putting his head in his hands even as he almost stabbed himself in the face with his own pencil. “No.”

Tucker gave a small head tilt towards Danny as he looked at Sam, raising his eyebrows and gesturing for her to try to guess, too. She sighed, rolling her eyes. “Umm . . . new power?”

He held up one of his hands, waving it a little before hiding his face again. “Okay. And you can’t control it, right?” A nod, and then he shook his head, waving his hand a little bit from side to side instead. This wasn’t really anything they didn’t know, but at least he was making an effort. “So maybe you could practice?”

“It’s not that simple! This isn’t always up to me, it’s not like it’s my ghostly wail, it’s just . . . “ He closed his eyes, and for a moment Tucker thought they would need to prod him again when he finally said, “It’s not like a power the way you’re thinking. It’s just existing. It would be like me telling you to never sleep again. You could try, but at some point you wouldn’t get a choice. Or maybe even if you could stay awake forever just because you decided to do it, your parents wouldn’t let you or something. I don’t know. This isn’t the best metaphor, but I don’t know how to even describe it without losing myself.”

Tucker shared a long look with Sam, not sure what to do with that information, and she bit her lip as she leaned on her hand, considering. “Okay. Um . . . the portals, then,” said Sam, switching tactics since neither of them could make sense of that. “Why didn’t you come back? Were you unable to reopen them or something?”

“No, I could have,” he admitted. “But I had to stay and try to fix things.”

“But you could have opened them so we could find you.”

“Not without hurting you. Or risking ghost attacks while I wasn’t here,” said Danny. 

“You wouldn’t hurt us,” insisted Sam even as Tucker could hear her anger bubbling to the surface again. “And your parents and Valerie and me and Tucker and Jazz are all capable of handling the ghost attacks.”

Danny’s pencil snapped, one of his fangs poking out, and for a brief moment Tucker swore he could feel a bite to the air, a chill in the breeze that shouldn’t be there, but that wasn’t possible. He was wearing the inhibitor still, and Tucker brushed the feeling aside, assuming he was imagining things. “ You’re not listening ,” said Danny coldly. “It’s not about what I want to do. It just happens when anyone sees–when I–” He shook his head, throwing his hands up in the air. “Forget it.”

“Danny–” began Tucker as Danny started packing his stuff into his bag. 

“No,” he said. “I can’t. I’m not going to risk hurting either of you. None of this–it’s–I’m not worth it, okay?” He swung his backpack onto his shoulder as Tucker and Sam hurriedly packed up their things to follow him. For a moment Tucker watched as he ran off, checking his footsteps for ice and snow, but there was nothing in sight as he hurried back inside the building. Definitely his imagination, then.

“He’ll be at his locker,” said Tucker with more confidence than he felt. Danny would need to get his books for the last couple of periods, assuming he didn’t skip all together, and sure enough they found him there, spinning the combination. There were still about five minutes to the warning bell, but there were about a dozen or so students milling about, and it took Tucker a moment to realize that they were all watching Danny even as they pretended to be on their phones or talking. At least one of them was recording, too, judging by the angle of their phone.

“Shit,” he whispered, freezing for a moment. 

“What?” asked Sam, but Tucker shook his head, his stomach curdling. He knew something was up, even if he didn’t know exactly what, but he would bet his entire allowance for the next year that the A-Listers hid something in Danny’s locker or had some kind of stunt planned to happen in the next few minutes.

“Danny!” he called out as he unfroze, rushing over, and his friends' eyes snapped up to him just as he opened the door with a scowl. An ocean of green goop that looked like ectoplasm poured out, covering every inch of Danny and his books and the floor around him as the kids nearby snickered loudly, their cameras flashing as they took pictures. 

“Quit it, asshole!” snapped Sam, hurrying up to one of the students and slapping their phone to the ground as she shouted at them, and while she did Tucker walked over to stand beside Danny. He doubted the stuff was actual ectoplasm. Tucker was all too familiar with the real thing from years of patching up Danny after ghost fights. The distinct citrus smell that left his mouth feeling like he swallowed a dozen copper pennies wasn’t there, nor was the usual telltale glow, and aside from Danny or his parents or Vlad there wasn’t anyone in Amity Park that had access to that much ectoplasm. His friend remained still, thankfully staring at his hands as the fake ectoplasm dripped off him and not at the message written on the inside of his locker door in red sharpie:

Stay out of our school, ghost freak.

“Danny?” said Tucker, and he shook his head, the words coming out in a hiss of static and noise and looping echoes that made Tucker flinch, his hands flying to cover his ears. The lights overhead flickered, and this time he knew the chill in the air wasn’t his imagination. “Danny, come on,” Tucker whispered, reaching out to grab his hand and trying not to wince as frost began to gather around Danny’s feet, and he could hear the laughter dying out, the voices shifting to anxious whispers and feet shuffling as people moved further away. 

“Let’s get him out of here,” said Sam, grabbing Danny’s other hand, and the two of them pulled him forcefully down the hall as Danny continued to mumble under his breath, the words echoing and full of ice and electrical buzzing. Thankfully no one tried to stop them, the frost forming and lights flickering overhead making the other students keep their distance, and Danny didn’t try to fight back as they led him into an empty classroom. 

“Danny, what’s wrong?” he asked again, and Danny shook his head as more static buzzing erupted from his mouth instead of words, making the hairs on Tucker’s arms stand on end. What little Tucker could make of his expression looked strangely hollow, Danny’s eyes unfocused and glazed over as he kept them locked onto his hands.

“Danny, man, you have to talk normally,” pleaded Tucker, but Danny merely shook his head again. “Please? We can’t–” The words died in his throat, cut off by the ghost alarm, the emergency lights turning on and the alarm sending flickering blue lights through the empty classroom and the corridor outside as it obnoxiously rang out. Crud. Of course there would have to be a stupid ghost attack right now. Hopefully Valerie could handle it. She probably could. They hadn’t seen a single really dangerous ghost since Danny came back, and besides, they had enough problems to deal with without worrying about whatever specter decided to pester the students at Casper High today.

There was no reason why Danny should be this rattled over such a stupid prank. It clearly triggered something for him, but Tucker had no clue what. Reminders of some of his nasty injuries, maybe? Nightmares about the Guys in White or his parents doing experiments on him? Tucker wasn’t sure, but his anger from earlier was gone, replaced with worry as he hovered around Danny, unsure what to do.

He looked at Sam, communicating without words, but she merely shook his head and shrugged. “Panic attack?” she suggested. 

“Maybe,” said Tucker. Pulling out his phone, he started to google as Sam walked over to Danny, taking his hands in her own. 

“Come on, Danny. You’re safe now, okay?” said Sam, sounding as if she were speaking to a scared, wounded animal, but Danny continued to say nothing as Sam checked over the inhibitor, confirming it was still on even though it appeared to be doing little to nothing to stop his powers from leaking out. 

“Broken, maybe?” suggested Tucker as he read through the search results and opened one site that looked promising, and Sam shrugged. Neither of them knew enough about this particular tech to analyze it. Danny might, but right now he wasn’t in any kind of state to get the inhibitor fully working again. 

“Did you find anything?” she asked as she continued to hold Danny’s hands, shivers running through her as the frost continued to spiral out from him and started to coat the desks and walls. 

“Uh . . . it says to stay with them and stay calm,” he read, scrolling as his teeth began to ache from the cold. Too late for that last bit, maybe, but if they could get him cleaned off it might help. “And ask them what they need and try to help them keep their breathing steady. Keep your sentences short, too.”

“Right,” she said, gently forcing Danny to sit down on the empty teacher’s desk as she and Tucker both sat beside him. “What do you need, Danny?”

Danny blinked, seeming to hear them for the first time. At first his words were filled with static and noise and echoes, making the two of them flinch, but then he let out a long, unsteady breath and tried again. “I didn’t want to do it,” he said, his hands shaking, but at least the words weren’t in ghost speech this time as he continued to stare at his hands, tears in his eyes, “but I had no choice.”

“No choice about what?” prodded Sam gently as Tucker watched him and took Danny’s hand in his own, forcing it out of his line of sight. Sam followed suit, gently grabbing Danny’s other hand and gripping it tightly, and the contact seemed to help even as Tucker felt as if he were sticking his hand into an icy pond. He didn’t know how long he could keep this up or stay here next to Danny, at least not if the frost kept spreading, and looking down he could see it beginning to collect on his shoes as the ghost alarm continued to whine in the background. He was starting to think Danny was right when he told them they could get hurt if they stayed too close, but Tucker still refused to leave him until he had no choice.

“It was part of the coronation,” Danny said. “I had to take his core and–and destroy it.”

Tucker shuddered, trying not to think about the implications even as he asked, “Whose core? What coronation?” 

“Pariah Dark’s core,” Danny whispered, turning to look at Tucker, and the tears were spilling out now, no longer contained, but they froze before they made it off his cheeks. 

“The Ghost King?” They hadn’t seen Pariah Dark in close to two years. Tucker knew the fight against Pariah Dark was ugly, Danny almost dying afterward, but they didn’t remember anything about a coronation or Danny destroying his core.

“Former ghost king,” he amended as he blinked, only just noticing the flashing emergency lights. “Is–is that the ghost alarm?”

“Yeah, it’s been going off for a few minutes. You were kind of freaking out after that prank,” said Tucker, gesturing at the fake ectoplasm coating him, and Danny swallowed as he switched the inhibitor fully off for a moment and let himself go intangible, the disgusting goop sliding off him and onto the floor, and then Tucker felt Danny extend his intangibility to clean off him and Sam, too. The chill in the air gnawed at him like an angry beast, biting and painful, but he ignored it and the intense urge to run. Sam didn’t look like she was faring much better, either, and it worried Tucker since that meant the inhibitor was working, just not well enough to stop Danny’s powers from spiraling while in the midst of a breakdown. “Valerie can probably handle it.”

“I should still go check.” 

“I think you should take a few minutes so you don’t start dissociating again,” argued Sam. “Plus your inhibitor doesn’t seem to be working very well and we have to do something about all of this.” She gestured at the classroom, and Danny’s mouth fell open, staring for a moment before he pulled his hands from theirs and curled in tightly on himself, hiding his face. A soft buzzing came out, an echo they didn’t quite understand, but Tucker could tell it was an apology even as the actual words escaped him.

He started to reassure Danny, to tell him it was fine, but then Tucker stopped himself. “It’s . . . it’s not okay, actually,” said Tucker, “but I–well, I can’t even say I get it. What happened, Danny? Please? We can’t help you if you won’t talk to us. If you feel like–like you’re losing control or think you’ll hurt us, then tell us that and we’ll leave, okay?”

Danny let out a shaky breath as he forced himself to uncurl enough to turn on the inhibitor, the worst of the chill and heavy atmosphere vanishing even as the frost persisted. Little by little, though, Tucker could see the thin layer of ice starting to dissipate slowly. “When I defeated Pariah Dark, I–I thought that was it, that he was locked away and that we would all be safe and that I was done with him” he said softly, his knuckles white and face pale, looking so much like a corpse that it scared Tucker, “but it wasn’t that simple. The–the way to become the Ghost King is through a trial by combat, and my fight against Pariah Dark technically counted, even if–even if I didn’t realize it and even if the Observants and others hoped that wasn’t the case. It took two years of the Ghost Zone eroding and crumbling for them to acknowledge that I was chosen to be his successor, and even then I–to be Crowned I had to finish–I had to–” He stopped, leaning over and tucking his head in his hands again as his shoulders trembled.

Tucker shivered. It made a horrible kind of sense. His powers spiraling out of control, being trapped for three months, the Observants talking about keeping him confined because they believed he was too dangerous, no doubt because they saw the damage done by Pariah Dark during his reign. But even though Danny being the Ghost King worried him, he didn’t understand why talking about it would scare Jazz or hurt Vlad so badly, why it would break them or make Jazz question if Danny was really, well, Danny. 

And he still didn’t understand why or how he would keep the portals closed. Danny insisted it was to keep them safe, but thinking Danny was dead was so much worse than anything else Tucker could even begin to imagine. Tucker didn’t welcome pain. He actively avoided most physical activities and sports, and did his best to stick to the back during ghost fights, providing support because he knew how easily he could be hurt or injured and find himself in a hospital that he very much did not want to be in under any circumstance. But Tucker would have suffered whatever pain or hardship he needed to if it meant getting his best friend back and knowing he was still alive, to hear him laugh at one of his jokes, to listen to him talk endlessly about outer space and map out the constellations, or even to hear him grumble about Jazz psychoanalyzing him or his complaints about the ghost attacks and his parents and his school work. 

That Danny didn’t understand that after all this time, after the countless ghost fights and the years they spent together, stung more than Tucker wanted to admit. He knew Danny was worried about them, that he was scared and probably confused, that there was probably a lot that being the Ghost King entailed and that it was almost certainly too much for his already overwhelmed friend. But instead of sharing that burden with them, he lied about it, hid it, and actively pushed them away. He never even gave them a chance or let them make the choice for themselves. And Tucker hated it almost as much as Sam. He didn’t want to be coddled. He didn’t want to lose his best friend. 

Tucker wanted to scream at him, to yell and make him understand that he needed to let them in, to trust them so that he wouldn’t get hurt, but this wasn’t the time for it, and as he saw Danny’s shoulders shaking, his cheeks covered in tear streaks, Tucker let out a long breath and forced himself to lock his feelings away and out of reach. He could vent to Sam or Jazz later. Right now, he needed to give Danny the support he needed so he wouldn’t push them away again.

“Okay, so, you’re the Ghost King now,” said Tucker. “So what does that mean, exactly?” 

“It’s–” he began, but he was cut off as a voice echoed through the school. 

“Come out, come out, ghost child!” called Technus, and Danny froze for a moment, his eyes widening a fraction. 

“I have to go,” he said, hopping off the desk. 

“Danny, it’s just Technus–”

“--I have to,” he insisted as he wiped his tears on his sleeve. He stood up straighter as he switched the inhibitor off, but the feeling this time wasn’t of cold and ice and turmoil. 

Instead, it felt impossibly heavy, like a storm barreling down on them, full of rage as Danny’s eyes glowed in the dark room and he transformed. Most of it was the suit he remembered, but he wore the Crown and Ring and a strange, starry cape, his eyes glowing a brilliant blue instead of green, and the warmth and familiarity was gone. The figure standing before them wasn’t the Phantom that made jokes and used lots of terrible puns. He was confident, but it wasn’t the arrogant, overconfidence of a child but the quiet, steady self-assurance of someone far older and experienced. Tucker stopped breathing as he took it in, of the person who looked so much like his friend even as every part of him seemed to scream that he wasn’t him anymore, but then Danny’s expression softened for a moment as he looked back at them. “I’m sorry.”

And then he was gone, disappearing in a blink and leaving the two of them alone as the emergency lights flickered around them.

Chapter Text

“Please stay with your class!” said William as he watched several students try to sneak off to talk to their friends. He was in the middle of his free period when the ghost alarm rang out, and for a brief moment he found himself back in his classroom from several months ago when the Fright Knight appeared, the sheer terror on Daniel’s face haunting him as he was taken away, and then William blinked and snapped back to the present, his hands shaking as he forced himself to evacuate. 

Without a class this period, he had no students to mind and no attendance to do, so he found himself slowly wandering from evacuation site to site after checking in with Principal Ishiyama, his eyes searching for one student in particular. He was relatively sure that Daniel was supposed to be at lunch, yet he wasn’t with the teachers who were on lunch duty today. But then he spotted Amanda Tetslaf, reviewing her list and frowning.

“Will, come here!” she called, spotting him and waving him over, and he put his hands in his pockets, trying to hide the tremors that would not cease. 

“Amanda,” he said. “What’s wrong?”

“Fenton, Foley, and Manson haven’t checked in yet,” she explained. “They should be here. Have you seen them?” 

“No,” he said. 

“I’m going to call it in, then,” she said, pulling a radio off her belt, and William felt his heart begin to beat a little too fast, sweat beading on his brow. 

“ The Lovely Bones,” he cursed as he walked off. He didn’t have his radio with him. He should have–they were required to keep it on them when evacuating–but he carelessly left it behind. It wasn’t surprising to hear that the three of them were missing, since they were often absent from the check-ins when the ghost alarm went off in the past, Daniel even more so than the others. When questioned about it, Daniel claimed to have severe panic attacks that would leave him frozen in place, unable to think straight while the alarm rang out, and his friends insisted they tried to help him work through the attacks while evacuating to the closest, safest option.

And while that was never ideal before, now William worried that the consequences could be far more dire. Daniel was already a target for the ghosts once. The likelihood that it might happen again was too close for comfort. He would not lose Daniel again. He refused. 

But he didn’t know where to begin his search. The other teachers and administrators would be double-checking outside at the various evacuation points and letting the emergency responders know that three students were missing. The Fentons would be furious, likely ready to tear the school apart brick by brick until they found their son, and William didn’t doubt that they were capable of it. They could be a terrifying force when angry, particularly Daniel’s mother, and he shuddered. Hopefully, they would be able to find Daniel before she arrived. He could not bear telling her that they lost track of her son, since truly, they should have done better given what happened to Daniel.

He shouldn’t go inside the school. William knew that better than anyone. But he also knew Daniel was most likely inside, and walking over to the doorway he took a deep breath, steadying himself before quietly slipping into the building. The emergency lights flashed in the hallway, the steady beat of the alarm humming in the background as he slowly made his way through the empty building. More than likely Daniel would be near the cafeteria or his locker, and he carefully made his way towards his locker first since it was closer, trying to watch for any signs of ghosts nearby. 

He was most of the way there when a whining voice called out, one he recognized as the technology specter, Technus. “ The House with a Clock in Its Walls,” he cursed. It sounded as if he were looking for Phantom, though like most William had barely seen the ghost since the portals temporarily shut down so many months ago. It had been weeks since anyone had encountered a truly powerful specter, but in his heart of hearts, William knew that their brief reprieve from the ghost attacks couldn’t last. But he didn’t know if or when Phantom might return to keep them safe, or why Technus was so anxious to fight Phantom given how poorly their battles tended to go for him in the past. 

The echoing voice made it nearly impossible to determine exactly where the ghost was. A smart man would turn around, find the closest exit, evacuate, and let the professionals handle it, and normally William considered himself to be fairly intelligent, fairly cautious, and not lacking in common sense. Yet he could not– would not –leave, his own guilt over what happened to Daniel so many months ago a much too persistent nudge for him to ignore, and so he continued forward, going as slowly and silently as he could. At least the alarms made it more difficult for him to be seen, too.

He went to turn down the next corridor when his senses were suddenly overwhelmed and he froze, the air too heavy and thick, oppressive and nearly choking him where he stood. Most ghosts didn’t inspire such a reaction, despite what the stories might suggest. He could only remember a few that did, and their powers were so immense that they left imprints on the very essence of Amity Park long after they were gone. 

Vortex. Undergrowth. Pariah Dark. Powerful, ancient ghosts whose presence made the world ripple and shift around them, as if reality struggled to remain intact as they defied the very laws of physics that governed this dimension. Technus never inspired such a feeling, and once again William knew instinctively that he should turn back, run, and never come near this place again. But his eyes were locked on the ghost in front of him that inspired the sense of dread and doom, the one he knew to be the source of the oppressive aura, and who no longer looked quite how he remembered, a strange iron Crown on his head and a cape that flowed like the night sky trailing behind him. 

Phantom. 

The ghost was not looking in his direction, his entire focus on Technus who now floated before him. “I, Technus, challenge you to a duel for the Crown of the Infin–” he began, but he was cut off by a screeching sound, of static and ice breaking and echoing as if caught in a dark tunnel, and William slammed his hands over his ears as he curled in on himself. Ghost speech. He rarely heard it before and never from Phantom, who typically spoke normally, the ghost spending most of his time trying to inspire confidence and trust in those who observed him. 

But any efforts to inspire hope, for Phantom to stand before him as a hero, were gone. The ghost made William’s knees quake, the hair on his arms standing on end as he shivered violently, a cold frost starting to coat the lockers and floor and ceilings. 

To call what happened next a fight would be a gross exaggeration. Technus opened his mouth to respond, but in a blink Phantom vanished and then reappeared in front of him, ice crystals spreading out rapidly from the floor and ceiling around Technus and shattering the handful of electronics Technus gathered to his side. Electricity flickered around them, shorting out the lights and the various devices, and the ghost alarms went suddenly, horrifyingly silent, the only sound a quiet sort of roar in the air that reminded William of being outside in a harsh blizzard like the sort he used to see in his childhood back when he lived in upstate New York. 

The flashing lights died out, leaving them in darkness. The only illumination came from the glowing specters in front of him, and William found himself slowly stepping back, not daring to get too close as ice crystals encased Technus, making it impossible for him to move. For a brief moment, Wiliam wondered what Phantom would do, the ghost so unlike the would-be superhero that he could not help the way his heart beat rapidly in his chest in terror, and then a thermos seemed to appear from nowhere. He watched as Phantom flicked the cap open, sucking up the ghost in a way that was all too familiar and normal despite how much every part of William screamed that this wasn’t right, that something had shifted in Phantom, that he had changed and that this was not, could not , possibly be the same ghostly teen he remembered.

Technus vanished, swallowed up by a beam of brilliant green light from the thermos, and then Phantom turned to face him, his eyes glowing a brilliant blue, his face a hard mask that softened as he recognized him. A hum of static and noise erupted, and then Phantom scowled, closing his eyes for a moment before trying again in a way that struck William as oddly familiar even if he couldn’t quite put his finger on precisely why. “Are you okay?” he asked, his voice still echoing in the corridor, but at least William understood him now. “Why didn’t you evacuate with the others?”

“Several students are missing,” he explained, his voice sounding impossibly calm, though he suspected the ghost could hear the way his heart hammered away, echoing loudly in his own ears as adrenaline ran through him. Could Phantom taste his fear in the air around him, too? Some of the ghosts could, he knew, and before he never believed Phantom to be one of them, but now? He was so unlike the specter he remembered and it frightened him, making him uncertain how Phantom would respond to humans like himself. “I came to find them.”

 “That’s not your job,” said Phantom gently, the tension in his shoulders easing up a bit as Phantom tilted his head to the side and studied William. His gaze made him shiver as if his soul had been laid out to bear before Phantom, and William swallowed hard and looked away as he tried to catch his breath and respond, the words feeling heavy on his tongue even as he spoke the truth. 

“Maybe not, but I won’t let anyone be taken by the ghosts again.” The frost in the corridor began to dissipate even as a hint of something like ozone lingered, and the sense of familiarity clicked for him. He knew this feeling, that smell.  It was exactly like being in Daniel’s presence when the inhibitor was turned off. It had been at least a week since he last felt it, yet there was no forgetting the scent of the impending storm, the odd pressure and weight to the world as it seemed to bend around him. His eyes flicked back up to meet Phantom’s, and he was unnerved by how the boy in front of him looked both so impossibly old and young, so impossibly like Daniel then that he couldn’t believe he never noticed the similarities before. But they weren’t the same person. They couldn’t be. Daniel wasn’t dead, despite the oddities surrounding him, but the more William focused on Phantom, the more he suspected that there was some sort of connection there even if he could not begin to grasp what it might be. 

“Well, lucky for you I’m not in the habit of kidnapping people,” he said lightly, smiling at him for a moment as the lights around them flickered back to life even as the alarm remained silent. “But anyway, I should–”

“--what happened to you?” asked William before he could leave, and he saw Phantom pause. “This–the Crown, the Ring? The . . .” he paused, not quite sure how to address the way the world itself felt so wrong in his presence without completely insulting him, and in the end, he couldn’t quite find the words to explain it to Phantom. “You seem so different.” 

“So I’ve been told,” he said. “Comes with the promotion, I guess, though I would’ve preferred it if it went to someone else.”

“Promotion?” 

“You’re talking to the new Ghost King,” said Phantom, taking a bow and flourishing his cape, and then he smiled at him. “It’s a lousy job, though. The pay sucks, there’s no benefits, and there’s way too much overtime. I seriously don’t recommend it.” 

Something about hearing Phantom snark helped a little of the tension in his chest release. “Ghosts have kings?”

“Sort of. It’s complicated,” said Phantom, and then he glanced over his shoulder. “The students you’re looking for are in the classroom at the end of the hall, by the way. They panicked when they saw Technus and hid.”

William blinked. “I–thank you, Phantom.” The ghost gave a half-salute, for a moment perfectly embodying the strange, teenage ghost he remembered before he vanished. As soon as he was gone Lancer felt the pressure leave, the world somehow right again now that Phantom wasn’t here, the cold and sense of an oncoming blizzard vanishing along with the odd hum that filled the air. 

But instead of feeling remotely better, he found himself worrying more since that was precisely how it felt when Daniel left, too. Yet he couldn’t be–he wasn’t–Daniel wasn’t a ghost. He knew that even if he found himself wondering if the boy still breathed at times and if his heart continued to beat. Perhaps whatever caused the shifts in Phantom, however, had an impact on Daniel, too. The sense of a connection there nagged at him as he made his way down the hall, a certainty that there was something there that he couldn’t explain in words, his mind not wanting to make the leap. 

Opening the classroom door, he saw Samantha, Tucker, and Daniel. Daniel was leaning against one of the desks, eyes locked on the floor and arms crossed over his chest as the other two hovered across the room, Samantha mid-sentence but her mouth snapping shut as soon as she spotted him. “Mr. Lancer?”

“Why haven’t the three of you evacuated?” he asked, and she saw Samantha and Tucker exchange an uneasy look as Danny continued to stare at his shoes. 

“We, um, heard the ghost and thought it would be safe here?” said Samantha, wincing a little. The lie was painfully obvious. 

“I had a panic attack,” said Danny before he could call Samantha out for her dishonesty “I–someone rigged a thing in my locker and it made me freak out. I wasn’t really functional after and Sam and Tucker couldn’t get me out of the school when the alarm went off. I’m sorry, Mr. Lancer.” He paused, swallowing uncomfortably. “And I think–I don’t think my parents’ inhibitor is completely working anymore.”

“Oh?” He hadn’t noticed anything in the room, no hint of the pressure, no whiff of ozone or chill. 

“There’s a video,” explained Tucker as he walked over and handed Wiliam his phone, and he watched it in silence for a moment. Ectoplasm–or something an awful lot like it–had been rigged to spill out of Daniel’s locker onto him when he opened it. Like the other video, he saw the lights overhead flickering and popping, but then there was the hint of frost near his feet, ice spreading out from him as his friends rushed in and hurried him away, far too similar to what he saw mere moments ago from Phantom as he fought Technus. He winced, rubbing his temples as he handed it back to Tucker, the implications frightening him. 

“I see.” He frowned, studying Daniel and his friends. A puddle of green slime lay on the floor and the desk, yet Daniel and his friends were impossibly clean, with not a hint of the disgusting substance on their skin or clothes. While Tucker or Samantha may have simply cleaned themselves up, William was certain that Daniel was wearing the same thing he had been in the video. If they came here right away as they claimed, however, then there would have been no opportunity for Daniel to get changed and swap out his clothes for something clean, or to get it off of his skin and out of his hair, all of which were spotless and dry.

There was more happening here than he knew, and he thought of the ice in the video and the hall just now, of the odd similarities between Phantom and Danny, absolutely positive that there was a connection, that they might even be the same person even as the mere idea made him nauseous. But how many times had Daniel vanished in the ghost attacks, only for Phantom to appear moments later?  How many injuries did Daniel have that he attributed to merely being clumsy? How often did he fall asleep in class, constantly exhausted no matter how much his family tried to help him at home or limited his access to his devices and friends? 

He opened his mouth, about to point it out, and then stopped. This wasn’t the moment. He needed more proof, and he needed to let someone know the three teenagers had been found. Technically, at least, they were still in the midst of a ghost attack. “Daniel, perhaps you should go home with your parents today when they arrive in a few minutes. I–I’ll talk to the superintendent and principal about the video. I’m not sure what they’ll require if the inhibitor isn’t working.”

William wanted to keep it hidden, but the footage Tucker showed him on his phone was from some website, already posted somewhere and no doubt quickly spreading to the entire student body and their families and friends. “Do you have any idea who did it?” 

“No.” 

“I see. Tucker and Samantha, please go outside to your evacuation point and report to your teachers,” he insisted.

“But Danny–”

“--I’ll keep him safe this time. Promise. The ghost is already gone,” he said. “Phantom defeated it.” 

“You saw Phantom?” said Tucker. 

“Yes. But please, we have people looking for you and I don’t have my radio to call in that we located the two of you. You need to go find Ms. Tetslaf or one of the other teachers immediately, and please let them know that I have Daniel,” he reiterated, and the two of them sighed, pouting as they grabbed their things and whispered a quick farewell to Danny before leaving. Danny still wouldn’t look at him as Mr. Lancer leaned against the desk beside him, crossing his arms over his chest as well. 

“I’m going to be expelled, aren’t I?” 

“It’s not your fault that the device isn’t working,” said William. “Unless you turned it off?” Danny shook his head. “I didn’t think so. I suspect that you may need to stay home for a few days until your parents can fix it, though.”

“And if they can’t?” said Danny.

“Then I don’t know,” he admitted, shifting uneasily as the ghost alarm finally shut off. That meant the Fentons had to be on site. He didn’t have much time left with Daniel before they no doubt came to escort him home. He would need to tell them about the bullying, Daniel’s reaction, and the likely consequences, none of which he wanted to do. Another conversation with the elder Fentons would no doubt be exhausting as the two of them argued that they ought to do more to protect Daniel, or worse, agree that he shouldn’t be in school as long as he couldn’t control the strange, ghostly traits. “Daniel . . .”

“Yeah?”

He hadn’t intended to ask, but the words slipped out despite his better judgment yet again. “Is there a connection between you and Phantom?”

Daniel froze beside him, his fingers digging into the desk as his eyes widened a fraction and he looked sick, curling in on himself a bit more. No matter what Daniel said now, his reaction confirmed that William was right and that there was some link between the two, even if the specifics eluded him. 

He expected a lie, a deflection. An awkward laugh as Daniel tried to cover it up, or a dismissive eye roll. Instead, Daniel looked at him, studying him intently, his gaze feeling far sharper and older than it should have, as if something ancient lurked within the depths and William felt a shiver run down his spine. “It’s complicated,” Daniel said at last, and though his response told him little to nothing, it was more than William expected to get out of him. 

“It’s not new, though, is it?” he said, and the underlying meaning was no doubt clear: this connection, whatever it was, had nothing to do with his kidnapping even though it may have strengthened it or changed it, somehow. 

“No. It’s not.” He reached up, rubbing his arms for a moment as he stared at the wall, his eyes seeming to focus on something even though as far as William could tell there was nothing out of the ordinary about it. “How did you figure it out?”

“I saw Phantom in the hallway. We spoke for a moment,” said William, “and I realized that the way it felt around him was not entirely dissimilar to how it feels around you when you don’t have the inhibitor on.”

“So I feel like a ghost?” he said, a strange, bitter smile on his face. 

“No. Most ghosts don’t feel the way that you or Phantom do.” He paused, wondering if he ought to have said something different or asked in another way, but he was already in the thick of it so he might as well push forward. “I don’t want you to think that what I’m saying is that it’s bad, Daniel. It’s not. It’s simply different.”

“You don’t have to lie to me, you know. Even Sam and Tucker and Jazz . . . none of them like it when I have the inhibitor off,” said Daniel. “And already admitted that it felt pretty uncomfortable before.”

“That’s not automatically the same as bad,” said William. “The smell of seafood causes me discomfort, but that doesn’t make seafood inherently bad.”

“Oh, so you’re comparing me to smelly fish now?” laughed Daniel. “You might want to reconsider whether or not that’s a compliment or something that would actually make me feel better. Aren’t you supposed to be good at metaphors or whatever since you’re an English teacher?”

“Being an English teacher doesn’t automatically make me any good at writing, Daniel,” said William. “Or at speaking, for that matter. I’ve been known to put my foot in my mouth sometimes.”

“Ooh, a cliche expression now, too,” he said with a grin, and then his smile slipped away. “But, um, thanks. I–I know I’ve said it like a dozen times already, but I really appreciate you not, like, freaking out every time I’m around or something weird happens. Even if I do get expelled, I know that it’s not your fault and that you’ve seriously put yourself on the line for me like a dozen times. And when I was kidnapped . . . that wasn’t your fault, either. You know that, right?”

“I know that there’s little I could have done to stop the Fright Knight,” admitted William, “but that doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t have tried to do something back then.” He wanted to ask him. To know if the boy beside him was alive at all, if he had been dead all this time and they failed to notice, his ghost fighting and protecting them as it haunted the fragments of his life. To know if he was Phantom, who now apparently shouldered more responsibilities and would be forced to endure the pain those new responsibilities would no doubt bring.

But then there was the sound of voices in the hallway that he recognized all too well, of anxious calls and heavy footsteps. “I think those are my parents,” said Daniel as he stood up. “I should probably go if that’s okay.”

“I–of course, Daniel,” he said. “I’ll talk to them both about what happened today after checking in with the principal and superintendent.”

“Sure. And . . . seriously, if I can’t–if they won’t–if they have to kick me out or whatever, it’s okay. I get it,” said Daniel, “and I’ll be okay. Promise.”

“I’ll do whatever I can to ensure that doesn’t happen,” promised William, “and that the ones responsible face the appropriate consequences for their actions.”

“I doubt you can get them to admit to it, but thanks.” Before he could say another word, Daniel hurried out the door to meet his parents out in the hallway, leaving Lancer behind. The odd pool of green liquid sat by the desk, uncomfortably like the ectoplasm he had seen dripping from Phantom too many times before after particularly nasty fights, battles that he was finding he was increasingly sure were fought by his student, who was somehow, impossibly, a ghost yet not. Because if he were fully and truly dead, then surely his parents or friends or someone would have noticed. 

At least, he certainly hoped so. But one thing was now clear: he was going to need to find a way to get the truth from Daniel. Because if he was right and the boy was Phantom, then he doubted his parents would accept that reality with open arms given the way they continued to speak about ghosts and what they would do to them if given half the chance. Even if Daniel was correct that his kidnapping was not William’s fault, William still refused to let him be harmed by anyone again, ghost or human or otherwise.

Chapter Text

Maddie sat at the table in the basement, staring at the computer in front of her as she took another sip of cold coffee. What had started as a bad week had only steadily grown worse. First, there was the scan they took of Danny’s core, which showed a level of entanglement that terrified her. The core was fully integrated with Danny’s bodily systems, the odd, tendrils like strange vines spreading from it and throughout the left side of his body in a pattern that was equally beautiful and horrifying. Removing it would be an enormous challenge, one that only the most skilled ecto biologist could manage, and aside from herself, the only one she knew with that level of talent worked for the Ghost Investigation Ward. 

She tried to reach out to Vlad about a lawyer as soon as Danny left for school. The man, of course, was frustratingly nosy, wanting to dig into the hundred reasons why she needed a lawyer when she did not want anyone to know about the extent of Danny’s contamination. But Vlad also seemed a little exhausted and ill, his voice strained as the connection fizzled periodically. After droning on for close to a half hour, Vlad finally provided the name of a legal firm well-versed in the recent laws regarding ecto-contaminated humans. She thanked him, hung up the phone and contacted the lawyer immediately, surprised when he answered on the second ring. Most of what the lawyer confirmed was that in theory, at least, Danny should be protected by the existing laws. He also confirmed that he would be happy to review any contract she and the GIW created regarding Danny’s necessary decontamination process and potential surgeries. 

But more importantly, he promised not to discuss it with Vlad despite the man providing the recommendation. While she knew lawyers were beholden to confidentiality when it came to their clients, she still wouldn’t be shocked if Vlad found out, anyway. He always seemed to know far too much about what was happening with her family, and while some of it could be her husband oversharing things with Vlad, other secrets about her or her children that Vlad confirmed he knew about made that seem incredibly unlikely. 

“You can’t be serious, Mads,” said Jack when she explained her plan to him when he came back to the lab after running a few errands. “We–you saw the scan. I’m not an ecto biologist, but–”

“--no, you’re not,” she interrupted coolly. “I am. It’ll be challenging, but it should be possible to remove his core. And we have to do it. It’s the only way we can save him. If the ecto contamination continues, it will eventually kill him.”

“We don’t know that for sure. We’ve never seen a case like this,” argued Jack. “We should try to run more tests, bring him to the doctor and see if–”

“--it can’t hurt to reach out out to my contact at the GIW,” she insisted, and Jack sighed, clearly troubled, but ultimately he relented, no doubt hoping the GIW would tell her the same thing. But he didn’t understand how dire the situation was, not the way that she did. She had done plenty of tests on smaller subjects, seen the evidence firsthand as she dissected the specimens and noted the severe damage to their ruined organs, the way their bodies fought back as if against an infection that they had no hope of stopping. And she saw the tendrils, the wisps of ectoplasm, and the tiny cores slowly forming as they died, the contamination making the likelihood of their spawning a ghost upon their death a near certainty. 

She did not want that for her son, did not want to see an echo of his subconscious imprinted onto ectoplasm that would slowly degrade over time until it became unrecognizable and completely inhuman, a monster that they would eventually need to put down. She knew Jack hadn’t thought it all the way through, that he didn’t realize what it would mean when Danny inevitably passed away from his ecto contamination because there was no world in which he could survive it. Death was written into his blood, his very essence, as long as the ghostly core in his chest remained and continued to pump ectoplasm into his system. Their ongoing decontamination sequences were likely the only thing that stopped him from dying already, but they would not work indefinitely. The damage was still being done, even if the effects weren’t entirely obvious to them yet beyond the mild symptoms Danny complained about so far like his nausea and the changes to his appearance.

And then the ghost alarm went off, signaling an attack at the high school. Maddie sighed, rubbing her temples. Of course. As if they weren’t dealing with enough, the vile specters couldn’t leave them alone for even a moment. She and Jack gathered a couple of weapons and ran to the GAV, her husband tearing through the streets as she sat in silence, staring out the window, but by the time they arrived, the ghost was gone. Yet again Phantom appeared and took care of it according to Mr. Lancer when he called later that day. She wanted to ask more questions, to get as much information as she could about the ghost who they still hadn’t personally seen since the portals closed, but Mr. Lancer interrupted her.

“Mrs. Fenton, I’m happy to tell you what I know about the ghost, but we need to discuss Daniel first. It’s–it’s urgent. Can you please come down to my office this afternoon? It would be best if we discussed it in person,” he said. Her stomach twisted into knots, her anxiety skyrocketing even as she agreed to meet. It didn’t sound as if she had a choice, and she desperately wished just once she would get good news about her son again. 

She let Jack know about the meeting and then went upstairs to check on Danny. He was sitting at his desk, working on something for school, and she could see the unnatural writing that sprawled out from beneath his pen, the strange symbols that made her queasy the more she looked at them as he turned. “Hi, hon,” she said. “Mr. Lancer called. He asked me to meet to talk about you.”

“Oh.” There was no surprise, no shock. Just . . . exhaustion and defeat, his shoulders slumping as he ran his fingers through his hair, and her heart ached for her poor son. She knew he was trying so, so hard. It wasn’t fair that this happened to him, that he couldn’t be normal as long as this continued, and she felt her determination to fix it only grow. She would save Danny no matter what. She refused to give up. 

“I take it you know what it’s about?” she asked, and he nodded, his eyes not meeting hers as he twisted the inhibitor on his wrist. 

“I–some people at school pulled a prank and I . . . I reacted badly,” he said, and she cocked an eyebrow. No doubt that was the understatement of the year. “I, um . . . the inhibitor didn’t work and there’s a video and it’s–I’m sorry, Mom.” 

“It’s not your fault, hon,” she said automatically, walking over and giving him a tight hug, ignoring the unnatural chill that clung to him and managed to penetrate even through her Hazmat suit. “We’ll–we’ll fix this, okay? I promise.”

“And if you can’t?” His voice trembled, a hint of an unnatural echo there as he hugged her back. 

“Fentons aren’t quitters. We’ll find a way. Promise,” she insisted as she released him and kissed his forehead. “We’ll be back soon and we can talk more tonight, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Love you, hon,” she said. 

“Love you, too,” he murmured as he turned back to his homework, and she watched him for a moment, hovering in the doorway before finally forcing herself to shut the door. They could fix this. She could fix this. She would not give up, not when her son was depending on her. 

She filled in Jack on what little she knew as they drove back to the school. The students were dismissed shortly after the ghost attack, although she could hear the band practicing out on the football field when they arrived, and Mr. Lancer met them at the door by the front office, letting them in. Maddie never loved the high school. Even before the portal opened, it always felt haunted to her, as if something were watching and waiting to strike, and the sense only became worse after the ghost attacks began. They were drawn intensely to the school for reasons she and Jack had yet to figure out, no obvious portals or ley lines or deaths on the campus that they could find, yet in mapping out the data they found that half of all the known ghost attacks in Amity Park were at the school. 

“Thanks for coming in on such short notice. I would have spoken to you this afternoon, but I needed to check in with the principal and superintendent first,” said Mr. Lancer as they sat down across from him. “I sincerely hoped we wouldn’t find ourselves here again so soon. Did Daniel tell you what happened today?”

Maddie eyed him carefully. The last meeting they had with Mr. Lancer was tense, the man seeming to quietly judge them even as he technically said nothing inappropriate. She suspected some of that was her own nerves, worried as she was about her son and still anxious about what Jazz had said, her daughter’s words so closely echoing that of more than a few of their own friends and neighbors. She still needed to talk to Jazz, too, to find a way to bridge the gap between them that erupted that day, but every time she tried so far Jazz found an excuse to avoid her, and for the first time Maddie began to wonder if perhaps people weren’t entirely wrong to judge her parenting if for no other reason than her own sense that she was failing both her children somehow.

“A little bit,” said Jack. “Just that there was a prank and that the inhibitor didn’t work. But it seemed fine when Mads talked to him.”

“Have you seen the video?” he asked, and they shook their heads. There hadn’t been time before coming over to the school, and Mr. Lancer pulled up something on his computer, angling the screen so they could watch. The footage was clearly taken on a cell phone, the camera shaking a bit in the student’s unsteady hands, and she frowned darkly as she watched. Whoever took it knew something was going to happen. The camera was angled too perfectly before Danny even walked to his locker, and then she saw the disgusting green slime come tumbling out as he opened the door, the panic in his expression, and then the lights flickering overhead, the image distorting. 

And there was a hint of ice and frost that began to spread beneath his feet, clearly with her son at the epicenter, and she found herself leaning forward, hands over her mouth in shock as she processed it. This wasn’t–it wasn’t merely a side effect from the ecto contamination in his bloodstream. Danny was manipulating it, albeit subconsciously, and the sight made her want to scream even as she pushed it down. 

“Psychomagnotheric ectoplasmic manipulation with an elemental subtype,” her husband whispered in awe beside her. “It can’t–that’s not–it’s not possible.” 

“What isn’t possible?” asked Mr. Lancer.

“I–there are different types of ectoplasm and ectoplasmic manipulation,” explained Maddie automatically, falling into the comfortable, familiar role of researcher and educator. “Psychomagnotheric ectoplasm relates to emotional volatility. It’s–think of it as the kind of ectoplasmic manipulation you see when a ghost has a strong response to its environment. One of the easiest ways to generate that effect would be to ask a ghost about its demise since it almost always creates a powerful emotional response. Flickering lights, substantial shifts in temperature, items floating . . . anything that’s not consciously being controlled by the actual specter falls into this classification.”

“Hasn’t Daniel been doing that all along? I thought that was what the inhibitor was meant to prevent,” said Mr. Lancer.

It hurt to admit it, but he had a point. “Maybe,” she admitted. “We assumed it was an unintentional side effect of the ectoplasmic contamination. Ectoplasm on its own is already a highly charged, volatile substance that can cause substantial environmental impacts without any consciousness driving it. We thought–” hoped “--that was what we were seeing with Danny. But this . . . his response makes it clear that’s not the case.”

“And elemental subtypes are rare, even amongst powerful ghosts. The ice suggests his contamination is at a much higher and much deeper level than previously indicated,” she finished. It wasn’t out of the question, of course, even as they hadn’t considered it before since it was only recently they learned he had a core. But to her, it suggested that Danny’s condition was deteriorating rapidly, that he was already well on his way to becoming a ghost as his body was no doubt shutting down. The thought that they might already be out of time, that they had missed what window they had to save him, that he was–he wouldn’t–

She burst into tears, unable to help herself as Mr. Lancer started, and she could feel Jack’s arms around her as he held her tightly, her entire body shaking beneath his arms. She doubted even her husband fully understood what it meant, what this indicated about Danny, that it might already be too late, that her son was–would be–

“I–I can give you a moment,” offered Mr. Lancer as he held out a box of tissues as Jack released her, gently rubbing her back. 

“I’m–I’m fine,” she lied, wiping away the tears as she tried to push down her own fears. She wasn’t fine. She couldn’t be fine. “Who–do you know who did this?”

“Not yet, but we’re investigating. Clearly, the student that took the footage and posted it was aware of what was going to happen,” said Mr. Lancer. “But even with the clear provocation that caused the incident, the administration has determined that until Daniel’s inhibitor is fully functional again, he can’t return to school. I’m so sorry. I’ll do whatever I can to get it overturned and I’m happy to continue to help Daniel keep up with his work until this can be straightened out.”

“We know you’re doing everything you can,” said Jack. “We’ll let Danny know. And we’ll get it fixed up in no time, right, Mads?”

She barely managed to force herself to nod as the tears threatened to pour out again and Jack squeezed her hand, trying his best to reassure her. “I–thank you for showing us this,” she said. At least that much was true. If he hadn’t, she wouldn’t have known how severe things were, how little time they had left. She needed to get this done immediately, needed to contact the GIW and get his surgery scheduled and completed as soon as possible if there was going to be any chance of saving him. She already lost her son once. She refused to lose him again.

“I can let Danny know,” offered Jack as they drove home afterward, and he reached over, putting a hand on his leg in a desperate bid to comfort her. “It’ll be okay, Mads. He–he’ll be okay.”

“I know,” she said. It was a promise to Jack and to Danny. To herself. 

Jack ordered some food for dinner, splitting it with himself and the kids as she headed back down to the lab with a plate of food she had no intention of eating, but she didn’t want Jack to worry about her. She would need to tell him, to get him to understand what Danny’s control over the ectoplasm meant. The images from the video kept replaying in her mind over and over again as she reached out to Dr. Stone at the GIW, sending him the images of Danny’s scans and asking him to take a look. She didn’t mention Danny by name, not yet, but she knew he would likely guess who they belonged to regardless. The story of what happened to her son was far too well-known at this point. 

And although she knew she ought to try and rest, she couldn’t. Jack came down eventually just before midnight. “Mads,” he said. “You need to get some sleep.”

“I can’t,” she whispered as she scrolled through the data, looking for something, anything that would give her even the tiniest sliver of hope. They would need to extract the core and remove the odd, ectoplasmic threads that seemed to have spread from it and throughout his body, careful not to harm any of his organs or vital systems. They would need to do a decontamination sequence afterward, too, extracting what ectoplasm they could until it was fully absent, and then they would need to do continuous scans to ensure that the core didn’t return. Even a tiny fragment of it could allow it to regenerate, to survive intact within his systems as long as there was a consciousness connected to it. 

Jack sighed as he sat down. “What aren’t you telling me?”

“Danny’s dying,” she said. Might, in fact, already be functionally dead, even as his heart still beat and air still filled his lungs. “I–even if we remove his core, the damage to his organs may already be too extensive. He shouldn’t be able to manifest ectoplasm the way he did today if–” She paused, biting her lip. She wasn’t going to cry again. She wasn’t . “I can’t lose him again.”

“Mads, we don’t know that for sure,” said Jack.

“ You don’t know that for sure,” she insisted. “I do. I’ve studied the impacts of ectoplasmic contamination on organic structures for years. I–I know this better than you do, Jack. I know that he’s–that he won’t–” She shook her head, her entire body shaking as she started to cry again. 

“Have you heard back from the GIW?” he asked.

“Not yet.”

“Then we’ll wait and see what they say before we assume the worst,” he insisted, ever the optimist even when this time it wasn’t appropriate. “And maybe I can get him checked out at the doctor’s this week, too, and have them do some blood work and check to see if there’s any signs that he’s not–that he won’t be okay. He still needs to make up that appointment he missed the other day, anyway.” 

It was a reasonable plan. A logical one. But she was finding it hard to stay in that mindset, to remind herself that what Jack was suggesting was the right path, that they needed to do this carefully and do it right. They couldn’t rush in headfirst, not if they wanted to keep holding onto the slim possibility that Danny would survive this. “It would be so much easier if this wasn’t him,” she said softly. “Just some ghostly impersonator.”

“But it is him.”

“I know.” 

She forced herself to go to bed, but she barely slept, and what few moments she tried were filled with nightmares of losing her son. Maddie spent nearly every minute she wasn’t tossing and turning in bed in the lab, reviewing her notes and going through every relevant piece of research she could find. At one point Jazz came downstairs, holding one of her arms as she fidgeted uneasily at the bottom of the stairs. “Mom?”

“Yes, hon?” 

“Can we talk?” asked Jazz. She should be relieved, grateful that her daughter was finally willing to take this step now, yet she was too worried about Danny, too scared she wouldn’t be able to save him if she didn’t move faster. But she wouldn’t push Jazz to the side, knowing her daughter would assume the worst given their last argument.

“Of course. Do you–do you want to sit down?” she said, gesturing to the stool nearby, and Jazz let out a breath as she walked over and took a seat. 

“I’m sorry about our fight,” said Jazz. “But I can’t say that I’m sorry about what I said.”

“Jazz–”

“--let me finish, please?” she asked, and Maddie nodded, rubbing her temples as she put down her pen. She needed sleep. Coffee. A break. But out of those things, she suspected she would only get one. “I know that ghosts can be dangerous. I’m not half as clueless as you think. You know how many ghost attacks there were while I was still going to Casper High. And I get that you and Dad are really the only ones in a position to protect everyone aside from the Red Huntress and Phantom. And no, I don’t want to hear you argue that he’s not a good ghost, Mom. He is. But that’s not the point.”

“Danny’s been struggling since he first ended up in high school,” said Jazz, and it was increasingly clear to her that Jazz had practiced this over and over again, figuring out exactly what she wanted to say and how she wanted to say it. “And I know that you knew that, that you cared, but you didn’t really try to do anything to help. I was the one who sat with him and helped with his homework. I was the one that noticed when he didn’t come home at night. I was the one who ended up making him dinner while you and Dad were out, who made sure the laundry was done, who tried to get him help with a counselor at school even if that didn’t work out so well. And I–it wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right for that to be on me.”

Maddie bit her lip, wanting to scream, to let out her anger all over again, but she couldn’t bear the distance between her and Jazz, not when she was staring at the grim reality that one of her kids might soon be gone for good. They all needed to be there to support each other if the worst happened. “I’m sorry,” she said eventually, “that you felt–” She stopped, catching herself. “--that you found yourself in that position. The only thing your father and I have ever wanted is for the two of you to be safe and happy, hon. Our research matters, but it doesn’t matter half as much as the two of you.”

“Then will you at least come upstairs and have dinner with us tonight?” asked Jazz. “Danny’s . . . I’m worried, Mom. He’s barely said a word the last few days since he got suspended from school. He’s avoiding his friends. And he–I–I don’t know.” She hugged herself tightly as she stared at the portal, a strangely haunted look in her eyes. “I’m worried about him. I’m worried about all of us, that we’re breaking apart, that we–that this–that we’re never going to recover from what happened to him. Not really.”

Maddie stood up and walked over, throwing her arms around Jazz and holding her tightly for a long time. Part of her wanted to say no, to stay in the lab and keep combing through the research in front of her, but wasn’t that precisely what Jazz was so upset about? That their work, even if it was intended to help them, ended up with them feeling isolated and ignored? Neglected? She could spare an hour to have dinner with them tonight. If Danny didn’t survive, she knew she would regret not taking what moments she could with him before he was gone.

“Of course, sweetie,” said Maddie, squeezing her tightly. “I’ll be up in a moment, okay?”

“Okay. Thanks.” She turned to head up the stairs, pausing for a moment. “Did you and Dad figure out the issue with the inhibitor yet?”

“I–not yet.” Maddie hadn’t even looked at it, too consumed with finding a more permanent solution to the issue, but Jazz didn’t push as she headed back upstairs, leaving Maddie to her thoughts before she shut the laptop and followed. She was surprised to find Jack cooking, Jazz helping him out as Danny sat at the table and hugged himself tightly, his chest barely moving as he stared out the window while Jack and Jazz talked. She tried not to focus on his oddly pointed ears, the too-sharp teeth, or how still he was. She would fix this. It was not too late. It couldn’t be.

She shut the door a little loudly, making Jack and Jazz jump. “Sorry,” she said, eyes flicking back to Danny, and he watched her as she sat down and smiled at him. “How was your day, hon?”

“Fine.” He said nothing else as his eyes glazed over and he stared off into the distance, chin in hand. He looked so much worse already. Too thin, too pale, sickly, and exhausted. She would need to call Dr. Stone again tonight if he didn’t get back to her. They couldn’t afford to wait, and the more she studied him, the more she worried about going into his room, finding his body and–

She shook her head, forcing the thoughts away. That wasn’t helpful right now. Instead, she listened as Jack and Jazz talked, trying to figure out a way to bridge the distance between her and Danny, between her and her entire family. Maddie hadn’t realized how bad things had gotten until now. Sitting and having dinner with her family should be a joyful experience, something to look forward to, yet every minute she found herself glancing at her phone, checking for missed calls or texts or emails. 

Perhaps Jazz had even more of a point than Maddie wanted to admit.

Despite Jazz and Jack’s best efforts, dinner was quiet, a cloud hanging over all of them as they ate. Danny and Jazz wouldn’t look at each other, her brother seeming to curl in on himself and shrink away from even the mere possibility of human contact and connection. Each conversation they started grew stilted, the words dying out after a minute or two as an uncomfortable, awful silence filled the air. 

And then her phone rang and she recognized the number immediately. “I’m sorry, I have to take this,” she said, excusing herself as she hurried outside and sat down on the back steps, the relief washing over her at getting a break from the uncomfortable dinner inside even as she remained terrified of the news this call would bring. “Hello, Dr. Stone.”

“Dr. Fenton! It’s been too long,” he said. “Sorry for missing your calls - I was on a high-security project for a couple of days and wasn’t permitted outside the lab. I just saw your email today.”

“Did you have a chance to look at the subject files?” she asked anxiously, trying to keep her voice low. 

“I did. I reviewed them with my superiors, too,” he said, and then he paused for a moment and let out a heavy sigh. “This–these are your son’s files, aren’t they?”

Of course, he figured it out. She knew he would. The man was too sharp. “Yes.” There was no point in lying about it.

“I thought so,” he said. “I–listen, Dr. Fenton. You know I have the utmost respect for you and your work, and I can appreciate what your family has gone through here.” Maddie felt her stomach clench, her hands gripping the phone too tightly. She knew where this was headed. What he was going to say even as she wanted to demand otherwise, to force him to speak the words she wanted to hear and not the words that, on some level, she was already certain she would hear instead. “With the current laws in place protecting ecto entities, the folks at the top aren’t willing to take the risk of attempting a core extraction. Your son’s case is too public, and the likelihood of success . . . honestly, Dr. Fenton, I’ll be blunt. Based on what you sent me, the core is too integrated with his biological systems. There’s no hope of removing it and having the patient survive the procedure.”

“I know it’s risky, but–”

“--Dr. Fenton,” he said, and then he sighed. “Maddie. I understand what this means. I know firsthand the damage that high levels of ecto contamination can do to a person. I know how hard it must be to see that now with your son and to know what’s going to happen to him and just how ugly his end is going to be. But removing his core won’t fix it. It’ll just kill him faster. If I were you, I would spend what time you can with him and your family. Try to make the most of it while he’s here.”

“I am not giving up on my son!” she hissed. “How dare you assume–”

“Dr. Fenton, I’m sorry,” he repeated, “but this isn’t negotiable. The only thing we’re willing to do–and I apologize if this sounds a bit indelicate, but . . . when he does inevitably succumb to his ecto contamination, my superiors would love to have his remains to do some additional research. We might be able to figure out a way post-mortem to ensure this doesn’t happen again and–”

Maddie slammed the button to end the call, not willing to listen to another word and wanting to scream and tear her own hair out. Dr. Stone didn’t care about her son. The only way to work for the GIW was to sacrifice every moral and ethical principle one had, and how dare he ask about her son’s corpse, as if Danny were already dead and as if there were no hope of saving him. Maddie refused to accept it. She would never accept it, and her hands shook as she clutched her phone and bit her lip, trying to fight back the tears. She was so, so tired of crying. Of mourning and grieving her son who was still here, who was still fighting to survive, who deserved a chance to live and grow up and see his dreams become reality. 

The door opened behind her and she knew it was Jack, the sound of his footsteps too heavy to be anyone else. “Bad news?” he said, and she gave a small, half-nod. “I’m sorry, Mads. I–it’s not what I wanted to hear, either. But for now, we should try to spend what time we can with Danny while he’s still here with us. We–we should let him and the kids know, too.”

“I’m not giving up, Jack.”

“I didn’t say that,” he said quickly. “But we need to be–I–damn it, Mads, he’s my son, too! I don’t want to lose him again. I can’t lose him again. But we can’t just start cutting him open and hoping for the best, either. We need a plan, okay? Let me talk to Vlad. He’s the only person I know that’s even come close to the level of ecto contamination Danny suffered. He might know something, might remember some treatment protocol that helped him. Please, Mads. Before you do anything drastic, at least let me do this much. Please.”

“Fine,” she whispered, but the promise held no weight. Vlad wouldn’t have the solution. His case was severe, but he never developed a core. Jack had already given up, no matter what he protested. And the GIW? She was so, so foolish to think they would have dared to care enough to try. The only person who could save Danny now was her, and she would do it without them if she had to. She would not lose her son again. She would not let him die because of them, because of their research that made him a target in the first place. 

And as she let Jack lead her back into the house, she watched as he went to sit with the kids for a bit even as she shook her head and didn’t follow them. Instead, Maddie filled up her coffee as she headed down to the basement, sat down at her computer, and began to come up with a new plan to save her son.

Chapter Text

Vlad hummed quietly as he poured himself a glass of wine. In the past few days, he had finally begun to feel like himself again as the fog lifted, leaving him capable enough that he managed to spend the last two days at work and dispel the rumors that swirled in his absence. Affairs, deadly illnesses, a mid-life crisis that had him flying out to countries across the world . . . the wild gossip surrounding his brief disappearance from public life was as absurd as it was occasionally too close for comfort, but no one would ever begin to guess the true nature of what happened to him. How could they? Such an experience was beyond mere human comprehension. 

He leaned into the rumors a little, indicating he had taken ill for a few weeks and hadn’t wanted to inflict it on his poor, hardworking staff. He smiled and joked, checked in with his company boards and deputy mayor, and for all intents and purposes, he was the same man they had always known, and he could practically feel the relief emanating from them at seeing him at work again. The Fright Knight stopped by once, thankfully when no one else was around, and they chatted a bit more about the Infinite Realms and Daniel. 

“He’s had a challenger,” said the Fright Knight eventually. 

“Oh?”

“Technus,” he supplied as an answer to the obvious yet unasked question, and Vlad scoffed, rolling his eyes. 

“As if he ever stood a chance against Daniel, with or without the Crown and Ring,” he said. He heard, of course, about Daniel being temporarily suspended from school after some ghostly display despite the inhibitor that was intended to prevent such incidents, but he hadn’t learned about the attack itself. An oversight on his staff’s part, no doubt concerned about stressing Vlad needlessly just as he returned to work. “Did he finish the fight?”

“He satisfied the challenge, but he did not finish his opponent,” replied the Fright Knight. “Technus will almost certainly return to fight King Phantom again.”

“I’ll deal with Technus if it continues,” said Vlad, waving a hand dismissively. It wasn’t as if Technus were a real opponent. He could easily handle the ghost, either with bribes or his destruction if need be, though he knew that Daniel would be displeased if he eliminated him. And, odd as it was, he found he did not want to upset the boy any further. After learning about his suspension, a not-so-small part of Vlad wanted to check in on him and stop by the Fenton household, ensuring that he was still well, but he knew Daniel would not appreciate it. It wasn’t as if the child knew about Vlad’s pledge to keep him safe, even if they would no doubt be forced to cross that bridge sometime soon. 

“If a ghost more suited to the kingship appears, though–”

“--I will not betray Daniel,” interrupted Vlad coolly. “And should you consider doing so again, I’ll ensure that it’s the last thing you contemplate. Understood?”

The Fright Knight didn’t flinch. “Perfectly, Plasmius.” He vanished as Vlad went back to his work. It wasn’t as if this were much of a surprise. The Fright Knight wasn’t loyal to the King, he was loyal to the Infinite Realms and had told Vlad as much already. And while that was true to an extent for Vlad as well–he would not sacrifice the world for Daniel, or at least, he didn’t think he would–he knew the boy was more than capable of handling the responsibility even if he did not want it and even if he never should have been forced into this situation in the first place. But there was no escaping his fate now, no changing the past, and the only way for him to stop being King would be his own, inevitable demise, something which Vlad found unacceptable.

It was as he was pouring himself a drink that Vlad heard a sharp knock on the door, which meant it couldn’t be Daniel as the boy treated the walls and doors as if they didn’t exist, but it didn’t make sense for it to be his mayoral staff or any donors. They knew to reach out to him before stopping by, and with a sigh he picked up his wine glass and headed to the entrance of his mansion, swinging the door open. 

Standing before him were Jasmine, Samantha, and Tucker. He did not bother to disguise his distaste, though frankly he should have known it would only be a matter of time after what happened last weekend with Jasmine and Daniel. “To what do I owe the pleasure?” 

“We’re here to talk about Danny,” said Jasmine.

“Ah, of course. Silly me for assuming it might be something else,” said Vlad as he opened the door. There was no point in shutting it. He knew the children well enough to know they would not easily be persuaded to leave him alone without getting what they wanted, or at least without him putting up a sufficient fight first. “Do come in and make yourselves at home, I suppose, since you’ll do that regardless.”

They followed him inside as he led them to the den, and he could hear Tucker whispering to Jasmine. “Didn’t you say he was like, totally nuts now or something?” 

“I have never been ‘totally nuts,’” he said, using air quotes with his free hand, and he saw the boy flinch. Good. “But I was admittedly quite unwell for a brief spell. Ask Daniel if you wish to know why.” He sat down, making himself comfortable as the three teenagers took their own seats, perched on the edge of their chairs as if ready to flee. He saw Samantha’s fingers hovering over a wrist ray, Tucker’s in his pocket that clearly contained some sort of ecto blaster, and it took everything in him not to roll his eyes at the theatricality of it all. While Vlad enjoyed a bit of dramatic flare, it only worked if one could actually carry out the inherent threat behind the posturing. There was very little danger to him from the blaster on her wrist or even the gun that Tucker kept concealed in his pocket. He held the upper hand here, and they all knew it even as their pathetic attempts at intimidation said otherwise. 

“Now,” he said, “why do the three of you think I have any information about Daniel that I would be willing to provide to you?” 

“Because if you don’t, I’ll tell my parents the truth about you and what you are,” said Jasmine, and oh, perhaps there was a little bite behind their threats after all. He couldn’t help the faint glimmer of pride as he saw the fire in her, the willingness to blackmail and manipulate to get her way. If only she were his daughter and not Jack Fenton’s. “We know that Danny’s the Ghost King now. Sam and Tucker saw him transform at school when Technus challenged him. And we know he’s the one that sealed the portals.”

“Then what do you need me for? It seems you already know the truth about everything,” said Vlad. “It only took, what? Seven, almost eight weeks for you to figure it out?”

“I–just this once, could you maybe not?” hissed Samantha. “I know you’re a total creep, but I also know you care about Danny in your own twisted way. We know he’s keeping secrets. We know that there’s more to it than just Danny having ownership of the Crown and Ring, and his powers being a bit stronger than before he spent three months in the Ghost Zone. But he won’t talk to us. He’s refusing to answer our calls, he’s avoiding Jazz at home, he–we tried to stop by earlier and he literally refused to open his bedroom door and let us in.”

“That sounds like your problem. The affairs of ghosts like Daniel and myself are none of your concern,” he insisted as he took a sip. “And I doubt Daniel would welcome my engaging in this discussion with you behind his back.”

“We don’t have a choice,” said Tucker. 

“Neither do I. Now, if that’s all, children, I would suggest you–”

“--I saw something,” interrupted Jasmine, her face pale, and he could see the hint of a shadow there, a glimmer of recognition. “After–after we stopped by your house last weekend. I–in the car, Danny tried to explain to me what happened to him and he was–he wasn’t–” She shook her head, her eyes glazing over, and he frowned, considering for a moment before he spoke again. 

“He was not entirely Daniel, was he?” He finished, letting the static fill his words willingly this time, and he saw Samantha and Tucker flinch even as Jasmine’s gaze remained steady. “Oh, dear child. I told you to look away.” 

Samantha reached over to Jasmine, grabbing her hand as she anxiously studied her. “Jazz?” 

“I–why? Why can I understand you now?” asked Jasmine, going pale. Her own words remained in ordinary English, the ability to understand not the same as speaking it. To use the language of the dead, one needed to die first, and thankfully, at least, Jasmine had avoided that fate so far.

He switched back, much as he could feel the faint desire for the echoes and sound of breaking glass to infiltrate his speech. “You have seen something which you should not have borne witness to,” he explained. “I assume not much, given you still appear to be mostly in command of your faculties, but even a glimpse behind the veil is enough to leave its mark.” He paused, watching her closely. “Or perhaps you’re simply better at masking the effects than I am.”

“I–no, I don’t think I am,” she admitted, gripping Samantha’s hand a little tighter as she leaned forward. “I don’t know what it was, only that there was something about him that wasn’t–it couldn’t be him, and I remember feeling terrified even though I didn’t entirely understand why. I–I ran from him. I didn’t mean to, but I–I couldn’t help myself.”

“Of course not. You’re only human,” he said without a hint of condescension. There were times when he missed the simplicity of such an existence even as he would not trade the power he held now as a half-ghost for any reason. 

“Can the two of you please start talking sense?” grumbled Samantha. 

“You’re asking that I betray the boy’s secrets?”

“We’re asking you to be honest with us before Danny ends up hurting himself or worse,” corrected Jasmine. “Please, Vlad. I hate it, but we need your help. Please.”

Vlad cursed softly to himself as he took another sip, his defenses weakening at her earnest plea. If only she weren’t so much like her mother. “I will do my best, but it may be that dear Jasmine will need to translate if I succumb,” he sighed. It wasn’t as if Daniel could ever tell them the truth if what his sister said was any indication. Perhaps he would believe Vlad did him a favor, though it was unlikely. No doubt the child would be knocking down his door in a few hours, furious with him for spilling his secrets to his friends. “What do you know about the Ghost King?”

“That it used to be Pariah Dark,” said Tucker. “And that Danny defeated him, and apparently that means that he’s now in charge.”

“That’s mostly accurate,” said Vlad. “Although many previous rulers have used the office as a way to rule and exert control over the denizens of both the Infinite Realms and the human world, being the King of the Infinite Realms is not about conquests or politics or the endless bureaucracy that comes from being in power and in charge of countless souls. Centuries ago, the position was not referred to as a kingship at all, but as the Heart of the Infinite Realms.”

“What is this, some Kingdom Hearts bullshit?” said Samantha with a groan as she rubbed her temples.

“I’m afraid I don’t know what that is,” said Vlad. Probably some foolish game or movie, knowing Daniel’s friends. “The Infinite Realms is alive. It is sentient and aware, a living world in a way that our own never has been. It is not merely that there are organisms that thrive within it, but that the Infinite Realms itself has a consciousness. It exists on a level that humans cannot comprehend.” He could hear the edge of the static dancing beneath his tongue, and he tried to suppress it, not certain he would succeed. “But it requires a heart. The ghost fulfilling that role must be powerful enough to withstand the burden.”

“Young Daniel was chosen, in part because of his own actions, in part because of mine, and in part because the Infinite Realms saw his core and harmonized with it when he defeated Pariah Dark in battle,” said Vlad. “He and the Infinite Realms are permanently connected. He provides balance, stability, and acts as its core. He determines how the Ghost Zone will grow and expand, and whether or not its denizens will continue to thrive. He is its heart, and like a human heart, without him and his core, the Infinite Realms cannot survive. And Daniel will remain in that position until another ghost defeats him and takes the Crown and Ring.”

“And Pariah Dark? Danny–he didn’t say, exactly, but he suggested that he, um . . .” said Tucker, trailing off. 

“Dead. Wiped from existence. Call it whatever you prefer,” said Vlad, waving a hand dismissively. “He’s irrelevant now.” 

“Not to Danny. He–he said he destroyed his core,” said Tucker. “He’s never . . . Danny’s never hurt someone like that before. He literally had a panic attack over it.”

“Did he?” That was news to him, and he saw Samantha kick Tucker with her boot, clearly annoyed he shared it as he scowled back at her. “What a shame. But he made the right decision. It was necessary for the good of the Infinite Realms,” said Vlad with a shrug as he took another sip. “No doubt Daniel will move on in time.”

“Jeez, you really are a sociopath, aren’t you?” said Samantha. “Maybe you don’t have a problem killing people or ghosts, but Danny does.”

“Your insults are meaningless. I am not a sociopath. No doubt things would be far, far easier for me if I were. What I am, however, is practical,” he insisted. “And so is Daniel, when pushed. He understood what refusing to destroy Pariah Dark meant for everyone, though I suppose it’s unsurprising that he would feel guilt about it regardless.”

“So what I saw in the car that day,” said Jasmine, changing the subject as Samantha opened her mouth to argue once more, “wasn’t Danny, but the Ghost Zone?” 

“In a sense. There is some distinction between the two, but they are connected, and when your brother is fully immersed, in conversation with it, the wall between them may as well not exist,” said Vlad, digging his nails into his palm as he tightly gripped his wine glass with the other and finished it, letting the scent float to him, the liquid dance delicately on his tongue, reminders of his own humanity as he spoke of something so beyond human comprehension that he knew no words could adequately allow the three children in front of him to grasp the reality. “When you see him in those moments, it can cause irreparable damage. Even a glimpse, as Jasmine discovered, is enough to leave its mark.”

“And the portals?” she asked.

“He kept them closed to protect you. The Infinite Realms suffered under Pariah’s rule and subsequent imprisonment. It required a constant connection, an outpouring of support and energy from Daniel’s core to begin to heal. If you saw him in such a state–if anyone did–you would not have come away from the encounter with your mind and spirit intact,” he explained.

“How do we know this is–that you’re telling the truth?” asked Tucker. “That this isn’t some weird, sick prank or something? You’re sure that you weren’t responsible for the portals and that Danny isn’t just taking the fall for you or something?”

“Do you even hear yourself? When would Daniel ever make such a sacrifice for me? And what would I have to gain watching my dearest Maddie drive herself mad in pursuit of a son she could not hope to reach?” he scoffed. For being so bright, Tucker could be quite foolish at times. “And why come here at all to ask if you weren’t going to take me at my word?”

“Because there was no one else we could ask,” said Samantha as they fell silent, exchanging looks and speaking without words, and as Vlad watched he considered for a moment what he should do, if he should say anything. He didn’t know what would help Daniel the most and found himself struck by how odd it was that he kept going back to what the boy would want, to what would help Daniel rather than himself as he considered his options. It was unsettling, even as it felt right . 

“We’re going to go,” said Jasmine eventually as she stood up, Tucker and Samantha moving to follow her. “I don’t know if what you’ve told us is the truth, but you seem to believe it.”

“Analyzing my body language?” 

“Something like that,” said Jasmine evasively. 

“Then you should know, dear Jasmine, that there’s one other rather important detail Daniel hasn’t told you,” said Vlad, and the three of them stopped, turning to face him. “His return to this world is temporary.”

The three of them froze as Jasmine stared at him, her eyes widening a fraction. “What?”

“On the summer solstice, he needs to go back to the Infinite Realms. No doubt the portals will close behind him again when he leaves,” said Vlad as Jasmine’s hand went to her mouth and his friends looked sick. “My understanding is that he’ll be back on the first day of fall, permanently in a cycle of three months here, three months there, for the rest of his life. That is, assuming you and everyone else don’t drive him away and convince him to never return.”

“We wouldn’t hurt Danny like that,” insisted Samantha. “He knows we love him, that we want him here with us, and if you try to convince him otherwise, then know that Danny will be the least of your concerns.” 

Internally, Vlad rolled his eyes, the threats empty and pathetic. He could already see the cracks, knew the way that his parents spoke about him, saw the way his friends regarded him, and how their decision to come to him and ask Vlad for the truth instead of Daniel himself would only further widen the rift between them. But even as Samantha spoke, oblivious to the reality of the situation, Vlad could see the hesitation on Jasmine’s face, the uncertainty and worry that hovered beneath the surface. Daniel’s sister was always quite sharp, and for a moment they locked eyes, an understanding passing between them. 

“Of course. I wouldn’t dream of it,” he said at last. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to enjoy the rest of my evening in peace.”

They shuffled out, Tucker and Samantha already whispering to each other as the door shut behind them, and Vlad sighed as he went back to grab his empty glass, hoping to pour himself another before bracing himself to make a necessary phone call to the boy king. No doubt Daniel would be furious, but no matter. He was all too accustomed to dealing with the boy’s ire, and his friends and sister needed to know before it was too late, since despite what they believed, Vlad had no desire to see the boy disappear for good. 

Sam, Tucker, and Jazz sat in the booth at the Nasty Burger, waiting for Danny to arrive. Sam could feel herself reeling, trying to deal with the fallout from the conversation with Vlad. She didn’t want what he said to be true. She didn’t want to think about Danny not being Danny anymore, about him leaving them again, about him always leaving them again and again and being gone every summer and winter for the rest of their lives. While she accepted that there was a chance they might drift apart when they eventually graduated and went to college, that was drastically different than him becoming something even less human than he was before, than Danny being stuck in his own nightmarish version of the myth of Persephone. 

She drank her milkshake in silence, staring sullenly at the door as Tucker mindlessly scrolled through his phone and Jazz looked down at her hands, her eyes glassy again. It unnerved her. Danny changing and becoming more ghostly was something she knew and understood, a consequence of his accident that she accepted. But the way just seeing the Infinite Realms within Danny altered Jazz, made her able to understand ghost speech, and how she seemed constantly haunted and broken? The way Vlad was so oddly helpful, even as he remained a little obnoxious and creepy? 

It made her wonder what would happen to her if she saw the truth, if she peeked beyond the curtain. Would she even be recognizably herself anymore? Or would it fundamentally break her in some new way they hadn’t yet witnessed? 

“He’s here,” said Jazz, disrupting her thoughts as she spotted him walk up to the door and step inside. Danny looked around for a brief moment before spotting them in the booth at the back of the restaurant. She expected him to order something, but instead, he walked over and sat down, hands tucked in his pockets. The inhibitor was clearly on and working at the moment, with no bite to the air or lights flickering overhead, but his expression was grim as he sat down with them. 

“So I heard you went to talk to Vlad,” he began, and all three of them winced at the hint of anger bubbling beneath the surface there.

“You wouldn’t talk to us,” said Sam, immediately getting defensive even though she specifically intended not to snap back at him, but she couldn’t help herself. How dare he be angry when he was the one lying to them and keeping secrets? “We tried, Danny, you know that we did, but you wouldn’t even open your door. And you’ve been ignoring Jazz–”

“--only as much as she’s been ignoring me–”

“--and you won’t answer your phone or texts or anything,” she finished, steamrolling right past his protests. “None of us wanted to ask Vlad, okay? The guy is a certifiable creep. But you were obviously keeping stuff from us. You had a panic attack in school that could’ve gotten you expelled or shoved into a government lab for the rest of your life! You still might! And for what?! So you could lie to us until you just–just disappeared again?!”

“Sam, keep it down,” hissed Jazz, but the restaurant was mostly empty, and aside from Val raising an eyebrow as she worked the register, no one seemed to notice. Still, Jazz had a point, and Sam forced herself to exhale, her chest too tight as she gripped her milkshake so hard she was surprised she didn’t break the cup. 

“It wasn’t an issue of whether I wanted to tell you or not. I couldn’t–”

“--you could’ve, though,” interrupted Tucker, and Sam blinked, surprised at how upset he sounded as he put his phone face down on the table. His tone lacked the bite that her own carried, but the frustration and disappointment came through loud and clear. “You could have found a way if you really wanted to, Danny. Written it down, sent it to us through texts, asked Vlad or someone else who knew what was going on to explain it, just . . . anything. You promised you would tell us.”

Instead of arguing back, Danny sighed, his fingers tracing a circle on the table. “I know,” he said, and they waited a moment for him to continue, but he said nothing more. 

“Were you even going to tell us that you needed to go back, at least?” asked Jazz when it was clear that they were still going to need to fight tooth and nail to have this conversation with him. “I–Look, I know firsthand what happens when you try to explain it. I get why you thought you couldn’t.” Sam scowled, but pushed down her urge to interrupt, to insist that Tucker was right. It probably wouldn’t help beyond making her feel better for half a second at best. “But you could have told us you were going to leave again. Did you–do you know how much it hurt when you were taken that day?” 

Tears burned in Jazz’s eyes as she continued. “We thought you were dead. Not a ghost, not just lost to us temporarily, but dead. I spent weeks wondering if we would ever find out what happened to you and if we’d even get to bury you. If we should tell Mom and Dad that you were Phantom. You have no idea how much it wrecked them, too. Dad . . .” She shook her head. “And now we find out from Vlad, of all people, that it’s going to happen again. And again. And again.” She jabbed the table with her finger on the last one for emphasis. “You can’t keep this hidden, Danny. That kind of endless cycle, it–what was your plan? How were you going to explain it when you suddenly left? Not just to us, but to Mom and Dad, too?”

Danny squirmed uncomfortably in his seat, twisting the inhibitor on his wrist as he chewed his lip with one of his fangs. “I don’t know,” he admitted. 

“Don’t know what?” pushed Sam. “If you were going to tell any of us the truth? Or what you were going to tell your parents? Or what your plan was?”

“Any of it!” he snapped, a little too loudly, and he sank down into his seat as he forced himself to bring his voice back down. “Listen, okay, I know I should tell you that I definitely planned to figure out some way to explain everything, to let you all know that I would need to leave, to figure out some sort of cover with Mom and Dad or some way to tell them the truth or whatever.” He threw his hands up and then dragged his fingers through his hair, digging his nails into his scalp. “I wanted to come back and be normal and pretend like–like none of this happened, that I could just be me again and not–not–”

“Not what?” said Tucker.

“Not this,” he said weakly, his anger evaporating as he gestured to himself and he let out a shaky breath as he looked at each of them in turn. Sam felt her own anger start to dissipate as she saw the fear and terror there, the anxiety and uneasiness as he continued. “I’ve never really known what I was before. Half-human, half-ghost. Some mix of the two. Just a living kid with freaky powers, or a dead kid pretending to be alive, or . . . I don’t know. And I tried not to think about it, told myself it didn’t matter because at least I could still be here and even if I–even if I wasn’t exactly normal anymore, I was still me.”

“But I’m not me anymore,” he said as he met Jazz’s eyes, staring for a moment before he looked back down at his hands. “I–I don’t know what I am now. I’ve gone from being some freaky ghost kid to–to this like eldritch thing , and I want to hate it but I don’t and it feels so incredibly right even though it shouldn’t and that scares me. But I wanted it to not matter. I wanted to just play video games and go to school and pretend I still was the same Danny that was taken that day, I guess. But I’m not. Everyone at school is terrified of me. Mom and Dad didn’t recognize me, they tried to kill me when I came back, and I–it’s not like it’s the first time it happened, but this was the first time they pointed a weapon at me while I looked like me. Like Danny. And they–” 

He stopped as something slowly twisted inside of her, her stomach curling in on itself as if her milkshake were spoiled. “They hate the ghosts,” he continued after a few seconds, “even worse than before because of what happened to me. And now they know I have a core.” Sam’s eyes widened as she and Tucker exchanged a surprised look, neither of them knowing how much his parents had learned. “I heard them talking about trying to remove it. I–I don’t think they will, but . . . how the hell am I supposed to tell them what I am now? How am I supposed to sit here and just–just act like you didn’t lose me that day when you also did?” He chuckled bitterly, his hands clenched into fists. “I’m sorry. I know I’m not making a lot of sense. I just–I don’t know. I don’t know what to do, and I’ve spent like every minute either trying not to think about it or getting so paralyzed with dread that I can’t think at all, and then when I finally tried to tell you, Jazz, I–I hurt you and I . . .”

He stopped, his head dropping into his arms as he hid his face, unable to continue. 

“Danny,” said Jazz as she reached across the table, gripping his hand tightly. “I know I didn’t react well after what happened in the car. I’m sorry. But I’m okay. Promise. And no matter how you’ve changed, no matter who or what you are now, we still love you. We still want to help you. So please, Danny. Let us help.”

“You shouldn’t be apologizing,” he insisted. “And I know you’re not actually okay. I can see it, even if it’s not as bad as it is with Vlad.”

“He seems to be doing okay, too, now,” said Tucker. “Like he’s back to his normal levels of creepy, although he was sort of willing to help more than I thought he would.”

“He probably just wanted to make us hate Danny or something,” said Sam, and she sighed heavily as she took a sip of her milkshake. “But Tucker’s right. He’s one hundred percent back to his usual levels of creepiness. If Jazz didn’t tell us he was all messed up, I wouldn’t have known anything happened to him.”

That wasn’t entirely true, of course. He had seemed to genuinely want to help them, which was unnerving in itself, and there were moments during their conversation where Vlad had the same, haunted look as Jazz did sometimes, where she could hear a hint of ghost speech even when he intended not to use it. It was easier for her to believe he just wanted to drive them apart and to fall back into their normal relationship, though, because like Danny, Sam also craved the normalcy and familiarity of their life from before he went through the portal. “How did you find out we talked to him, anyway?”

“He called me after,” said Danny. Ah. “But even I don’t know how he found out that I’m going to be spending half my life in the Infinite Realms.”

Sam flinched at the way he said it, as if there were no other choice and as if it were only natural for him to spend so much of his life away from them. “So there really isn’t a way out of this? You can’t, like, just go for a night every once in a while?”

“No.” Even though she knew it was probably her imagination, there was a bite to the air when he said it, a chill that sank all the way down to her bones. 

“So what’s the plan?” asked Tucker. 

“Plan?” repeated Danny.

“Yeah, dude, the plan. Are we going to try to get your parents to understand and accept what’s going on with you, or do we gotta figure out a three-month cover story for when you leave again this summer?” said Tucker. “Also, can we maybe figure out a way for you to at least talk to us this time while you’re there even if we can’t see you? Your parents have some tech that might work if I can modify it. Maybe we can even get Doomed to work somehow, or–”

“--that’s not going to work,” interrupted Danny. “I–even if you make something like that, I mean, I won’t–I won’t really be in a state where I can use it.”

Sam shivered, rubbing her arms. “So what you said about reading books and stuff in Pariah’s Keep last time?” 

“That was still true,” he said, “because, um . . . I didn’t–I was trying not to do what I needed to do.” A faint echo surrounded his words as Danny stopped spinning the inhibitor for a moment to dig his nails into his wrist, and Sam realized then that he was trying not to fall into whatever odd state he went into that messed with Jazz and Vlad’s heads. She suppressed a shudder, unnerved by how easily he could descend, and much as she hated it, a tiny part of her wondered if he was right that it might be safer for them to avoid him. 

For all that he so often felt like Danny, that there were things he did that so perfectly encapsulated the person she remembered, there were too many moments like this where he wasn’t himself, where he was different in a way that unnerved her even as she wished it didn’t. 

But she refused to let go of the boy that she knew was still in there without a fight. 

His phone buzzed and he sighed as he pulled it out. “Crud, that’s Mom. She wants me to come home,” he said. 

“I’ll bring you,” offered Jazz. “Do you guys want a ride?” 

“Nah, we can walk,” said Sam as Tucker opened his mouth to accept, and a tiny frown crossed his face but he said nothing. “But stop avoiding us, okay, Danny? We can go over to your house tomorrow if that’ll help your Mom freak out less.”

“Sure,” he said as he and Jazz left, and Sam waited until they were out of sight before looking back at Tucker.

“So?” 

“I don’t care what anyone says,” said Sam. “There has to be a way for Danny to stay here.”

“Sam–”

“--No, Tuck,” she insisted. “Even if Danny’s accepted it, I won’t. We can figure something out, some way to help him stay instead of going back.”

“Look, I want him to stay, too,” said Tucker quietly, “But it really doesn’t sound like that’s an option. If Danny’s the heart of the Ghost Zone or whatever and is responsible for keeping it stable, then I don’t think he can risk staying here, either. You know our dimensions are connected. If something happens to the Ghost Zone because we try to stop him from leaving, then it’ll impact our world, too. We–I don’t think we can just start messing with this stuff blindly.”

“I’m not saying that we do,” said Sam. “There’s got to be some ghosts that know more, like the Fright Knight or Clockwork or something.”

“We don’t know how to find Clockwork, and I don’t think the Fright Knight is going to go behind Danny’s back if he serves him now or whatever, and he probably does,” argued Tucker. “Seriously, I’m not trying to be pessimistic, but I just–with the way Jazz said that Vlad reacted and how he’s been, I just feel like we’re messing with something that’s so much bigger than we are. I think we need to focus on figuring out a way to tell Danny’s parents the truth without them freaking out so badly that they try to dissect him or whatever.”

“You seriously think that’s possible? That there’s any world now where they’ll just be okay with their son being half-ghost, half-human, half-eldritch whatever, and yes, I realize that’s too many halves , but that’s not the point,” argued Sam. “They tried to kill him. And–look, even if we don’t do that and do manage to figure out some excuse for why he’s gone for three months . . . I just . . .”

“What?”

“What are three more months going to do to him?” she asked softly. “He’s so different now from how he was, and I’m just–I'm scared that if he keeps going back and staying there, then the Danny we know is going to disappear. That he’ll come back and it won’t matter because at some point it won’t even be him anymore.” That eventually it might be better if he didn’t return since the thought of some alien, incomprehensible consciousness essentially wearing her friend’s face while being definitively not him terrified her in a way that few things ever could. 

“We don’t know if that’s what will happen, though,” said Tucker.

“No, we don’t,” she said. “But I don’t want to take that chance. Do you?” Tucker scowled, twirling one of his fries around in a pool of ketchup on his tray, before finally taking a bite and meeting her gaze.

“No. I don’t,” he admitted. “But I’m not sure we have a choice.”

“Well, let’s do what we can first to make sure we don’t,” said Sam. “It’s not like we can’t come up with a plan to cover for him being away, too, if we can’t find a way to stop him from needing to go back. But I need to do this, Tucker. I–I need to try. Please?”

She knew she had him as he gave her an exasperated smile. “Fine. I’m in.”

Chapter Text

Jazz sat in her room, staring at the clock on her nightstand, her book on her pillow. She tried to read it a dozen times now, but after rereading the same page over and over, the words continued falling through her fingers like water and barely left an impression before she lost track and started again, so Jazz gave it up as a lost cause. 

Despite what she told Danny, she was very much not okay.

Her skin itched, feeling too hot and too cold as she resisted digging her nails into it to try to stop a feeling that would not leave no matter how much she scratched. There were moments when she heard static and noise and swore she could hear the words beneath it, the cries and calls and quiet questions bubbling beneath the surface even when no ghosts were present. She saw shadows out of the corners of her eyes, impressions of things beside her that were impossibly vast, that twitched in ways they should not be able to move, and she curled in on herself as she forced herself not to flinch. 

At night she woke up crying, not sure why, her brain in a fog as she wandered to the bathroom to wash her face, to feel present and connected to the world. “Little reminders help,” Vlad told her gently when she reached out again after the talk with him and Sam and Tucker, not wanting to upset or worry Danny further. “Focus on your humanity, on things that connect you to others, and the noise will eventually subside.”

Much as she could hear the truth in his words, there was just one problem: Jazz didn’t have any human connections to reach out to right now. Sam and Tucker spent the day at school, and she didn’t want to let them know the extent of the damage that Danny inadvertently caused. Danny . . . she couldn’t even look at him anymore without seeing the shadow of something else, a hint of the presence that lurked behind him and within him, that was somehow both Danny and very much not, that felt so incredibly right even as it was horribly, horribly wrong. 

Her friends were still in college, not returning to Amity Park until the summer if they returned at all. Her Mom, despite initially making an effort after Jazz finally talked to her the other night, had retreated to the basement again, doing who knew what sort of research, no doubt looking for yet another way to fix Danny. She knew they stopped running the decontamination sequences, at least, but hadn’t known why until Danny mentioned that they knew about his core. 

And while her Dad was present, he was distracted. She heard him on the phone talking to someone she swore might have been Vlad, though he dropped his voice and ducked outside when he spotted her nearby, smiling at her in a way that didn’t reach his eyes. He was worried, even though he tried to hide it, and Jazz found him working on his cross stitch and knitting projects more than usual, muttering to himself as he worked through the stitches, scowling when he realized he missed one and had to undo his work. It was something he did when he was stuck, when there was some engineering problem he couldn’t quite figure out, but this time whatever clarity or flash of inspiration he was seeking didn’t seem to be coming. She suspected, like everything else, that it was connected to Danny and whatever her parents thought about his condition, and not for the first time she found herself silently wishing that they could go back to the way things were before Danny was taken by the Fright Knight. 

So she tried to read. To play video games, despite never really enjoying them. To watch TV and let her brain shut off for a bit. But all of it felt like she was dancing around the real issue. What she needed, more than anything, was a therapist. Someone who could help her work through the problem, sort out her convoluted thoughts, and help her find her center again, her sense of self. But there was no therapist that existed that she could talk to about this, that could even begin to understand what happened to her brother and to her in turn, so instead she remained haunted, feeling herself drifting in and out, hovering on the outskirts of reality as she wondered if this was what Danny felt like now, too. 

Groaning, she stood up and headed downstairs, considering going to the library even if it was only so she could feel like herself again for a brief moment as she browsed the stacks and felt the spines of dozens of books beneath her fingertips. “Hiya, Jazz,” said Dad as she walked into the kitchen, Danny’s inhibitor on the table while he worked on it. 

“Any luck?” she asked as she poured herself some water. Food and drink helped her to remain connected. To feel human. 

“No,” he sighed. “It should be fine. I’ve checked and rechecked the components, analyzed it against what we know about Danny’s ectoplasmic contamination now . . . It should work.”

“But it doesn’t?” 

“I don’t know. We thought it did before. It seems to function when Danny’s wearing it,” he said. “Even after the incident at school it seemed fine, too. But something has to be wrong with it since . . . well, you saw the video.”

She had, even as she wished she hadn’t. “Yeah,” she said. “So what happens if you send him back and it’s not working?”

“The GIW will take him in for a decontamination sequence,” said Dad, biting his lip. “But it won’t work.”

“Because he has a core?”

Her Dad looked up at her, clearly surprised. “How did you–?”

“Danny mentioned you were checking for it,” she explained as she gripped her glass a little tighter, something flitting in the corner of her eyes that she ignored as best she could. It wasn’t real. She knew it wasn’t. “What . . . what’s going to happen to him?” 

“We don’t know,” said Dad with a sigh as he began to put the inhibitor back together, his large fingers delicately picking up the screws. Jazz remained impressed by how deftly he could handle even the tiniest components as she watched him work. “Your Mom thinks he can’t survive with it long-term, that it’s probably damaging his organs and other internal systems. She and I reached out to some folks we know about removing it, but it’s no good. There’s no way to extract it without killing him, and we won’t take that risk. We can’t.”

Jazz felt a twinge of relief at hearing it for herself. “So what else can you do?”

“There might be a way to render it inert,” he said. “Your Mom’s been looking into it, seeing if there’s some way to automatically negate the ectoplasm in his system.”

“And you?”

“I’m not an ecto biologist,” he chuckled. “But I’m also not convinced it is hurting him. He’s been eating a lot more since we stopped the decontamination sequences and he’s putting weight back on. I took him to the doctor’s this morning and they couldn’t find anything obviously wrong with his heart or lungs, though, uh, the core threw him for a loop when he heard it through the stethoscope. Everything points to him being fine, even if that seems like it should be impossible. And they’re doing blood work, too, even though Danny was pretty skittish about it. I know he’s scared of the GIW swooping in and taking him away if they think he’s not human anymore.”

“But I’m not going to let that happen,” said Dad as he smiled at her. “I’ve been talking to Vlad about seeing if there’s a way to strengthen the laws regarding ecto-contaminated humans to protect Danny since I know he’s got some connections with Congress. And I’ve asked him about his own contamination, too, since he’s the one we know that came close to the level of exposure that Dann-o’s had, even though his exposure was a high-level, brief event rather than an extended one.”

Jazz stared at her Dad in wonder as he talked. “You–even if he’s like part-ghost or something, you really don’t mind?”

“Of course not, Jazz,” he said. “He’s still Danny. I, uh . . . your Mom and I weren’t sure at first when he first came back, y’know.” He chuckled uncomfortably, rubbing the back of his neck. “I’m ashamed to say that we reacted pretty badly. I thought he was a shapeshifter or something, but even though I didn’t tell you, I didn’t . . . I didn’t think Danny could possibly be alive after so long. I thought for sure he was–that he was–” His voice cracked, tears brimming in his eyes that he hastily brushed aside. “I don’t want to lose him ever again. I’ll do whatever I can to keep him safe. So even if he’s changed and he’s got some ghost core and spooky powers now, I don’t care. He’s still my son.”

“And Mom?”

“She’s . . . she loves him, too, no matter what,” Dad said, maybe a little too quickly. “But her entire career says that what’s happening to him shouldn’t be possible even as it’s staring us in the face that it is. She’s struggling to accept that he might be okay like this, that it’s not killing him. And she still might be right about it, even if we’re not seeing any symptoms of something wrong yet. It’s–there’s just not a lot of information out there about this sort of thing.”

He fell silent as he picked up another screwdriver, continuing to put things back together as Jazz watched. It was good news for Danny, at least, that their Dad seemed more prepared to accept him than either of them believed would be possible. But Mom . . . as long as she was still stuck in seeing this as something bad, as something that needed to be fixed, they wouldn’t be in a position for Danny to tell her the truth. Somehow, she and her Dad needed to figure out a way to get through to her, and while Jazz wished she had more time, she knew that the weeks were passing by quickly, the days before Danny would need to return and leave them again for three months rapidly dwindling. Already it was beginning to feel like summer outside despite still being spring. 

“You okay, kiddo?” asked Dad, and she blinked, lost in thought. 

“I’m not a kid, Dad,” she deflected, rolling her eyes as he smiled at her, but he was too accustomed to her quirks to let it slide.

“You’ll always be my little girl, Jazzerincess,” he said as she tried not to groan at the nickname. “You seem a bit off lately, though. I know you and your Mom finally talked the other day after–well, y’know.”

“Yeah.”

“Missing school? Your friends?” he prompted, and Jazz jumped on the excuse. 

“I think so. I don’t regret taking the semester off since there was no way I would’ve been able to focus while Danny was missing, but it’s still hard,” she said, and there was some truth in that, at least, even if it wasn’t what was actually wrong with her right now. “And I’m starting to get bored, too. Danny doesn’t exactly want his big sister hanging around all the time.”

“Guess not, huh?” said Dad as he finished putting the inhibitor back together. “Well, this is the best this thing’s gonna get. Hopefully whatever reason caused it to not work at school was a one-time fluke. Do you want to bring it up to him? I think he’s in his room. I’m gonna give his teacher a call and let him know it should be working again, too. I don’t think being out of school the last week has been doing Danny any good.”

“Did they figure out who did the prank?”

“Not yet. They’re still looking into it, but I trust his teacher there, Mr. Lancer, to figure it out,” said Dad. “He cares about Danny a lot.”

“More like he feels guilty.”

“That, too,” her Dad chuckled as he handed the inhibitor over to her even though she never actually agreed, and she gave him a quick hug before heading upstairs to Danny’s bedroom. 

Jazz’s hand hovered in the air for a minute as she stood outside the door, bracing herself. She could feel a hint of cold already, a faint buzzing in the back of her head like a swarm of bees, and she gritted her teeth as she forced herself to knock. “Come in!” called Danny, and she pushed open the door, ignoring the awful chill, the anxiety that seemed to bubble just beneath the surface. He was sitting at his desk, working on an assignment, and as she stared at the letters she didn’t feel the faint headache or pain from the past few times she looked at ghost speech. “You okay?” 

“I, um . . . I can read this, now,” she said carefully, pointing to the sentence at the top of the page. It was notes from his English class, and she could see him cock an eyebrow at her skeptically as she picked it up. “You guys are reading Wuthering Heights? ”

Danny blinked, his mouth opening and closing, and she almost laughed even as the back of her neck prickled, static running along it. “Ye–yeah,” he stuttered. “How, um . . . how?”

“Vlad said it was seeing you that did it. When you–y’know,” she said, waving a hand, and then she shook her head. “But, um, that’s not why I’m here. Dad says the inhibitor should be working, so your mini-vacation from school is officially over.”

“Hooray,” he mumbled sarcastically as he took it from her, flipping it on, and she couldn’t help herself as her breath seemed to catch again, the chill and prickling unease vanishing. “It’s not like it matters.”

“Danny . . .” She paused, not sure what, exactly, she wanted to say. “Um . . . Dad’s–I think if you told him the truth, about you being Phantom . . . I think he would listen.” Danny froze, going impossibly still as his eyes stared blankly at the wall behind her. “I didn’t tell him anything,” she added quickly. “Just, we talked a few minutes ago and he seemed to think that you–that there isn’t anything wrong with you having a core or being more ghostly since you’re still you.”

“And Mom?”

“She’s worried,” said Jazz, hesitating just enough that she could tell Danny noticed. “But we need to find a way to talk to them about it before you leave again.” Danny said nothing as he took his assignment back from her and faced his desk again once more, his hand picking up the pencil. “Danny–”

“--I’m not stupid, Jazz,” he interrupted. “I know, okay? I just . . . I can’t think about it right now. Please.”

Jazz knew she ought to push it, but she felt a whisper of something as she stared at his back, a sense of disconnect, a reminder that this was not merely him but something other, and she shivered as the urge to flee overtook her. “Okay,” she agreed, proud of herself for keeping her voice from quaking, and she hurried out the door and downstairs. The library. She would go to the library, browse the stacks, and get a fancy cup of coffee from the cafe outside. She would feel warmth and light and connection, would get the reassurance she needed that the world wasn’t the dark void haunting her brain, and then she could come back and try to talk to Danny again, to help him tell their parents before it was too late. 

Everything was falling apart. 

It shouldn’t have been. His friends and sister finally knew the truth, or at least as much of the truth as they could ever know thanks to Vlad. Much as Danny snapped at him and called him more than a few less-than-friendly names, a not-so-small part of him was grateful that Vlad did, that he handled the conversation he couldn’t–or wouldn’t–allow himself to have. 

His Dad was ready to accept him, if Jazz was right, something Danny thought would be impossible. They didn’t need to know everything about him. They could learn about how he was Phantom, about him being Crowned, and he could remain vague about his responsibilities, about exactly what being the Ghost King entailed, and let their own imaginations fill in the blanks. Let them never peek beyond the curtain or know about his connection, his inhumanity, how far removed he was from merely being a half-ghost, half-human hybrid now. But something in his stomach squirmed at the idea, memories of his parents pointing weapons in his face bubbling up and making him want to vomit. 

And his Mom . . . she had taken another scan of his core, and then two more over the last few days, checking his blood work and ectoplasmic levels. He knew she wouldn’t try to remove it, had heard her and his Dad say as much already, and she mentioned looking for a way to make it inert, somehow. But it was clear to him that she was searching for a solution that didn’t exist. A way to make him human again, as if he were some silly enchanted prince that merely needed true love’s kiss to break the curse. But there was no kiss or kind gesture that would remove this spell, because while it might feel like a curse, it was a permanent part of him. There was no fixing it without destroying what little of him remained. 

He walked through school that day and kept mostly to himself, hugging his books tightly to his chest and not going anywhere near his locker. Danny doubted they would pull another prank, or at least the same kind of prank, but then again, the A-listers weren’t exactly known for their creativity and wit. Better to keep his distance, to just carry what he needed from class to class even if his overstuffed backpack made his shoulders and back ache despite his powers since they were mostly suppressed by the inhibitor on his wrist. 

Danny knew it wouldn’t keep his ghostliness at bay if he snapped again. His Dad worked hard on it, trying to solve a puzzle that he lacked all the pieces to, since there was no disconnecting Danny from something that was a part of his very essence, that was more powerful than mere electronic components and his parents’ hopes, but he smiled at him anyway, and thanked him for fixing it even as he knew how easily it might fail. 

He barely listened as Sam and Tucker chatted away during lunch, trying so hard to act normal and be normal for him as they talked about video games, movies, the new Humpty Dumpty album, but even they noticed how disconnected he was. There was so little time left. “You okay?” asked Tucker eventually, and it was only then that he realized that Sam asked him a question at least a minute ago that he never answered.

“I–sorry,” he mumbled as he pushed his food around on his tray. “Things just kind of feel off, I guess. I don’t know.”

“It’ll be okay, Danny,” promised Sam. “We’ll figure out a way to get back to normal, or at least, as close to normal as we’ve ever been.” She smiled, full of hope and expectations he couldn’t bear, but he forced himself to give a half-smile in return as he finished his lunch. 

He was supposed to do tutoring with Mr. Lancer today, but as the bell for his last class ended, Danny felt too exhausted, too worn out despite having been home for so many days last week. “Daniel,” he called as Danny tried to sneak out, and Danny closed his eyes, forcing out a breath as he turned. “We have an appointment, remember?”

“I–I know,” he said as he walked back over. But what was the point? All he was doing was getting his grades back up and for what? So he could still get held back a year when he missed summer school? So he could ultimately fail to graduate when he kept missing classes and continued to fall behind? Why was he even doing this again, continuing to deny his reality? He felt some odd mixture of anger and sadness bubbling within, his chest aching. He couldn’t–it wasn’t right. He shouldn’t keep taking up Mr. Lancer’s time when all of this was nothing more than another lie, a facade, an illusion of normalcy that would shatter as soon as the first day of summer came. 

“Daniel?” he repeated, frowning at him. “Is everything okay?”

No.

“No,” he said and Danny blinked, surprised at himself and the honest reply that came out when he fully intended to lie. But he couldn’t tell Mr. Lancer everything. He couldn’t begin to explain the truth to him, the impossibility of who and what he was, even as he was desperate to talk to someone. “I . . . I guess I don’t . . . I’m just wondering what the point is.” 

The words were quiet, barely a whisper, and for a moment he wasn’t sure Mr. Lancer heard him at all. “Daniel,” he said, “of course there’s a point. Your education is important, and my job is to help you and the other students here however I can.”

“But–but it’s a waste,” he said, his voice breaking, and he squeezed the books in his arms more tightly to try and keep from crying. “There’s––I’m not–I’m never going to graduate. I’m never going to finish school. So what’s the point?”

“Daniel, where is this coming from?” asked Mr. Lancer as he frowned at him, studying him closely. “You’re doing incredibly well with your work, despite everything that’s happened to you. I genuinely believe that you will be able to move onto your senior year with your peers, that–”

“--but I can’t,” he said. “I’m–I’m–” He tried to make himself say it, to put the words out there, to confess the truth to someone, to anyone, but they wouldn’t make it past the tip of his tongue, and he swallowed them, letting out the lie that tasted sickly sweet and sour as he forced it out instead. “I’m just burning myself out. I didn’t notice until I was suspended and had the chance to take a break. I want to do well, I really do, but I don’t know how long I can keep this pace up, especially since I’m going to have to do summer school.” 

Danny wanted him to push back on the lie, to realize what he was doing, but instead Mr. Lancer nodded, his expression softening. “I suppose that makes sense,” he admitted. “With everything going on right now, the pressure of doing well must be incredible. I know you don’t want to disappoint your parents or watch your peers move on without you.” It took everything in Danny not to choke out a bitter laugh or sob at the unintentional pun, to not make a joke about how the problem was that he had moved on without them, that there was no coming back or truly moving forward for him, not when he was dead. “If you need a break this week, it’s fine, Daniel. I don’t want you to burn yourself out, either. If there’s anything I can do to make it easier for you, please don’t hesitate to ask.”

“I–thanks. I–a break sounds great,” he whispered, and before he could accidentally blurt out something stupid, he hurried out of the classroom, knowing he would miss this session and the next, that he would keep making up excuses until Mr. Lancer finally stopped asking or until he was gone yet again. 

Tucker and Sam didn’t wait for him, assuming he was stuck in tutoring for the afternoon, and although he could have texted them he went home instead. FentonWorks was quiet when he finally arrived, the GAV and his sister’s car both gone, but he heard footsteps on the lab stairs as he went to the kitchen to find a snack. 

“Oh, good, you’re home,” said Mom as stepped halfway into the kitchen just as he grabbed a bag of chips from the cupboard. “Can you come downstairs with me? I had another test I wanted to run.”

“Can I eat something first?” he sighed. Much as he wanted to argue about doing it at all, he knew his Mom wouldn’t relent and that it was easier to get it over with instead of having yet another fight about it. And he was so, so tired of fighting with his family and friends. 

“It would be better if you didn’t,” she said, and Danny muttered under his breath as he left the bag on the counter and followed her down into the lab. “Have a seat on that table, okay?”

“Fine.” Climbing up onto it, he let his legs swing slowly back and forth, ignoring the pull of the portal nearby, the hum a constant even with the doors tightly shut. His mom was prepping a couple of syringes, one of them filled with a white, faintly glowing substance, and he swallowed, his heart skipping a beat. “What, um . . . what kind of test?”

“It’s a bit like a CT scan,” she explained. “So I’ll need to inject you with a radioactive isotope first that will allow me to get a better image of your internal structures.”

He felt himself relax a little, but he couldn’t ignore the twinge of unease, the sense that something was wrong, and it took him a minute to realize it was her. Her shoulders were tense, something about her energy both strangely calm and frantic as she walked over to him. “Let me see your arm, please,” she insisted. 

“Mom? You–are you–” he stuttered, feeling himself panicking, and she smiled at him. 

“Hon, I promise, you’ll be fine. I only want to help you feel better, okay?” she insisted, and he forced himself to breathe. He was being paranoid. She wasn’t–she wouldn’t. He knew she wouldn’t do something to him without at least asking or explaining it to him first, and he relaxed his arm, holding it out to her so she could inject the isotope. His arm felt strangely hot, warm and borderline unpleasant, and he watched as his Mom walked over and began to prepare an IV. 

“M–mom?” he stuttered, his tongue feeling heavy, his chest tight, a horrible thought crossing his mind. No. She wouldn’t. She couldn’t . “Please don’t do this,” he begged, the words slurring together as he felt himself growing weak, and he was barely aware of his body as he fell over onto the table, nearly slipping off and onto the floor instead. He reached out to his powers, to his core, trying to see if he could push back against whatever was pumping through his system, but he couldn’t grasp it, not with the inhibitor and whatever she injected with him slowing his responses, making his brain feel like it was made of mush.

“Please,” he whispered, his voice cracking, and his face felt hot, tears burning in his eyes. 

“I’m sorry, hon,” she said softly as she rolled him onto his back, taking a moment to brush a hair out of his face. “I know you’re scared, but I promise you’ll be okay once I get it out.”

“You–you–you can’t–”

“It’s okay,” she whispered, humming softly as she put the IV in, and at that point his eyelids were too heavy, his consciousness fading as he passed out. 

Chapter Text

She spent the entire week preparing. 

She made a point of sending Jack on an errand to Vlad’s today, asking him to have the man review some of Danny’s scans with him since soon it wouldn’t matter if anyone knew Danny might have had a ghostly core. Jazz confirmed she would be spending the evening in the library again and at the nearby cafe once it closed. Her daughter was frequenting both a lot in the last week or so, no doubt bored and anxious to resume her college courses. And since Danny had tutoring today, Maddie knew there was no chance of his friends coming home with him after school. He arrived back sooner than she expected, but she was still prepared nevertheless. If anything, it gave her more time to get this done before Jack returned. 

At first, she considered telling Danny what she intended, but she knew he would object. He didn’t–couldn’t, really–understand how his core was poisoning him, how deeply the corruption was settling into his systems and destroying his humanity. Jack already refused to entertain the idea of removing it at all after the GIW’s response, which was unfortunate. None of his proposed solutions made sense, none of them fixing the problem at its roots. Rendering Danny’s core inert might stop the displays of ghostliness, but it wouldn’t prevent it from producing ectoplasm in the long term, from continually poisoning his biological systems, or from creating a ghost upon his death. Maddie hated that Jack wasn’t here now, that she was forced to lie to him about what she intended to do. She liked it best when they worked as a team, the two of them so coordinated and in sync that it was as if they could read each other’s thoughts, and a procedure like this was incredibly risky to do alone. But her husband was stubborn, and she doubted that she would be able to convince him before they passed the point where it would be too late to save Danny. 

A not-so-small part of her whispered it was already too late to save him, but she pushed it aside as she set up the table, checking her instruments and ensuring she had all of her necessary supplies at the ready. She had a couple of scalpels, dissecting scissors, forceps, and clamps, all of which she thoroughly sterilized. She had a surgical gown, gloves, and hair cap, along with her goggles and mask and the special gloves she would need to remove his core, and her cell phone was tucked into her pocket just in case something went wrong. She wouldn’t hesitate to call an ambulance even if it ended with her spending the rest of her life in prison. Maddie would do whatever it took to save him. 

She also had her needles, syringes, and sutures at the ready, and she managed to get several pieces of equipment to monitor his heart rate, O2 stats, blood pressure, temperature, and other vital statistics while he was under. His most recent scans were there, too, along with an IV, a powerful anesthetic, and some pain medication. She was as prepared as she could possibly be, her hands surprisingly steady. It felt good to be doing something , to be taking the problem into her own hands, no longer hoping that someone else would produce a miracle for her when she had the power to fix it herself. Much as the thought of operating on her son pained her, she knew it needed to be done, and at this point, Maddie was the only person capable of fixing this for good. 

She hated lying to him when he came downstairs with her. She didn’t let him eat, worried about aspiration, though it might be an issue, anyway, since she couldn’t tell him not to have his lunch or breakfast today without tipping her hand. All she could do was hope it wouldn’t happen, though she had the tools necessary to try to fix it if needed, and her phone close by to call for help if it all went awry. 

The only moment she almost stopped was when she saw the look of absolute terror on his face, the quiver and quiet desperation in his voice as he pleaded with her not to go through with this after he realized what was happening. But like Jack, Danny didn’t understand that this was necessary, that he couldn’t survive like this for much longer, and she refused to let him die. Flashes of small creatures, half-formed with wispy ectoplasmic threads and glowing cores haunted her. She would not let Danny become a ghost, and she would not find herself in a position where she would be forced to ruthlessly hunt him down until the echo of his former self was put down for good. This needed to be done, and she would rather perform surgery on him against his will than watch him become a monster, even if he and Jack and Jazz never forgave her for it. 

He almost fell off the table when he finally passed out, hitting it with a hard thump, and Maddie carefully rolled him onto his back as she began to move through the steps she spent the last two days repeating on a loop in her head. She set up his IV, attached the monitoring equipment, and then cut away his t-shirt, delicately putting it to the side with a bit of regret, knowing it was one of her son’s favorites. But she needed to move quickly, and checking the sedative and numbing agent again, she studied his scans for a moment, confirming the positioning of his core before going back to make the incision.

Even with her newfound resolve, Maddie’s hand hovered with the scalpel for over a minute as she stared at his chest slowly rising and falling, her eyes locked on the spot she needed to make the first incision. “You can do this,” she whispered to herself, letting out a long breath, and then she pushed the blade in, making the first cut. She heard a faint whimper, and her hand froze as she looked up at her son. Even though it shouldn’t hurt, Danny winced, clearly in pain. Moving to the IV, she adjusted the medication on the drip, hoping it would be sufficient, and waited a few minutes before resuming. She spent all week reading up on appropriate dosages and levels and made sure to include a sedative intended for ecto-entities as well (even if her son wasn’t one, even if he would never be one). He should be completely unconscious, unable to feel anything she did. 

But as she went back to him, the fear that she was wrong, that she made some critical miscalculation made her hesitate, and she scowled. This wasn’t the moment to second guess herself. He needed her to do this. She needed to save him. She studied his scans for days and confirmed that his core was just a few millimeters beneath the surface. It should only require a few shallow cuts to reach it. She knew from the way it overlaid his sternum that it could not be entirely tangible, and she had specialized gloves ready to phase it out, removing whatever lock it had on him. The threads she saw that expanded outward from it were similarly a step out of phase with the rest of his body, and she should be able to pull it out like the roots of a weed from her garden. It was, from what she could see, entirely parasitic, flooding his system with ectoplasm as it pulled it in from the very air around him. If she didn’t remove it, then eventually, as his organs and internal systems shut down, it would fully establish itself as his core in truth as he died and became a ghost. 

She let out a long breath, mentally walking through the steps again, and then she pushed the scalpel back into his chest, finishing the original incision. She heard a whisper of static, of echoes as his mouth moved in his sleep and he let out a small, warbling cry. The words were nonsense, the ghost speech making her shiver as she looked at him. As far as she could tell, at least, he was still unconscious, his eyes closed. But as she pushed with the knife again, making the next cut, he whispered yet again, a clear plea for her to stop even as the words were indecipherable. 

“It’ll be okay, hon,” she insisted as she continued to make the small, necessary cuts, and at last she had opened him up enough to see his core. It was oddly beautiful, whispering and humming, and she realized only then that the ghost speech spoken by her son came not from his vocal cords but from the strange sphere that was nestled so perfectly within his chest instead. Cold blue light surrounded a sharp, white crystal, and glowing sapphire lines spread throughout his core like spiderwebs, the lines shifting to a violent emerald color as the tendrils extended out. Turning, she picked up her other set of gloves that she needed to use to extract his core, carefully putting them on as she did her best to keep everything as sterile as possible. 

But when she went back to Danny she saw his eyes open, faintly glowing and filled with tears. “Please,” he said, a hint of an echo there as he spoke. “Please. You can’t. I don’t–I don’t want it to hurt you. Please.”

“Danny, I have to do this,” she said, but her voice was cracking, her confidence dwindling as she walked over. She hated to see him cry, to see him so upset and scared of her even as she was doing this to protect him and save his life. He shouldn’t be conscious right now, shouldn’t be alert at all, but she was too far along to stop. “It’ll be over soon, I promise.”

“Please, Mom,” he begged. “I can’t–I don’t–please.” 

“Your organs will fail, the ectoplasm will–”

“--No, it won’t,” he said, and then he shifted, his eyes unfocused and strangely glassy. “Please. I can’t–We can’t–please–you can’t do this, you can’t hurt her, please–” 

The words were like a slap to the face. She shivered, though whether from her own nerves or from the temperature dropping in the lab, she wasn’t sure, but despite Danny having the inhibitor on, she could see the frost beginning to creep out from his fingertips, spreading across the table. She needed to finish this, now, before whatever ghost or specter was speaking through her son stopped her because the only thing she felt certain of was that this wasn’t merely Danny, that there was some other entity within him that needed to be exorcized before it was too late. She should have known, should have realized the truth sooner, and no doubt it wasn’t her son speaking to her now but the monster hiding within him, pretending to be Danny until it could finally destroy her and Jack for good in revenge for everything they did to exterminate the vile specters once and for all. 

Had it ever been Danny? Had he ever really, truly come home, or had he merely been manipulated like this all along against his will as the creature inside him laughed at how foolish she and Jack were to miss the obvious? But in a way, it was a relief, too. It meant this core wasn’t Danny, wasn’t controlled by his consciousness, wasn’t truly a part of him, and it made her more certain than ever that this was the correct course of action and that she could save him. She didn’t know how those monsters did it, how they managed to alter him and integrate this other ghost’s core so well with Danny’s biological systems, but she would not let them control him any longer. She would stop them, and Danny would be back, safe and whole and himself once more. 

Maddie activated the gloves, her fingers grasping at his core and pulling it slowly but surely from his chest as little tendrils began to wrap themselves around her hands and wrist, resisting and making every inch she pulled it free from him a fight, but she could not afford to lose. “Please,” it begged, sobbing through her son’s eyes. 

“I won’t fall for your tricks, ghost. You’re not my son. You’re not Danny,” she insisted confidently as she continued to pull, doing her best to try to tune it out, and finally, after what seemed an agonizingly long couple of minutes, she held it outside of his chest, most of it removed aside from the dozens of ectoplasmic threads that continued to cling to his body. It felt impossibly cold and alive in her hands, both incredibly heavy and light, and she allowed herself a small sense of relief, the first and most difficult part now complete. All she had to do was pull the remaining ectoplasmic threads, and then–and then–

Maddie froze as the portal doors suddenly opened.

It was impossible. The only way to open it was by pressing a finger on the genetic lock, and no one was anywhere near the control panel. Yet the swirling green of the Ghost Zone was unmistakable, casting the lab into an eerie light, and as she looked down at her son she saw his fingers outstretched towards it like a drowning man grasping towards the surface of the water in a last, desperate attempt to break free and save himself, his eyes swirling with a strange, odd energy before he looked back at her.

“Forgive me,” it whispered in a voice that wasn’t words, filling her up and echoing within her mind, and she wanted to vomit and sob and curl in on herself as it dug into her skin, making every part of her itch and burn and scream in misery. “But I cannot allow her to harm us.”

And it was as her mind was breaking, the core slipping from her fingers as the strange, glowing threads pulled it back towards his chest, that she realized it was apologizing not to her but to Danny, to her son, who she could almost make out within the impossibly ancient depths of his blue eyes that glowed with a brilliant light, mirroring his core, no, their core , he was a child of the Infinite Realms, born on the cusp of both worlds when the gateway was torn asunder, their heart, their essence, their . . .

She stumbled away and tumbled down, endlessly falling and falling until her knees slammed into the floor, static and a sound like ice cracking filling her mind, consuming her thoughts. She couldn’t–he wasn’t–he was–

. . .  Their core . . . 

. . . Her son . . .

. . . Danny was . . .

. . . He was . . .

. . . Danny . . .

Chapter Text

Vlad sat at the kitchen table with Jack, drumming his fingers against the wood. He hadn’t wanted to spend his afternoon with the man, but Maddie insisted, letting him know they were in need of his expertise and resources as they delved further into searching for a solution for Daniel. Much to Vlad’s dismay, he and Jack had spoken a few times over the last week or so since Vlad’s recovery, but while he knew no cure existed for Daniel’s condition, Vlad supposed it was in his best interests to indulge the incessant visits and phone calls if only to ensure that they would not do something rash. He wished it were Maddie calling and visiting him almost daily instead of Jack, but if suffering through Jack’s endless yammering was how he could keep Daniel safe, he supposed he could manage it. He had certainly endured far worse.

And though it might be a small silver lining, Jack was far less subtle and secretive than Maddie would have been, bumbling forward and speaking without a thought as he showed Vlad the various scans they performed, the consistent levels of ectoplasm in Daniel’s bloodstream, and their brief plan to remove Daniel’s core that they thankfully abandoned quite quickly in favor of pursuing some method to render it or the ectoplasm it generated inert once it interacted with Daniel’s system. Jack admitted that they reached out to the GIW for a consult, too, an undoubtedly foolish risk given the organization’s overzealous nature, but thankfully, they refused to help. At least some good finally came of the ecto contamination laws he managed to get passed, but the protections would need to be stronger now, especially if they were aware of Daniel’s core. He doubted they would let it stop them from getting their hands on the child for very long.

“Y’know, Vladdie, I missed this,” said Jack as Vlad took a sip of tea. While he knew he would struggle to get the man to leave now that he was here, at least the refreshments were better in his home. Dear Maddie did her best, of course, but it was hardly a match for what his own money and access could obtain, and making tea was never her strong suit as she preferred to drink heroic levels of coffee instead.

“Oh?”

“Us, working together on a problem, trying to fix it and . . .” he paused, rubbing the back of his neck as he chuckled nervously. “And feeling like we’re friends again. I know that after what happened with the proto-portal you–well, you know.” He waved a hand, unwilling to say the words out loud as Vlad cocked an eyebrow, surprised Jack had noticed at all. He always assumed Jack was oblivious to his anger, to his pain and rage at the treatment he received at Jack’s careless hands as the man nearly killed him and stole away the love of his life. “I guess what I’m saying is, I’m sorry, Vladdie. For hurting you. For not being there when you were in the hospital. You were my best friend. I never meant to do that, and I–it’s nice that it finally feels like you’re willing to give me another chance. Even though you’ve been back in our lives for a while now, it still felt like there was this gap between us until now.”

“Maybe that’s all anybody needs. A second chance,” mused Vlad. Did he, too, deserve a second chance? He didn’t care about reforging a friendship with Jack. But he wanted to try again, to make things right with Daniel if nothing else without the ulterior motive of pursuing Maddie. Not that he would refuse her affections, should she decide to finally see the truth that he and not Jack was the ideal match for her. “And I’m hardly perfect.”

“That’s right. You’d have to own the Packers to be perfect,” teased Jack, and Vlad turned his gaze away, his eyes flashing red for a moment as his rage overcame him. He knew the man intended it as a joke, of course, but it was a sore spot that he did not have the patience to see poked and prodded by the person he still fantasized about killing each night before he went to bed. 

Or most nights, at any rate. Lately, his thoughts were focused elsewhere, primarily on helping Daniel, which now that Jack was here, he might as well attempt to put his plan into place to cover for Daniel’s absence this summer. He doubted the boy would confess the truth to his parents at this point, and his friends probably hadn’t devised any sort of reasonable plan or explanation for Daniel’s trip back to the Infinite Realms, either. “You know, Jack,” he said, changing the subject, “I had an idea the other day that I wanted to run past you. I know that Daniel’s been struggling since his return. I have some private tutors out in Colorado that could work with him over the summer, and–and–” 

He stopped suddenly, dropping his tea cup as his core screamed in pain in his chest. Leaning forward, he couldn’t hide the agony he was in, barely able to keep from crying out,  and he could tell that something was wrong, that Daniel was–he was–

“--we need to go,” he gasped as Jack jumped to his feet. 

“Right, heart attack, eh? I’ll get you to the hospital faster than any ambulance, promise, just–”

“--not that!” he snapped as another ripple of pain went through him as Jack helped him to his feet. He hated Jack’s hands touching him, hated that he was stuck here in such a vulnerable position, hated what he suspected it meant. He should have known better . There was no way Maddie would simply accept her son being part ghost, no universe in which she would be content with merely rendering his core inert, much as it stung for him to admit it since he knew what that meant for him, too. Hopefully, the Fright Knight would move faster. “We need to get to your house. Now.”

Realistically, it would almost certainly be better if he teleported or sent off a clone, but he doubted that Jack would leave him alone or out of sight, his worry sliding off him like an over-anxious puppy. Vlad would watch for an opportunity to teleport if he could, but even then he doubted he would be able to make it. He felt weak, his core burning in his chest too much for him to focus, and he worried he might go terribly off course and end up further away from Daniel if he tried. 

“But–”

“--do you trust me?” Vlad hissed out through gritted teeth, and he heard something there, some hint of static that made Jack’s eyes widen in shock as he stared at him. He hadn’t intended to use ghost speech, hadn’t meant to let it infiltrate his speech, but it was so hard to concentrate as the universe itself screamed that he needed to hurry, to move before it was too late. 

“Vl–Vladdie?” whispered Jack. “You–do you–are you–?” 

Vlad rolled his eyes as the words stuttered out of Jack’s mouth. He wished not for the first time that the man was even a little smarter, that the one who won Maddie’s heart was a bit more competent so at least he didn’t have to constantly be reminded that he was outmaneuvered by an oblivious oaf. “Congratulations, Jack. You finally figured it out,” he said, unable to help the hint of venom in his words. “But that doesn’t matter right now. What matters is your son, and what your wife is doing to him.”

“What . . . Mads wouldn’t hurt Danny,” he said.

“I doubt she thinks she’s hurting him,” said Vlad, and thankfully Jack’s eyes widened in understanding as he turned, pulling Vlad rapidly to the door and pushing him into the GAV so hard he almost smashed his face on the console. The indignity of being Jack Fenton’s ally ( never friend, never again, no matter what the man believed, no matter what some tiny part of him whispered about second chances and forgiveness ) was unmatched, and he scowled as the man threw the GAV into gear and aggressively tore away from his estate. They barreled down the roads, red lights and stop signs irrelevant as he sped along and Vlad clung desperately to his seat.

“I should take your license,” he said, little hints of static and echoes still underlying his words, the sounds of glass breaking as his core continued to burn like a coal and sent little flares through his chest. 

“I don’t think you get that power as mayor, Vladdie,” chuckled Jack nervously, clearly worried even as he didn’t fully understand what was happening. 

“Then perhaps a warning system is in order for when you drive on the roads,” he said.

“Hah! Maybe Lance Thunder can add it to his weather reports,” said Jack as they tore around another corner, but his expression turned somber. “Vladdie . . . how–how do you know? About Danny and–?”

“There will be time for that later when it doesn’t take every ounce of my concentration to continue to speak,” Vlad grumbled. Quite frankly, he wasn’t entirely sure, either. A consequence of his pledge to protect Daniel? The Fright Knight insisted that the oaths carried more weight when made in the Infinite Realms, but did that extend to some odd, psychic link to Daniel? Or was Maddie’s intrusion so violating that any creature with even the faintest connection to the Infinite Realms felt it as if it were an earthquake with Daniel at its epicenter even if they did not quite understand what it meant? 

They pulled into the driveway outside FentonWorks, Vlad barely containing his disgust at the glaring sign overhead, but what worried him more was the burning pain in his core beginning to subside. He didn’t know what it meant, but something about the situation had changed, and he doubted it was good. Given that their world didn’t appear to be ending, he suspected he knew what it was, too. “Stay here, V-Man,” said Jack as he hopped out of the GAV, and scowling Vlad clambered out, his legs still a little shaky but steadier than they were before despite Jack’s appalling driving.

“Absolutely not,” said Vlad as he stubbornly followed him into the house. “If anyone needs to stay here, it’s you. You’ve no idea what we’re dealing with.”

“That’s not true! It’s my family, and it’s ghost-related which means I’m exactly the right person to–”

“You need to stay here,” insisted Vlad as they approached the door to the basement lab. He could feel something in the back of his mind, an itch that he could not scratch, digging and chipping away at what little of his sanity remained intact. There was no way he could explain it to Jack, but he knew that whatever was happening in the lab was not something the oaf should see. 

“I won’t leave my son and Mads alone down there while–”

“--Jack,” he interrupted, staring at him coolly, and then he sighed. “You said it yourself - we are friends, no?” He saw Jack flinch, even as the words felt like poison on his own tongue. “Please trust me. This isn’t a question, it’s not a choice. You are dealing with matters that you are woefully unprepared for and that you have only the barest hope of ever understanding. Your wife and son are both in danger–no, everyone is in danger–if we do not stop what is happening now. You need to stay up here, for your sake as well as your son and wife’s. You must not let anyone else down into the lab. Do you understand?”

“I–”

“--Do you understand?” he repeated, his words nearly slipping into ghost speech, and Jack’s eyes went wide, his mouth dropping open as he swallowed and nodded. “Good. And here I thought you weren’t capable of exhibiting  caution or self-restraint.”

Opening the door, he could feel the chill immediately, ice coating the stairs and walls. He reached to his core, releasing the heat, just enough to melt the thin sheet of ice beneath his steps. Water spilled and refroze as he walked downstairs, the air filled with cool mist, and he dreaded what he would find at the bottom of the stairs. That otherness, that sense of something off-kilter, of something impossibly ancient emanated from the basement, like a dragon dwelling in its den, making it clear that no one was welcome, but Vlad pressed on anyway. 

It wasn’t as if he had a choice. 

If Maddie succeeded, then not only Daniel but the Infinite Realms and every world connected to it would die, the balance permanently destroyed as the dimensions consumed each other. But he doubted she achieved her goal of removing Daniel’s core, and his stomach twisted in knots as he knew in his heart that Maddie’s mind was almost certainly broken.

Despite expecting the worst, however, Vlad was not prepared for what he saw when he finally made it down the stairs.

Sitting on the table, his brilliant blue eyes unfocused and glazed over was something that was Daniel yet very clearly not him, too. Faint wisps and tendrils of blue and green mist extended from every part of him, reaching into the corners of the lab and the portal, the doors opened wide as brilliant green ectoplasm swirled within it, casting the entire lab into an odd, ghoulish glow. Yet the worst of it was Daniel’s exposed core, hovering in front of his wounded chest, a brilliant shining sphere of ice and light and energy, of endless entropy and growth, that was both as small as a baseball and yet as large as the galaxy itself. It was pulsing, tendrils extending from it throughout his body, the old Lichtenberg figure on his left arm and chest filled with terrifying energy and light. The boy was barely substantial, translucent and pale and half-present in the basement despite how oppressive the air itself felt, weighed down by the heaviness of the ancient thing that remained connected to Daniel for eternity. 

If Vlad had not already seen Daniel and the Realms so deeply intertwined when Daniel fixed his portal, then he had no doubt he would slowly feel his mind crumbling now, destroying itself as it tried to comprehend the competing sensory input that slammed into every fiber of his being. For the first time, he was grateful for the days he spent incoherent, forced to dwell on what he saw that day and what it meant, since at least now he could focus as his own core hummed and pulsed in turn, illuminating his eyes that no doubt glowed with intense, red light. 

“Oh, dear boy, I’m so sorry,” he said as he carefully walked across the lab, noticing Daniel’s tears for the first time. They streamed down his face as he whispered something softly over and over again in ghost speech, and it was only when he was close that Vlad understood it. 

“I’m sorry.” 

He reached out a hand, gently gripping Daniel’s own in his, and as he did he finally spotted Maddie. She sat on the floor and wept silently, her hands over her mouth as she shook her head over and over, her eyes fixated on something he could not see. There was little to do for her now. He knew in an instant that she was destroyed by what happened here, likely damaged beyond repair. While Vlad wanted to comfort her, to hold her and help her and talk her through it to whatever extent he could, right now it was by far more important that he help Daniel regain control lest anyone else suffer for dear Maddie’s mistake.

“Daniel, you need to listen to me,” he said as he put his other hand on the boy’s shoulder, a feeling of something beneath his hand yet distinctly not, and he shuddered inwardly at the impossible contradiction. “I know what happened to you. I know that you’re afraid and I imagine that you didn’t want to do this, that this–what happened to your mother? Was an accident.”

“But if you let yourself continue to spiral this way, then you will destroy what family you have left,” he continued. “Your father is upstairs. He asked me to come here, to help you, to . . . to stop this. Suffice it to say I was a little too late, but please, Daniel. Let me help you now that I’m here.”

The boy looked over at him, his eyes still unseeing, filled with a mind that was not wholly his own, and Vlad felt some part of him breaking for a moment before biting his lip, focusing on the pain, the bittersweet, coppery and citrusy taste of his own blood and ectoplasm on his tongue. “We didn’t mean to,” Daniel said, his voice full of static and echoes, of noise that looped over itself endlessly into an impossible void. “We wanted to–she gave us no choice. She would hurt him–hurt us–hurt me–?” The words stuttered out, spitting and spiraling from him as he blinked for the first time since Vlad approached him. “We–he–did not want to connect. Did not want to harm her even to save us, to save them, to save everyone. He did not–but we knew–we must–he must–” 

The tears began to fall rapidly now. “We did not want to harm her,” he repeated, the Infinite Realms speaking with him and through him, here within the poor child who took on this burden that never should have been his to bear, and once again Vlad felt that guilt rise up within him. It shouldn’t have been Daniel who was forced to hurt his dear mother to save himself. 

It should have been Vlad. It always should have been him. 

“I’m sorry, dear boy,” he said, letting out a shuddering breath as he ran a finger through Daniel’s hair. “I’m sorry, Danny .” He emphasized the last word, Daniel’s preferred name that he never used, knowing how much his refusal to do so irked the child endlessly. And it was enough that Daniel blinked again, the glassiness slipping away, his presence still too large but shrinking or at least retreating back behind the veil of humanity it hid behind, a sense of him becoming increasingly solid beneath Vlad’s hand on his shoulder. 

“Vlad?” he whispered. 

“Don’t look down,” he said immediately. “You’re hurt rather badly. You’ll heal, but don’t look.”

“She tried to cut out my core,” he said, his hand going up to touch it, but Vlad grabbed it before his fingers could brush against it. He doubted Daniel could injure himself that way, that any harm could come to him, but he worried that it would bring back the Infinite Realms, that it would summon the ancient entity once more as Daniel spiraled into an endless cycle of guilt and doom. “I–it–”

“--protected you,” finished Vlad. “Protected all of us. If your mother succeeded, then it would not only have been you that was lost. It would have been all of us. Your mother, your father, your friends, and your sister . . . every person you care for and love would have been destroyed.”

“I know that, but I–she still–” His lip trembled as he shook his head, wiping away the tears as the odd lights and threads that seemed to fill the lab mostly vanished with a few exceptions, as if the Ghost Zone could not bear to completely lose touch with him after what happened. “Will she–she won’t be okay, will she?”

“I don’t know,” admitted Vlad. He wished he could tell the boy otherwise. That he could promise that she would survive and be whole with her mind intact, but as he glanced at her sitting on the floor, he sincerely doubted it would ever be possible. With a sigh he pulled off his suit jacket, wrapping it around the boy’s shoulders and doing his best to hide poor Daniel’s chest when he heard slow, uneasy footsteps on the stairs. 

Of course that fool could not stay up in the kitchen.

“Dann-o?” Daniel looked over Vlad's shoulder as he pulled the suit jacket more closely around himself, trying to hide what he could. “Are you–are you okay, son?”

Daniel opened his mouth to respond and then stopped, snapping it shut as he shook his head and wiped more tears from his eyes. “No. But Mom–she’s–I’m sorry.” He tucked his head into his legs, refusing to look at Jack as he curled in on himself, his body shaking as he sobbed. “I’m sorry.” 

Jack walked over slowly, his footsteps surprisingly light as he crossed the lab, and it was only then that Vlad remembered the ice that the man was no doubt trying not to slip on. The air felt thick, heavy with dread and fear, anxiety and grief, guilt and self-loathing. Vlad blinked, surprised at how clearly the emotions came across now to him, how easily he could read the boy’s mood. Though he noticed the odd atmospheric shifts before, they were muddled, hardly clear to him or easy to understand. 

The changes worried him. They were an unknown, a variable he did not account for, and he profoundly disliked such anomalies, knowing how easily they could disrupt his carefully laid plans. 

Jack put a hand on Daniel’s back, letting out a shaky breath as he spotted Maddie on the floor. “Oh, Mads,” he whispered, kneeling down in front of her and pushing her hair out of her face, her body still trembling and shaking. “It’ll be okay. Danny–he’s okay. It’s not–please, Mads. Look at me.” He touched her chin, trying to get her to meet his gaze, but she refused, stubbornly keeping her eyes locked away from him, staring at nothing that Vlad could see. “Please.”

There was a time when Vlad would have given anything to see his dear Maddie refuse Jack’s quiet entreaties, his attention, and his soft pleas, but he found the exchange dissatisfying, his own concerns more with the boy than the woman he once believed to be his single true love in this world and any other. Yet knowing how far she went with Daniel, trying to remove his core despite the refusal of the GIW to do the very same? No doubt she believed it would save him, cure him, and return the boy she lost to her, but instead all she did was destroy poor Daniel and herself. He could not imagine a way to come back from that, to return from such depths. 

That she didn’t know half of what Daniel was when she began, that she merely believed him to be contaminated, did not bode well for her ever accepting Vlad in any universe. Intuitively he knew that, of course, had always known it, but seeing it laid out so clearly was quite another matter.  

For a few minutes, Jack continued to whisper to Maddie, to try to get her to respond, but there was little to no change. “You may need to bring her out of the lab,” suggested Vlad eventually. “I doubt being here is helping.”

“I don’t think she’ll walk,” said Jack, “and I can’t carry her across the ice.”

“The . . . oh,” whispered Daniel as he stared at the floor, refusing to look at his mother. “I’m sorry. I didn’t–I–”

“--It’s not your fault, kiddo,” said Jack, though he could hear a hint of anger there, of frustration even if it wasn’t clear who he was angry at, his wife or his son or both. “But if you can melt it, I can take her out of here while Vlad helps you. I–I think he understands more about what you–about how your–about your ghost stuff than I do.”

Daniel nodded, and slowly the ice began to dissipate even as the air itself felt like ice cracking around them, too sharp and too cold. Jack stood up slowly, putting a hand on Daniel’s back, and then he pulled him into a tight hug, careful to avoid his chest even though he couldn’t possibly know the extent of Daniel’s injuries. “I’m sorry, son. I should’ve tried harder to stop her from doing this,” he whispered, his shoulders shaking as he began to cry. 

“It’s not–I should’ve told you both the truth,” said Daniel as he hugged him back with one arm, the other tightly clinging to the jacket to keep himself covered and his core protected. 

“Why would you when you knew what–with everything that we said about ghosts? Or after what we did when you came back?” said Jack. “I–listen, I know we can’t–that there’s no way to make this right. That you might not want . . .” He trailed off, biting his lip as he pulled away from Daniel. “All I can say is that I’m sorry, Danny. Whatever you want to do now, whatever you need, I–I understand, okay?”

“Okay,” he whispered as Jack picked up Maddie and carried her up the stairs, and as soon as his footsteps overhead faded Daniel looked over at Vlad. “You were right.”

“I often am. You’ll need to be more specific,” he said, and Daniel rolled his eyes even as he no doubt understood what Vlad was trying to do. 

“They can’t–they’ll never accept me. Never could,” said Daniel. “Nobody else understands what this–what I’m–” He stopped, shaking his head. “So congrats, Fruit Loop. I guess you win.”

“I’d rather wish I hadn’t,” admitted Vlad, “if this is what victory looks like. But why don’t you come back with me for now and get some rest? I suspect your presence here won’t help at the moment, at least not as far as your dear mother is concerned, and I can help reset your core properly if you trust me enough to do so.”

“I . . . I don’t think I have a choice,” said Danny bitterly, and he didn’t protest as Vlad picked him up, teleporting the boy away to his estate and leaving the gruesome scene behind even as the strange, faint tendrils from the portal seemed desperate to pull them back, not wanting to let the child go. 

Chapter Text

For the second time since Danny returned, Tucker found himself standing outside of Vlad Master’s mansion. The billionaire’s home was the last place he wanted to go, but if they wanted to see Danny, they had no other choice. Currently, Vlad had temporary custody of him while child services investigated the incident. It seemed likely that he would go home eventually, that his Dad would be cleared of any wrongdoing since his Mom clearly acted alone, and yet Tucker quietly wondered if it made sense for Danny to ever return to his former house.

He didn’t like Vlad, didn’t want the man to have more of a hold on his friend than he already did, yet he doubted that Danny would be able to ever feel comfortable in his home again after what his Mom did. And his Mom . . . they hadn’t seen her, but when they asked Jazz, her face had that hollowed-out look accompanied by a vague sense of dread and nausea. Maddie had seen something, peeked behind the curtain the same way that Vlad and Jazz had, yet the damage to her was by far worse. From all accounts, she was a shell, unspeaking and staring off as her mouth silently moved, tears occasionally streaming down her face. 

He seriously, seriously hoped Danny never had to see her again. 

The news spread through the school and town quickly. No interviews were given, and Vlad claimed a private, family doctor had treated Danny when asked. Mr. Fenton was oddly quiet, shoulders hunched as he curled in on himself, the image jarringly familiar, a perfect match to the silhouette of the man who eventually fell into a quiet state of despair as he realized that his son might never return home. He and Jazz refused to talk to any reporters, and both were staying in a hotel at the moment, unable to bear the sight of FentonWorks. The damage Danny’s Mom did was vast, the cracks spreading out rapidly and destroying what faint chance of normalcy Danny had left.

“We can’t make him stay, can we?” said Sam as they hovered outside the door. They hadn’t made it far into their plans to research a way to get Danny out of his responsibility and the requirement that he spend half of his foreseeable future in the Infinite Realms. Tucker never thought they would, to be fair, but he still wanted to try for their sake and Danny’s. But now? He couldn’t pretend that it was in Danny’s best interest to stay here, not after what happened to him.

“I don’t think so,” he said. “We don’t really have a way to make it happen, and I–who knows if he’ll want to stay here after–y’know.”

“Yeah.” She fell silent, rocking on the heels of her boots as they continued to stare at the door, neither one wanting to be the first to enter. They didn’t know what they would find, what Danny would be like. They hadn’t seen him since that fateful day at school, but his family all insisted he needed a little more time before he would be up for any visitors. A week felt like an eternity, passing by at a frustratingly slow crawl, and although they asked Tucker and Sam not to, they both sent Danny a half-dozen texts, hoping for a response, but Tucker wasn’t surprised when nothing came. 

He doubted Danny survived what happened without being permanently broken, too.

But they wanted to be here, to remind him that there were still people that loved him, that cared about him, that wanted him here. He worried that after what happened, that Danny–that he might not want to stay at all. That he might leave without a word, without looking back, without saying goodbye, and after living through that once, Tucker couldn’t bear to do it again. 

And with that thought he pushed himself to lift the knocker and bang on the door, sweat dripping down the back of his neck that was as much from nerves as the unnaturally warm, spring day. 

It was only a minute before the door swung open, and he expected Vlad to look at him with his usual disdain, but instead, he merely looked exhausted, impossibly worn out and out of sorts. “Here to visit me?” he teased lightly. “I’m sorry, but our last conversation was already–”

“--can you just not? For once?”

“I believe I already did ‘just not’ once,” said Vlad, referencing their last visit, but he let out a heavy sigh as he held open the door. “He’s upstairs. The second door on the left. I wouldn’t expect much of him if I were you.”

“Thanks,” said Tucker as he and Sam walked inside, and they were halfway up the stairs when Vlad called out to them.

“Oh, and children? The Fright Knight is with him. Please don’t be rude,” he insisted, and Tucker blanched, his knees buckling for a moment beneath him before he continued up the stairs. He didn’t want to go anywhere near the Fright Knight given the last time he saw the ghost it was when he kidnapped Danny, but–but if Danny was the Ghost King now, he guessed it made sense. The Fright Knight probably refused to leave his side after what happened with Danny’s Mom, and it felt like one more nail in the coffin, one more sign that there was no hope of Danny ever having any sort of normal life for himself again.

They stepped into the hallway and, after hesitating for a moment, this time it was Sam who forced herself to continue forward, pushing open the door without knocking. The room was nice, at least. A large canopy bed with plush red blankets and pillows, a beautifully carved wooden desk in the corner, and even a small sofa. The windows were massive, stretching almost from the floor to the ceiling, but there was no seeing outside them, the heavy curtains drawn tightly closed. Sitting on the bed with his knees tucked up to his chest was Danny, wearing a pair of dark sweatpants and a loose-fitting shirt, and as he shifted to look at them Tucker caught a glimpse of a scar near the collar of his shirt and swallowed. 

But what worried him the most was how normal the room felt. As far as he could tell, Danny wasn’t wearing the inhibitor, and given what happened he expected it to be like the bathroom that day so long ago, where the walls and ceiling were coated in ice, where the atmosphere practically suffocated him with its weight. The only chill came from the Fright Knight, who watched them in silence from his stance by the window, his sword drawn yet the point pushed gently into the carpet. 

“Hi, Danny,” said Sam, breaking the silence. “We . . . we wanted to check on you. Um . . . see how you were–well, I–” She stopped stuttering, glancing at Tucker for help. 

“We wanted to say hi,” said Tucker quickly, and Sam gave him a small, grateful smile. It was always weird to see her unsure of herself, but in this case, he wasn’t really surprised. There was no guidebook for how to talk to your friend after his Mom nearly killed him by trying to give him surgery against his will in his own basement. “Can we, um - do you mind if we sit?”

Danny merely stared at them, eventually giving a half-hearted shrug that Tucker took as a yes before sitting down on the bed with Sam beside him. They took off their shoes, leaving them beside the bed so they could sit with their legs crisscrossed and facing Danny. “So, um, the room is pretty nice, at least, given that the company seems less than great,” said Sam eventually, but he still didn’t respond. 

Well, if there was one thing Tucker excelled at, it was nervously babbling to fill an awkward silence, so he started to talk to Danny about school, about the A-Listers getting busted for pulling the prank with his locker, about how the petition had been taken down after what happened to him. He told him about Mr. Lancer asking after him once he heard what happened, even as he skirted around saying the actual words. Sam spoke up occasionally, adding in little details here and there, but although he could tell Danny was listening to them, he still wouldn’t respond, his expression terrifyingly empty. 

He thought before that he knew what a ghost was from years of ghost hunting with Danny, but as he sat there talking to his unresponsive friend, Tucker realized only then what people truly meant when they talked about ghosts. Never had Danny felt more disconnected, more removed, more a step outside of reality and barely present than he did now as he sat there without showing a flicker of emotion, and little by little Tucker began to wonder if their being here was helping at all. If there was a point, or if he might as well be standing at Danny’s empty grave, staring at a headstone and merely continuing to talk in a desperate bid to bring himself some sense of comfort and closure. 

There was an unnerving finality to it, a dread that filled him that he could not accept. “Danny, I–listen, I don’t–we don’t just want to sit here talking your ear off,” said Tucker. “We want to help you. Support you. Do whatever we can to–well, not make this right, I guess, since I don’t think that’s possible, but to be here for you to lean on if you want to talk. I know that–I can’t imagine what you’re going through. But you’re my best friend. I love you, man. Please. Just–just say something. Anything.” Danny blinked, his eyes meeting Tucker’s for a moment as he begged, and he hated how little of Danny he saw in his gaze, in the faint speckles of green that swirled with his blue irises. “Please?”

“There’s no point,” said Danny, his voice cracking slightly.

“No–no point?” repeated Sam, her fists clenching on her knees. “What do you mean there’s no point?! Of course, there is, Danny! We can–”

“--When I leave, I’m not coming back again,” he interrupted her, his gaze never wavering. “All I’ve done since I came back is hurt everyone I care about. And I–” For the first time there was a flicker of lights, a chilly bite in the air as a hint of static filled his words “--I can’t keep pretending to be human or like I fit in here. Like I’m not already dead. Everyone–everyone who said I didn’t belong here was right. I don’t. And I’m done pretending.”

“So what? You’re just going to give up?” snapped Sam, and Tucker reached a hand out, trying to get her to stop but she swatted it away. He knew this wouldn’t help Danny. No doubt on some level, Sam knew it, too. But that wasn’t the point. She wanted to scream, to lash out, to let the world know that what happened was unfair, that she wouldn’t accept it, and hope that if she yelled loudly enough then maybe it would be enough to reshape reality, to change it to what she wanted. But it wouldn’t. It couldn’t. Instead, she was just taking out her anger on her friend who was in no position to bear the brunt of it, who might only become more steadfast in his choice because of her reaction. “Do you have any idea what you put us through when you disappeared? How much that hurt us? Do you know what it was like to think you were dead, to think we would never see you again, and now after one–one, okay, admittedly incredibly seriously messed up moment , you’re just going to give up and leave? Just forget about the rest of us who do still love you and care about you and–and–and–ARGH! You are so unbelievably stupid, Danny Fenton!” 

She threw her arms up, hopped off the bed, and grabbed her boots without bothering to put them on as she stormed out, slamming the door as hard as she could and making Tucker flinch. 

“She’s not mad at you,” said Tucker. 

“Does it matter?” asked Danny. “It’s not like it changes anything.”

“I think whether or not it changes anything is up to you,” said Tucker as he sighed and moved to the end of the bed to put his shoes on, too, knowing that he wasn’t going to make any progress with Danny today, but then he paused. “I meant what I said before. Even though you’re not who I remember, even though you’re not really human anymore, I still care about you. Sam does, too. She wouldn’t be so angry if she didn’t.”

“I know.” And even though he said nothing more, Tucker could hear the unspoken sentiment there: but none of that matters anymore.

Crawling back over, Tucker bit his lip and then threw his arms around Danny, pulling him into a tight hug. He felt his friend flinch beneath him, only starting to relax after a few seconds passed, and there were tears in Tucker’s eyes that he did his best to hold back. “You–listen. You need to do whatever you need to do for yourself. I can’t–I won’t force you to stay if you don’t want to,” said Tucker. “But just know that no matter what, we’re here for you, okay? And we’ll be waiting and . . . and at least this time say goodbye? Please?”

He didn’t expect an answer as he pulled away from him, but he waited a few minutes for a response anyway, holding out hope that Danny would promise him that much. Eventually, though, he knew he needed to go find Sam and check in with her, too, so Tucker climbed off the bed and put his shoes back on. He was halfway to the door when Danny finally spoke so quietly he almost didn’t hear it. 

“Okay.”

The remaining weeks before his return passed by in a haze. 

Danny could not say when he finally forced himself to leave his room and make a half-step toward returning to some semblance of normalcy. Everything he did lately, he did on autopilot, from brushing his teeth to combing his hair to getting dressed and eating. The food tasted like nothing, empty and absent of any pleasant flavors, and he barely registered what Vlad was talking about as he sat at the table with him each day. 

And everywhere he went the Fright Knight followed closely behind. He learned after that apparently Vlad had sworn some sort of oath to protect him in the human realm, and that after what–after everything, the Fright Knight lost a bit of confidence in Vlad even as the man was the one to rescue him from that nightmare. But that bothered Danny less than the shift he could see in the older half-ghost, a sense that Vlad was now a half-step out of reality, too, even if he was oblivious to it. 

His Dad came by often, trying to talk to him, to explain gently that he knew everything now and that he was sorry he didn’t protect him, that he should have figured it out sooner, and a thousand other apologies that, despite Danny knowing they came from a place of genuine love and concern, felt like too little too late. And the tiny part of him that did find it in him to forgive his Dad was still too numb, buried beneath a shroud, beneath the part of Danny that said that no one, especially his Dad, should be begging for forgiveness from him when he was the one that ruined everything.

‘This was the best possible timeline.’ 

Danny scowled, showing a brief flicker of anger that sent the temperature around him plummeting as he remembered Clockwork’s words, his lie. There was no world in which what happened to him could be the best option. Danny refused to accept it, that there was any timeline where things could be worse, somehow, than what happened here. He hoped Clockwork would appear and try to defend himself, to prove it somehow, to let Danny scream at him until his throat was raw and the walls around him collapsed from the sound of his own ghostly wail, but of course, the old ghost knew better and remained out of sight. But maybe he was being selfish. Maybe his point was never that this was the best possible timeline for Danny but for everyone else instead, even as he struggled to believe that after what happened to his friends and family.

Jazz visited a few times, too, but he could see the fog there, the detachment. “Mom is, umm . . . she’ll be okay,” she lied as she placed a hand on Danny’s shoulder, and he could feel her shiver, her hint of fear and the crushing despair that lingered. No doubt she knew what he told Sam and Tucker about his plans.

No doubt some part of her was relieved , even if she would never admit it.

He couldn’t say when he finally went back to school. His body moved through the motions, his mind absent as he sat at his desk, the inhibitor on his wrist. He hated it, back then, but now it muted the voice in the back of his head, the whispering of the Realms as it begged for forgiveness he already granted it. Danny wanted to hate it. He wanted to never connect again, to hide away from it or let some ghost take his core from him and simply end it, but he knew that it did it to protect him, to save him and everyone else when he couldn’t bring himself to do it, couldn’t bring himself to hurt Mom.

And most of Danny longed for its embrace, for the detachment from himself and his reality, for the sense of home and comfort and protection it gave him when he was fully immersed within it and connected to it. He was tired of feeling numb, but he didn’t dare risk feeling anything else, not wanting to hurt anyone else before he returned. Once or twice he considered leaving sooner, just disappearing without a word to anyone. But he promised Tucker, however meekly, that he would say goodbye this time.

The other students ignored him. Sam and Tucker talked to him or tried to, at any rate, but he barely responded. And Mr. Lancer stopped him several times to speak with him while he went to his other classes, to offer his quiet support even as Danny refused it, over and over again. There was no point. There had never been a point to any of this. The only thing his return did was hurt everyone he cared about and create a wound that would never heal. 

So on the last day he would spend on this Earth, he sat at his desk doing his English final, the assignment more of an excuse to be here and say goodbye to his teacher. He pretended to struggle with it, typing out the answers slowly on his laptop as the other students finished their work, and when the bell rang they rushed out. Sam and Tucker paused, waiting for him, but he shook his head and mouthed a single word: 

Later.

They knew as well as he did what today was.

“Mr. Fenton,” said Mr. Lancer. “Please turn in your final.”

“I just submitted it,” said Danny as he closed up the laptop and packed his things away. “But, um, before I go, I–can I talk to you about something?”

“I–of course,” he said, blinking. No doubt he was surprised to hear more than a dozen words come out of Danny, but most days, Danny barely managed to find the energy to come to school, to continue to move through the shattered remains of his life, let alone talk to anyone. 

He let out a shaky breath, uncertain how to start for a moment before inspiration struck. “Do you, um . . . do you know the myth of Persephone?”

Another ripple of surprise, but Mr. Lancer nodded even as he clearly didn’t understand the reason for the question. “I–of course, Daniel. It’s an incredibly famous myth. But I–did you have a question about it?”

“Do you . . . do you think she ever wanted to just . . . stay?” he asked quietly, his fingers digging into the edges of his laptop, and he could hear the tremor in his voice. “That–that after being there and being changed by what happened, that she–that maybe it would have been better for everyone if she did?”

He stared at his shoes as he felt Mr. Lancer’s eyes on him, clearly trying to puzzle out what he was trying to say and to avoid giving his honest opinion about it and instead what he probably thought Danny wanted to hear. “Myths change over time,” he said eventually, “and are told and retold over generations, each one interpreting the story to fit whatever lesson or provide whatever comfort and support they need. I don’t doubt that there are versions where she wished to stay.” He paused as Danny’s eyes flicked up to him. “But I doubt there are anywhere it would be better if she did. Or if you did.”

“You don’t know that,” whispered Danny, letting go of any pretenses. “You don’t know what I–my Mom saw me. Really saw me. And it broke her.” And then, despite his best efforts, he felt the tears he pushed as far down as he could, that he locked away and hoped would never see the light of day begin to spill out, his shoulders starting to shake as he broke down into full body sobs. 

He didn’t know when Mr. Lancer stood up and put his arms around him, holding him tightly and telling him it would be okay, but he hugged him back, his fingers probably digging into Mr. Lancer too much as he continued to cry, needing the support, needing for everything to be right, to be okay, to be the best possible timeline that he was promised when he accepted this curse. 

How long he cried he didn’t know, but eventually he pulled away and leaned against one of the desks nearby, and Mr. Lancer joined him at a neighboring desk. “I figured it out, you know,” he said, and Danny blinked at him. “The connection. You and Phantom . . . I couldn’t believe it at first. But the way the world felt in your presence was the same. And once I figured that out, the rest of the pieces fell into place, even as I hoped it wasn’t true because of what it meant for you and how much you must have suffered these last few years, carrying a burden that never should have been yours to begin with. I’m so, so sorry Daniel. That I didn’t realize it sooner. That I couldn’t protect you from what happened. But I’m here now, ready to help you however I can if you’ll let me.”

“It isn’t–it’s more complicated than me just being Phantom,” said Danny quietly as the tears subsided and he wiped his face on his sleeve. “This isn’t–it’s not something that can be fixed with some tutoring.”

“Oh, I don’t doubt it. Things are rarely so simple,” said Mr. Lancer, and then he pressed his lips together. “I’m assuming based on your question about Greek mythology that you’re going to be leaving, then?” Danny nodded. “How soon?”

“Today.”

Mr. Lancer let out a small grunt. “I see. Well, I appreciate you saying farewell this time, at least. Are there tutors in the Ghost Zone?”

“I–what?”

“I know tutoring won’t fix all of your problems, but you’ll still need to keep up with your work while you’re gone,” he said. “At least if you want to graduate with your friends. We can come up with something to explain your absences, too. I suspect your current guardian, Mayor Masters, can help with that, assuming he’s aware of all this?” 

“But I–I’m not–”

“--Excellent,” he interrupted as if Danny said nothing. “I’ll send along the assignments I planned for the summer to him and gather what I can from your other teachers. I have no doubt you’ll figure it out. You’re a bright kid. Always have been. You’ve just been given too many responsibilities.”

Despite himself, Danny let out a small half-laugh, half-sob. “You’re not wrong.”

“I hope, you know,” said Mr. Lancer, “that when you return, you’ll tell me more about it.” And even though he wanted to argue, to insist he wouldn’t return, the words wouldn’t come. “Part of Persephone’s responsibility, after all, was to always return in the spring. The world was a lot darker without her in it, more hostile and cold and uncaring, and the only way for spring to return was for her to come back. And our world would be that way without you, Daniel, even if you can’t see that right now. So, please. Consider it, at least?”

And for the second time in as many weeks, he found himself making yet another promise he wasn’t sure he could keep. “Okay. I’ll think about it.”

His friends and family were waiting for him when he made it back to Vlad’s. He let the rings fall over him, shifting into Phantom with the Ring and Crown shining brilliantly, his cape billowing out behind him as he approached the portal and they said their farewells, as they hugged him despite the chill and cold that permeated the air, despite how inhuman and far removed he was from the boy who was taken so many months ago. With one final look, he turned back to the portal, reaching out, feeling the eddies and currents of ectoplasm delight at the contact and swirl around his fingers, and in the back of his mind, he heard a whisper as he and the Fright Knight stepped through and the portal closed behind them. 

Welcome home. 

Chapter Text

Vlad paced about the house, full of nervous energy as he waited. Daniel’s friends and family would be here soon, save for Maddie and Jasmine. Jasmine opted to stay at her college instead of making the long drive to Amity Park to wait, requesting that they call her if he did return, and she promised to talk to him on the phone and then come back next weekend on her break if he did. She mentioned that she swore to him that she would continue living her life even if he vanished again, yet as much as that was likely the truth, Vlad knew she also still struggled with the traces left behind from her brief encounter with Daniel’s true nature even now. Realistically, he knew that she also didn’t believe Daniel would come back after everything that happened, too. It was a fair assumption, much as Vlad hated to admit it. 

Maddie was still in a long-term care facility recovering, though little by little there were signs of someone there, of a light in the darkness that suggested that she might eventually pull through despite everything. Vlad did what he could to visit her discreetly, to speak to her and help her reconnect with herself, with reality, with humanity. It would take time, but as a man who spent over two decades plotting his revenge against Jack, he was nothing if not patient.

Except today.

The portals remained steadfastly shut while Daniel was gone, the world feeling dead and detached as the summer heat beat down upon the Earth and slowly gave way to fall. There was a loss there, an absence and a void he could not quite put into words, no doubt a result of his oath and strange connection to Daniel. They didn’t know for sure if Daniel would return to them. From what Daniel’s friends said, he had no intention of doing so, but they could not help themselves from hoping he would come back to them and this world despite everything that happened and how much they all failed him. 

It was early afternoon when Daniel’s friends and father finally arrived and went down to Vlad’s underground lab, getting comfortable as they pulled up seats around his portal. The one at FentonWorks had been fully decommissioned along with the lab, the basement surprisingly ordinary after being the center of the Fenton’s research for so long, and while Vlad expected Jack to fight it, the man quickly agreed, his desire for hunting ghosts vanishing as he dealt with the aftermath of learning the truth about his son and Vlad. So much of his time was now spent trying to help his wife recover, too, that it left little room to think about the ghosts. 

Vlad puttered mindlessly around the lab as he pretended to ignore the significance of the day, to act as if he didn’t care about whether or Daniel returned or not, and to merely act as if this was simply an ordinary afternoon despite the children and Jack sitting and quietly talking as they watched the gateway and anxiously waited. After pacing for far too long, Vlad tinkered with some of his inventions instead, taking them apart and rebuilding them before taking them apart again, and while Daniel’s friends didn’t seem to notice, eventually Jack did. 

When had the man become so observant?

“Can I help?” Jack asked as he sat down beside him at a lab bench, and Vlad scowled. “I didn’t bring any of my knitting or the cross stitch I started last week. I could use something to keep my hands busy, too. It helps me focus.”

“Very well. Try not to break anything with your ridiculously massive fingers,” muttered Vlad, and Jack merely chuckled as he picked up one of the devices and began slowly disassembling it. 

“Jazz said you wanted to kill me, y’know,” he said quietly, trying to keep his voice down as Daniel’s friends continued to talk on the other side of the lab, occasionally scrolling through their phones. 

“You should use the present tense for that,” said Vlad coolly. “I still want to kill you, after all.”

“I don’t believe you,” said Jack, and Vlad felt his eyes flash red for a moment, a brief spurt of anger and rage bubbling there at the audacity of Jack arguing with him about his own feelings. “Given what you are and the powers you have,  you could've killed me a hundred times in a hundred different ways, Vladdie. I know that now. But you didn’t.”

“Keep talking and we’ll see how quickly that changes,” he hissed, but Jack merely laughed at him again. 

“You won’t,” he insisted. “Danny would never forgive you. Neither would Mads, if she–when she eventually regains her senses.”

“You say that as if either of them would ever know anything about it or realize I’m the one responsible,” argued Vlad. “You’ve no idea how adept I am at covering my tracks.”

“You wouldn’t forgive yourself, either,” said Jack with a shrug as he took apart another piece. “You’re not a killer. You might not always be a good person, either, but killing folks is too far. Even for you.”

“And how would you know?” 

“Because you’re my best friend, V-Man, and I can’t imagine that basically dying after my mistake would make you willing to let anyone experience something that awful, too,” he said, popping off a screw and exposing some of the circuits inside, and then he grinned “Ooh, this design was pretty clever, y’know. Mads and I built something similar once but we had power supply issues with it.”

“I know.”

And, much to Vlad’s eternal annoyance, Jack laughed again . “Stole our design?”

“I stole nothing, I–”

“--it’s fine, Vladdie,” he said, clapping a hand on his shoulder and making Vlad shudder, but even he could not ignore the voice in the back of his head that reminded him of the friendship they once had, the closeness, and how much he found himself missing that at times. Jack wasn’t always the sharpest, but his flashes of inspiration and creativity were a rare sight to behold if Vlad was being entirely honest with himself, and he relentlessly supported Vlad throughout college, even as Vlad doubted himself. Perhaps it wasn’t too late to be something, even if that wasn’t friends, and as if reading his mind, Jack said, “Everyone deserves a second chance, right?”

“I suppose,” he huffed, and then Jack gave him a tight, sideways hug even as he protested and pushed back against him. He could see the teenagers watching them, their conversation stopping abruptly as they stared at the two of them, and he shriveled up on the outside even as internally he rejoiced. It would take time, but perhaps . . . perhaps he could find it in himself to forgive Jack. To try to rebuild their friendship. To give him the second chance that he himself never deserved, either. Both of them had made grave mistakes, or rather, all three of them had, though Maddie paid a far heavier price than either of them given her current state.

The hours ticked by, getting later and later, and the closer it grew to midnight the heavier the despair in the room grew, most of them falling silent as it became increasingly unlikely that Daniel would return. When the clock finally struck, disappointment hovered over them like a cloud. “Well, then,” he said, ever practical even as he knew he couldn’t completely disguise his own disappointment, “same time this December? Or would it be the first day of spring, you think?”

“I–” began Jack, but suddenly a green light filled the room as the portal behind them swirled, and even before he saw the boy he knew since Vlad could feel the oath that bound him to Daniel’s service responding to the child’s core on the other side of the portal. His eyes widened as he turned, and despite the connection to Daniel, despite knowing he was on the other side of the gateway, Vlad still held his breath, waiting for what felt like an eternity before a white boot came through first, and then a familiar head stuck its way out and looked around, eyes glowing an impossible blue. 

“Sorry I’m late,” he said, his voice echoing faintly, the tension and uneasiness in his shoulders clear as he walked through the portal, and though Vlad expected the Fright Knight to emerge behind him, the ghost never appeared. As if reading his mind, Daniel looked at Vlad, his face that of a boy forced to grow up too soon, exhausted and ancient and full of hard-earned wisdom and weighed down with by far too much responsibility. He hoped, if nothing else, that he could find a way to let Daniel be a child again while he was here, to experience the delights and trials of being a teenager, and to give him a brief respite from quite literally carrying all of existence on his back. “Fright Knight says you need to do better this time.”

“How fortunate for me,” Vlad said, even as he knew the words weren’t merely directed at him but all of them as his father and friends rushed him, throwing their arms around him and hugging him tightly. Despite having such incredible power, the boy was fragile, in need of protection, of love and acceptance and respect that they failed to give him after his initial return, yet despite how much they hurt him, Daniel still came back. It was more than they deserved, more than he could have hoped, and he could hear them sobbing as they held him, not wanting to ever let go again or to fail him the way they once did. 

And loathe as Vlad was to admit it, Jack was probably right to throw his own words from that horrible day back at him. Perhaps they all truly did deserve a second chance.