raaorqtpbpdy

[raaorqtpbpdy]

The Only Way Out is Through (2)

Vlad overshadows Jack as part of a diabolical plan to get rid of him and win Maddie's heart. Unfortunately, the plan goes awry when Vlad finds he can neither take control over Jack, nor leave.

For the prompts: Vlad's murderous plan for vengeance goes awry when he finds himself unable to stop possessing Jack's body. Jack is very much still alive and complaining about the "insufferable spook inhabiting his form". He's forced to live Jack's life until he can come up with a solution. IF he can... [from Balshumet], Vlad wishes his friendships could go back to the way they were in college, little does he know that Jack and Maddie have similar sentiments. [from @half-deadmagicperson], and Jack wants to save Vlad, but he'll have to face the harm he caused twenty years ago in order to accomplish this. [from @kuzann]

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Chapter 2: Forgive, but Never Forget (Chapter 1)

[Warning for past trauma, guilt and blame, and mentions of death]

Jack stared.

Before him, he saw the rotten specter who'd tried to possess him and gotten stuck... and he also saw his best friend, Vlad Masters. And he had no idea what to make of it.

"I... I don't understand," he said.

"Of course you wouldn't understand, you oaf," the Wisconsin Ghost sneered at him. "I can't stand to be near you for even another second."

Then, with a flourish of his cape, the ghost flew through the portal and was gone, leaving Jack alone with his friend and no less confused.

"Vlad, are you alright?" he asked. He reached out to his friend, only to have his hand slapped away.

"Don't touch me," Vlad said, though there was little bite to it.

He looked... sad. Sadder than Jack had ever seen him, and he was overcome with the desire to help, though he still hadn't the foggiest idea what he needed to help with.

"Vlad... what's going on?" he asked, trying and failing to put all the pieces together. It just didn't add up.

Had the Wisconsin Ghost possessed Vlad before coming to do the same to Jack? But... how would it have even done something like that? It was impossible. Still, Vlad would know better than Jack, he always did, so it probably would be best to ask.

"Did the Wisconsin Ghost overshadow you, too, Vlad?"

"I wasn't overshadowed by the Wisconsin Ghost," Vlad muttered darkly. "I am the Wisconsin Ghost. Or I was, anyway. Your device seems to have separated me from my ghost half, and now it has apparently abandoned me in its disgust. I hardly blame it for wanting to get away from you."

"I don't understand—"

"I told you, didn't I?" Vlad replied. "You killed me. I came to get revenge. It's as simple as that."

Jack shook his head, still as confused as when he'd first dispossessed himself of that ghost and seen Vlad standing there, if not more so. It certainly didn't seem like anything about this situation was at all simple. Actually, it seemed quite confusing. Most confusing of all, however, was that, even though Vlad's words should have sounded angry... he just sounded sad.

"Is... is something wrong, Vladdie?" Jack asked. "Are you alright?"

"Oh, I'm fine, why wouldn't I be? The man I once called friend betrayed me by stealing away the woman I love, sending me to an early grave in his incompetence, turning me into a half formed freak, neither truly human nor truly ghost, trapped me in his body for a week, and then split my two sides apart from each other, leaving me a broken man in every sense of the word."

Jack wasn't always the best at picking out sarcasm, but he didn't think Vlad was being genuine when he claimed he was fine. He actually sounded rather displeased and depressed about the whole thing. But Jack knew the cure for that.

"Come on, old chum," he said, grabbing Vlad by the arm despite his protests. "I'm taking you upstairs for some hot-chocolate and a warm blanket and we're going to talk this out."

Too bad Jack didn't know what to do about any of the rest of Vlad's problems. He didn't even know what Vlad was babbling about when he said half those things. Stealing away the woman he loved? Jack didn't know Vlad was dating anyone, or even crushing on anyone. And the only person Jack had dated since meeting Vlad was Maddie. By all accounts, it didn't make sense.

Once they got upstairs, Jack sat Vlad down on the sofa, grabbed a blanket from under the coffee table, and threw it over his friend's shoulders. It was a good blanket, thick, and warm, and soft. Jack knew because he'd knitted it himself, and he said as much. Then he told Vlad to stay put while he made some cocoa.

While Jack went through the familiar process of warming the milk, and mixing in the powder, and hunting down the marshmallows from wherever Maddie had hidden them this time, he tried to think over what Vlad had said before. There was something about a woman, and a half-formed... something, and a ghost? Or rather, not truly a ghost.

He felt like he was trying to put together a puzzle when he had only been given every other piece, and he'd gone and lost half the pieces he did have. It was, admittedly, rather frustrating, but Jack had done many puzzles with missing pieces—because he had a tendency to lose real puzzle pieces as much as metaphorical ones. He never gave up until he could see what the picture was, missing pieces or no.

When he returned to the living room with two cups of cocoa—he'd made one for himself while he was at it, just because—he saw Danny standing across from Vlad with an angry expression.

"I don't know what you're playing at, Vlad, but I want you out of here. Fly home. Now," he said in a low, growling tone.

"I would love to, Daniel, but alas... I don't have my powers." Vlad replied. "I won't be flying anywhere."

"What do you mean you don't have your powers?" Danny hissed. "You've been overshadowing my dad for like, a week, you're telling me you've lost your powers in the last ten minutes?"

"He used something called a 'ghost catcher' to separate us." Vlad shrugged.

Danny cringed hard. "Oh."

"Worked a bit too well, it seems. My ghost half flew off who knows where. I'm sure it'll come back for me when Jack's asleep."

"Fine, but I'm watching you, Vlad," Danny told him. "If you try anything funny, I'll dropkick you into the Ghost Zone and let you flail. Play nice with Dad, don't flirt with mom, and generally don't be such a fruit loop, or you're done here. Got it?"

"Loud and clear."

"Good."

With that, Danny turned around and left Vlad sighing behind him.

"What was that all about?" Jack asked as he entered the room, at last, two mugs of hot-cocoa in hand.

"You really have no listening comprehension, do you?" Vlad sighed, accepting a mug of cocoa, but not drinking it yet.

"Or maybe you haven't explained anything very well," Jack replied, starting to get a bit huffy.

Vlad couldn't put this all on him, when Vlad had just been saying things that didn't make any sense and expecting him to just know what they meant.

"Like that thing about me stealing the woman you love," Jack continued. "What's that all about? You never told me you were dating anyone. I didn't even know you liked anyone. And the only person I've dated since we met is Maddie, so how could I have stolen the woman you love?"

"Maddie is the woman I love, you utter buffoon," Vlad grumbled, then took a sip of his cocoa.

"Really?" Jack asked. "But... you never said anything. You never told me. How was I supposed to know?"

"I would have thought I was rather obvious about it."

"That's not fair," Jack replied. "With the number of times you've talked about how oblivious I am, it's not fair of you to assume I know things just because they're obvious. You know more than anyone how bad I am at noticing things. You're my best friend, if you liked Maddie, you should have told me."

"And what would you have done if I had? Hm?" Vlad asked. "Let me have her?"

"Well... no," Jack said obviously. "I couldn't do that. Maddie's a person, not something you can just have. If I knew you liked her too, we could have told her together and let her decide. At the very least I would have wanted us both to have a fair chance, instead of just making a move on my own. In fact, we can call her down now and ask her what decision she would have made."

"Really?" Vlad asked skeptically, raising an eyebrow. "And what happens if she says she would have chosen me?"

"Well... then maybe we can work something out," Jack said. "I'll always support Maddie a hundred percent, no matter what she chooses. And no hard feelings from either of us, whatever she says, right?"

"Very well."

Maddie was reading a book in bed when Jack went to get her, telling her Vlad was here and they had an important question to ask her. She grimaced.

"Something wrong?" Jack asked.

"No, nothing," she said, putting on a smile. "Oh, is that ghost still attached to you?"

"No, I used the ghost catcher to separate it, and it flew off into the Ghost Zone," Jack said. "Then Vlad showed up, which... still not sure how that happened, but I'm working on it."

"The ghost catcher!" Maddie put her palm to her forehead. "I can't believe I didn't think of that. I totally forgot we made a ghost catcher."

"Don't feel too bad. I forgot, too. Now come on, Vlad's waiting downstairs."

"Right...." Maddie got up and followed, but she was walking slower than usual.

When they got to the living room, she took a seat on the armchair and Jack sat next to Vlad and started to explain.

"Did you know V-man also had a crush on you in college?" Jack asked. He opened his mouth to continue his speech, but Maddie interrupted him.

"Yes, I knew," she said.

"You did?"

"It was obvious," she and Vlad said in unison.

As much as he loved them both, they sure knew how to make Jack feel stupid at times.

"You and Vlad were both ridiculously obvious about your crushes on me," she continued. "At the time, I wasn't sure if I liked either of you, or who I liked more, so I decided that whoever asked me out first, I would go with, and if it worked, it worked, and if it didn't, it didn't."

"So... what if we'd come to you at the same time to confess our feelings and asked you to choose?" Vlad asked. "What would you have done then? Who would you have chosen?"

Maddie's eyes widened in surprise. "I... I don't know."

"Humor us," Vlad insisted. "Imagine that that had been what happened."

"Well... I suppose there are two possibilities," Maddie said. "You were both very good friends, and I wouldn't want to alienate either one of you by favoring the other. Either, I would have turned you both down to avoid hurting one of you so much that I would have lost him. Or I would have proposed an experiment to go on one date with the both of you and see which one I liked better as a boyfriend and which I preferred as just a friend."

"You always were very scientifically minded," Vlad commented.

"If you'd done the experiment, who do you think you would have picked?" Jack asked. More curious about her thoughts than actually concerned about whether she loved him or Vlad more.

She sighed. "I don't know. I really don't. It would have depended entirely on how you both met the challenge. But I was young, and naïve in college. I'd never dated anyone before, and I didn't know what to look for to know if a relationship would last. What I would have done back then, with the knowledge and experience I had back then, it doesn't really matter now, in the present.

"Knowing what I know now, I know I chose the right guy back then, even if it was just coincidence, or luck... I'm sorry Vlad. You were a good friend then, and I wish our friendship hadn't fallen apart, but the way you are now... you're pushy, and controlling, and I couldn't be happy married to a man like that. I know you both love me, but Jack understands me, and supports me, and even though he's forgetful, he cares about me as a person, and doesn't just want me, like you seem to.

"I just... I just wish we could all be friends like we were before," she said. "Before the accident, before all the resentment, and the pain, and separation. Before you turned into such a creep," she tacked on. "I miss those days. But it's too bad we can't just ignore all the time that's passed, and everything that's happened."

"That would be nice, wouldn't it?" Vlad agreed miserably, then took another sip of his cocoa.

"Well why not?" Jack asked. "Why can't we just go back to the way things were between us in the old days?"

"Because you killed me!" Vlad snapped. "Because you were overeager, despite our warnings, and by your incompetence, made me spend two years in a hospital, suffering poor care and constant mistreatment in addition to extreme pain as the ecto-acne simultaneously killed and healed me.

"Did you know, That ectoplasm can do that? Kill someone and resurrect them at the same time? I found that out the hard way. Guess who else found that out the hard way, twenty years after I did?"

"Danny," Jack breathed out.

If the ghost really was somehow Vlad, like he'd claimed to be, then that thing he'd said about Jack killing his son and not even realizing it was starting to make sense.

"In the portal accident," he realized. Killed and resurrected at the same time.

"What?" Maddie asked.

Jack just shook his head. He couldn't explain now. He felt sick to his stomach. He couldn't even imagine how horrible something like that would be to experience. The way Vlad put it, it sounded like agony.

"Vlad... it was an accident," Jack said.

"That you caused."

"I never meant to—"

"But you did, didn't you," Vlad said. "You pressed that damned button and I didn't hear from you again for twenty years."

"We tried to visit you in the hospital, Vlad," Maddie said. "We tried so many times we were permanently banned from visitation there. They wouldn't let us see you because we weren't relatives. We didn't even know if you'd survived."

"And what about after?" Vlad asked. "After I left the hospital, I became a millionaire. I was all over the news. Why didn't you reach out then?"

"I tried!" Jack told him. "Your receptionist said she was told to screen all calls from me."

"You killed me," Vlad repeated. "Why the hell would I take your calls?!"

"He's only trying to say that we're not the only ones to blame for losing touch," Maddie intervened, leaning forward, though she didn't have the reach across the coffee table to put herself between them. "You shut us out because of your bitter resentment. How were we supposed to reach out to you when you put a wall between yourself and us?"

A wall. That was a perfect metaphor, Jack decided. Ever since they'd reconnected with Vlad, it had felt like there was a brick wall between them, as much as Jack tried to ignore it, and pretend it wasn't there, even he wasn't so oblivious that he didn't notice.

It felt like a Cask of Amontillado situation, except that Vlad was both the one who'd built the wall, and the one trapped behind it, isolated, stuck, and suffering. Jack had burst through many a wall, but he couldn't break down this one. He wanted to help his friend, to save him... he just didn't know how.

"I... I'm sorry, Vlad," Jack said.

It didn't feel like the right thing to say after everything, after what he'd done, intentionally or not. Especially now that he realized the true extent of the consequences of his poorly-thought-out actions. It wasn't strong enough to express his remorse, or tangible enough to fix the damage, but he'd realized, out of nowhere, that he'd never actually said it.

In all these years, he'd never actually apologized. Or, if he had, he didn't remember, which wasn't exactly unlikely. Still, it couldn't do any harm to say it again, if he had said it at all.

"I know I can be overzealous, and clumsy, and thoughtless," he continued. "I didn't choose to be like this, I don't do it on purpose, but I know I do it, and I'm sorry. I don't know what I can do to make it up to you, but say the word and I'll do it."

"You could give me Maddie—"

"No, he couldn't," Maddie cut in sharply. "I am not something that can be kept or given away. I thought I already made myself clear about all this."

"Worth a shot."

"Wasn't," she scowled.

"I can't do that," Jack said. "But I will try to do better. Jazz is always suggesting things I can do to help with my forgetfulness, and I never remember to try them, but I'll work with her to start doing that. I'll find ways to stop me being so impulsive. And I'll try to think more. You're always getting on my about how I don't think enough."

"That'll be a real challenge for you," Vlad replied.

"I know," Jack replied with a short laugh. "But I'm willing to do it. Whatever else you are, dead, alive, even a ghost—you're my best friend. And I hurt you, and I want to make amends. If you'll let me."

Vlad looked down his nose at Jack, and sipped his cocoa once more. Jack realized he hadn't even touched his own drink during all this. It was probably lukewarm by now.

"I'll consider it," he said finally. Then he put his drink back down on the table and added, tersely, "It's late, you should go to bed. I'm sure I'll be gone in the morning. I'd like to be left alone for a while... to think."

"Of course," Maddie said. "Come on, Jack, let's leave him be. I'm sure we've bothered him more than enough for one evening."

She stood, and took Jack by the hand to lead him upstairs to their room.

"So... what exactly happened?" she asked once they were alone in their bedroom and Jack was changing into his pajamas. "Why was Vlad doing here? And what happened to the ghost that tried to overshadow you and got stuck? And what did you mean about Danny and his accident with the portal?"

"Slow down, Maddie, I can only answer one question at a time," Jack replied. "I'll start with Vlad and the ghost. Vlad was the ghost."

"What?"

"When he said the ecto-acne killed him and brought him back at the same time..." Jack trailed off to swallow back the discomfort at that mental image. "I think it made him a ghost... but also not a ghost?"

"What, like... a half-ghost?" Maddie asked, he eyebrows furrowed in confusion.

Jack imagined he must look like that pretty often. Confused, that is. He knew he didn't look anything like his wife.

"I guess so," he agreed. "When I used the ghost catcher to get rid of the ghost possessing me, it separated me from him, but it also separated Vlad's human self from his ghost self. That's what he said, anyway. Then his ghost self said he couldn't stand to look at me and flew into the portal."

"Rude."

"What do you expect from a—uh..."

Jack had been about to say 'what do you expect from a ghost', but he reconsidered when he remembered who he was talking about. We half-ghosts completely different from regular ghosts? Or were he and Maddie completely wrong about ghosts altogether.

"He was just upset," he said instead. "I think he'd been poking around in my memories, and he saw some things that upset him. He confronted me about my brother."

"I didn't know you had a brother," his wife said.

"I don't anymore," he looked down at the floor and tried not to recall to much and upset himself. "His name was Johnny, but he died falling through ice when we were kids. I... I was supposed to be watching him at the time, but I got distracted."

"Oh, Jack..."

"It was a long time ago," Jack said before she could try to comfort him and only made him linger on the guilt he still felt. "We all made mistakes that day. I should have learned from mine, and not let anyone else get hurt because of my negligence, but I guess I didn't learn well enough."

"How old were you?" she asked gently.

"I was ten," he replied. "Johnny was seven."

"I'm sorry."

He shook his head. It wasn't something he liked remembering, let alone talking about.

"You had other questions," he said, redirecting the subject back to what they'd been talking about before. "I'm sorry, I can't remember what they were...."

"Oh, Danny," Maddie said. "You said something about Danny when Vlad was telling us about what happened to him. And his accident with the portal?"

"Right... I think Vlad was trying to tell me that Danny was like him. Half ghost, I mean," Jack explained. "He told me I'd killed Danny, before I knew it was him. And then he said that thing about ectoplasm and—"

"Someone else found out the hard way, twenty years after he did..." Maddie realized. "Oh, Danny."

"Should we say something to him?" he asked.

She shook her head, although he wasn't sure if she actually meant 'no', or if she was just thinking.

"Why wouldn't he tell us?" she asked.

"Maybe... for the same reason as Vlad?" Jack guessed. "Maybe he blames us for what happened."

"Do you think so? Or maybe... maybe he doesn't feel safe telling us?"

"What?"

"We're ghost hunters," Maddie reminded him. "What if he's worried that our feelings for him might change if we knew he was a ghost."

"Oh no... what should we do?"

"I think... we should let him come to us when he's ready," she said. "Can you imagine how scared he might be if we brought it up to him now? We should wait for him to feel comfortable telling us, and in the meantime we can have some fun reexamining all the research we've ever done on ghosts in order to draw new, differently biased conclusions so Danny doesn't think we think he's evil just because he's half ghost. If he's half-ghost."

"And if he's not, we can reexamine our research so Vlad doesn't think we think he's evil," Jack enthused. "Should we start tonight?"

If reexamining their research and studying ghosts even more carefully than before was the worst thing that came out of this whole situation, than they really were on easy street.

"No, let's start tomorrow," Maddie suggested. "I don't think we should bother Vlad any more for tonight, and no offense, sweetie, but I don't think you'll be able to sneak past him to the lab without being noticed."

"I am pretty hard to miss."

"So come to bed for now, Jack," she said, patting his side of the bed invitingly. "A good night's sleep is a good start."

"Right you are, Maddie!"

He climbed into bed, and the two of them fell asleep cuddled up in each other's arms.

—

That night, Vlad paced the lab, waiting for his ghost half to decide to come get him. Lousy, good-for-nothing spook, leaving him behind. He'd examined the ghost catcher, and discovered that, for whatever reason, one of the sides separated people from ghosts, and the other side merged the two. Why it would be designed that way, Vlad couldn't fathom, but it was certainly convenient.

While he waited, blanket still hung round his shoulders because it really was quite comfortable, he considered all the things he'd learned, both from Jack's memories, and from the conversation he'd had with his two old friends upstairs.

They missed the old days as much as he did. All three of them wanted their friendship to go back to how it had been. But they all knew now why it couldn't.

Perhaps... perhaps that didn't mean they could never be friends again, even if it could never be like back in college. Perhaps it wasn't too late to forgive and move on.

Finally, Vlad's ghost half returned, as expected. They weren't meant to be separate, after all.

"There you are," Vlad said. "Come now, we can use the device that separated us to merge us back together."

"Good," Plasmius replied. "I scared the butler half to death when he saw me."

Together, they went through the merge side of the ghost catcher.

It wasn't as seamless as Vlad would have hoped. It seemed his ghost half had taken much of his anger with him when they'd been separated, and having it back made him less willing to forgive.

But the reflection stayed with him to. The sting of Maddie telling him off for being possessive and controlling, of both her and Jack pointing out that he wasn't treating her like a person, but a prize. Was he really that awful? He'd never thought of her that way before he'd developed feelings for her.

Perhaps it would be better to just let those feelings go, after all. She'd made her decision, and she didn't regret it, or want anything other than she got. Maybe he should cut his losses and give up before it further ruined a good friendship on the verge of rekindling.

Perhaps he should forgive Jack, too.

He would never be able to forget what had gone down between them. For years he'd tried to erase those bad memories from his head, of his accident, and his long hospital stay, and his slow and painful death. He'd even gone so far as to get plastic surgery to remove the pitted scars all over his skin, but even though he couldn't see them, he couldn't forget them either.

Jack was giving him a second chance, even though he'd tried to kill him, and steal away his wife and children, and even though he was a ghost, the very thing Jack hated most in the world. Perhaps Vlad could extend the oaf the same courtesy... for old times' sake.

There was much to consider as he flew, whole again, through the Ghost Zone to his own portal, and his home.

#dp #danny fenton #danny phantom #jack Fenton #vlad masters #vlad plasmius #maddie fenton #angst #amends #college trio #dp college buddies #fic #things i wrote #phic phight #phic phight 24

[raaorqtpbpdy]

The Only Way Out is Through (1)

Vlad overshadows Jack as part of a diabolical plan to get rid of him and win Maddie's heart. Unfortunately, the plan goes awry when Vlad finds he can neither take control over Jack, nor leave.

For the prompts: Vlad's murderous plan for vengeance goes awry when he finds himself unable to stop possessing Jack's body. Jack is very much still alive and complaining about the "insufferable spook inhabiting his form". He's forced to live Jack's life until he can come up with a solution. IF he can... [from Balshumet], Vlad wishes his friendships could go back to the way they were in college, little does he know that Jack and Maddie have similar sentiments. [from @half-deadmagicperson], and Jack wants to save Vlad, but he'll have to face the harm he caused twenty years ago in order to accomplish this. [from @kuzann]

Read also on AO3

Chapter 1: Resent and Remember (Chapter 2)

[Warnings for on-page accidental death of a minor character, childhood trauma and implied child abuse, medical trauma and hospitals, and mental invasion]

The plan was simple: overshadow Jack's body, divorce Maddie, and leave her single, heartbroken, and in the ideal position for Vlad to swoop in, kill her idiot ex-husband, and win her undying love. It was genius! He couldn't believe he hadn't thought of it before.

There was just one tiny problem he hadn't accounted for.

Jack Fenton's inexplicably indomitable will.

Not only was he unable to force Jack to divorce Maddie, but now, he couldn't even escape. Somehow he'd managed to get stuck possessing the big oaf, and he wasn't even in control. He was just there, unable to do anything and unable to leave, while young Daniel laughed at him when no one was looking, and Jack griped and complained, about the "insufferable spook inhabiting his form."

If nothing else, at least having Vlad in his head improved the dolt's vocabulary.

Until he came up with a solution—if he could come up with a solution at all—he was forced to live Jack's life. When he finally, fully realized the situation he not found himself in, the wave of disgust that tore through him was so intense it had rippled through Jack's body as well and caused him to dry-heave in revulsion. If he couldn't get out, or take control, then at least Jack could feel his suffering.

That night, there was a brief, shining moment where Vlad thought this situation might have a silver lining after all—until Maddie made it abundantly clear that she would not be having sex with her husband when he was sharing his body with some strange ghost, which... ouch.

So Vlad didn't get any silver linings. He got to float around in the massive, overgrown body of a hair-brained, ghost-obsessed moron for an indeterminate amount of time until he either escaped, or one of them died.

Ancients, was Jack tall.

Vlad thought he was pretty tall at a respectable six feet even, but Jack was easily a foot taller than that, and had always dwarfed Vlad's own height, ever since their college days. The fact that he was this big, and this dumb, and had never been on a football team was a testament to his unrivaled ineptitude and clumsiness.

This was so boring.

Somehow, Vlad had never realized how much time Jack spent knitting. Actually, the fool was rather adept at the fiber-craft. His fingers were quick, and stitches smooth and even. It seemed he possessed at least one skill, after all.

He had been thinking and scheming for three days at this point, and was no closer to getting out of here. He spent most of his time critiquing and insulting Jack's every action, which was fun, but even that got old after a while. Well... no, not really, but he couldn't spend all his time bullying Jack if he actually wanted to leave.

Jack and Maddie had also been working on find a way for Jack to dispossess himself of the ghost, but had yet to get anywhere. Having him where a specter-deflector had just zapped them both, and all the other various gadgets and inventions they tried only weakened Vlad, leaving him even more thoroughly stuck than before. It was demoralizing to say the least.

After a while, when Vlad shook himself out of a momentary hypnosis, induced by watching Jack's knitting, he decided that he desperately needed to find something else to do. Unfortunately, finding something to do when he was confined within someone else's body without any control over their actions was... difficult to say the least.

After a while, however, he realized that in his current position gave him the ability to root around in Jack's brain as much as he wanted—not that he really wanted to, but he figured there might be some tiny morsel of useful information, perhaps an explanation in the dunce's memory for why he was able to take control when he was overshadowed.

This was Jack, of course, so it was perfectly likely that he was simply immune to mind-control because there wasn't enough mind in there to control. Whatever the case, Vlad figured he could got through all of Jack's memories and the entire contents of his brain in an afternoon at most. At least he would be occupied for that afternoon.

The first memory he found was of Jack as a boy.

Quite contrary to his own desires, Vlad found himself rather intrigued by this. As long as he'd known the man, Jack had never spoken about his childhood.

The calendar on the wall showed May, 1970, meaning the Jack standing before him would have been 8 years old. He was dragging a blanket behind him, and rubbing sleep out of his eyes.

"Why'd you wake us up, Dad?" he asked.

Behind him, a second boy came out of a room further down the hall and yawned. This one looked a little younger than Jack.

"Jackie, Johnny, pack up everything you can and get in the car," his father ordered.

"Why?" asked the other boy, who must've been Johnny.

Jack had never mentioned having a brother. Vlad certainly would have remembered another family member he could have leveraged against Jack in his machinations. With a deep frown, Vlad wondered why.

"There's no time for questions, Johnny. Pack your things," the man ordered again. "We have to leave tonight."

Johnny went back to his room, but Jack stayed for a moment and looked at his father with a deep frown.

"I'm not gonna fight," his dad said, his tone firm, and stone cold. "I won't fight some losing war halfway across the world when I've got you and your brother to take care of, but we have to go, Jackie. So pack your bags."

Jack went into his room.

The memory faded out.

Ah, so he'd been drafted. 1970... so that would be Vietnam then. Jack's father was a draft dodger. There didn't seem to be a wife in the picture, so that was probably why. Single father, not willing to leave his sons in the care of whatever family member would take them in his absence.

What a coward. Vlad's own father had been brave and a patriot. He'd fought and died in Vietnam... leaving his wife and son alone. A pang of emotion wracked through Vlad's chest. But he would never admit that deep down... he wished that his father had cared enough to stay, as Jack's had, despite the consequences.

"You alright, Dad?"

For a moment, Vlad thought he was in another memory, but then he realized that the voice had come from outside. From Jasmine.

"Oh, I'm alright Jazzy-pants," Jack replied, perking up instantly. "I just felt real sad all of a sudden. Must be that wily ghost overstaying his welcome."

Vlad scoffed. He said that like Vlad was sticking around on purpose. With an eye-roll, Vlad moved on to the next closest memory.

This one was from college, and Vlad was in it, though he didn't really remember it.

Jack, Maddie, and himself at nineteen, were all sitting in the science classroom they'd gotten permission to use for paranormal research club. The three of them were sitting at one of the laboratory work benches, as they often did, with Vlad and Maddie on one side, and Jack and all his bulk on the other. Rather than equations and formulas however, they appeared to be working on some kind of art project.

"I'm telling ya, Vladdie, if we want more members, our sign needs to be flashy! It needs to draw people's eyes right to it!"

"And I'm telling you, Jack," college Vlad retorted, "No one will take us seriously if our recruitment table is covered in glitter-glue."

The two of them argued back and forth about the importance of drawing attention vs. the importance of a clean presentation before they finally turned and asked in unison: "What do you think, Maddie?"

Maddie hummed and pursed her lips in thought. She used to wear hot pink lipstick back then. It was both cute, and very in-style at the time.

"You both make compelling points..." she replied consideringly. "Maybe glitter isn't the way to go but... I bet my roommate would let me borrow some shiny silver paint!"

Maddie's roommate was a biology major, but liked to paint as a hobby.

"That's not a bad idea," Vlad agreed. "It would add some flair without making us look tacky."

"And it would give our display a sciencey, futuristic feel," Jack added.

"Then we're in agreement," Maddie said, smiling brightly.

She leaned over the workbench and wrote 'shiny silver paint' on the list of supplies they would need. Vlad remembered this now. Sophomore year. The three of them were getting ready for Club Day, when all the school clubs would get a table in the field to advertise and get new members. At the time, the three of them were the only members of the club.

They had gotten exactly one more sign-up on Club Day. Vlad didn't remember his name. He'd never shown up to a single club meeting, and they took his name off the club register after two months of no-shows. Their presentation, however, had looked spectacular.

The three of them had spent for days working together on all the various pieces. Maddie had done the lettering, Vlad the paint, and Jack the paper cut-outs, and they'd picked out their most interesting looking experiments—none of them had been functional at that point, but they looked very cool. A lot of people had come over to check out their table—most had left the moment they realized what the club actually was.

Believing in the existence of the paranormal was out of vogue in 1981 Wisconsin, not like in 2005 Amity Park, and they'd all been very unpopular, but they'd had each other, and that had been plenty good enough.

Truth be told, Vlad missed those days. Before the accident had split them up, they'd actually been friends. He'd even liked Jack well enough back then, before his incompetence put him in the hospital and neither he nor Maddie had even bothered to visit him. They were too busy canoodling in the honeymoon phase of their new relationship while he was slowly wasting away all alone.

The next memory came without Vlad even looking for it.

"Why can't we see him!?" Jack demanded, sounding angrier than Vlad had ever seen him before.

"Sir, only family members are allowed visitation to the urgent care ward," said the woman at the administration desk.

They were at a hospital... the hospital where Vlad had spent his long, agonizing stay with ecto-acne. They... they'd come to visit him.

"We are his family!" Jack insisted. "We're all he's got. You'd make us leave him to go through all this alone?"

"If you don't leave, I'll be forced to call security," the woman at the desk said firmly.

"Please, if you won't let us in to see him, at least let him know we were here," Maddie all but begged. "He's our friend, and his mother just died last year. He has no one else."

Jack tried to force his way through, but two security guards blocked his path and managed to strong arm him out the door, even though he was nearly twice the size of either of them. Maddie followed, pleading with them to let Jack go and be reasonable.

"It's not fair!" Jack screamed. "You can't make us leave when Vladdie's stuck here! You can't make us leave him all alone!"

"Don't come back here," one of the security guards said gruffly. "If you do, you'll be ejected immediately."

"But—" Maddie started to argue.

"You too, miss," the guard said. "This is a hospital. It's not the place for you to be shouting and causing a scene. The people here are distressed enough."

The security guards stood blocking to doors, waiting for the two of them to leave, and didn't respond to any of their arguments or complaints except to ask them sternly to move alone before they called the police.

They'd come to visit him. They'd tried. They just hadn't been allowed in.

And Vlad... he didn't know how to feel about that. For so long, one of his main complaints had been that they abandoned him, and now he was seeing that they hadn't done it on purpose. That they'd tried to visit him, and stay connected, but they'd been turned away. And it... it didn't fix anything.

He'd still died.

Jack was still at fault.

And Vlad... Vlad still missed his friend, and still couldn't bring himself to forgive him.

"I wonder what's wrong," Vlad heard Jack's voice say.

He worried that he'd just ended up in another distressing, confusing memory until he realized again, that the sound had come from outside.

"What do you mean, Dad?" Jasmine asked.

"I just got sad again," Jack said. "I wonder what that awful spook is thinking about that's making me feel like this."

Jasmine smirked pointedly. "You're not starting to feel sympathy for a ghost, are you?"

"Sympathy? Never!" Jack refuted, turning up his nose. "It was just curiosity, that's all. And annoyance, because it's annoying, and I don't want it hanging around in my body anymore.

"Sure, Dad." She looked back to her book with a smug expression. "Whatever you say."

Vlad turned back to all the memories he still had yet to explore and wondered if it was worth it. Surely he could look at another memory from Jack's childhood without it forcibly bringing up unpleasant memories of his own.

This one, appeared to be in some sort of small cabin in the woods somewhere. Vlad couldn't tell how old Jack was by looking at him, and there was no calendar in the room by which to calculate it. He was about the same height as Vlad, though, so he was probably in high school at this point, fifteen or sixteen, and deftly skinning a rabbit in the tiny kitchen.

Vlad turned at the sound of a door opening, and Saw Jack's father come in, looking older and much more grizzled.

"Good news from the passersby on the road, son," the man said, grinning. "War's over."

"Really?" Jack asked. At the sound of his voice, Vlad was forced to revise his estimate of the boy's age. He couldn't have been more than fourteen if he sounded like that, probably even younger. If the Vietnam War had just ended, then this would be 1975, putting Jack at twelve or thirteen. "Does that mean we can move back into town?"

"Sure does," his father confirmed. "And you can finally go back to school again. I'll enroll you in high school in the fall. You've missed a few grades, but you're a smart boy, I'm sure you'll puzzle it out."

"That's great, Dad!" Jack replied, grinning that signature Jack Fenton grin. "I'm so excited!"

It was a brief, but happy memory. Although, Vlad couldn't help but notice that Jack's younger brother wasn't in it.

It also explained some things. If Jack hadn't gone to school from the ages of 8 to 13, and then skipped right into high school and college, then it wasn't any wonder why he could design and build advanced technology, but struggled with basic concepts like fractions and long division. Or why he could create a chemical compound that drastically weakened ghosts, but didn't know the difference between a metaphor and a simile.

That certainly didn't make his ignorance less pathetic or embarrassing, but it did explain it.

What that memory did not explain was what had happened to his brother.

He searched for a while, but couldn't find any memory that looked, at a glance, like it could explain. Interestingly, he didn't see Vlad's memory of the day of the proto-portal experiment—though, in fairness, he wasn't actually looking for that one, only noticing that he didn't see it. Frustrated, he called out to Jack, figuring he might just be dumb enough to answer without asking any questions.

"Jack, what happened to your younger brother?" he asked. "I can't find anything about it in here."

In the corner of his eye, Vlad saw another memory shake loose, poking out from a hidden corner he hadn't noticed.

"Poking around in my head, are you, spook?" Jack sneered. "That's none of your business."

Vlad felt something yank on his cape and he suddenly found himself far away from Jack's memories. That big ape had shut him out!

No matter, Vlad would wait until he forgot, as Jack tended to do, and he would find his way back to 'poke around' some more. He was curious now. So sue him. It wasn't as if there was really anything else to do at the moment.

He watched Jack knit some more for a while until he thought he had forgotten all about Vlad prying into his memory, and then attempted to find his way back into Jack's mind.

This time, when he got back there, he knew where to look for the memory he was most curious about. He found it, in that hidden away corner of Jack's mind that he hadn't seen before, and went in to take a look.

He found himself in the woods, and it was snowing ever-so softly. Jack and his brother were playing in a snowbank near a frozen lake. They appeared to be having a good time. They'd built a pair of snowmen that appeared to be holding stick swords and fighting each other, their tiny twig eyebrows angled in anger. It was rather cute.

"I'm gonna make a snow fort," Jack declared. "Then we can have a real snowball fight."

"I don't want to have a snowball fight," Johnny replied. "I want to go skating!"

But Jack had already started digging his fort. Typical Jack. Once he got focused in on something, he became completely unaware of his surroundings.

While he dug, his brother harrumphed and started toward the frozen lake. He didn't have ice-skates, but that, apparently, wasn't going to stop him. He skidded about four or five feet across, then stumbled. When he fell forward, the ice cracked beneath him. He didn't have time to scream or shout for help before he fell through.

Jack didn't seem to hear the ice breaking. He kept working on his fort until he was done, and then he looked up, trying to see where his brother had gone.

"Johnny! It's done!" he called out. "Let's have our snowball fight now!" He looked around again, but his brother was, of course, nowhere in sight. "Johnny!"

He ran frantically through the snow, searching the treeline until he caught sight of the lake and stared, utterly horrified, at the hole in the ice.

"Oh no..." he said. "Oh no oh no oh no no no."He ran over and, from the edge of the lake, he looked in, trying to see if his brother was there. "I gotta get Dad!"

Vlad's eyebrows shot up, surprised. If something like this had happened to him, he would never have even considered going to his father. His first thought would probably have been about how he could gaslight his father into believing Vlad had never had a brother to begin with.

Jack ran through the snow.

"I was supposed to watch him," he muttered. "I was supposed to keep him off the ice. Dad said not to take my eyes off him."

Though he was loath to feel sorry for Jack of all people, Vlad felt his heart sink. He told himself Jack should have known better, that he should have been more responsible, and paid more attention. Jack's ineptitude had killed his brother just as it would later kill Vlad. As panicked and horrified as it obviously made him, he hadn't even learned his lesson.

"Dad!" Jack shouted, slamming open the door to their small cabin. "Dad! Come quick! Johnny fell through the ice! I can't get to him."

"What?" his Dad shouted.

He tore off the apron he was wearing, put on his boots so quickly he forgot to tie them, and grabbed his coat on the way out the door.

The two of them searched the lake for hours, and Jack apparently remembered every single one in great detail, watching his father break this ice with a sledgehammer and drag the lake with a net until they found the limp, frozen body of Johnny.

Jack cried the whole time, silently, as he diligently helped his father search.

"I'm... I'm so sorry, Dad," he sniffled. "This is all my fault. You told me to... to watch him, and I got di... distracted and lost sight of him."

His father shook his head. "No, Jack," he said. "I told both of you not to go on the ice, and Johnny didn't listen. You're only ten. I shouldn't have put that responsibility on you. I should have gone out with you both or not let you go out at all."

"But dad, I promised," Jack insisted, his tears freezing on his cheeks. "I promised I would look after him and I—"

"I shouldn't have let you," his dad refuted. "My parents made me to look after my younger siblings from the time I was six years old. I knew it would unfair to have a kid loo after another kid, but I... I forgot. As much as I try not to be like they were, sometimes I fall back into old habits, and that's on me.

"We all made mistakes today, Jackie," his father continued. "You and I..." he trailed off, choking back tears. "We have the chance to learn from ours." He did not remind his son that Johnny didn't, Vlad noticed.

The memory jumped ahead to Jack and his father building a pyre out of wood and cremating Johnny together. The bonfire melting the snow in a huge circle around it, and thawing the ground below, so when there was nothing but ashes and bones left, the two had a place to bury them where the ground wasn't too frozen to dig.

The memory continued, showing Jack lying awake that night, unable to sleep through his father's wails of grief and mourning. Then... finally... the memory faded.

Vlad got no relief from that sad sight, though, because no sooner was it gone, then another memory took its place. This one, however, Vlad recognized.

It was the inside of the lab room they used for paranormal research club in college, and the proto-portal was fully assembled and sitting on one of the laboratory workbenches ready to be tested.

College Vlad was leaning over it, his face inches from it.

"I'm telling you, Jack, it won't work," he said calmly, completely unaware of what was about to happen to him.

"No," Vlad muttered. "Please no. Any memory but this one."

"Bogus, V-man, it totally will!" Jack said. "This proto-portal is guaranteed to bust open the wall into the ghost dimension."

Vlad tried to grab his past self and move him out of the way, but he couldn't touch anything in a memory. He shouted at them to stop this, to wait, but they couldn't hear him.

"Jack, these calculations aren't right," Maddie said, but Jack didn't seem to hear her either.

Jack was always overeager and impulsive in his excitement—it was something Vlad had always thought of as somewhat childish and endearing before this moment, but in this moment, his opinion changed drastically.

"Bonzai!" Jack shouted, pressing the button.

Vlad closed his eyes. He heard the chaos, the screams, Jack shouting Maddie's name and pushing her out of the way. Their disgusting little love connection as she expressed her gratitude, and then their horror as they saw what had happened to Vlad. He heard it all. But he couldn't bring himself to watch.

"V-man, hold on," Jack said. "Try to stay calm, take deep breaths. We'll get you to a hospital."

Vlad opened his eyes. He... he didn't remember this part. At the time, he'd been too disoriented, angry, and in pain to properly remember it all.

He didn't remember the panic in Jack's face as he picked Vlad up princess style like he weighed no more than a doll and carried him down the stairs and to his beat-up old lemon of a car and drove like a maniac to the emergency room, with Maddie in the back, holding young Vlad steady so he wouldn't get too jostled by the ride while he slipped in and out of consciousness.

"Jack, this is ecto-acne," Maddie said, her voice dripping with concern. "I'm not sure the doctors will be able to help him."

"They'll have to, Maddie," Jack replied. "Lord knows we don't know how to."

They stopped at the emergency room, and Jack once more picked up the sickly, college Vlad and carried him into the emergency room shouting for a doctor, saying it was an emergency and his friend was dying.

The nurses tried to calm him down and get more information out of him, but Jack was completely incoherent, so Maddie took over the explanation and they brought in a bed to take Vlad back on.

Jack and Maddie sat in the waiting room. Jack's feet tapping and his fingers fidgeting in his anxiety. Until the nurse came and told them to leave, that their friend was in intensive care and couldn't have any visitors.

Jack tried to argue but Maddie stopped him, thanked the nurse, and made him leave.

"You were right Jack," she said once they were headed back to Jack's car. "We can't help him right now, so we have no choice but to trust the doctors to do it."

Jack didn't look happy about it, but he didn't argue.

Vlad hadn't been happy about it either.

He could remember waking up a day or two later in the intensive care unit with only doctors and nurses to keep him company, even though none of them paid him any attention at all. They had poked and prodded, drugged him up, taken his blood, and completely ignored him. He'd tried to ask what was going on, where he was, and why he was there. None of them had answered any of his questions.

Even once he'd left intensive care and was switched to the urgent care ward of the hospital, he was ignored. He was confused, and in pain, and alone, and none of them would explain anything to him until one kind nurse finally tried to explain the situation to him as best he could, though she didn't know everything.

She'd told him he was in the hospital being treated for some form of infected acne, though the infection itself was unlike anything the doctors had seen before, and they were struggling to even diagnose it, let alone treat it. But they had stabilized him, and they were doing their best. She hadn't known who had brought him in, or that anyone had tried to visit him.

She hadn't known, so Vlad hadn't known.

But now... he knew.

He knew, and he had to get out of here.

"Let me out of here, you buffoon!" he yelled. "Let me out!"

"If it were that easy, I would have done it days ago," Jack replied. "What do you expect me to do."

Vlad growled in frustration. "Take me down to your lab! In your incompetence, you could find no way to remove me, but I am not an ignoramus as you are. I can't stand to spend another moment with you!"

"The feeling is mutual," Jack grumbled, putting his knitting down on the coffee table and getting up to trudge down the stairs to his lab. "I've never met anyone so quick to insult me! What did I ever do to you?"

"You killed me!" Vlad shouted back. With the pain now so fresh in his mind, he couldn't stop himself. "Your ignorance, your neglect, your incompetence killed me!"

Jack froze halfway down the stairs.

"No... no it couldn't be..." he said. His dread was so powerful Vlad could feel it send a chill down his own spine. "You're... you're not my brother. You can't be."

"I'm not your brother, you dolt!" Vlad replied. "Are you so foolish as to think he's the only one you've ever killed in your impulsive stupidity? I'm not even entirely convinced he was the first, but he was certainly not the last. You killed me, too. You killed your own son and you haven't even realized it yet."

"What are you talking about?" Jack sneered. "If you're trying to psych me out, you can stop it. My Danny's alive and well. I'd never let anything happen to him."

"But you did, didn't you?" Vlad argued instantly. "You let him be harmed by your portal, didn't you? He was hurt badly. He was killed."

"He survived!" Jack shouted. "The doctors said he was fine! How do you even know about that?"

"The doctors said I was fine, too. They didn't even know what they were looking at, but they had the audacity to say they had somehow cured me and pat themselves on the back for a job so poorly done they couldn't see that my life as I knew it was over."

"Who are you?"

"You don't recognize your quote-unquote best friend? Typical, foolish Jack Fenton."

Jack started moving again, storming the rest of the way down the stairs into the lab.

"I've heard enough of your lies, ghost," he spat. "I'm getting rid of you, and I'm not leaving this lab until your gone."

"Fine by me," Vlad replied. "If I never see you again, it will be too soon."

Upon Vlad's instructions, Jack tried device after device, invention after invention, and most of them just gave him a nasty shock, which he absolutely deserved. Finally, Vlad picked out the one that would actually work.

"What's that one?"

"The Fenton Ghost Catcher," Jack said. "It catches ghosts, and separates them from any... body they might... be... overshadowing...."

Vlad's rage was so potent he was sure Jack must be feeling it in every inch of his body.

"WHAT?!" he yelled, causing Jack to flinch. "You have a device specifically designed to dispossess a person of a ghostly intruder, and you didn't try that first?"

"It's not my fault I just... I forgot we had that."

"Well, use it already!"

"Alright, I'm using it!" Jack grabbed the ghost catcher, turned the right side toward him, and pulled it down on top of them both.

It worked.

A little too well, actually.

When the ghost catcher hit the floor, there were not two, but three people standing over it, newly separated. Jack, Vlad, and the Wisconsin Ghost.

#dp #danny phantom #Vlad Masters #vlad plasmius #jack fenton #angst #fic #minor character death #hospital #medical trauma #things i wrote #phic phight #phic phight 24 #the only way out is through

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Wishing all undiagnosed/partially diagnosed people a very doctors listening to you and providing you with more testing than a blood draw and even possibly providing treatment 2024

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Hey I’m rewatching Warehouse 13 and it’s actually good??? I originally watched it when I was like 12, so I figured it would be one of those things where upon rewatching it I would realize it sucked but still get nostalgia from it, but that is not the case.

Sure the effects are lowkey shitty because it was 2009, but the writing?? Especially for the female characters?? They all have depth, internal conflict, unique character traits, individual strengths and weaknesses, it’s amazing!

I also love the world building. Half of it is based in real history and half of it is fully made up but all of it is fun and engaging and I enjoy it immensely.

#warehouse 13 #Watching this show and looking at how so many writers write female characters currently #makes the flat demeaning “feminist” “strong female characters” even more pathetic than I thought #like I just needed a palate cleanser or something to realize how bad it’s gotten yikes #there’s a reason this show has more f/f ship fics than any other category by like a thousand fics #even though the gender ratio of characters is fairly even #and it’s because they treat their female characters with respect and dignity #also myca/helena are amazing together but that’s neither here nor there

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#dropped out of college after one semester #right before covid hit #frankly I’m rather proud I even made it to college #considering I was very very close to dropping out of high school #poll

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If you migrate from Wattpad to Ao3....

I'm fucking begging you to actually tag your works properly AND DO NOT CENSOR WHAT YOU WRITE OR TAG !!! Terms like "unalive" "sewer slide" and other censored terms are NOT welcome here, and you wont be punished by the algorithm for talking about death and blood and stuff BECAUSE THERES IS NO ALGORITHM ! Also making place holders IS NOT ALLOWED BY AO3 TOS. It just clogs up the archive for nothing, if you do this, thats a sure way to get your stuff reported. Please learn how Ao3 works, its nothing like Wattpad.

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shaking myself (very gently) . being in pain takes a lot of energy!!!!!! being in pain is exhausting!!!!!!! you are not lazy or weak because you need to spend so much time resting, this is your body coping with how much pain you’re in literally 24/7!!!!!!!!!

[raaorqtpbpdy]

#avatar #atla

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#I have and actively use one #not regularly but on occasion #for fun or for decorative effect depending on what I’m doing #poll

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#keyboard because I have sprained and strained the muscles and ligaments in my thumbs several times #due to excessive typing on my phone #(in high school we had one computer in a 6 person house and all my assignments had to be typed so it was either type EVERYTHING on my phone #or not get my assignments done because there was no way I would get enough computer time to do them all) #my joints are shitty no matter how I’m typing #but at least on a keyboard the strain is spread across many joints instead of just my thumbs #poll

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Hi I have a question about Pacific Rim. Given that the sparring is just A way to test for drift compatibility and any activity that requires people to collaborate and anticipate each others moves works, including stuff like multi player video games

Can you test for drift compatibility via improv comedy

#pacific rim

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They Will Be Missed

For the prompt: (Post TUE, Clockwork didn't save his friends & family.) Danny is struggling living with Vlad, drowning in his own grief and pain. It gets to the point where he rarely ever goes ghost hunting anymore. Although, if he did, he may have seen signs of the new ghosts forming in Amity Park, and they look hauntingly familiar. [from @fentoaster]

This takes place in the original TUE timeline, before Clockwork meddled.

Read also on AO3

[Warnings for past character death, grief, implied suicidal ideation, and depression]

Danny felt empty. Except for a sharp pain in his chest, there was nothing in him anymore. Nothing mattered anymore.grief

Every since he'd lost all his loved ones in that explosion, he felt as if he had nothing to live for anymore. He spent all his time wandering Vlad's mansion like a ghost—the kind from those old stories, not the real ones. He stared into space and he either cried or tried not to.

He was so pitiful and depressed Vlad didn't even have it in him to gloat about Danny finally being his son. 

He tried to keep up his old habits, school, ghost hunting, video games... but he fell off the wagon pretty quickly and took to just sulking around Vlad's place... his new home that felt like a dungeon, even though he wasn't technically being held prisoner except by his own lack of motivation to leave.

Surprisingly, Vlad didn't try to control him, didn't force him to go back to school, or to be normal, or even to train with him as his half-ghost apprentice or whatever it was he'd always planned to do if Danny ever agreed to join him. Danny supposed he must be grieving too, in his own way. After all—or so he claimed—he'd lost the love of his life in that explosion too.

It got to the point where Danny hardly ever left the house and almost never went ghost hunting anymore. Unless the ghost sought him out directly, he simply didn't care. Valerie could handle it. Or the A-Listers—once Phantom stopped showing up as often and the Fenton's were... gone, they all formed their own little ghost hunting team. They weren't bad, actually. They weren't great, but they weren't bad.

Amity Park didn't need him.

He was free to live his sorry excuse of a life, struggling to manage even basic tasks like showering and eating and even sleeping. He was free to ignore everyone and everything around him, shirk his responsibilities, and discard all the things he'd once enjoyed. He could do anything he wanted to but die.

Perhaps if he hadn't chosen to ignore the world around him, he might've seen the signs. The spike of ectoplasmic energy where the Nasty Burger had once been. The chill everyone seemed to get when they walked past the cordoned off site where it used to stand.

If he ever went into the town center, he might've seen the shades start to form, their silhouettes vague but hauntingly familiar. He might have heard it when they started to speak. When they asked after him. When they began to look for him.

He might have heard his parents voices calling after him again. "Danny! Danny! Where are you?"

He might have gotten to see his best friends' smiling faces when they saw him once more.

He might've even felt the warmth of his sister's hugs, hugs he'd often refused before her death, and that he so missed now.

But he didn't. And he hadn't. And he never would.

And after Vlad made good on his promise to remove his humanity... he never would.

#danny phantom #dp #danny fenton #fic #ficlet #things i wrote #depression cw #suicidal ideation cw #grief cw #phic phight #phic phight 24

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[raaorqtpbpdy]

Get Well Soon

Danny is sick and his powers are going crazy.

For the prompt: Danny comes down with a nasty, but totally regular cold. It's not the first time he's been sick since he got his powers, and normally, it's no big deal, but this time his powers are acting up, setting off randomly every so often. It's never very long, but it IS getting hard to hide, especially as he starts to recover. (AKA: sickfic with shenanigans) [from @gottacatchghosts]

Read also on AO3

[No applicable warnings]

Danny was dying. He was definitely gonna die. He was already half dead, but this vile infection was going to do him in the rest of the way. He moaned in pain and distress.

"Stop being so dramatic, Danny," Sam told him, rolling her eyes. "It's just a regular cold. It's not even a ghost flu or anything like that. It's a perfectly normal, run-of-the-mill cold, and you're gonna be fine."

"Are you sure about that, Sam?" Danny asked. 

His voice was low and nasally, thanks to his stuffy nose and sore throat, and he promptly buried his face in his blankets and burst into a coughing fit. 

When he looked up again, Sam was staring at him, wide-eyed.

He looked down at himself curiously, wondering what she was looking so freaked about. White gloves and black sleeves met his swimming vision.

"Just a normal cold, huh?" He looked at her and raised an eyebrow—probably both actually. His muscle control wasn't the best at the moment.

"It is just a cold," she insisted. "We've already run the tests, and there's absolutely no chance at all that this virus is in any way ghost related. It's a regular cold, Danny. You're just gonna have to tough it out until it goes away."

Danny groaned in despair and agony.

"But Saaaammm."

"I don't know what you think I can do about it. I'm rich, not magic."

He groaned again, and Sam shuddered as the temperature in the room suddenly dropped to freezing, and a thin sheen of frost formed on Danny's window.

He'd had colds before since getting his powers, and normally, it wasn't that big a deal. It sucked, sure; being sick always sucked. But nothing like this had ever happened before. His powers had never acted up like this before, and he'd never lost control of his powers.

Sam walked over and opened his window to let the cold air escape.

"I've gotta get going," she told him apologetically. "You should change back before your parents come in to check on you. Fair warning, your mom was making soup when I came in."

"Thanks for the warning," he grumbled, and sniffed.

It took more concentration than usual to shift back into his Fenton form, but it seemed he hadn't completely lost control of his powers... yet, at least.

It was only a few minutes later that his mom came in, carrying a steaming mug full of chicken soup.

"Hi sweetie, how you feeling?" she asked, her voice dripping with sympathy.

"I feel half dead," Danny replied with a small smirk. 

He felt a sneeze coming on, but held it in. He knew what would happen.

"Oh, I'm sorry," she told him pouted. "Do you need anything? Cough syrup? Hot tea? Marshmallows? Oh!" 

She turned to look in her utility belt, and as she did so, Danny let loose a sneeze, and the accompanying ghost-ray that shot out from him and scorched the wall opposite his bed, only narrowly missing his mother.

"Your dad found his old Game Boy," she said, pulling out a device lat looked kind of like Tucker's PDA, but way more eighties. "You don't have to take it if you don't want, but since you're stuck in bed right now, it might be fun, just to pass the time."

Danny put his mug of soup down on his bedside table, wiped his sweaty hands off on his blankets, and took the device from his mom. Examining it to figure out how exactly it worked. The controls were fairly intuitive, but he couldn't find the 'on' button. His mother laughed softly.

Well if that keeps you entertained, then my work here is done. She patted her knees, stood up and walked out the door with a gentle, "Get well soon, sweetie."

As soon as the door closed, Danny sneezed again. A ghost ray shot out and his the door where his mother's head had been a moment before.

Yeah... he'd better get well soon.

The Game Boy only had Tetris, Pac-Man, and the Ghostbusters 2 video game, so Danny chose to play the one game that didn't have ghosts in it, only to discover rather quickly that he sucked ass at Tetris. That didn't stop him from trying, even though his record at this point was 16 lines.

He was starting to get chills now, but he remained steadfastly focused on his game until his dad came into the room.

"Ah, the old Game Boy," he said fondly, sitting on the edge of the bed with his back to Danny. "You know, I can get all the way to level two hundred and fifty-six on Pac-Man. Spent a whole summer trying to get a perfect score, but I never quite got there."

"I'm playing Tetris," Danny said.

A chill wracked his body and he saw his hands disappear and gasped softly. Thankfully his dad didn't notice, or the man might've turned around to look and seen empty air where his son had been a moment before. Danny quickly turned himself visible again.

"Oh... yeah, there was a deal going when I bought the Game Boy," his dad explained, oblivious as usual to the paranormal activity happening behind him. "It came with a free copy of Tetris. I tried it a few times, but the best score I ever got was twenty rows before I finally gave up."

"Yeah," Danny commiserated. "I've only gotten up to 16 so far."

He shuddered again with a chill and turned invisible once more. Then his dad started to turn toward him and Danny desperately snapped back into the visible spectrum.

"Well, as long as you're having fun, that's all that matters," his dad said.

Danny smiled in response, just relieved he'd managed to turn visible again before his dad saw—or rather, didn't see.

They didn't talk long before his dad left, and he was in his room alone again, free to turn invisible as much as he liked—whether he wanted to or not.

It was more-or-less fine when he was mostly left alone in his room with no one to see his powers acting up. He was still sick, and he still felt like death, but at least he didn't have to worry to much about his secret identity being found out.

But a few days later, he started to recover. He could get up and walk around the house, and people spent more time around him because they were less worried about catching his cold. The problem with that was, even though he was on the mend, his powers were still acting up.

Once, when he was microwaving some soup, he randomly went intangible and fell halfway through the kitchen floor. Thankfully Jazz had been the only one to see, and she'd helped pull him back up, but if his parents had been there, he'd have been screwed. 

When he was watching TV with his mom, he'd had a light cough and when he looked up, he saw that he'd accidentally made the coasters on the coffee table start floating. Thankfully, she'd been too focused on the drama they were watching together to notice, but it had been a close call.

His cold was almost gone, but he wasn't out of the woods yet.

Truly, he couldn't get well soon enough.

#dp #danny phantom #danny fenton #jack fenton #sam manson #maddie fenton #sickfic #fic #things i wrote #phic phight #phic phight 24

[raaorqtpbpdy]

In Memory of Mom

Danny meets a strange, Spanish-speaking ghost wandering around Casper High. His Spanish isn't great, but he's pretty sure she's looking for her daughter.

For the Prompt: Danny encounters a strange spanish-only speaking ghost looking for Paulina Sanchez. Being a first year Spanish student, he only recognizes the words "mi hija" and hesitantly leads her to Paulina. It's Día de los Muertos, but because Paulina has been trying to fit in at school, and her papa remarried and doesn't want to make his new wife uncomfortable, they've fallen out of the habit of setting up the ofrenda and marigolds, leaving their mom/wife unable to find her way home. Paulina can't see or hear her, but Phantom can [From @dreamwraith]

Disclaimer: I am white, and I do not speak Spanish. It is with deepest regret that I must admit to using Google translate for the Spanish dialogue in this fic. If you notice any errors in the Spanish, or regarding Día de Muertos (which there might very well be, though I did do my research), please feel free to correct me. I can only do my best, and always appreciate the opportunity to do better.

Read also on AO3

[Warnings for past character death, and mentions of culture death]

Danny typically liked to have more than one day to recover after fighting Fright Knight every Halloween. Not to mention the numerous other ghosts who always had to come out on that stupid holiday to cause as much trouble as possible during the period of time when the barrier between the human world and the Ghost Zone was at it's thinnest.

Of course, Danny never got more than one day, but he would have liked to.

Luckily the ghost that showed during lunch period on November second didn't seem to be causing any trouble. In fact, it didn't seem like she was powerful enough to cause trouble, even if she wanted to. No one besides Danny even seemed to notice her, which at least meant she wouldn't be able to cause any serious damage, even if she tried.

She was speaking Spanish as she walked through the halls of Casper High, and turning her head this way and that as if she was looking for something, or someone.

"¿La has visto? ¿Mi hija? ¿Dónde está mi hija? ¿La has visto?" she called out.

Now, Danny was only a first year Spanish student, and furthermore... he missed a lot of classes, so he wasn't sure exactly what she was saying, but he did recognize the words 'mi hija', 'my daughter'. The last time he'd been to Spanish class, Señora Gutierrez had been teaching family terms. Madre, padre, hermana, hermano, hija, hijo, tío, abuela, that kind of thing.

Subtly, he followed her until she walked into a hallway where there weren't any people, and then, with no one to look at him like he was crazy for talking to the air, he spoke to her.

"Excuse me, are you looking for your daughter?" Danny asked.

"¡sí mi hija!" the woman replied excitedly. "¿La conoces? ¿La has visto?"

Danny knew 'sí', that was 'yes', the most basic of basic Spanish. 'sí' and... and... okay, so Danny couldn't remember what 'no' was in Spanish, but he remembered 'sí'. Ancients, he was really gonna have to start showing up to that class more if he wanted to get the foreign language credits he needed to graduate.

"Uh... tu hija," Danny said, completely confident that he was already screwing up the grammar, "¿que es la nombre?"

"No es muy fluido en español, ¿verdad?" The ghost laughed. "Su nombre es Paulina."

"Paulina?" Danny didn't understand any of the rest of what she said, so he focused on the last bit. "Paulina Sanchez?"

"¡Sí!" she confirmed, enthusiastically. "Mi hija. Paulina Sánchez. ¿Tu la conoce?"

Danny nodded, although he'd kinda fallen off the sentence after 'sí'. "Why are you looking for her?"

"Es el Dia de Muertos," she said. "Quiero verla, pero no encuentro la ofrenda."

Danny had no idea to respond to that. The only word he recognized from all of that was 'la', but he couldn't glean a whole sentence from a single 'the', so he just looked at her with an expression that was half a forced, awkward smile and half a grimace.

"Ummmm..."

Was it safe to lead an unknown ghost to an unsuspecting human? Objectively no. Most especially not when the unsuspecting human was the girl Danny had a massive crush on. But... on the other hand, this particular ghost seemed pretty harmless, and she said she was Paulina's mother. So... maybe it was okay?

"How about I'll take you to her," Danny suggested.

The ghost that claimed to be Paulina's mother nodded excitedly and said something else in Spanish that Danny had no hope of translating. 

Danny led her to the outdoor table where the A-listers always sat, but Paulina wasn't there. After a little bit of prowling the quad, he found her, at an out of the way table no one ever sat at because the the school custodian always ignored it and it was disgusting. 

Paulina had laid her jacket over the bench to sit on, and unfolded a few paper napkins over the surface of the table. She had a handful of sugar cubes, and was poking one with a toothpick for some reason. She hadn't noticed him yet.

As much as he would have liked to go over to her as Danny Fenton and be the hero who let her talk to her mom again, he figured it would probably be suspicious if people knew he could see ghosts others couldn't. A but reluctantly, he looked around to make sure no one could see and transformed into Danny Phantom. The ghost, Paulina's mom, applauded him, like he'd just done a magic trick. To her, it might have seemed that way.

"Thanks," he said, a little sarcastically, and floated over to talk to Paulina.

"Excuse me, Paulina Sanchez?" Danny asked, as if he wasn't sure whether he knew her name or not. "There's a ghost here who wants to speak to you."

Paulina looked up and looked around, then turned back to Danny and raised a perfect eyebrow. She put down the sugar cube she was poking at, and Danny noticed that on her other side, there were two other sugar cubes sculpted into the shape of a skull.

"You mean you?" she asked. "Look, normally, I'd be thrilled, but today isn't really—"

"Oh, no, not me," Danny said. "She has long hair, wearing a nice knee-length dress.... It's kinda hard to describe ghosts in a way that makes them recognizable to people who knew them in life, 'cause colors tend to be different between life-and-death but uh... you and her have the same nose, actually. She says your her daughter? I don't speak Spanish, but I managed to figure out that much."

When he stopped talking, Pauling gave him a flat look.

"Are you messing with me?"

"No," Danny insisted. "She's not a very powerful ghost, so she can't stay in the visible range, but she's here. She wants to talk to you."

"Mamá?" Paulina asked hesitantly. "¿Estás aquí?"

"Sí, hija mía, estoy aquí," Mrs. Sanchez replied. "Estoy muy feliz de verte de nuevo."

Paulina didn't respond for a long moment, apparently waiting. Then, finally, she said, "I don't hear anything."

"I was worried you might say that," Danny said. "I'm gonna have to speak Spanish if you guys want to talk to each other, aren't I?" he sighed deeply. "Alright fine. Apologies in advance because I am gonna absolutely butcher the pronunciations."

"Hija," Mrs. Sanchez said, "volví a verte, pero no había camino para mí. ¿Por qué?"

Danny repeated the words to the best of his ability.

Paulina took a moment to parse them out, with a puzzled expression before finally saying, "Papá se volvió a casar. Su nueva esposa es gringa, así que no le hicimos un ofrenda en casa para que no se sintiera incómoda."

Danny didn't know what any of that meant, obviously, and was grateful he only had to repeat after Paulina's mom, because Paulina herself spoke Spanish very quickly and there was absolutely no way he wouldn't trip over his tongue mimicking her. 

"Pero estoy aquí, debe haber una ofrenda."

Danny mimicked her again.

Paulina looked a little embarrassed. "Sí... yo... hice uno en mi casillero para ti. No quería que no pudieras cruzar."

Her mother gasped. Danny really wished he knew what was going on.

"¿Me mostrarás?"

Paulina's expression lit up when Danny repeated that, and she stood, gathering up her jacket and her sugar cubes.

"Vamos," she said. "I mean, follow me."

She led the way through the empty halls and Danny and her mom followed.

"What were you guys talking about?" Danny asked, then immediately realized what he was asking and quickly backtracked. "I mean, never mind, it's probably personal. I was just curious. You don't have to answer that."

"No, it's okay," Paulina said. "See, my mom passed when I was seven, and every year, me and my dad set up an ofrenda for Day of the Dead with her picture so she could visit us. We moved here from Mexico when I was ten, but we kept up the tradition. 

"Last winter, though, Dad married my step-mom, and she's white, and doesn't know anything about Mexican traditions or holidays. Dad doesn't want to make her uncomfortable, so ever since they got married, we stopped celebrating most of what we used to back in Mexico, so we didn't put up an ofrenda this year, and Mom was asking why she couldn't find it, so I explained."

"Oh... that's... kinda sad," Danny said. "You just had to give up all your culture because your dad remarried?"

Paulina shrugged. "We had to give up a lot of it already, when we moved to America anyway," she said, as if that made it less sad and not more. "At least Sandra's nice, she's just... a little out of her depth sometimes."

"So... where are you taking us?"

Finally, she stopped in front of her locker and turned the dial with her combination.

"I didn't want mom to not be able to visit me, so... I sort of made my own ofrenda in my locker," Paulina explained sheepishly.

The door swung open to reveal the inside. There was a small magnetic shelf stuck on the back of the locker. On it, there was a small electric candle, some kind of orange flower, a pair of black lace gloves, and a heart-shaped locket. The locket was open and propped up so the picture inside was visible. It was the ghost Danny was trying to help.

Paulina reached in an put a few of the sculpted sugar cubes on the shelf next to the locket. The tiny sugar skulls were perfectly to scale with the tiny picture, but absolutely dwarfed by the flower.

The ghost put her hands to her heart and looked absolutely touched by the tiny display.

"Those were her favorite gloves," Paulina explained. "She always wore them when Dad took her dancing."

"What's the flower?" Danny asked.

"It's a marigold," she replied. "Cempasúchil, in Spanish. They're a traditional decoration for the ofrenda. You're also supposed to leave a trail of their petals from the grave to the ofrenda, but... Mom's grave is in Mexico, and the ofrenda is in my locker so...." 

"Ay, esto es hermoso," the ghost said. "Gracias. Amo mucho esto. Te quiero mi hija."

Danny had been to distracted to properly listen, so he wasn't sure how to repeat her words.

"Uh... she says she likes it."

The ghost gave him a look and a light slap that passed right through him.

"A lot, she likes it a lot."

"¡Y te amo!" she added insistently.

"Y te amo, she says," Danny repeated.

"Thank you, Phantom," Paulina said. She leaned forward and gave him a kiss on the cheek. "This means a lot to me."

Danny knew his cheeks were turning bright green, and he cleared his throat awkwardly to make sure his voice wouldn't crack.

"Uh, yeah, no problem," he said. "Don't mention it."

It was then that the bell rang signalling the end of lunch, and Paulina grabbed a couple of books from her locker and headed to class. Her mom followed, even though Paulina couldn't see her.

Danny had to get to class, too. He had Spanish class after lunch, and Ancients knew he didn't need to be missing any more of those.

In class, Señora Gutierrez talked about Dia de los Muertos, and for once, Danny actually sort of knew what she was talking about, thanks to Paulina. Maybe he should ask her to tutor him.

#dp #danny phantom #danny fenton #paulina sanchez #paulina sanchez's mom #dia de los muertos #fic #things i wrote #phic phight #phic phight 24 #spanish

[raaorqtpbpdy]

Highlights from the conference room where they nominated contenders for Word of the Year 2023:

• They put Skibidi Toilet on the projector to explain what “skibidi” means.

• Baby Gronk was mentioned.

• We discussed the Rizzler.

• “Cunty” was nominated.

• “Enshittification” was suggested for EVERY category.

• “Blue Check” (like from Twitter) was briefly defined as “Someone who will not Shut The Fuck Up”

• The person writing notes briefly defined babygirl as “referencing [The Speaker]”. He is now being called babygirl in the linguist groupchats.

• MULTIPLE people raised their hand to say “I cannot stress this enough: ‘Babygirl’ refers to a GROWN MAN”

#language