Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It all happened because of the accident, the one that he had caused. He was stupid, cocky, and everyone else paid the price for it. He did too much but not nearly enough and then stretched himself too thin until he was unable to take care of his human and ghost life. Looking back there were thousands of things he could have done, things he didn’t try at all, but that he could have. Would have. Should have.

What did he do? He ran. When things got really bad, he had decided to cheat. 

He wanted to say so many things. His head was a whole library of stuff he now realized that he was and would eternally be grateful for. An infinity of things he should have apologized for, a library that would forever remain unwritten, because it didn’t matter if he suddenly could wax poetry about his loved ones or how he could have done things differently. There was nobody around to hear him say those things anymore. 

Whether he wanted it or not, it simply didn’t matter anymore. He could redo a test. He could recover from an F – deserved or not. In hindsight it was easy to realize his errors and what he could have done better in order to succeed, but it was absolutely useless to him at the moment because he couldn’t get a redo or extra credit, the jarring red grade would stay forever on his permanent record just as he was going to stay in this butter biscuitted place! 

Just like he couldn’t take back the explosion, he was completely and utterly alone. Would Vlad even accept him now?  He didn’t manage to save his own mother, and she was pretty much the billionaire's object of obsession, or at least a pretty big part of it. The older halfa wanted to get back what he thought Jack had stolen from him. Danny had only become part of that equation when Vlad found out about his ghost powers. Only then did the man show any interest in him as well. The Froot Loop in him would have gotten rid of him as well if he hadn't realized Fenton and Phantom were one and the same, and yet… and yet he had protected him. Him! Vlad did not save himself. Instead, he had saved Danny. It made little sense. 

Back then his godfather was the only place he could reasonably go to. His only other relative was an aunt on his mother's side that lived miles and miles away in the middle of nowhere, practically another planet in the mind of a teenager, one that he wasn’t particularly interested in visiting. Vlad would be the only one to truly get it, and as much as he had despised the older halfa before, he was familiar at the very least. Familiarity was something he desperately needed. 

Danny had asked himself many times, would he be a useless accessory without the main piece of interest now? Would he matter at all to Vlad, or be cast aside to be alone and have to fend for himself? He wouldn’t take it personally if Vlad scorned him, his own obsession was centered on protecting and defending, the very thing he was obsessed over, was also something he failed at, in a way that wasn’t possible to fix. Danny had been a failure, so Danny had to go. Danny Fenton had to be remade, and from his ashes someone new could rise. 

Fortunately Vlad had taken him in without much of the usual spiel, and the older halfa shared his own experience with grief and working through sheer hopelessness, but even after finding another who we could share his grief with it wasn’t enough. It would never be enough. He would find himself thinking of them all the time, what kind of invention his parents would come up with, what kind of protest or cause Sam would sign them up for… if by this time, Tucker would have bought a new phone or tablet. If Jazz could have been there she would most certainly be helping him with her patented psycho-analyzing that he claimed he hated but never really did. What he would give to have his sister dig into his head one more time… 

Before, he would complain and try to avoid his sister's overbearing attitude, but now? He would have given up his own powers in order to have her there, helping him, being there for him, lifting that which weighed him down into the murky depths. How funny, how you only truly realize how much you valued and treasured something until you lost it forever with no hopes of ever getting it back.

He could try to avoid thinking about it as much as he wanted, but that didn't help him either. In his rather unique situation, he had to keep himself busy, yet working only worked so much. 

Digging his way through the homework and assignments that Vlad had all but ordered him to do in an attempt to homeschool his new ward, then exercising and practicing his ghost powers as much as he could have been a start, but not a good one. The only time he could let go and forget for a bit was during the many lectures about lab safety that the man had made him sit through. 

But despite his greatest efforts it was like trying to run away, before everything ultimately went to shit again, and it would catch up to him and bite down hard.

He could try and be the busiest halfa in existence but exhaustion would get to him sooner or later,  and then he would rest, and after that everything would come crashing down like a star collapsing itself into a black hole. He would become a supernova, and then fight a loosing battle against the void that had taken the place of his heart. Like a pit growing heavier and heavier with every day that came and went, his obsession about protecting and defending not only those he held dear, but also everyone around him, screamed for him to do something.
Save them. 

His obsession is what gave him drive and determination to keep going, to keep fighting, but what did he have to fight for after what happened? Who did he have left to save?

He failed them, and now every day it was like his core was bleeding out. It wasn’t physical pain but he wished it was, for as much as the portal accident had hurt, nothing came close to what was tearing him apart now. Ironically enough, half dying made him heal incredibly fast from whatever kind of damage he went through, but it didn’t work with grief. 

In the past his parents used to rave about how ghosts were basically emotionless, only capable of anger and greed like cartoonish monsters on Saturday morning TV. They said that they couldn’t truly feel pain and whenever they seemed to be hurt it was just a reflex, an in-built response that didn’t carry any of the actual weight that came with it. A memory, or at least what ghosts thought those emotions had felt like. 

And yet they couldn’t be more wrong. If anything, the fact that he had a core and an obsession to protect on top of that made the whole grieving process a thousand times harder. The pain wasn’t ever going to go away, and he was only reaching deeper and deeper levels of it. Trapped in his little box where Vlad stashed him in, safe and secure, alone and isolated, he never healed. Neither then, in the castle, nor now in his new private hell. 

Again and again remorse and regret would hit with no mercy at all and his mind got flooded with the same thoughts. What was the point of having ghost powers if he wasn’t able to save his friends? What was the point of having a core if it was making him feel twice the pain he was supposed to? If only there was a way to separate himself from his core, to temporarily process the loss on his own and just breathe without his ghostly obsession dragging him down like a block of cement all the way to the bottom of a deep frostbitten lake. 

If that was actually possible then Vlad would know. Vlad always knew. He didn't always know better, but he knew more, and to him that was enough. 

When he told the idea to his godfather, Vlad wasn’t exactly keen on it. In fact, he tried his best to dissuade him from trying it at all. Vlad truly understood better than anyone else what he was going through, he knew how it was to suffer through grief with both of his human and ghostly nature, but his grief had been a softer blow. When Vlad had grieved he still had a chance, unlike Danny. Death was a little more permanent than losing the love of your life to your former best friend, but who was he to judge after he got both of them killed?

Vlad didn’t think it was a good idea to split his godson into two halves. He made it clear they were two halves of a whole, and that it wasn’t exactly healthy or ethical to rip him apart even further. 

How ironic that that was the time he decided to actually think about morality. Where was the crazy obsessive Froot Loop when he needed him?

Daniel knew that Vlad was only trying to take care of his well-being and look out for him, and as cold as it was he didn’t have the energy to be decent enough to acknowledge said fact. He knew it was unfair to the older halfa, he was suffering as well and still put in effort to make things better for him. Now here he was, making unreasonable requests! But again, he didn’t have the heart to care anymore. He was haunted every single day by what happened and wasn’t that ironic in the most twisted way possible? He had found a possible way to find relief and then he couldn’t think of anything else ever since. A new obsession took over. Protecting others had become saving himself. Sam would have called him selfish. He hoped that would make her angry enough to return to him. 

The older halfa eventually relented and started to do research. Vlad spent days working out a theory of exactly how he was going to do that, and try as he might he still wasn't quite understanding how he and Daniel became halfas in the first place. Trying to temporarily reverse the process was going to result in a lot of coffee and sleepless nights, but his face said it all. Daniel was worth it. 

He started out by studying the Fenton ghost catcher which separated humans from ghosts that possessed them. An impressive object, but not what he was looking for. It could separate the mind and body, but not the soul. The split would still be tethered to the other half. His godson had admitted to using it before to separate himself in two, resulting in a human Danny that had a mullet and fun centered mindset and a ghost Danny with an even greater hero complex. The concept of that was a decent start, but it needed to be more than that. Vlad needed a completely clean split that wouldn’t destabilize or damage either side upon separation.

He experimented with introducing ectoplasm into plants until they incorporated into their own biology, something alive that breathed and made use of photosynthesis but that also started to metabolize and use ectoplasm in an almost seamless way. Daniel had suggested they use sausages for it, but Vlad had declined. He has seen what those can do, and his lab wasn't the Fenton's kitchen table. Once the hybridized halfa plants were stable he tried to separate them again, using a modified catcher design. Perfecting it took a bit of time and patience, but in the end he got it to work. He didn’t just pull out a ghostly blob of energy, but practically a mirror copy of the plant he had infected before. Vlad ended up with far too many Dionaea Muscipula in his lab and a satisfied warmth in his chest. 

The alive plant only showed minor traces of residual ectoplasm and showed no signs of wilting, the ghostly Venus flytrap also showed no signs of destabilizing, and sure it tried to eat his face but he correlated that more with his choice of choosing a considered “carnivore” plant as his test subject. Of course there would be some kinks to work out when accounting for a fully formed core and a human being instead of just a plant.

He tried to make progress as fast as possible but also without making errors and making the whole thing as safe as possible. He could not lose Daniel. He just could not, so he had to be extra careful. After succeeding in that, he streamlined the process and double checked things again just to be sure. 

Chapter Text

After all that hard work, Vlad walked his godson through the process again and again. Over and over. He made sure to explain how the procedure would go, and listed all the possible ramifications and consequences in excruciating detail to the teenager. As much as he had tried to make this safe, he knew it wasn't. Not entirely. After his godson had consented and accepted it all, Vlad started to prepare for the ghostly surgery with a heavy heart. If everything went right he would get two godsons, if only for a short while before he could safely fuse them together again. Vlad himself had no siblings, so he wasn't sure how Daniel might react to having what was essentially a twin out of nowhere. Maybe they would play catch on the field, taking advantage of the space and solitude to fly and let out steam? He could only hope that Fenton and Phantom would get along. 

But the thing was, even with Vlad being one of the best ghost scientists and the only one who understood halfa biology in the whole wide world, it was still a narrow field. He couldn’t share said knowledge with others – or more importantly learn from others. Getting peer reviews on any para-scientific text was already nearly impossible. Xenobiology? Fat chance, unless he revealed his secret to the world and he would rather die than risk both of them like that. 

The only ones who he could collaborate with were the Far Frozen, a group of benevolent ghostly yetis. Considering their rough backstory, Vlad was sure that the yetis wouldn’t agree with the procedure he was about to perform at all. They have always been more spiritual than scientific, which led to him and them clashing over the smallest things. With that being said, the fuchsia powered halfa still had no idea what was truly going to happen, he thought he did but that wasn’t the truth. Vlad wasn't all-knowing, no matter what Daniel believed. 

When he finally went to take out the young badger's ghost half it was still an experience he could not have prepared for. As much as he had studied in the last weeks there was still a big difference between doing it and revising theoretical calculations on a screen. Doing tests with ecto-plants and then actually doing the operation were like night and day.

It was something out of a nightmare, actually. 

The meticulously planned procedure turned into a scary ghost story to tell at campfires. The worst was that it wasn’t a freak accident this time. Vlad had known the risks. He had calculated them. He had gambled… and lost. 

Vlad had successfully separated Daniel's core from his body, but he had underestimated Phantom's stability and the psychological backlash a sudden separation would cause. He had only focused on making sure that Daniel – the human Daniel – would be safe and sane. He hadn't accounted for his ghost half to go rogue. Suddenly he held Frankenstein's monster, if not worse in his hands. 

Perhaps this was a sign to stop messing with the boundaries that separated life and death.

The ghost twin didn’t waste any time, and by using his own tech against him, he ripped Vlad's own ghostly core from him. Plasmius was out and disoriented, so much so that he barely had time to realize what his godson's ghostly half was planning to do. Although, in hindsight it was more of a kneejerk reaction, he supposed. Phantom tried to overshadow Plasmius and both of their unstable cores clashed, melded, fused. Then two became one, much to his horror. 

Daniel's ghostly twin was turning a suffocatingly pale green, and his hair erupted into a blaze of white fire. Red angry eyes and an expression of pure undiluted fury in his face, this new fusion looked like Daniel, but warped through a very messed up funhouse mirror.

Through his fury, the ghost never saw how Vlad used the last of his energy to teleport his human nephew to his own lair. Plasmius had given him one last spark just before being absorbed to make sure their boy would be out of harm's way. He would be safe until his human self had dealt with the mess that everything had become. Hopefully he would be able to contain the blazing spirit, to take control of the situation and then start putting this back together… With luck the situation would be safer to retrieve Daniel from his lair in due time.

Things did not get safer at all. If anything, the world went to hell. Dan – as the creature was calling himself – was hell-bent on destroying everything and everyone on his path, making the world experience the devastation, anger, and pain he was feeling a thousand fold.

Not that Daniel had any way to know that just yet. He was stuck in Vlad's ghostly lair and couldn’t get out because Plasmius was not exactly able to release him anymore. 

There was a door, but it was pretty fucking stupid door at that! Why? Because he couldn’t fricking open it! There wasn’t any kind of visible lock, much less a key, and no matter how many times he tried to open it by kicking it, the door simply wouldn’t budge. It wasn’t a question of strength or anything, he simply couldn’t get out without the owner of the lair letting him because of course Vlad would have made sure his lair would be private and secure. 

His frustration aside, he didn’t think that Vlad would really leave him trapped there. Even if so, there were probably other methods he could try, right? 

After getting more than frustrated dealing with a non-functional door, he tried to look around for anything that could help him escape. Vlad's lair was a lab, pristine yet strangely vintage in some ways. There were old blueprints stashed in a desk, and Daniel could see a small fridge nestled between a couch and shelves full of tools. Maybe he could use those?

His first idea was burning the door to a crisp. When that didn't work he went on to blast his way through it and apologize to Vlad later. When that failed too he reached out to fire an ecto-blast at it, but there was a little problem with that. He didn’t have his powers anymore. The last bits of energy he could produce made a few green sparks that couldn’t even light a campfire. The same went for any of his other powers. Trying to phase through the door only resulted in him getting a headache when he ran headfirst into the wall. 

He had wanted to get rid of his powers so much, to rip out his core, his second heart still pulsing and glowing right out of his chest – all so he could get some relief from his bottomless grief. When he actually managed to do just that, where did that leave him? The irony was almost as cruel as this timeline. 

After all this, he got stuck in a situation where having his powers would make getting out a piece of cake. Was it fate, or some ghost mocking him? Maybe both? Well if he learned anything after dealing with the effects of the non-lethal Fenton weapons and the Plasmius Maximus, it was how to be resourceful. At the very least, Daniel knew how to survive until he got his powers back. He just needed to wait until Vlad trapped his ghostly self in a thermos and got him out of the lair. 

How long could that realistically take? Vlad always liked to rub it in his face how he had over 20 years of experience with his ghost powers and technology! Hopefully it would be a breeze and things would go back to a semi normal – if dubiously strange – life within a week. He would just have to wait a bit, maybe explore where he was stuck, and keep calm. Deep down he had expected Vlad's ghost lair to look like a compact mansion or some kind of luxury spa where the billionaire would go to relax and throw himself a pity party after losing to him or failing at his latest nutty scheme, like a cartoon villain or something. 

Instead it was a fairly big lab with a small section that looked like an apartment where he could imagine the other halfa crashing. There was a bed that looked small compared to Plasmius's usual standard, but to an exhausted and scared teen it was like a small piece of paradise. The little freezer was full of all kinds of snacks, as well as some groceries. Daniel could use the equally tiny stove to make himself food while he waited. On the other side of the lair was a bathroom equipped with all basic necessities. All things considered, it was actually quite homely.

Maybe it wasn’t the most luxurious or comfiest of places, but it wasn’t that bad considering he was only going to be there for a short while. He took a bath to wash off the leftovers of his operation, heated up a deceptively good dehydrated food pack, took a shower, went to bed and fell into some blissful sleep, without nightmares to remind of the tragedy, nor dreams to torment him with people that weren’t there anymore. 

He woke up and surprise, surprise! He was still there… Huh his ghost self was more slippery than he thought it would be, but couldn’t Vlad just let him out already? Maybe he was just being over protective until he caught the… ectoplasmic scum, as his parents would call his ghost half. It did make him worry though. Vlad was human too, he knew that much, but even without his powers he could shoot a bazooka… Probably, even when he had super strength the big Fenton bazooka had a hell of a knock back. Hopefully this whole ordeal would blow over in a few days and he would be able to treat his time there like a forced vacation inside a lab to do crazy science experiments at best, and die of boredom at worst, which wasn’t all that bad of a possibility considering what he went through already.

The lair was a far cry from his godfather's castle. The building had the best of both worlds when it came down to it, old in the ways of architecture that made you stare and marvel at how everything was built, grand, beautiful, majestic, and imposing. 

But it was also new in every way that mattered, all kinds of amenities and comfort that money could buy and more had been installed into walls older than everyone Daniel knew combined. Ice cream machines of every flavor, personal bowling alleys, a mini water park that Daniel was pretty sure was bigger than most community pools, and even a whole theater with a collection of classic movies ranging from cherished picks like Titanic to every new movie that was considered good and a big hit. Vlad really had it all, and if he were honest with himself for a moment or two then Daniel had to admit that he has gotten used to it. He was missing the luxury lifestyle. He hadn't really been able to enjoy all of that given his emotional state. Before the split his mind had been in a sort of trance. He had been unable to do more than watch ink dry… in his better moments, but he didn’t feel that way anymore did he?

It hit him like a bag of bricks, sure he was still hurting and reeling from his loss but it didn’t feel like he was always right on the verge of being sucked in by an endless back hole anymore, it still hurt but he finally felt like he could breathe again. 

Sure every breath stung as if he'd swallowed acid and it made him cough, but he could breathe again and that was enough for now. Sure it took him having to give up his ghost powers, and getting stuck on the billionaire's lair in the first place, but at least he was feeling better. It was almost funny that he had to lose his ability to fly in order to feel lighter than he had felt in months. It was his unique brand of luck that all it took for him to feel a little better was losing his powers and getting stuck on a glorified box.

So he waited and did his best to distract himself in however way he could while he was stuck in baby-ghost-jail. Would his godfather get mad if he tried to recreate old experiments he never got to finish in chemistry class? At the very start when he got his powers he got into little accidents and stuff all the time, phasing in and out of the floor, floating at random times, being invisible and so on and so forth so he got banned from handling any kind of lab-equipment both at home and school. He wasn't a halfa anymore, so the phasing issues wouldn't be a problem anymore and Daniel had time. He had too much time – and he was bored already. 

The days passed and he tried out as many things as he could, but he always ended up leaving things unfinished in a constant state of boredom. However time continued to pass and it seemed like he was never going to get out of there. He became too restless to wait for Vlad to rescue him. Who knows? Maybe Vlad was in trouble and needed help? He was going to break out of this place one way or another. If his father had been there he would have totally approved of the idea. Not that Daniel realized he had been thinking of both Jack and Vlad then. 

At first he tried to improvise an ecto-blaster. The lair was filled to the brim with both ectoplasm and tech, and given how many weapons he had dismantled at home; how hard could it really be to build one from scratch? Of all of his parent’s creations the most straightforward one were their various models of ecto-guns. Even Daniel himself caused some minor and then not so minor explosions from time to time before he even had his powers. This time he just had to do it on purpose.