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#phicc
wastefulreverie · 5 months
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fixed point
“Would you like to know how much time you have left?” Clockwork asked.
Danny had never wished more that he’d died in something with pockets so he could hide his shaking hands. The endless ticking in the lair—hundreds of hands TICK TICK TICK -ing in perfect sync—had never sounded so ominous.
“I—” his voice rattled his throat, a raw thing “—I didn’t think you gave spoilers.”
With an absent spin of their staff, Clockwork shifted from adult to child and said nothing. Dread hung heavy in the air, Clockwork’s unblinking stare piercing through it all. Danny pointedly did not make eye contact. Instead focusing on the oscillating hands of the wall behind them.
He took a breath.
“Will it make it easier, knowing?”
Clockwork blinked once, face betraying nothing.
Dammit.
He wasn’t an idiot. There was really only one outcome of this conversation. Just as there had been the day he’d first pulled on his jumpsuit, walking—tripping—through the threshold. Life snuffed out of him in less than a second.
He brought his shaking hands together and met Clockwork’s even gaze.
And answered.
Thirteen days.
Seven hours.
Thirty-six minutes.
It was somehow both longer and shorter than he’d expected.
It was also a weight off his shoulders, at least in the beginning. It wouldn’t happen any earlier than the date Clockwork had recounted that night. Thirteen days of freedom. Peace. Liberation.
Because if he thought too much about the length of thirteen days, how three-hundred or so hours wasn’t enough time— it’s not fucking FAIR —he would be swallowed by the crushing anxiety that made its permanent home in his stomach.
So there was that.
He didn’t bother telling his friends. They were already all on edge, but if he could act like all was well he could ease their worries. Because ultimately they were just worried about him, and if he was fine they would be too.
He did, however, make contingency plans. Farewell videos on a USB drive taped to the underside of his bed.
He wanted Clockwork to be wrong. Some nights he laid awake, trying his damndest to find a way off this track. This self-fulfilling prophecy. But there was nothing. That moment had already passed with that stupid news broadcast that had glued him to the couch, shaking, as his parents had shouted and jeered at the screen. Dismissive. Furious. Invested.
They hadn’t noticed when he pushed himself off the couch and stumbled, shaking, to the bathroom to purge the contents of his stomach.
It was a miracle he’d only gotten a two-day suspension for slugging Wes in the face in front of the whole cafeteria. Even more so that no one had pieced it together from that.
No one saw him. But they would. When it was too late.
He couldn’t stop it. But as he didn’t acknowledge it in the waking world it wouldn’t exist. So he reserved his existential crises for when there was nothing to distract him from the looming, inevitable deadline.
He wished he could tell Mr. Lancer that whenever he was given detention that afternoon.
On the night of the twelfth day, he didn’t sleep a wink. No amount of coffee could keep his head above his desk that morning, and so, Danny spent his final hour in detention. He considered skipping. Detention was not the place for everything to come to an end.
But wouldn’t leaving—deviating from his normal routine—up the chances of putting events in motion?
Avoidance was his specialty, after all.
Jazz could write a paper on his coping tactics alone if she hadn’t already. 
At nineteen minutes Mr. Lancer stopped in front of his desk. It was only him and Valerie today, and she sat somewhere three desks behind and to his left of him. Her hair was in a loose ponytail, loose yellow sleeves draped over her hands. The bags under her eyes rivaled his own, even though he was sure there hadn’t been too many ghosts in the past week or so—but then again, he’d not been the most attentive to things on the ghost front lately. It was probably his fault she was here at all. 
“Mr. Fenton,” Lancer said. He forced his head to turn, a feat much more difficult than it sounded. His head felt full of lead. “Is everything alright at home?”
Danny forced himself not to cringe.
“Uh.” He ignored the sound of Valerie shifting in her seat behind him. Great. An audience. “Yes.”
“I’ve noticed you’ve been getting much less sleep of late, is all.”
Now this was a load of shit. Danny’s sleep schedule was normally trash. This current existential crisis was no more taxing than his normal night activities.
Lancer continued. “And your parents have—” he paused, eyes flitting somewhere behind him. “—in light of recent revelations, I just worry, Mr. Fenton.”
Hm.
Did he know, then?
Was this it?
Danny stared stupidly for a moment, forgetting to shut his mouth. And then shrugged.
Falling back on ignorance.
If he was honest, he hadn’t quite expected Lancer to be the one to put it together, but it also made sense. 
Lancer’s mouth thinned. “I know they can be intense, especially with the scrutiny placed on our school now. No one should feel scared to come to school. Or go home,” he said, letting the words hang in the air for a moment. “This is a safe space.”
For a moment all he could hear was the drum of his heart in his chest. And then behind him, Valerie cleared her throat.
“With all due respect, Mr. Lancer,” she said, “nowhere is safe with that putrid ghost hiding among us.”
Danny didn’t turn around. Lancer’s reaction was subdued, but there was a protective fire in his eyes that confirmed Danny’s suspicions. He wondered how long ago he’d put it together.
“Ms. Gray,” Lancer said, “I see your point, but I’m just trying to ease tensions.”
Danny checked the clock.
Seventeen minutes. 
Maybe he should’ve skipped detention after all.
(No escaping the inevitable. No do-overs this time.)
Valerie scoffed. “So what? We let our guard down?” he chanced a glance behind him, and Valerie’s eyes were red-rimmed—from lack of sleep or otherwise he had no idea. “Someone here is a walking weapon and we’re supposed to ignore this? Fenton at least knows he’ll be safe at home, but what about the rest of us? We don’t get to go home to ghost-hunting parents—we have to hold our own.”
Lancer nodded. “I understand. I just think that it’s very frightening for all of us, ghost hunters or not.”
Danny’s voice cracked when he spoke. “Yeah.”
Valerie’s expression softened. “I didn’t mean to make light—”
“No. No, you’re right,” he said. “It’s not safe with Phantom as a student here. Whoever he is.”
She sighed. “Danny, I don’t know what it’s like with your parents, but—”
“But what?” he cut her off. “Because they’re ghost hunters they’re automatically the safest people in the room?” He lowered his voice. “You would think that.”
She froze. “What does that mean?”
Hm. Whoops.
“People don’t know what it’s like, I guess.”
Danny turned back around. Lancer’s stare was dripping with sympathy.
Fifteen minutes.
There was a scrape of a chair, a thud of feet, and a warm hand on his shoulder. Valerie released him just as fast. When he met her eyes, they were as wide as saucers.
“D—Danny,” she said with a note of panic. “You’re cold.”
“Yeah?” he asked.
She took a step back. He hadn’t seen her this scared since they’d been stranded on Skulker’s island together. He could see the realization dawning. 
“Val,” he said, knowing full well what was going through her head, “what’s wrong?”
“It’s not you,” she said, a desperate plea. “I can’t be this stupid.”
He sighed and Lancer stepped between them.
“Ms. Gray,” he said, “now let’s not jump to conclusions—”
“No!” she shook her head. “No, no, no! It doesn’t make sense. You’re—your parents hunt ghosts. Hunt Phantom.”
Danny crossed his arms.
“So do you.”
Lancer looked between them like Danny had announced that he liked eating golf balls. “What.”
Tears welled in Valerie’s eyes. “I trusted you!”
The minute hand inched forward.
Fourteen.
“You trusted me to what?”
Valerie clenched her fists. “Don’t do that! Don’t play stupid!”
“Ms. Gray—”
“I’m not playing.” Danny turned sideways in his desk, facing her head-on. “Tell me what you think I’ve done, Val.”
“Mr. Fenton—!”
“You replaced him. You replaced Danny. How long have you been pretending to be him? To be alive? How can you live with yourself, going home everyday and seeing his parents and—and—acting like you’re still—” she choked on her tears. “You terrorize this town, Phantom. I won’t let you take anything else from me, or anyone.”
Lancer’s eyes were wide. He’d never seen the man so shocked, in such foreign territory.
Valerie, on the other hand, was resolute. There was as much determination in her face as tears.
“I’m still me,” he said. “I died, but I came back. I never replaced myself, however that works. I am sorry, Val. There’s a lot that—”
“Shut up! Shut up shut up shut up! ”
“—that I didn’t mean to happen.”
Lancer slammed his hand on Danny’s desk.
“Can we all settle down!”
It all happened in a matter of seconds. The clock in his peripheral kept him tethered to the moment. 
Valerie reached behind her and pulled a blaster.
A flash of red—
(The minute hand moves.
Thirteen.)
—and a burst of hot pain through his side.
He crumpled forward, his head meeting the linoleum floor with a SMACK and somewhere above him a distant shout.
Everything from his side to his cranium THROBBED and it wouldn’t fucking stop.
(He’d taken hits from Val before. This shouldn’t hurt so much. Why does this—?)
Iron pooled in his mouth. 
Oh right.
Ectoplasm was thicker than blood.
Danny tried to push himself up from the floor but the world spun and his arms gave out below him and he slumped back down to the cold, hard floor.
The floor felt better.
Maybe he would…
Stay here for a while…
***
The television clicked on. A rerun of the six o’clock news.
He didn’t let Jazz turn it off.
“According to a recent report, there is speculation that our local ghost vigilante Phantom might be living among us. Care to tell us more, Lance?”
“Yes, Tiffany.” Lance Thunder’s stupid blonde hair was polished and perfect as usual and he wanted to wipe that stupid half-smile off the bastard’s face. “A ghost ID’ed as Walker —” at this, a crude picture that was mostly just a white blur appeared on the screen “— has publicly announced that our hero is a student at Casper High fooling us, flying under the radar.”
“And as far as we understand, tips from ghosts aren’t verifiable…?”
“Normally, yes, but there is evidence to suggest that—”
“This isn’t good for you,” Jazz hissed. “I know that it’s scary, but—”
“Exposure therapy,” he snapped back. “It’s gonna be the talk of the school anyway.”
She slumped back down onto the couch. “Take care of yourself.”
The door to the lab was thrown open. His parents marched through the kitchen and into the living room, perfectly eclipsing the TV.
“—telling you, Jack. The DNA scans are inconclusive at best. Their so-called ‘experts’ are out of their depths.”
“We’ll show them once and for all. If we can find out which student it’s using as cover—”
“—we’ll expose Phantom for the monster he is!”
His parents disappeared upstairs for the night, but he could still hear snippets of their vows to destroy him. 
He shot Jazz a tired look. “Easier said than done.”
***
Someone was touching him.
Everything on his left burned. Far above him were LEDs and beige ceiling tiles. He wasn’t sure when he’d been rolled onto his back. But he was now, and someone was pressing down on the spot that burned burned burned—!
Blood trickled down his throat.
How many minutes had it been?
How many did he have left?
There were voices, somewhere, but everything sounded like it was underwater. Maybe it was. Drowning would be preferable to many of the other deaths he’d prepared for. Still terrible, sure, but vivisection lowered the bar considerably. 
“—have you done!”
“He’s—” A girl’s voice wavered, quiet. “He’s Phantom. He’s not supposed to—to—”
Wow. Valerie had the decency to sound ashamed.
At least he could die knowing that his killer at least had a few shreds of regret.
(Is it sad that it’s more than he expected?)
“—little first aid.” The pain came in waves, and all Danny could hear was the rush of his stupid heart in his ears. “—expecting shootings in America, but not from a—” 
Just as fast as it came, the world melted away. His last grasp on consciousness slipped away.
(As fast as the click of a button.)
***
Wes had a punchable face.
But hey—that’s what you get for talking to the press. The accusations were written off as pretty baseless, but the damage had been done. He got inquisitive stares now and again. After all, Wes was a joke, but his interview put Danny’s name on the list of suspects and that was enough to fuck his entire life over.
After his two-day suspension, Danny had little opportunity to survey his work. Honestly, more people asked him about how bad he fucked up Wes’s face than whether or not he was Phantom.
(From what he had seen, it was in a perpetual state of purple and that was enough to curb his anger for now.)
So. He had two days off from school.
Danny went to see Clockwork.
Long Now welcomed him with welcome arms, and he broke down into a fit of whines and gripes about how it seemed like everyone was out to get him, that everyone wanted to put his head on a pike. Everyone wanted to ferret out the wolf in sheep’s clothing.
Clockwork shared their sympathies.
“No matter what I do, I just—I’m a wreck. I think someone’s figured it out. That they know, but then I mention it to Jazz or Sam or Tucker and I’m just paranoid and I think I’m paranoid now and—” he groaned. “I don’t know what to do. I’m losing my mind.”
“You do know that it’s inevitable that the truth comes to light.”
He froze. “What.”
Clockwork shifted from senior to adult. “Your paranoia isn’t for naught. It’s a matter of time.”
No. This couldn’t be happening.
He’d figure a way out.
There had to be something.
“I thought nothing was inevitable.”
“Not nothing,” Clockwork hummed. “Often, it is nothing. But not this time.”
Their words shook him to the core. He’d suspected it, sure, but confirmation was—
“I know it isn’t fair.”
“Don’t tell me what is and isn’t fair!” Danny snapped. “Your entire life isn’t—isn’t under scrutiny for everyone. If they know that I’m me, I—”
He pressed his hands to his chest.
He would be finished.
One way or another, someone would find a way to put him on their table.
The government.
His parents.
Maybe someone else out for his blood.
(His body.)
“I can’t see what will happen past them learning the truth,” Clockwork said. “But it is a fixed point. Everything past that diverges, a thousand roads. Timelines. Possibilities. I can’t tell you what to expect. The best, the worst. I cannot offer that reassurance.”
“Oh.”
They nodded. “It’s a lot to take in.”
“I don’t want them to find out,” he said in a pathetic whine.
For a long moment, Clockwork said nothing. If not for the constant ticking of clocks, he would have thought they were frozen. But then Clockwork’s expression shifted.
And they asked: 
“Would you like to know?” 
***
……
………
Warbled voices were around him again. Different.
But this time more in focus.
“Sir, Ma’am, if you could leave the room—”
“I will NOT. That is my son, and I am not leaving until someone tells me why there is a HOLE in his chest—!”
And somewhere else, a shriek of sobs.
“We’re transporting him to the hospital, you can’t—”
“I did it,” said that same, sobbing voice. “I shot him. I shot him.”
More people were touching him and Danny didn’t like it oh god no no no —
“—get him on the stretcher—”
“—the hell DID you—”
“—Ms. Gray, you—”
“—no! I want to know why—”
“—securing him, just—”
And now time did slow.
The EMTs lifted the stretcher.
And his face lolled to the side, giving him a clear view of the clock.
The minute hand moved one last time.
Just as:
“I didn’t mean to! I didn’t—he’s Phantom, I didn’t think that it would—!” Valerie, cut off, sobbing. “I’m so sorry, Danny. If you can hear me, I’m so sorry.”
And then there was silence.
Crushing darkness.
***
If he had any last doubts that his secret was out, they were snuffed out when he woke up in the hospital to the pained faces of his parents. Jazz was in the chair to his left, hair mussed up and asleep. His parents’ eyes were red with tears. In his delirium, he also noticed Sam’s backpack discarded in the corner.
How long had—?
“Two days.”
Clockwork appeared before him in their adult form. They swung their staff, looking rather pleased with themselves. Danny then realized the occupants of the room had been frozen as long as he’d been awake. 
“You’re recovering well, all considered.” Clockwork tapped a clipboard on a nearby table. “I will say, I am surprised that we took this route. It is what you might call a ‘spoiler,’ but it’s kinder than most.”
“Is it,” he said, voice hoarse.
Clockwork waited for him to finish coughing up his lungs before speaking again. “They’re handling it as best they can. I won’t say it’s great, but you’re on the way there.”
“I—what happened, again?”
And as he asked, it came rushing back.
Lancer. Valerie.
And paramedics?
Clockwork gave him a knowing smile. “Your teacher called an ambulance. In his panic, he might have let it slip that you were having a reaction because of a ghost weapon, and your parents were looped into the call.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
Danny’s eyes found his frozen heart monitor, time stopped between beats. Below, his mother had tied off the top half of her HAZMAT suit and was wearing a black shirt beneath. He did notice that the contents of her weapons belt were emptied.
He turned back to Clockwork. “How did they take it?”
They shrugged. “Why don’t you ask them?”
“Wait—wait, I'm not ready.”
“How about this? I tell you how much time you have left.” They raised their staff. “Three—”
“Clockwork—”
“Two—”
“Don’t you dare!”
“Time in.”
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kinglazrus · 7 months
Text
The Moment it Breaks
AO3 | FFN
Summary: He knew his identity couldn't stay a secret forever. Eventually, someone would find out. But he always thought it would be on his terms. Instead, that chance is ripped away from him in the middle of a ghost fight, and now all of Amity Park knows the truth: Tucker Foley is the Tech Hunter.
After a harrowing fight with Phantom that they both limped away from, Tucker needs his friends more than ever. If only Danny would answer the phone.
AU where Vlad sought out Tucker as his teenage ghost hunter instead of Valerie.
Word count: 4340
Phantom lunged with teeth bared and claws outstretched—and was met with a cannon to his chest. Lost in his mindless pursuit, he did not react or even attempt to push the cannon away. The barrel dug into his gut as his body curved over it, the light within smothered against his jumpsuit.
The cannon fired.
The street exploded into light as Phantom took the blast at point-blank range. It tossed his body across the street, slamming him into a parked truck, where the door crumpled and held him like a jagged maw biting down on its prey. A moment passed before he phased through the twisted metal and collapsed onto the street. Ectoplasm dripped from his ears, nose, and stomach, hissing against the pavement.
There was more green than black on his suit.
Across the street, the Tech Hunter stood with his arm raised, his left gauntlet unfurled into a cannon. His arm flagged under the weight but did not drop. Violet light still glowed within the barrel, gathering for another shot.
Although he was too far away to hear, the dancing line on his mouthpiece showed he was speaking.
It was impossible to tell if Phantom could hear Tech. The ghost's eyes were bright but unfocused. One arm pressed against his side while the other struggled to hold him up.
Everyone knows that ghosts don't breathe, but it looks like he had been gasping, his mouth gaping as he struggled to catch a breath he could never take.
Tech limped forward. Light rippled across his suit, or seemed to, as he stepped under a streetlamp. The nanobots surging over his body drilled into the pavement as he braced his cannon arm with his other hand, readying for the next shot.
Phantom jerked his head up, eyes completely white.
Tech fired. In that instant, Phantom unleashed twin beams of ectoplasm from his eyes. The beams tore through the street as Phantom raised his eyes to Tech, and the attacks met.
Night turned into day as ectoplasm swept across the street. A horrible screech sounded from within the blaze as it flung the two silhouettes aside like limp dolls.
The light was gone as quickly as it came, letting the night sweep back in just as Tech hit the pavement, the visor on his mask shattering as his head bounced off the curb.
No one moved. Phantom lay in a puddle of ectoplasm, and Tech sprawled in the middle of the street.
The seconds ticked by.
Tech stirred first, lifting his head as he struggled to rise. The crack in his visor exposed the face of Tucker Foley.
“It’s not too late,” Tucker's dad says.
It takes a moment for the words to sink in, and even longer for Tucker to drag himself back to the present. He pauses the video he had been watching on his phone, freezing it on a close-up of his battered face. Although the footage is somewhat out of focus, his teal eyes are unmistakable. If Tucker's timeline is correct, the video had only been up for ten minutes before someone mentioned his name. By morning, everyone had known the truth: Tucker Foley is the Tech Hunter.
He closes the video—there's no point watching the rest when he already lived it—and looks at his dad in the driver's seat.
“You can wait in the truck while I talk to Mr. Lancer, and then we can go home,” Maurice suggests. “Maybe stop at the Nasty Burger on the way. No harm in missing a Monday.”
Tucker gasps. “But then I’d miss out on the love of my adoring fans!” His voice softens as he continues. “Besides, I already told Sam I’d be there.”
“And Danny?” Maurice glances away from the road long enough to catch his eye.
Tucker’s gaze drops back to his phone. Notifications had been pouring in all weekend, setting his phone off so often that he had to turn off his alerts to get a few seconds of peace. But things have settled down, and only one message waits for him now. Sent from Sam at the start of second period that morning, her first class with Danny.
AWOL again. Have you heard from him yet?
“No,” Tucker says, texting Sam the same thing before putting his phone in his pocket. No texts. No calls. Tucker’s whole world turned on its head, and everyone has had something to say about it. Everyone except his best friend.
He feels his dad’s stare but refuses to meet it, glaring at the parking lot as they pull in. He doesn’t want to see the expression on his dad’s face, whether it’s pity or worry. After a year of dealing with this new Danny, Tucker has grown used to the silent treatment. But he had hoped something this big would make things different. Apparently not.
Tucker opens the passenger door and stands up slowly. Although his concussion is minor, his head spins when he moves too quickly. He braces himself against the truck while lowering to sit on the door frame before sliding to the ground, mindful of his injured ankle.
Gravel crunches under the boot he has to wear for the next three weeks.
“Crutches,” his dad reminds him, not that Tucker would have forgotten. He grabs them from the back seat and fixes them under his arms.
He makes his way to the front doors slowly. Since he has never sprained an ankle before, he’s unsteady on the crutches. The doctor said he would get used to the crutches and that he should keep off his right ankle as much as possible.
The temptation to sprint the rest of the way to the door is still there. Has the sidewalk from the parking lot to the front door always been this long? Ironically, the reason Tucker wants to make a mad dash for the entrance is the same thing keeping him from trying it—rows of classroom windows looking out over the front lawn.
The lunch bell won’t have rung quite yet, which means plenty of antsy students looking outside as they stave off the last boring minutes of class before they can finally eat. Tucker makes the mistake of glancing up once and making eye contact with a girl on the second floor. She stares at him, her mouth falling open.
Tucker tosses her a brilliant smile before hobbling faster, catching up to his dad just as he opens the door.
The secretary is on the phone when they enter the main office, but Lancer intercepts them before Tucker and his father can sit down to wait.
“Ah, Mr. Foley! Thank you for coming in. Tucker, I hope you’re feeling well,” Lancer says.
Tucker gives Lancer an incredulous look. What a dumb question. He knows Lancer saw the video, along with everyone else in Amity. He saw the fight. Can see the crutches and the bruises. He already knows the answer.
Tucker humours him with a shrug but offers nothing further.
“You wanted to talk about Tucker’s grades?” Maurice asks.
Lancer's stare lingers on Tucker a second longer before switching to Maurice. “Almost right. After the, um, revelation, I went through our records. Tucker’s grades started dropping when he began ghost hunting, and I doubt that's a coincidence.”
“I don’t choose when ghosts attack,” Tucker says.
“Of course that's not your fault; you were doing this city a great service. But school is still important, and I'd like to help Tucker keep up. We have a student advisor program that could be useful.”
“What does it entail?” Maurice asks.
A tugging draws Tucker's attention away from the conversation, and he tunes out his dad and Lancer's voices. The feeling comes from behind him.
The visitor chairs calling my name, Tucker jokes. Despite his doctor's warnings, he may have put some weight on his ankle in his rush to get inside, and now it throbs through the boot. Plus, leaning on the crutches has started hurting his arms.
He turns away from the desk and looks at the three chairs against the wall.
The furthest is occupied. Tucker hadn't even noticed when they came in, but the office door hadn't opened again since they arrived, so the kid must have been there the whole time. They look more like a lump than a person, swathed in a hoodie three times their size, clutching a backpack that has seen better days.
Tucker recognizes that backpack, which would look more at home in a trash can. That orange and green logo stamped on the hoodie sleeve. That unruly fringe of hair splaying out from the hood.
“Danny?”
Tucker’s best friend flinches.
That tug again, harder this time, pulling Tucker forward half a step.
Danny's arms, lost in the sleeves of his father's old hoodie, curl tighter around his stomach as Tucker moves. No wonder Tucker had not recognized him at first glance. Jack's sweater smothers Danny, and the way he curls around himself with his head ducked… It's no surprise that Tucker called out first. That's how it always is, now.
He pushes down the flutter of anxiety and drops into the chair closest to the door, leaning his crutches against the wall. The space between them feels like a canyon. For months, Tucker has stood on one side, shouting across the chasm, while Danny watches from the other. How many bridges has he built trying to cross that gap? How many times has he reached out to nothing but open air?
How many times has Danny bothered to answer him?
As if sensing Tucker's thoughts, Danny lifts his head, exposing pale cheeks and sleep-starved eyes.
Tucker looks again at Danny’s arms around his stomach and asks, “Sick?” Danny's go-to excuse, although it appears true this time.
Danny doesn’t answer right away. His eyes lock on the golden band around Tucker’s throat. Tucker barely notices the choker these days, or the longer chain accompanying it, but it's hard to ignore when Danny stares. He becomes aware of how the choker shifts—so unlike the solid metal band the nanobots parade as—when he swallows.
The matching bracelets on his wrists and ankles constrict as the nanobots spread, reacting to his quickening pulse. He knows better than to try and will them down. Sometimes, he thinks his suit has a mind of its own and trying to fight it only makes his heart beat faster, makes the suit more reactive.
“Something like that,” Danny says.
“And without a note,” the secretary adds.
Danny sinks in his chair, eyes lowered.
Lancer stops talking mid-sentence. He turns, surprise lighting his eyes, as if he hadn't noticed Danny before.
Tucker realizes that he hadn't. Like him, Lancer had not clocked the quiet observer in the corner.
“Again? You don't have a note excusing your absence this morning?” Lancer asks.
Danny shakes his head.
“Can you contact your parents for us and have them give a verbal notice?”
“I’ve been trying,” the secretary cuts in. She sets the phone down on the receiver. “Four times, no answer. I can’t leave a message, either, since their voicemail is still full.”
Tucker is willing to bet his PDA that all the messages taking up the Fentons’ voicemail are from the school. Anyone who knows them knows calling the house is a useless endeavour. Danny could offer up his parents' cell phone numbers, but his lips stay sealed.
Tucker could give Lancer their numbers. Or Maurice could. Tucker has reasons for not offering the phone numbers up—frustration being the biggest among them—but his dad…
Maurice watches in contemplative silence.
Lancer sighs. “Daniel, you know what we talked about.”
“I wasn’t skipping!” Danny makes a move forward but abandons it with a sharp hiss. “I didn’t feel good, so I overslept on accident, honest.”
“I want to believe you, but you don’t have a note, and we can’t reach your parents. We can’t ignore this problem.”
“​​Please, I’ve been trying.”
“You’ve been late nearly every day this month, gone missing from class three times last week, and have sixteen absent days without explanation from the beginning of the year. Not to mention your streak of late or incomplete assignments and failing grades.” Lancer recites each offence as if reading off a grocery list. He could have said “bag of flour” instead of “failing grades,” and it wouldn’t have sounded out of place.
Danny's face crumples as Lancer speaks, and his eyes water. Although, judging by how he grips his side, Lancer's words may not be the only thing causing him pain.
Tucker wonders if he should speak up. A good friend would, and Tucker is a good friend, but something holds him back. Part of him wishes Lancer had taken Danny into his office to have the conversation in private, so that he didn't have to watch this. He may be annoyed with Danny, but he doesn't enjoy hearing Lancer scold his best friend.
But another part of him, much smaller yet big enough to keep him quiet, thrums with satisfaction because someone is finally calling Danny out.
“Please.” Danny's voice cracks. “I swear it's not on purpose.”
Then stop doing it, a voice hisses in Tucker's mind.
“Now, hold on.” As Maurice steps between Lancer and Danny, the growing sneer vanishes from Tucker's face. “Can we talk about this? I might not be Danny’s parent, but I am one of his emergency contacts.”
“Only a guardian can provide an absence note,” Lancer says.
“I know, but this conversation is for an adult, not a fourteen-year-old. What kind of punishment are we looking at?”
“In-school suspension at the least, but we need to consider Danny’s record. Property damage—”
“I stopped dropping beakers,” Danny mumbles.
Lancer glares at Danny for the interruption. “Property damage, and bringing questionable substances to school. Two months ago, we had to confiscate a lip… balm?”
 “Lipstick.”
“Thank you, Daniel. We confiscated a lipstick blaster. He fired it at a student as revenge for a prank.”
“Ghost weapons don’t hurt regular people. Much,” Danny says.
“And we were lenient enough not to suspend you then since Mr. Baxter wasn’t injured, but it’s concerning behaviour. Taking that into consideration, we’re now looking at a three-day suspension.”
“I don’t see how taking a student out of school will help when they’re struggling to stay in,” Maurice says. “I’ve known Danny his whole life. He's a good kid, and someone should speak up for him. Can we at least talk about this?”
Lancer purses his lips. “Daniel, are you comfortable with me talking to Mr. Foley about this?”
That’s funny, since Lancer already recited Danny’s record from memory without care.
Danny stays silent, stare fixed on the carpet, hands trembling in his lap. The bell for lunch goes off, ringing right outside the door, but he doesn't move.
“Dude.” Tucker nudges Danny's foot with his own.
Danny's leg jerks, pulling out of reach, and he finally looks up. “Um. Sure. Yeah.”
Lancer nods. “Ms. Nichols, could you go to the guidance counsellor and get a packet on the student advisor program? I’d like Tucker to read it over. Mr. Foley, if you’d come with me.”
Tucker’s dad casts Danny a worried glance before disappearing into Lancer’s adjoining office. The secretary steps out a moment later, leaving Tucker and Danny alone. By that time, Danny is back to staring at the carpet. His trembling worsens, and he lowers his head to his knees.
“Hey, man. It'll be okay. A few days isn’t so bad.” Tucker pats Danny's shoulder, but he flinches again. Tucker's hand hovers in the air before pulling back. It’s the first time they’ve seen each other in days, and this is how Danny acts. No, “I’m glad you’re not dead” or, “Hey, how’s your leg?” If Tucker hadn’t noticed Danny, would he have said anything?
No. Tucker knows he wouldn't have.
Anger sparks in his chest. He tries to swallow it, but it leaks into his voice. “I'm surprised you care this much. It's a free pass to skip more school.”
“I can't afford to miss any more school.”
“Really? You could have fooled me.”
Danny glares at Tucker. “What does that mean?”
In the back of his mind, Tucker knows he should stop talking. A few words in, and the conversation is turning sour already. There’s a bitterness growing between them that wasn’t there before. It shadows Danny's gaze and turns the spark in Tucker’s chest to a blaze.
He doesn’t think before he says, “I know your grades are bad, but I didn't realize you were actually stupid.”
Danny reels back. Tucker is nowhere near him, but his words are enough of a slap in the face. Tucker regrets them the second they leave his mouth. It's too far. Too close to Danny's greatest insecurity. He knows it was an asshole thing to say, but he keeps talking.
“It's hard to believe you care when you're never here.”
“You don't understand.”
“It doesn't sound that complicated. Stop skipping class, and Lancer won't suspend you. Simple.?
“I have—there are things I have to do, okay? You don't­—” Danny bites down on his words. His gaze drops to Tucker's choker. “You should get it.”
Tucker puts a hand on his throat. The collar responds to his touch, rippling beneath his fingers. The chain resting against his chest grows warm. “Are you serious? I don't know where the hell you've been the last few days, but I'm a ghost hunter. What I'm doing matters. What's your excuse?”
Danny opens his mouth, but Tucker pushes on. Now that he's started, he can't seem to stop.
“Whatever it is, I guess it's more important than your friends. Where have you been, Danny? Because it's not here. First, you miss school, then stop hanging out with us, and then you miss Sam's birthday. We tried to reach out. We asked what was wrong, but you kept shutting us out! You've done some rotten things this year, but we still thought you cared. We still­—”
Tucker's voice cracks. Is it cold in here? He feels cold. And wet. Phantom raindrops strike his nose and cheeks, just like that night. The world around him grows fuzzy and distorted, making his head ache. His ankle hurts. His suit is broken. There are no enemies here, but his instincts scream at him to fight.
To attack.
“I needed you! It was the scariest night of my life, and you weren't there. I had to limp home alone because my best friend wouldn't answer his phone. And you kept ignoring me! You didn't come to the hospital. You didn't visit me at home. You didn't answer any of my calls. I need you, Danny, but it's like you're not even here. Where the hell are you?”
Tucker looms over Danny. He doesn't remember standing up, but his shadow falls over Danny's face. Danny isn't here. His eyes are wide and distant, looking through Tucker at something very far away. He curls into himself, his trembles turning to full-body shakes.
“You don’t have anything to say?”
Danny grabs his head and squeezes his eyes shut, the backpack falling from his lap.
“Say something!” Tucker grabs Danny's hoodie and hauls him up. That's when Danny screams. Tucker's first instinct is to shove him back, send him sprawling. Danny hits the floor with another broken cry. The rain vanishes, leaving Tucker with a sheen of sweat as he returns to himself.
“Shit, Danny.” Tucker is drowning in an ocean of anger, but he swims for the glimmer of light above his head, reminding himself with each stroke of his arms where he is, who he's with, that Danny isn't his enemy.
Tucker reaches out to help. No matter how angry he is, Danny is still his friend. Tucker grabs Danny’s arm to hold him steady, wondering what he’s supposed to do now. Should he call the nurse? His dad and Mr. Lancer? Whatever’s wrong with Danny isn’t like a cold or flu.
Unconsciously, his grip on Danny’s arm tightens.
He doesn’t see Danny move. Tucker is standing, and then he’s on the floor, staring up at the ceiling rather than down at Danny's crumpled face.
“Mr. Fenton!”
“Tucker!”
Tucker blinks, trying to process what just happened. Grabbing the nearest chair, he hoists himself up and surveys the scene. Lancer and his dad hover in the doorway, staring at Danny in disbelief. Danny stands in the middle of the room, his fist extended. He’s the one looming now, but somehow he looks small.
Tucker’s chest throbs where Danny had struck him.
“Fighting in school is prohibited. Thanks to Mr. Foley, I was willing to give you another chance, but I’ve just changed my mind.” Lancer goes to a cabinet behind the desk and opens the top drawer, pulling out a pink slip of paper. It only takes him a second to fill it out.  “You’re not allowed on school grounds for the rest of the week. This needs to be signed and brought back to me as soon as possible.”
Danny grabs the paper without looking. “How can I bring it back if I’m not allowed?”
“Your parents need to bring it in, so we know they've seen it. You can wait in the hall until we send you home”
Danny’s jaw clenches. For a moment, Tucker thinks he’s going to protest, wants him to protest. Do anything to show that he still cares about any of this. But Danny only lets out a shuddering breath and leaves.
Tucker stares after him until a hand appears at the edge of his vision.
“Tucker, are you okay?” his dad asks.
“Fine. Been hit worse by nastier things.”
“We heard shouting.” His dad helps him up.
“We were just talking, but then…” Tucker doesn't understand how it spiralled so fast. Danny's scream snuffed out the fire in Tucker's chest, but watching him walk away without a word fans the lingering embers. “Be right back.”
He snatches his crutches from the wall and hobbles out of the office as fast as he can. The hallway is empty. Bursting out the front door, Tucker scans the schoolyard. He spots Danny halfway across the grass, heading to the side fence.
“Danny!” Tucker shouts.
If he hears Tucker, he doesn’t show it.
“Hey!” Tucker stumbles down the steps, swearing under his breath. Damn crutches. Damn ankle. Damn stupid best friend and their stupid argument.
They aren’t the only ones outside. It’s lunchtime, and on such a nice day, a handful of students have congregated at the picnic tables and bleachers to enjoy their food in the sun. Tucker feels their stares as he crosses the field but ignores them. All his focus is on Danny, who moves much too quickly for him to catch up.
“Danny Fenton!” Tucker bellows.
Danny falters but doesn’t stop.
“Fuck this.” Tucker throws his crutches aside and activates the boots on his suit. With a burst of lavender rocket fire, he soars across the field, overtaking Danny in seconds. His landing is sloppy, too hard on his injured ankle, but he drops right in front of Danny and grabs his collar.
“What the hell was that?”
“Leave me alone.” The words are harsh, but Danny's voice trembles as he says them.
“Uh, no, because there is something wrong with you. Aren't we friends? Why can't you tell me what's going on?” Tucker searches Danny's face. He doesn't know what he's looking for, but he wants to see something.
“Like you told me about the Tech Hunter?”
Tucker can't hide his wince. He thought about it—so many times, he thought about it. Had never cared about his friends knowing his identity, hoped for it even. It would have been so easy to say. Hey, guys. I'm the Tech Hunter. Cool, right?
There had been many moments he could have said it, especially to Sam, but he always wanted both of them to know. On his favourite PDA, he has a note saved, a confession, spilling everything to them. All the fights, all the excuses, his most triumphant moments, and his lowest ones. Every time he opened his mouth, he fought down the urge to confess.
Sam and Danny are his best friends, and they have always deserved to know. But…
“That's different.” Tucker's voice is quiet, but not soft. “Vlad said it would keep you guys safe.”
Something other than grim acceptance finally flashes through Danny's eyes, but it's here and gone so fast that Tucker can't identify it. But he knows he said something wrong. Danny's face falls as soon as the words leave Tucker's lips.
“I don't know what's going on, but this doesn't have to be whatever it is. You're still my best friend.” A lump forms in Tucker's throat. The nanobots respond to his distress, their hum drowning out his haggard breathing. His choker, the chain, and the bracelets grow warm as the suit activates. It doesn't cover him completely, just enough for him to see the gleam of his gauntlets, and feel the weight of his helmet. It calms him down. Makes him feel safe. The Tech Hunter is cool, strong, and brave. Nothing phases him.
Nothing except the terror that fills Danny's eyes as the golden armour appears.
“Stay away from me!” Danny screeches.
A burst of wind pushes Tucker back a step. His grip loosens, and Danny pries his hands off. For a moment, Tucker swears something sharp digs into his wrists. The surrounding yard has fallen silent. He can feel the other students watching them. No one speaks. No one moves.
The inferno roaring in Tucker's chest has finally gone out, snuffed by Danny's howl. It leaves a blackened pit behind. Tucker's arm rises imperceptibly, an unconscious move to reach out one last time.
Danny's gaze leaps to Tucker's hand as he steps back.
Finally, something in Tucker shatters.
“Fine,” he whispers. “I don't care anymore.”
His arm lowers, he turns away, and limps back to the school. Tucker is done offering his hand to someone who won't take it.
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lexosaurus · 7 months
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[16:14] WATNEY: A teenage ghost appeared in the Hab. [16:25] JPL: Inside the Hab? How did that happen? Mark, these are extremely dangerous creatures. They are classified as semi-sentient and they are extremely territorial. DO NOT ENGAGE. [16:36] WATNEY: He opened a portal directly in the middle of the Hab, bypassing all shields. He said his name is Phantom. He seems friendly. [16:47] JPL: Standby while we contact the ecto-specialists. [17:12] JPL: The Ghost Investigation Ward has been contacted. They said that Phantom is a rogue level 7 ectoentity who has taken over the city of Amity Park, Illinois. Very aggressive, and extremely manipulative. DO NOT ENGAGE. Repeat. DO NOT ENGAGE.   [17:23] WATNEY: No, we're buddies now. [17:34] JPL: Mark, this is Venkat Kapoor. DO NOT engage with the ectoentity further. It is advised that you exit the Hab and go to Rover 2 while we devise a plan of action to remove Phantom from the Hab. [17:45] WATNEY: No need.  [17:56] JPL: That is an order. [18:07] WATNEY: Should have thought about that before you left me on Mars. [18:07] WATNEY: He said he came here to rescue me but messed up and now he's stuck on Mars too. [18:08] WATNEY: He also wanted me to tell you to tell the GIW to go f*** themselves. He said, “Especially Operatives O and K. They can go f*** themselves twice.” 
(My favorite excerpt from my Danny Phantom x The Martian fic The Phantom Martian on ao3!)
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editorofeverything · 2 years
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It’s 2 in the morning and my sleep schedule is fucked so I’m having fun with writing prompts for later and using the italics and bold features a little too much.
I’ve had a sudden vision of Danny Phantom, in very quick succession:
1. meeting Red Hood for the first time
2. sensing that he has a whole ass corrupted core, and, without explaining anything to anyone about anything
3. picking Jason up in the air and shoving his hand into his chest
I can see the Batfam but especially Bruce/Batman being horrified at watching what they think is this otherworldly, eldritch terror entity appear out of nowhere and murder their brother/son/friend right in front of them.
They attack, and Danny jerks something out of Jason’s chest before dropping him, ignoring all his new wounds thanks to the Batfam to immediately contain the toxic green, oozing core like it’s worth more than his life. (I imagine like an ecto-shield but it acts like a Steven universe bubble) and sends it away/destroys it/contains it for the time being idk
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Jason is somehow alive- although he’s collapsed on his hands and knees puking up all the leftover toxic, corrupted ectoplasm that has been filtering through his veins for however long since he was revived.
After a disgusting/concerning amount of time, Jason is all out of toxic waste to puke up and the others have either captured Danny or he disappears idk
But suddenly Jason pops up looking more revived since he was- well- revived and he is like “I know that was wildly traumatic for all of us involved, but I think that weird little glow stick just saved my undead life” and the others go:
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Because they absolutely hammered that thing when it attacked Jason and it just disappeared?? With no trace???
And Danny is just like: who the fuck is this random person walking around with a corrupted core killing him just as much as it was keeping him alive and why did everyone within a ten mile vicinity just use me for target practice
Shenanigans ensue
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sceptiseptic · 3 months
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gamingm[ass] was ju[ass]t the ass we [ssa]w along the way
Hyping white men with lil perky bums is my contribution to lgbt+ solidarity
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Hunger
Ghosts need to eat.
And you’re brain’s probably went to a dark place immediately, but no. There’s nothing cannibalistic or depraved about it.
There are plants based on ectoplasm, animals that reform. The Ghost zone simply has food. And ghosts eat it to survive, just as humans do.
In addition, ghosts do not tend to eat in meals.
In the Terminal, that lawless place in the shadow of Pariah’s Keep, they scavenge. They eat frequently, and whatever they can get their hands on.
Whereas in Elysium, the major Greek kingdom, they host meals. Roughly every earth fortnight, they will hold a massive banquet and eat until every one of them is satiated.
In such a place as a kingdom of the ghost zone, none go hungry. It is a value most everybody shares.
Then there is Danny.
Danny who does not know any better, the Phantom who has been starving for so long he is used to it, the boy that eats nothing but the excess ectoplasm his parents make him clean out of the ecto-filtrator.
He knows nothing of food. Has never known anything expect his volatile core and finicky abilities.
oOo
And now that she took a step back and actually looked, Pandora could see. This child’s core was something erratic, as though he’d been consuming raw ectoplasm. And his aura was faint enough that he must have been eating little of that, still.
That- that couldn’t be healthy. Pandora was no expert on the limits of those so liminal as to be halflings, but he was still a child. Even in the Wastes ghosts did not come so unhealthy as this.
But then, if he was liminal, and of the human realm, it was no surprise he didn’t know any better. Had he even ever eaten real food.
She wondered how he had functioned this long, wondered if he even understood there was anything wrong. He was young enough that he could likely digest food most ghosts could not handle, but Pandora did not know how well that would let the child sustain himself, considering she didn’t make a habit of testing the limits of child-stomachs.
So she easily grabbed Daniel in one hand, ignoring his alarmed yelp.
“We need to take you to a doctor at once, little one!” She said, rushing him from the outskirts to the depths of Elysium, paying no mind to his protest.
And if the child became an honored guest at her feasts after that, no one was complaining.
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cosette141 · 1 year
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To Be A Hero | Danny Phantom fanfic
Fandom: Danny Phantom Author: cosette141 Words: 22k Summary: Danny has always known the consequences should he be captured by the Guys In White, but now Tucker is going to learn firsthand just what the stakes are for his superhero friend and what it really means to be a hero. (not slash) hurt/comfort AO3 (fully finished on AO3!)
For "Day 1: Tucker Foley/Power Up". I've been following along with the DP side hoes event going on by @lexosaurus but my muse isn't here right now. Hope its ok to include a past fic that fits the theme. If that's not cool, I can remove the tag. :)
Chapter One
Danny wiped cold sweat from his brow, and leaned against the building behind him. He pressed his hands on his knees, panting as he floated in mid-air around the tenth story of an apartment complex. Moonlight cast his snow-white hair in a sheen glow, and glinted off the Fenton thermos in his hand. He lifted his head, and asked, between gasps, "Was that… the last… one?"
The Fenton Phones crackled in his ear, and Tucker pulled out his PDA, the light glinting in the darkness where he and Sam stood on the street below. "Check, and check." He yawned audibly and canted his head back toward where Danny hovered. "Finally."
"Great," muttered Sam, muffling her own yawn with her hand. She crossed her arms and tapped her foot on the pavement. "Now, can we please go to bed?"
"Ghost fighting first, sleep later, Sam." tsked Tucker. "You know the—" He made an oof sound over the headsets and Danny was pretty sure he saw Sam land her elbow into his gut. "Okay, sleep it is." They both picked up their scooters from the sidewalk.
Danny sighed in his own exhausted relief and pushed off the building to fly home. "Thank god. I thought this night would never—"
Danny's words were cut harshly off as something hard and sharp struck him in the stomach. It sliced across his skin, cutting the suit and into his abdomen. He cried out, the force of the hit driving him backward into the apartment building, shattering a window.
"Danny!"
Dazedly, Danny heard his friends shouting at him through the Phones, but his head pounded far too much to hear anything through the muddled pain. He raised a hand to his head, groaning. He barely had time to realize he was falling toward the pavement.
-.-.-.
"Danny!"
Tucker and Sam ducked as the broken glass from the window Danny slammed into showered down on them. Tucker felt Sam grab his jacket sleeve and yank him out of the downpour.
"Danny," whispered Sam breathlessly, eyes glued to the falling figure of their best friend. Tucker picked himself off the ground and ran.
He caught Danny just in time, nearly bridal-style, but Danny's altitude forced his weight into Tucker and they both slammed into the pavement.
Tucker cringed, his head nearly whiplashing on the ground. His back took most of the fall. He felt Danny's dead weight on his chest, pinning him down. Tucker lifted his head off the ground, ignoring that his hat didn't follow. Danny's head rested on his chest, but his eyes weren't open. He was out cold.
"Danny?" asked Tucker frantically, pressing a finger into Danny's forehead. "Dude? You… you okay?"
Danny didn't respond.
Tucker heard Sam's pounding footsteps behind him at the same moment he suddenly felt wet. He glanced down, realizing a green ooze was leaking over himself and the pavement.
Ectoplasm.
His heart shot into a frenzy. Danny was bleeding. A lot. "Danny!" he almost shouted. He grabbed his friend's shoulder and shook it, hard. "Dude, wake up!"
"Is he okay?" came Sam's panicked voice. She reached out and started to carefully pull Danny off of Tucker's chest. Danny's weight was freezing, and warm air quickly filled its place as Sam transferred him to the ground. The moment she did, white light encased Danny's waist, changing Phantom back to Fenton.
He still didn't stir.
"Oh my god," she breathed, eyes drawn to the growing pool of dark blood. But even in the darkness, they could tell the green ectoplasm was beginning to turn crimson.
Tucker pulled himself onto his knees, ignoring the fact that he was practically covered head to toe in Danny's blood. He looked at his friend, now noticing the sizable gash from where his shirt exposed it; the cut was nasty, still bleeding now-red blood onto the pavement. Tucker's heart cantered. "He's… he's okay." He looked panicked at Sam. "He's okay, right?"
Sam responded by slapping Danny on the face. "Danny!"
Danny flinched.
Both Tucker and Sam released a breath as his eyes flickered open. He coughed lightly, groggily lifting his head. His hand sluggishly found his side and he winced, looking down at it. His eyes widened at the blood. "Ugh… wha' hit me?"
Trying to ignore the slur in his words, Tucker swallowed hard. "I… I don't know."
"Yeah," muttered Sam, briefly looking toward the sky. "What the hell did hit you?"
Danny lifted a hand and gingerly touched the wound. The moment his fingers made contact, he gasped and tore them away.
"Crap," muttered Sam.
"What?" asked Tucker, a slight whine entering his voice.
"Danny's not in ghost form," she said, looking at him. "He heals faster in ghost form."
"Still heal pretty fast as a human," said Danny sleepily. He shut his eyes and his head slowly titled toward the ground.
"No!" Sam slapped his cheek again and he snapped his eyes open. "No sleeping, Danny!"
Danny lazily rolled his eyes at her. "Bossy."
"Look, we have to get this taken care of." said Sam, turning to Tucker. "My house is further than FentonWorks. Jazz has a first aid kit in her room—we'll have to wake her up."
Danny groaned. "No, guys—I'll… I'll heal fine, okay? If we tell Jazz she's just gonna… gonna fuss all over me…"
"Danny, you sound drunk," snapped Sam. "You are not fine."
"I'm with your girlfriend on this one, dude," added Tucker. He ignored the "I'm not his/She's not my girlfriend" responses from his friends and risked another look down at the blood. "Um, dude, can you walk?"
Danny bit his lip, then tried pushing himself off the ground. He yelped and fell back to the pavement. "That's a no," he said, barely audibly.
Tucker and Sam helped pull Danny slowly and carefully to his feet, sharing his weight between them. They started their slow walk toward FentonWorks. Danny cringed with every step, dragging his feet. Too bad he's not in ghost form, thought Tucker. He was far lighter as a ghost.
Danny's head hung low over his chest, his breathing loud and labored. "Agh—damn, that… that stings—" His face was pinched and white.
"We're almost there, dude," said Tucker quickly. They made it to the door, and Sam left Danny hanging onto Tucker as she slipped her personal FentonWorks key—not that she was given a personal key—into the lock and opened the door. She rushed back to her two best friends and grabbed her half of Danny's weight.
"Try not to bleed all over your carpet," said Tucker, attempting to lighten the mood.
"I'll keep… that in mind," was Danny's forced reply.
Their journey across the living room and up the stairs—oh, god, the stairs—was painfully slow. By the time they reached Jazz's bedroom door, Tucker's shoulders were burning by how much Danny was leaning on him.
Sam opened Jazz's door and Tucker dragged Danny inside. He wound an arm around Danny's torso, holding him as upright as he could manage without Sam. He watched as the goth shook Jazz awake.
"Jazz," she hissed to the sleeping redhead.
"No—a B?" mumbled Jazz sleepily. "But I studied—"
"Jazz!"
Jazz shot upright, whipping her head toward Sam and clutching her blanket close to her chest. "Wha—Sam?" She rubbed her eyes. "What time is it?"
"Three a.m.," said Sam quickly. "Look, we need to know where you keep that extensive first aid kit."
Jazz's eyes immediately sharpened. "Why? What's wrong? Where's Danny?"
"'M right here, Jazz," mumbled Danny, in a much less sober voice than he had a minute ago. Tucker shook him slightly, making him blink his eyes open wider.
"Danny!" she hissed. Jazz jumped out of bed and rushed over to him, turning on a dim lamp with a click. "What—oh my god, Danny, what happened to you?!"
"Shh!" chided Sam. "We don't need your parents busting in here!"
Jazz ignored her, staring at the now-red stains on Danny's t-shirt. Tucker led Danny to Jazz's bed and relieved his burning arm from its duty. Danny fell back on the comforter with a cringe.
"'S not that bad, guys," whispered Danny to the room. "I heal fast."
"Not in human form, you don't!" snapped Sam. Her face was whiter than normal, and Tucker could tell she was shaking.
"Still faster than normal," Danny tried.
Jazz pulled a big, white first aid box out from underneath her bed, unwinding a roll of gauze. "I told you to tell me when you were going out patrolling, Danny!"
"I was with Sam and Tucker," whined Danny vaguely, cringing as Jazz lifted his shirt away from his wound. The cut was jagged and still bleeding fresh blood. Tucker resisted the urge to gag.
"Yeah?" said Jazz. "And look at what happened to you!"
"I don't even know what happened to me," said Danny, then gasped as Jazz dabbed antiseptic over the cut. Danny's hand fisted in the comforter.
"It was weird," said Tucker distantly. "Something hit him. But I have no idea what it was or where it came from."
"Holy crap, Tuck!" said Sam suddenly. She lifted the corner of the sleeve of his shirt. He looked down and realized he was still drenched in Danny's ectoplasm, nearly head to toe. Sam's fingers seemed to find the only patch of his shirt that wasn't dripping in glowing green.
"Aw, man!" whined Tucker, pulling off his hat, just now remembering how much his clothes have been destroyed. His hat seemed mostly untouched by the ghost-blood, and he heaved a sigh of relief and placed it back on his head. He glanced down at his arms, his face turning nearly a matching shade of green."Ugh, it's gonna take, like, six showers to get this stuff out…"
"Sorry, Tuck," said Danny softly, visibly trying to keep his eyes open.
"Well," said Jazz, wrapping the gauze around Danny's torso. "The bleeding seems to be slowing down."
"Told you," said Danny quietly. His eyes drooped. "C'n we go to sleep now?"
Jazz's face softened at the little-boy quality in his face. "Sure, little brother. But you have to let me take a look at that in the morning."
Tucker and Sam walked Danny back to his bedroom; he was still too exhausted to phase through the wall. He dropped on his bed gracelessly, releasing a gasp of pain.
Sam's hand shot for his shoulder. "Danny, are you sure you're okay?"
Danny groaned, cracking one eye open, meeting Sam's. Tucker shifted his weight from foot to foot, feeling—again—like the the third wheel of his two best friends. He fought the urge to whistle casually when Danny said, "You don't have to worry so much. I'll be fine, Sam."
Sam's hand lingered on his shoulder for a moment more, then she took it back and she and Tucker turned to go. His voice hoarse and quiet, Danny said, "Thanks, guys."
Tucker and Sam shared a knowing look. Tucker shrugged, grabbing Danny's door to pull it shut. Meaning every word, Tucker said, "What are friends for, dude?"
-.-.-.-.
"Damn it, he's gone."
Agent K glared at the tracker in his hands, monitoring the heat signatures below him. They'd been locking into Phantom's freezing signature moments ago. Their weapon had hit him head on, then he disappeared. K looked down over where he hovered above the street, only seeing a couple of teenagers up way past their bedtime. He turned toward his partner. "Did you get it?"
Agent O held out a hand, waiting for the small silver disc to land in his palm. Moonlight glinted off the metal as they floated in their sleek, Guys In White brand hovercrafts. Agent O looked down at the disc. Its blades were slick with fresh ectoplasm. He held it up in the moonlight, grinning sickly at Agent K.
"Oh," he said. "I got it." He looked down after where Phantom disappeared into the shadows of the alley. "That ghost kid might have disappeared tonight, but by tomorrow, he's ours."
-.-.-.
Fully completed over on AO3! (Link at top underneath summary!)
Here’s also a link to an animatic for this fic done by the incredible @aanau of chapter 4 (so don’t watch till you read chapter 4 or you’ll be spoiled!!! ;) ) thank you again for making such an amazing animatic of the fic!!! I cherish it so much! <3
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glitch-in-space · 2 years
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ok idk if this has been done before but, what if no one makes the ‘fenton is phantom’ connection because humans cant comprehend phantom correctly. like, the human brain just,, Can’t Process his ghost form correctly... its fine when they’re looking at him, except for the odd occasion where danny’s angry or protective or Really Happy (or basically anything that causes him to lose his grip on his Human Skin a little bit) when phantom just seems to... glitch. but, for the most part, everyone can see him just fine when he’s visible and right in front of them 
it’s when he’s not right in front of them that things... get weird 
the only thing the townsfolk can agree on regarding his physical appearance is that phantom is a) usually human-shaped, b) looks like a teenager, and c) has white hair & green eyes. 
at first, no one notices anything amiss. they all certainly recognise him perfectly fine, but then people start talking about, and thus thinking about, phantom more and more, and pretty soon, people start to realise they just... cant remember what he looks like and whenever they try the memories seem to slip through their fingers like sand, or his face is recalled as blurred or pixelated or twisted or completely featureless except for those piercing green voids he calls eyes 
the ghosts are seemingly immune to the strange affect phantom has on the human brain’s ability to memorise him, probably because they no longer have human brains. (but, strangely, wes- ordinary boy though he seems- appears to have the ability to see through his ‘perception filter’ (as tucker calls it) and remembers exactly what he looks like...)
even sam and tucker and jazz cant remember what he looks like as phantom. they know he looks almost the same as his human form, with a baseless certainty they call instinct, but they cant prove it, cant describe his ghostly face... perhaps they can recall a little more than the general populace, and vlad even more than them, but its still nothing more than the whisper of a straight nose or the inkling of a strong jaw... 
not even technology could hope to help anyone remember phantom’s face, any recording of him glitching with static or noise or convenient cuts to a tv channel the camera should not have access to... even art doesn’t help, anyone drawing or painting his face doing it... wrong, creating something that barely appears human, something dark and eldritch and too impossible to name, or else as some faceless child turning away in fear or covering his eyes as he weeps green tears (and they’re always green, even when the artist only has 1 black pencil), or as some creature split apart by static that, when looked at just right, appears to move... 
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nat-a-nat · 1 year
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27. Soul Shredder
He looked human. But then, most monsters do.
He looked human. But then, most monsters do.
He was surprisingly full of life for something dead. Ironically tan skin, looking healthy compared to the sickly greens and blues of other ghosts. He was expressive, could imitate emotions, comprehended speech. And, despised what the Fentons say, she was sure he wasn't mindless. His actions were too purposeful to be pure instinct. 
Yes—though Valerie—Phantom looked deceptively human. Acted like it, too. Just a few little details giving away the monstrosity hiding behind the facade of a boy. Hair too white to be blond, eyes too toxic to be green, something too otherwordly to be a person.
Was is posible, she wondered, for it to be mistaken for one? If its mouth were closed to conceal its fangs, if it was day and its ghosty glow wouldn't be as noticeable as it is at night. Could it fool humans? Could Valerie confuse it with one?
She preferred to think she couldn't be tricked. She was a ghost hunter. The best one in Amity. She knew her enemy, she wouldn't fall for its charade. 
Phantom was a ghost. A notorious one at that. But sitting on top of a building staring at the sky, he looked more like a kid than anything. Valerie could see his face through the spyglass in her visor. He had an expression of absolute child-like wonder, as if the stars held the secrets of the universe. 
Maybe for him, they did.
Looking at him now? Aiming the Soul Shredder at the monster with a face of a boy, she almost felt guilty. Well, almost.
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ghostpheonix5 · 2 years
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Warmth
    Danny Phantom Fic
Gen | Danny Fenton centric with his his relationship to his parents | Sort of a what-if introspective | ~700 words
    It was hot in the house. It curled around on Danny’s shoulders and rested in the bottom of his lungs. 
    The spot on the couch was warm too. Just a little bit. His body temperature never returned to normalcy after the accident. The accident his parents were all too aware of.
    Danny had kept Phantom secret for a couple years, managing the town & its ghost invasions as easily as Doomed.  Tough at first, but no longer felt overwhelming. 
    Danny’s fingers flew effortlessly on the controller in his hands. The living room TV yawned in before him, displaying a generic fighting game. Behind, the clink of dishes reminded him that Maddie was making dinner.
    The heat settled in his stomach. 
    Danny would be one of the first people to defend his parents. Despite all their faults, they cared, and as he grew older, he came to appreciate all they had sacrificed, all they had done to make sure he and his sister had everything they needed. While admitting that outloud was one thing, Danny had allowed the thought to rest comfortably in his normally troubled mind. 
    “Danny,” Maddie called, “do you want any sausage?”
    “I’m fine.” Danny mumbled. 
    Then, his parents had found out his secret.
    ‘Found out’ was a strong word. Danny had been fed up. Fed up with his parents’ snide remarks about the humanity of ghosts. Fed up of the way his parents so routinely treated it as a science project instead of a real question that had an answer.  Fed up of concealing his ghostly features around his own home when all he wanted to do was exist as what he was without being scared. 
    So Danny told them.
    And they cried. But not for him.
    Danny supposed they had tried to understand. However, Maddie had a face he had only seen once before. Her eyebrows furrowed in determination, her face becoming red with  the strain of holding back tears as she delivered the news of her father’s death. With the news that she would never see this person she loved so dearly ever again.
    Maddie had that face with Danny. 
    But Danny was still here. He just had this part of himself that he couldn’t allow them to ignore anymore. Especially since they inadvertently campaigned for his death.
    A long talk spent justifying himself, explaining what it meant to be a ghost, pleading with them to understand that this is who he was, that he couldn’t change it. 
    Maddie had apologized. She acted like her parenting had something to do with it when that didn’t matter in the slightest.
    Jack had promised to fix it. That he would build a contraption that would cure Danny of his ghostliness.
    Neither of them understood it was something that couldn’t be changed. So when Danny refused treatment, when he told Maddie her apology wasn’t what he was asking for, his parents…couldn’t understand it.
    His parents told him that Phantom was a parasitic entity that needed to be gotten rid of. Danny refused.
    The next day, Maddie & Jack acted like the talk hadn’t happened. The same with the next day, and then the next. 
    Danny confronted them about it. 
    And Maddie told him, with that damned face, that she hoped he would come around and make the right choice about Phantom.
    Danny expected many different reactions. He saw himself gunned down and caged like an animal. He saw his parents tearing him apart for the audacity to exist as something they hated. 
    Now that he had their reaction, Danny wasn’t sure what was worse.
    If they actually did something, then Danny could be mad. He could be angry. He would know where they stood and in turn, take a stand. Like he had against so many evils before.
    However, this pseudo peace left him wavering. He couldn’t bring himself to be mad. But he couldn’t act like it didn’t hurt either. 
    His parents refused to acknowledge him.
    What was he supposed to do? When his parents were loving aside from pretending that a big part of who he was didn’t exist?
    “Dinner’s ready.” Maddie said in a sing-song voice.
    The heat wrapped around Danny’s throat and choked him.
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roundaboutnow · 1 year
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Happy @phandomholidaytruce to @dp-marvel94!
My apologies for how late this was! I went with your prompt about clones, I love sibling dynamics- especially if they're not your average kids XD
hope you enjoy and happy new year!
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wastefulreverie · 2 years
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A couple days after his parents learned he was Phantom, Danny realized he didn't explain the nature of his condition as well as he could have.
"Can... can I talk to Phantom?"
His Mom seemed to regret speaking as soon as she'd asked.
"Uh, what do you mean?"
She bit her lip. "I mean, if you're not busy or anything. We only talked to him that first night after you, uh, switched."
"Mom," he said slowly, "you know I am Phantom, right? Like, we established this—"
"I know. I know you’re the same. It’s just that I wanted to talk to him for a second about ghost stuff.” She paused. “If that’s alright with you.”
His parents still weren’t comfortable with the ghost stuff. It probably took a lot of courage to ask him to change. He was grateful that she was willing to let him share this part of himself with her so soon.
“Yeah, sure.” He pulled on his core and made the change. White light washed over him and replaced his day-clothes with his HAZMAT suit. “So, what ghost stuff?”
She stared. “You heard that?”
“Uh, heard what?”
“About me wanting to talk about ghost stuff. I mean, I didn’t really want to go to into it earlier, but just how conscious are you and Danny of each other when you switch? Are you always listening under the surface, or like—”
“Mom, hold up.” He raised a hand. “Do you think that like, Danny and Phantom are two different, I don’t know, personalities? Or something?”
Her face went red. “Are—are you not?”
“Uh, no. I don’t think so? I’m me. Just—” he waved to himself “—me with white hair and cool outfit?”
“No.” She shook her head. “But you act so different?”
“Because I have a secret identity? Not like, whatever you’re thinking. Same Danny, I swear.”
“So, when you say that you’re Phantom... you mean that you don’t just share a body. You really are...”
“Yeah...” He tried not to waver under her shocked gaze. “Is that alright?”
“Of course! I just—I’m just surprised, is all.” She sat down on his bed. “So when Phantom told Vlad Masters to kiss his ass, that was all you. Danny.”
“Uh, I mean, Vlad is kind of complicated—”
“And the time Phantom phased some GIW into the ground by the wrists, pantsed them, and goaded a group of Casper High kids into using them as paintball targets.”
“Well, I wouldn’t say I goaded them.” He shrugged. “They were eager to do it.”
“Or the time Phantom was found loose in the car wash, high on ghost nip and trying to fight the brushes.”
“Hey!” With a rush of ectoplasm, his cheeks suddenly felt cold. “That’s—that’s uncalled for.”
“Ghost nip! Really, Danny?”
“You left it in the kitchen! I didn’t know what it was! That’s your fault, if anything!”
His Mom shook her head. “Great. I thought at least, ‘Hey! Phantom’s the wild one! Danny’s the sensible one. No need to worry about him.’ You’re going to make me go gray at forty-two, Daniel James.”
He didn’t regret most of his escapades as Phantom, but he realized now that his parents were privy to all his antics he wouldn’t have the same freedom as he once had.
“I’m sorry.”
She pressed her hand into his. They were both wearing gloves, but it was still nice to feel her warmth. “You don’t need to be. I told you before, didn’t I? That I accept you no matter what you’ve done as Phantom.”
“You thought Phantom was some other person in my head, not me.”
“That doesn’t change anything, though. Ghost or not, you’re still my son. You will always be my son.”
Despite the initial miscommunication, they were bridging a clearer understanding of what life after the reveal meant.
It didn’t seem all that bad.
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kinglazrus · 7 months
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The Cracks in the Mask
Sequel to The Moment it Breaks. Written for @invisobang 2023!
AO3 | FFN
Rating: T
Words: 9156
Warnings: mild panic attack, nondescript mention of vomiting, temporary dismemberment, graphic description injury
Description: Danny has been struggling for months. Balancing ghost hunting, school, and keeping his powers a secret has drained him both physically and mentally. And it all comes crumbling down when an identity is exposed—but not Danny's. Tucker Foley, his best, is a ghost hunter. And not just any ghost hunter, but the Tech Hunter. The same hunter who, just three days ago, pressed a cannon to Phantom's chest and fired without mercy.
This is fine, right? Everything is fine.
Check out the amazing art made for this fic by @popjeckdoom!
Cover | first scene | second scene
Danny can still feel Tucker's hands on him. Not in some aching, metaphysical way like when they bump shoulders, and the warmth of that contact lingers for hours afterwards. This isn’t warmth, but heat. Tucker’s fingertips had only brushed the hollow of Danny’s throat during that final grab, yet the spot burns now.
He stops in the middle of the sidewalk, turning toward a storefront window as he checks his reflection, pulling the collar of his hoodie down. Splotches the colour of old bruises litter his throat, tinged green around the edges and dotted with red. The rash and micro-cuts left by Tech’s nanobots are unmistakable. Had Tucker noticed how the nanobots coated his fingers as he reached for Danny, seen how they wounded him?
Of course, he didn’t. There is so much Tucker never notices.
The hoodie isn’t damaged, but that doesn’t surprise Danny. Tech’s touch has always hurt, and it was always designed to hurt ghosts.
It never destroys anything man-made.
Never harms anything human.
Danny clenches his fists to stop his hands from shaking. It’s getting harder and harder to lift his feet with each step. The wobble of his left knee, the stabbing in his chest every time he breathes, the itch of his throat. It all weighs him down. And atop that, something far heavier bears down upon him, a bone-deep dread that twists his stomach into knots. He has felt the press of that unseen force from the moment Tucker stepped into Lancer’s office.
Danny sways under a bout of dizziness, nearly stumbling into the street when he tries to catch his footing. Unable to breathe deeply, he compensates with quick, shallow breaths.
And the itch on his throat persists, like bugs creeping under his skin, gnawing on his insides. They skitter from his throat to his chest, spreading from his ribs to his heart, his lungs, burrowing deep.
Danny doesn’t notice his hand roaming under his hoodie until a nail slips between the bandages on his chest and pricks the open wound. A passing woman glares at him when he yelps, muttering something about delinquents under her breath. Danny ignores her.
At least he isn’t thinking about the itching now. He presses the heel of his palm into the bandages, grimacing through the lingering sting, waiting for it to dull into the ever-present throb. To be safe, he clasps his hands in his pocket, so he won’t scratch again as he continues down the street.
Despite how bright the sun shines, the air is cold. Or, it had been when he left for school that morning. He remembers looking out the window—seconds before realizing he was three hours late for class—seeing how crisp and clear everything looked, how the snow sparkled in the sunlight, and knowing it would be cold. But he's not cold now. He almost feels too hot, and the temptation to rip his hoodie off grows along with his weariness.
A red-hot coil burns in his chest, hissing as it brands the inside of his ribs. He exhales the steam in shallow puffs and wipes sweat from his forehead.
Something yellow glints at the edge of his vision, causing Danny's heart to leap into his throat. He throws himself to the side, slipping in the snow as he tries to get out of Tech's reach.
But Tech's not here. Tech is at school.
The taxi that caught Danny’s eye passes harmlessly by.
He leans against the nearest wall as he tries to catch his breath, which is hard when the bandages around his chest are so tight that his ribs creak. He reaches under his sweater again and probes the bandages, finding the loose loop his scratching had created. His fingers come away damp, but that could be blood or sweat. He doesn’t want to know which, wiping his hand on the inside of the hoodie.
It's too damn hot out here. His skin crawls. There's so much yellow everywhere, every flash cranking Danny’s nerves up. It all becomes too much, and he crashes to his knees as his stomach revolts.
No one pauses at the sight of a kid gagging on the sidewalk. Danny wonders what they think of him but decides he doesn't care as he retches again. Nothing but bile comes up. When was the last time he ate or drank anything besides ectoplasm? When did he even have that last? He has a foggy memory of opening the box he keeps his supply in and downing the last three vials at once, but he can't say when that was. As for actual food, that must have been on Friday, before the fight. That was three days ago, and he hasn’t had a bite to eat since.
Danny's head spins.
He should go home. Lancer told him to go home. Actually, no. He said he would send Danny home. With a parent, probably. Parents who already hadn't been answering the secretary's calls, which would have left Jazz as the remaining option. Danny won’t be surprised if she had put herself down as one of his emergency contacts the second she turned eighteen last month. But going home with her would either mean waiting at school all day for classes to end or pulling her out of class so that she could take him home.
Danny's stomach churns again. No. He wouldn't have let that happen. Even if he hadn’t stormed off, he still would have left.
He slumps against the wall behind him. During the fight on Friday, he landed poorly, and his left knee has been smarting ever since. It protests a bit more loudly now, especially after getting jostled around by Tucker. A few seconds to rest and stretch it out will do him some good.
Snow soaks into his jeans, but he doesn't care. Taking a handful of snow, he shoves it in his mouth, swishing it around until it melts, trying to get rid of the bile taste. He doesn't have anything else to wash it down with. He doesn’t even have his backpack, for that matter. Maybe it's still at home, sitting by the front door. Or he left it in the school office. He can't remember.
He doesn't remember much of anything since Friday. Just the pain, and the blood, and the cracking of his heart as he glimpsed those familiar green eyes underneath the visor.
A few snowflakes fall onto Danny's lashes. His eyelids flutter.
Why is it so hot?
After checking that people still aren't paying attention to him—they aren't—he closes his eyes and tugs on his core. Cold floods his veins as his ice powers activate. It soothes the bruises that spread across his back and stomach. He focuses on the palm against his chest, concentrating on his worst injury.
The cold is a balm. It pushes back against the heat in his cheeks and helps him forget about the burn of Tucker's hand.
Danny doesn't know how much time has passed before he hears a vehicle pulling up. The cold bites at his nose and ears, but his cheeks are still far too warm. He still hasn’t caught his breath.
He hears tires rolling over broken concrete. This must have been where he fought Johnny a couple of weeks ago. The city is usually pretty good at cleaning up Danny's messes, but sometimes the smaller debris gets missed. Most people have learned to ignore it by now, but Danny always notices.
A window rolls down.
Danny squeezes his eyes tighter, hoping he hasn't been mistaken for a vagrant. A scrawny kid with no backpack, huddled on the street during school hours in winter, wearing nothing but a hoodie. He pulls his knees up to make himself smaller. Bending his left knee hurts a bit more than it should, more than it ever has with bad landings in the past, but he ignores it.
“Danny, do you need a ride?”
It takes Danny a second to recognize the voice and the truck. Mr. Foley leans over the passenger seat and peers at him through the open window.
It takes another second for Danny to remember his ice powers and cut them off. He misses the cold as soon as it's gone. He always feels better when the cold comes from within, numbing his body from the bones outward. But he can't have Mr. Foley noticing the glow in his eyes. Despite the delay, Mr. Foley doesn't react.
“Where's your jacket? I almost didn't recognize you and had to turn back around,” Mr. Foley says.
“I don't need a jacket.”
“Everyone needs a jacket. You're going to freeze.”
Danny brushes the snowflakes off his lashes and stares hard. “Where's Tucker?”
“At the school. We got him set up with that student tutor program, and he's working on that for the rest of the afternoon. He has to catch up on all the work he missed from ghost hunting.”
“Oh.” Isn't that nice?
Danny almost says no. He has known the Foleys his whole life, considers them family, and would go so far as to call them his honorary aunt and uncle. There had once been a time when, if he couldn't go to his parents for something, he would go to the Foleys. But he almost says no.
Mr. Foley must notice his hesitation because he rolls his eyes and says, “Just get in the damn truck.”
Danny gets in the damn truck. Hot air blasts into his face once he's inside.
Mr. Foley waits until Danny, who first closes the vents on his side of the truck, has buckled himself in before speaking again. “I'm disappointed in you.”
How diabolical of him to wait until Danny can't easily escape.
“There's a jacket in my locker,” Danny mutters.
“Not because of that. Although, yes. You're going to get sick if you aren't already. Do you remember when you boys were little? Whenever you and Tucker played in the snow, you always took your jacket off. We couldn't leave you alone outside, or you'd come in three hours later with the worst cold we'd ever seen.” Mr. Foley shakes his head with a smile, although it fades quickly.
“I don’t know what’s going on between you and Tucker, but it’s not like you to lash out,” he continues. “It’s obvious you’re going through something, and I’m here if you need to talk. But what you did in there wasn’t okay.
Danny watches the sidewalk as they pull into traffic, staring at the indent he left behind. He hadn’t noticed how much it was snowing when he was sitting, but a pile nearly three inches tall marks where he had been.
“I can’t say I’m not mad, but… I’m just disappointed.”
Danny wants to say he didn't mean to hurt Tucker, but he can't. Tucker is his best friend, but Tech? Thinking of Tucker's alter ego makes Danny's heart pound, and not in a good way. Not the way he's used to. Thinking of Tucker as Tech? He wants to throw up again.
Every bruise, every burn, every little cut Danny has gathered this past month throbs at the thought of that golden armour. He checks over his shoulder, but no one is there.
Tucker's at school. Tucker's at school. Tech is at school.
“You don't have anything to say?” Mr. Foley asks.
Danny shrugs.
“Tucker's okay, by the way. You didn't hurt him any more than he already was.” Mr. Foley pauses, giving Danny space to respond, but he doesn't. “This is an upsetting situation. Tucker is hurt and has been getting hurt for some time. Going out and hunting ghosts—” Mr. Foley shakes his head. “It's funny how much a mask can trick you. Tucker made me follow all the 'official' Tech Hunter accounts. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen everything there is to see of Tech online. It seems obvious now that I know. I always thought he was just a fan.”
Mr. Foley's grip on the steering wheel tightens. “But some of those videos…”
Danny doesn’t need to hear it. He has seen them, too. Clips of Tech zooming through the city, using gadgets and gizmos to take down ghosts with ease. They started fun. Even Danny enjoyed the videos at first. He felt a kinship with this new hunter, who didn't seem much older than him. But then the tech got bigger, the fights more brutal, the targets more… familiar. Danny stopped watching the videos a while ago, after he became the ghost in them.
“These last few weeks alone… I swear he was hunting down Phantom every day. I was starting to feel sorry for Phantom until—well. Until.”
Danny rubs his knee. Despite having time to rest, it still hurts. Touching it is like pressing on a fresh bruise.
“I'm sorry,” Mr. Foley says. “It's been a stressful few days, but it's not appropriate for me to dump this all on you. You need to worry about school, not ghosts. I just always thought Phantom was a good one. It doesn't seem right that all ghosts could be bad.”
“Well, you were wrong. Everyone knows ghosts are bad.”
“Danny, your parents—”
“Were right all along. We all should have listened to them. Ghosts aren't good.” Danny squeezes his knee. “They can't be good. They're monsters, right? Because only a monster would hurt Tucker like that. Wouldn't see the person behind the mask. It—Phantom—Tucker was there the whole time, and Phantom couldn't see that. He just kept hurting him. He should have known!”
The soft voice of the radio fills the cab. And then Mr. Foley turns it off, and there's only silence. Danny can't look. He lets go of his knee, flexing his fingers. They're numb from how tightly he clenched his hand.
He wants to make himself small, curl up and disappear into nothing. He doesn’t want to be seen or heard or perceived. If only a portal would open up beneath him and take him to an endless void—there must be one somewhere in the Infinite Realms—where he can stop existing for a while.
“Danny,” Mr. Foley says.
Stop it.
“Danny, I'm worried about you.”
Stop looking at me.
“Your parents are good people, but I don't like it when you start saying these things. And you've been different lately.”
No, no, no!
The heat of the cab bears down on him. His bandages are damp, and he is cold and hot and too many things all at once. Mr. Foley keeps talking, but his words don't reach Danny. The pounding of his heart drowns them out. The truck turns a corner, making Danny's view spin, but when the vehicle straightens out, the world does not.
“I—” a voice says. “Please. I need—”
“Are you okay?” Something hot touches Danny's forehead. “You're burning up.”
A hand reaches for the door. A monster's hand with pale, bony fingers and scabby knuckles. It pops the door open. The truck screeches as Mr. Foley slams on the brakes, but Danny is already out the door, part of him phasing through the metal when it can't open fast enough. He hits the ground running.
“Danny!” Mr. Foley shouts after him, but Danny is gone before the truck stops.
He doesn't know where he's going. Snow pelts his face, nearly blinding him. The wind has gone from nipping at his cheeks to slicing through him, whipping into a storm. In the distance, a haze of green and orange glows behind the snow. Danny veers away from it and pivots down the nearest street. As he turns, he skids on a patch of ice and loses his footing, careening into a mailbox. The corner drives into his chest, and his world goes white.
Danny comes to face down in the snow with ringing in his ears. He doesn’t know how long he was out, but it is long enough that the flood of adrenaline has ebbed. As the tide recedes, it uncovers all the aches he had ignored for the past few minutes.
Every breath drives a dagger through his chest. He doesn't know if he wants to cry, puke, or collapse. Or all three at once. Through the flurry of snow, he hears a shout.
“Danny!”
He has to keep going.
“Danny, where are you?!”
Leaning on the mailbox for support, he drags himself up, pivoting on his left leg.
He hears a pop. A crackling, like stepping on broken glass. Danny crumples with a scream as a searing pain tears through his knee. It’s here and gone in seconds, leaving his whole body trembling as he lays in the snow. He tries to rise, but his knee immediately gives out.
A hand touches his shoulder before he can try again.
“Daniel.”
He tries to clamber away from the hand, the voice, but his leg can’t bear the weight, even when sliding across the ground. His entire side spasms when he accidentally knocks his knee, and he lashes out at the hand reaching for him, stopping just sort of crushing those fingers in his grip.
He whimpers. “Leave me 'lone.”
“Don't be stupid. You're coming with me.”
Danny is scooped up before he can protest. He doesn't even have the energy to squirm. Anything that isn't snow is just a blur of colour. The face above him. The car ahead of them. As they approach, Danny’s shaking stops. Not because he adjusts to the pain, his body just stops. No breathing. No heartbeat. Nothing. All at once, everything has become very far away.
“Not so much fight in you today, little badger.”
He tenses as the car door opens, but inside is barely warmer than out in the snow. Danny lies in the backseat, cheek pressed to the chill leather. He tries to keep his eyes open, but staring at the seat ahead of him while the car moves turns his stomach. Again, nothing but bile comes up.
He closes his eyes, drifting into nothing as the darkness takes him.
A tether pulls Danny along. His body moves, and he moves with it, but he isn't moving it. “Danny” and “Danny's body” are not the same right now. His body feels the arms around his shoulders and under his knees. Danny does not. His body lifts its hand to stare at its scarred fingers. Danny does not.
Danny drifts behind, watching but not seeing, as the world moves around him. It is dull and flat and not quite real. It’s like possessing his Doomed avatar all over again.
That changes when he is set down on a cold table in front of a glowing expanse. The swirling green fog beckons him forward. He tries to rise, but those hands grab him again and sit him back down. This time, he feels the pressure on his shoulder as if through layers of thick cloth. One hand moves to his head, dragging through his hair. Danny doesn't try getting up again after that. He sits, content watching the ebb and flow, breathing in the sour air.
The one time Danny's friends had been in his parents' lab, they called the air acrid. Danny would have agreed with them before. Now, that smell comforts him. The same way people enjoy citrus, vanilla, or pine, Danny savours the scent—and taste—of ecto-rich air. The longer he sits there, the more “Danny” and “Danny's body” feel like one thing again. The table beneath him becomes solid, real. His breathing, although far from easy, evens out. The haze over his mind creeps away like fog in the sunlight.
The trembling starts immediately. Danny closes his eyes, taking as deep a breath as possible, ignoring how shaky it is. He wants to curl into a ball and wallow, but this isn’t the place for that. Not anymore. Instead, he gives himself ten seconds.
One.
Ten seconds to be miserable.
Two.
To wonder how badly he screwed up this time.
Three.
Four.
To wonder if he cracked a rib when he hit that mailbox.
Five.
Six.
Or what he might have torn in his knee.
Seven.
Eight.
Nine.
To pretend he’s just a normal kid having a shitty day.
Ten.
Danny sits up straight and turns. Now that his panic has retreated—not gone, but tucked into a corner of his mind like a wild animal—he realizes where he is. Who he's with.
Danny didn't notice when Vlad pulled away. Part of him, much larger than he wants to admit, laments the loss of contact. Now, Vlad leans against the console of his lab. A large monitor rises behind him, with several smaller screens angled beside it. They can function as individual screens or act as one massive display. Danny has played Doomed on those screens many times in the past year. He can see the game's case just behind Vlad, alongside his NASA mug and a pair of headphones he has never seen before.
Vlad follows Danny’s gaze to the items on the desk. He smiles and picks up the headphones. “Do you like them? They just came in. I know your old headphones got damaged in a fight.”
“Yeah.” The ear pads on the headphones are planets, and stripes like the rings of Saturn decorate the headband. It will not be the first gift Vlad has given him. Danny swallows before adding, “With Tech.”
Vlad puts the headphones down and comes forward. “I'm sure you heard the news by now. It's all over Amity Park. I'm sorry your best friend turned out to be a ghost hunter.” He rests a hand on Danny's head in a paternal gesture, which Danny normally finds comforting. “It must be hard. Are you all right?”
Danny takes in the lab, which has grown more familiar to him than his own home. The day Vlad showed him this place and revealed himself, something in Danny changed.
You're like me, Danny had thought. You understand me.
Any ghost can stumble into Vlad's lab, but he and Danny are the only humans able to reach it. It became his haven. Here, he could be himself without worrying about anyone else seeing. And Vlad gave him that.
Tucker's words, which had never left Danny's mind, resurface.
Vlad told me to.
Danny jerks away from Vlad's hand, leaving it hanging between them. Something changes in Vlad's expression. It's so minute that someone else might not have caught it, but Danny has spent too much time with the man not to notice. Vlad's nostrils flare, and his mouth twitches downward. Danny blinks, and Vlad's smile is back at full brightness, but it's too late. Danny saw the mask crack.
Vlad clasps his hands behind his back and starts pacing. “I heard about your suspension. Your father added me to your list of emergency contacts after I came to Amity, and when you left without waiting for an adult, the school contacted me. You're lucky I found you. Have you even treated your injuries yet?”
“Vlad.” Danny's tone could make a ghost shiver.
Vlad pauses for a second. “Daniel. What did I do to lose my uncle privileges?”
“Whatever you did to Tucker.”
“Oh, dear. Is this about the press conference? I promise it won't be anything bad, but this is a big revelation for the city. I would be remiss not to address it.”
“No, I—press conference?” Danny shakes his head. “Stop it. Stop deflecting. Tucker told me.”
Vlad's jaw tenses. Another crack. “What do you mean? What did he tell you?”
“Everything!”
Vlad looks Danny up and down, then swivels, heading back for the console. He swipes the NASA mug up and swirls around the liquid inside. Some week-old energy drink, probably. He sniffs at it and makes a disgusted face, then dumps the contents over a nearby floor drain. Vlad takes his time going to the eyewash station, filling the mug with water and cleaning it.
Two minutes pass before Vlad returns to the console and leans against it, giving Danny a long stare. Unable to straighten with the gnawing in his chest, Danny curls in instead. Vlad smirks.
The expression makes Danny bristle. He knows that face. It's the smile Vlad gives him when they've both seen something stupid—a private joke passing between them. Danny doesn't smile back. He doesn't see any jokes around here except for himself.
“I don't know what you're talking about. Is your fever getting to you?” Vlad says.
“You knew who he was! Tucker said so!”
“Oh. I found out by mistake. I knew it would only hurt you, so I gave him some advice. I would have told you sooner if I thought it would end like this. But you know how unstable you—”
“LIAR!” Danny howls, the sound tearing from Danny’s throat, shaking the lab. It cracks the monitors and shatters the mug in Vlad’s hand. He scowls, shaking off glass and blood, while Danny cries out. “Why would you make me hurt him?!”
“I didn't make you do anything. You said you wanted to help, so I gave you a task. You did get the relic, didn't you?” Vlad pauses, but not long enough for Danny to answer. “How exactly you went about getting it was entirely up to you. I have plenty of resources you could have used to track it down before Tech got to it.”
“I wasn't going to use one of your ghosts!”
“Oh, that's delightful.” There is nothing friendly in Vlad's smile now.
The shift takes Danny aback. Despite the cracks he saw, he doesn’t want to believe the mask is there, to see it crumble. This isn’t supposed to happen. Vlad should be smiling at him—warmly—and offering some sage advice that sounds pompous but ultimately helps Danny figure this out. And, after taking care of Danny’s wounds, they will go upstairs and watch something in Vlad’s home theatre. An old Packers game if Vlad reaches the TV first, during which he’ll recite the same hundred facts Danny has heard a thousand times over. Some kind of monster flick if Danny gets there first, or a space documentary if he wants to annoy Vlad. But no matter what they watch, they’ll spend the hours crafting a perfect lie about his behaviour for Danny’s parents, and when Danny goes to sleep later, he can rest easy knowing that Vlad has his back. Even if no one else does.
Danny wants his Uncle Vlad.
He doesn’t want this.
“You really think you're a monster, don't you?”
Danny fights back tears, saying, “I'm not like them! I have a heartbeat. I still feel things. I don't just hurt people because I can!” He doesn't even convince himself.
“There's more than one way to be a monster.” Vlad presses a button on the console.
The screens, cracked but still functional, light up. All seven show the same thing: a clip from Friday's fight. It isn't in the video circling online, but Danny remembers this moment. It happened not long after the fight began.
Phantom grabs Tech by the chest piece, lifts him, and then slams him down on the ground. Hard enough that the pavement beneath Tech fractures and his suit glitches. The video closes in on the ghost's snarling face. Its bared fangs. The wild, inhuman eyes.
“Shut up!” Danny launches himself at Vlad. In the second it takes to cross the lab, he transforms from human to ghost. His claws tear into Vlad’s suit as they collide and crash into the main monitor. It shatters, glass raining down around them, but the video doesn’t stop.
The screens on either side show the clip on a loop. The same scene is happening here, in a different place, with a different friend, but the same feral look on Phantom's face.
“I didn't want to! You made me do it!” Danny slams Vlad down again and again and again. All the while, that recording taunts him from the edges of his vision. Danny's attention snaps to the screens on his right. Beams of ectoplasm explode from his eyes and carve through the screens, scorching the walls as he turns from right to left.
Vlad shoves his palm under Danny's chin and fires. Pink overtakes Danny’s vision as the ecto-blast goes off, throwing him across the lab. The smell of smoke and singed flesh overpowers the comforting tang of ectoplasm. Danny stares at the ceiling, panting, and swallows. It hurts.
“Little badger, look at yourself. You're not in the right state for this.”
Danny pushes himself up and finds Vlad, now transformed, floating closer. The front of his suit is torn, but the injuries beneath are little more than paper cuts to him. Danny flicks the blood off his claws and tries to stand. His knee gives out beneath him.
“You can't walk.”
Danny tries to respond but cuts off with a sharp gasp. He touches a hand to his throat. When he pulls away, he finds ectoplasm dripping from his claws.
“You can't speak.”
Danny snarls.
“I thought you said you weren't a monster?”
With a screech, Danny throws himself forward again. Vlad dodges to the side. They've been here before. How many times has Danny tested himself against Vlad, tried out new powers on him, and sparred in the lab?
How many times has Danny lost to Vlad in these friendly sessions?
That doesn’t stop Danny from throwing himself, again and again, at the man he trusts. The man he sees as a mentor, an uncle, and maybe even a father figure. He lashes out with claws, and teeth, and ectoplasm, but nothing hits. Vlad keeps slipping out of the way, unbothered, as if this means nothing to him. Danny's whole world is crashing down around him, and no one cares.
He tries to duplicate, desperate for any edge he can get over Vlad, and gets so far as having two right forearms sprouting from his elbow before something inside of him fizzles.
“No, no, no!” Danny croaks. A ring flickers around his chest. He forces it back, barely, and leaps at Vlad again, charging ecto-blasts in all three palms.
Vlad dodges the first blast and the second but slips right into the path of the third. Triumph fills Danny as the ecto-blast explodes, until a hand shoots out and grabs his wrist.
“Don’t forget who taught you all of your tricks.” The duplicate Vlad left behind to take the hit melts away as the real Vlad steps back, claws sinking into Danny’s flesh. He smiles before wrenching Danny’s arm upward.
Danny screams over the squelch of the limb tearing from his body. He crumples on the floor, groping at his elbow. Threads of muscle coated in blood and ectoplasm twitch beneath his fingers. Their tattered ends dangle from the arm in Vlad’s grip, a jagged bone poking out between the flesh.
Danny retches when he feels the muscles twitching. Darkness creeps into his vision, and he has to fight it back.
His arm. His arm. Vlad ripped off his arm.
A string of muscle slips out of the severed arm and hits the floor. Globs of ectoplasm follow, splattering against the tile. The flesh shrivels, sloughing off in chunks, followed by the remaining muscle, and the bones crumble in Vlad's grip as the arm corrodes from the inside out. Danny flinches at each wet smack, unable to tear his eyes away from the decaying limb. Every time a piece of it falls, his elbow spasms. He cups the wound, expecting his hand to close around a stump, but finds solid flesh instead. Slowly, his gaze lowers.
Ectoplasm oozes between his fingers. Pulling his hand away, he watches the last dangling thread of muscle fall, joining the mass on the floor. The ectoplasm on his elbow bubbles and smooths out into pale, unblemished skin.
Between the swimming in his head and the darkness creeping into his vision, it takes him a while to truly process what he sees. His right arm, from his shoulder all the way down to his fingertips, is still there.
The melting limb is fake—the duplicate.
It is the duplicate, right? Danny flexes his real—please, please be real—hand. The crumbling remains of his other fingers twitch, sending a jolt up his arm. Muscles that did not exist before—and exist no longer—strain to move a part of him that isn't there.
The limb is fake.
But it feels real.
Every second of agony as his flesh decays before his eyes.
When the rings come again, Danny doesn't have the energy to fight them off.
“Remember: it didn't have to be like this, little badger. If it weren't for your stubbornness, we could have kept going as we were. But I suppose you've ruined it.” Vlad waves his hand, creating a shield of ectoplasm. With a push, it shoots forward, pinning Danny to the ground, moulding around his body as it binds him.
The last chunks of his arm dissolve, and Danny’s eyes widen when the puddle inches toward him. He squirms, breath hitching as he tries to get away, but there’s nowhere to go. His bindings tighten, forcing his elbows into his ribs, cutting into his wrists until his fingers go numb.
The ectoplasm seeps into his hair. When he whips his head around, droplets splatter against his cheek. One lands on his lips.
The taste of lime. The smell. Burnt. Rotting.
Vlad rests a foot on Danny's chest, on his injury. It draws Danny’s attention, but one word lingers in the back of Danny’s mind.
Acrid.
“And I could have done so much for you,” Vlad says, then digs his heel in.
Danny is too busy howling at his cracking bones to see the foot come for his head next.
Danny was bleeding the first time they met. It was the standard for their first few run-ins, spread over the following weeks. Even now, it seems that Danny always bleeds in Vlad’s presence.
He had been late coming home from school, caught in a fight on his way. He pelted toward the stairs, clutching his backpack against his stomach—the fifth backpack he would lose after his accident. Before he started climbing, his dad beckoned him to the living room. Danny didn't have time for whatever his dad wanted. He could feel the wet spot on his side growing. If he didn't get behind a closed door soon, someone might notice the stain spreading on his shirt. He cared more about that than the grey tint slowly overcoming his vision.
“Danny? Are you coming?” his dad called again.
Danny made the mistake of looking back. His dad’s eyes were filled with so much hope. Danny knew his parents were eccentric and that put people off, but how could anyone ever say no to Jack Fenton when he radiated such joy?
Danny's earliest memory is the glint of his dad's smile. The warmth of his arms.
At that moment, Danny was bleeding into his backpack. His vision was growing dimmer by the second, and he wasn't sure if he could walk straight. But his dad smiled and waved him forward, and suddenly Danny was a toddler again, taking his first wobbling steps toward his favourite person in the world.
His dad’s beckoning hand pulled him toward the promise of that warmth, and he stumbled into the living room.
He didn't know the man sitting on the couch. Didn't hear anything his parents said, either. Danny rushed through an introduction (Hi, I'm Danny, nice to meet you—I'm going to my room now) and fled as soon as possible.
Once locked behind the bathroom door, he stuffed his bloody shirt into his bloodier backpack and started fixing himself up. He had to dig a pellet of ice from his abdomen and was surprised it hadn't melted yet. That ghost—what was his name… Klemper?—had been tossing snowballs left and right. Danny hadn’t expected it to hurt once he got hit with one, much less bury a chunk of ice in his stomach.
So much for making friends.
Once the shard was out, blood flowed freely from the wound. Danny nearly passed out at the sight of it. It was the first time he had bled so much from a ghost fight. He impressed himself by holding it together, until he tried to stitch himself up with a travel sewing kit. As the needle dug into his skin, his world went black.
An hour later, Danny was bandaged—but no stitches, never again—and the bathroom was clear. He had stuffed the toilet paper and towels he used to mop up the blood into his backpack, intent on tossing the whole thing in the dumpster once night fell. Satisfied with his cleanup job, he slunk into the hall, shirtless, once again hiding behind his backpack.
Danny had been so busy checking if Jazz's door was closed that he hadn’t noticed the body before him until he buried his nose in a cashmere jacket. He looked up into the stunned face of the man his dad had wanted him to meet. Some old friend of his parents’ from their college days. Danny had already forgotten his name.
He wouldn't find out for weeks how the man noticed the only drop of blood Danny had missed—a stain the size of a quarter on the hem of his jeans. In the moment, all he saw was the man's shocked expression melting into amusement, and something else, something Danny couldn't name but recognized on an instinctive level. Something that made him take a step back.
The man surprised Danny with a pat on the head. “Try dish soap. And cold water,” he said before gliding past into the bathroom.
Danny spent the rest of that evening hiding in his bedroom, afraid that at any second, his parents would come bursting in because their friend saw him bleeding. They never did.
To anyone else, that interaction would have been insignificant—a few harried seconds easily forgotten. But to Danny, who had already been through so much, it meant one thing:
There was an adult he could trust.
Danny wakes up to a fever and a ceiling covered in stars. Not the dollar-store, glow-in-the-dark stickers he grew up with, which his dad helped him put up when he was five, but a light projection from a lamp on the nightstand. With the curtains drawn, only the stars provide light for the room. Danny is thankful for that. He can barely keep his eyes open with how much his head pounds.
He reaches to peel off the blanket, but freezes. His right arm hovers in front of him, trembling. It comes back to him quickly: the sound, the smell, the taste. The slow decay of the phantom limb.
It was fake, he tells himself, squeezing his hand into a fist. That wasn’t real.
The rest of his body feels stiff, fresh bruises blooming across his back and shoulders, and he can’t catch his breath. It’s like there’s a knife in his back, held in place by Vlad’s heel, and even the smallest inhale pushes Danny’s chest back into the blade.
His throat is a footnote in comparison, barely worth his notice.
But his knee… This morning, Danny’s knee twinged. There was discomfort, but he could walk. Comparing his pain from then to now is like comparing a bruise to a bullet wound. He knows the disparity between those two injuries.
He pushes himself up, peeling away from the sweat-soaked sheets, and bites back a cry when his leg shifts. He has to stop twice and grit his teeth before he manages to sit upright.
The blanket falls into his lap just as he spots his reflection in the mirror across the room. His chest and throat have been bandaged with care. The edges of his injuries creep out from beneath the bandages, flares of red skin touching his collarbone and ribs. The bandages on his throat are also damp, but not from sweat. Danny recognizes the slightly tacky sensation of Vlad’s healing salve—a concoction made to soothe ectoplasmic injuries. It works best on surface wounds.
Beneath the blanket, he discovers unfamiliar pyjamas. Pulling up the left leg reveals a compression bandage around his knee. If it’s supposed to help, it’s not doing much.
There is little else in the room besides him, the bed, and the mirror. The projector and the nightstand, of course. A dresser beneath the mirror. A Dumpty Humpty poster on the door. This room is one of many that Danny had yet to explore in Vlad's manor. Despite this, he immediately knows what, or who, it's for.
This is Danny's room.
Only a day ago, that realization might have warmed him. Now, it fills him with disgust. He needs to leave as soon as possible, but he can't go out in a pair of flannel pyjama pants. Scanning the room again, he doesn't see his hoodie or sweatpants, but he notices a stack of clothes on the corner of the bed.
Designer jeans, a Vladco polo shirt, and a fur-lined leather jacket. No way Danny is putting those on.
He goes to transform, tugging on his core, but a jolt of electricity stops him. It rips through his body and leaves him breathless, clutching his chest. He doesn’t try again.
He should. If he wants to get out of here quickly, he only has one option. But just turning his hand intangible makes his insides itch. He doesn’t want to know how intense that would feel across his whole body. Doesn’t want to hurt any more than he already does.
Danny berates himself for his weakness.
He changes into the clothes and hates every second of it, but he doesn't have another option. It takes an embarrassingly long time since he has to manoeuvre his bad knee. Bending it hurts. Straightening it hurts. He can’t even let it lay limp without some discomfort. But he manages, grimacing when he catches his reflection, and starts the arduous process of limping through the manor.
He may not have explored every inch of Vlad’s home, but he knows the layout well enough to find his way to the front door. He keeps one hand on the wall to help his balance, but he still falls a few times.
By the time he reaches the stairs, the wall is the only thing holding him up. Every time he puts weight on his left leg, his knee slides beneath his skin. His right thigh aches from hopping across the manor on one leg. While ghost hunting keeps Danny in shape, the last few days have drained him so much that he feels like a weak freshman again, barely able to run a mile.
As he peers down the stairs from the third-floor landing, part of him whispers that he should go back and collapse into that soft bed. But he hasn’t sunk that low yet. As he debates the least painful way to make it down, a voice floats up to him.
“—wake him up. I don't want to take up more of your time,” Jazz says.
“It's not a problem, dear.” Danny's heart quickens at Vlad's voice. “Danny visits often enough. I don't mind him taking up one of my spare bedrooms for a few hours. I'm just glad I found him so quickly.”
Danny clings to the newel post as he lowers himself to the floor, starting the long process of scooting down the stairs one step at a time.
“Thanks again for calling the school back. Lancer said he didn't want to pull me out of class, but someone needed to be here for Danny.”
“He was fine with me.”
“Family, I mean.”
“Right. Of course. But you could have waited for school to end.”
Danny glances at the grandfather clock on the main floor, visible at the back of the hall now that he's worked his way down to the second landing. It's not even three yet. Jazz had to leave school early because of him. A bitter taste spreads across his tongue. He swallows a few times, but the taste lingers. He can't get rid of his guilt that easily.
“Yeah, that's not happening. Danny comes first.”
He wishes she would stop saying stupid things.
When Danny finally reaches the bottom floor, he stops to gather himself. A few quick breaths, so close to hyperventilating that he wonders if his panic has reared its head again, before he strides over to the doorway leading to Vlad's sitting room. He almost makes it all the way, but on the last step, his leg buckles, and he clings to the door frame to keep himself up. Jazz’s head jerks up at the sound of him hitting the doorway, and her face lights up when she spots him.
“Danny!” She is upon him instantly, leaping across the room to reach him, rubbing his hair, touching his forehead, and fussing with the jacket. “Oh. This is new?”
“His clothes were soaked, and he didn’t have a good coat. I couldn't in good conscience leave him like that.”
While Jazz frets, Danny stares past her. Vlad sits in a lavish armchair with his back to them but watches through the mirror above the mantle. He has a thing for mirrors.
Their eyes meet, and Vlad's flash red. Danny pales.
“Are you even listening to me?” Jazz asks.
Danny, unable to speak, nods. The way Jazz fusses, she keeps pushing him back, forcing more weight onto his injured knee. Tears spring to his eyes.
“Oh, Danny.” Jazz lifts a hand to wipe the tears away, but Danny flinches back.
“Careful.” Vlad rises from his chair. The movement yanks Danny's attention back to him as he approaches. “I think I might have bruised his ego when I had to carry him inside. He must be sulking.”
Danny can feel Jazz's eyes on him, but he can't look away from Vlad. Danny hasn't stopped shaking since they made eye contact. Vlad raises a hand to fix his sleeve, and Danny flinches again.
“Oh.” Jazz's hand finds Danny's wrist and squeezes it once. “Well, thank you again. I'm taking Danny home now if that's all right.”
Her tone says she doesn't care if it's all right; they're going home now.
“By all means,” Vlad says.
No one moves. Danny doesn’t want to look away from Vlad, afraid of what might happen the second he turns his back. Jazz must pick up on his wariness because she keeps looking between them as if she, too, is waiting for something to happen.
Vlad finally breaks the spell over them by gesturing to the door.
Jazz takes Danny’s hand and pulls him away. He stays behind her, so she can’t see him limping. Unfortunately, they’re nowhere near the wall, and he has no way to hold himself up when his leg gives out again. His hand rips from Jazz’s as he stumbles, barely catching himself from face-planting.
Jazz spins around, lips parting, but Danny snaps, “What?” before she can say anything.
Hurt flashes across her face. “Are you…?”
“I’m fine.” He drops to one knee, ducking his head to hide his grimace, and mutters, “Tripped on my shoelace.”
Jazz doesn’t say anything else, and he doesn’t lift his head to see what face she’s making. Danny fiddles with his perfectly tied laces until Jazz’s feet turn away from him and head for the door. He stays on the ground, breathing softly through his nose until he’s ready to stand, rising on one leg. His left knee spasms.
He massages it through his jeans, although it doesn’t help. The compression bandage doesn’t seem to be doing anything, either. It feels like someone sliced his knee open, chipped the bone to pieces, and filled the hole with oozing ectoplasm.
The front door opens and shuts.
Danny only has a second to process what that means before he jerks toward Vlad, just in time to see a syringe of orange fluid jabbed into his arm. Danny rips his arm away, but Vlad is faster. By the time Danny stumbles back, the syringe is empty.
“I've done a lot for you, little badger. I still will.” Vlad closes his fist around the syringe. There's a flash of pink, and then ash falls from his hand. “You'll be thanking me in a couple of hours when that kicks in. Remember, I only want what's best for you.” He turns but pauses halfway. “Oh… and keep that relic safe for me, won't you? I'll be needing it soon enough,” he says before drifting out of sight.
The car shakes as Danny drops into the passenger seat, and once more when he slams the door shut.
“Hey, not so hard,” Jazz says.
Danny ignores her, facing the window as he scrubs his face. He can still taste the salt on his lips, and the red around his eyes is prominent. He tries to rub it away, but there’s no helping it. After a few fruitless seconds, he gives up, pulling the bar under his seat to slide the chair back and give his legs some room. He cranks the lever on the side as well, putting the back down, and drapes a hand over his eyes.
“Hey.” Jazz prods him. “Upright, seatbelt on. That's not safe if we crash.”
“Do you plan on crashing?” The words drag at his throat, which quickly went hoarse during his minute of alone time. His voice comes out raspy and quiet. Danny doesn't know what Jazz sees, or what she makes of him right now.
After a few seconds of staring, she sighs and turns the engine on. “Just wear your seatbelt.”
Danny clicks it into place with the hand not draped over his eyes. If Jazz sees the redness, she’ll know that he was crying. Stupid. Fourteen years old and crying like a child. Danny's fingers dig into his scalp. His nails aren't quite claws when he's human, but they're sharper than normal and prick his skin. Every time he cuts them, they start growing back to a point. He always trims them before it gets too obvious.
They drive in silence. Danny grits his teeth, focusing on not hissing in pain every time they hit a pothole. Hold it together, he tells himself. Only a few more minutes to home, and then he can fall apart in private. Until then, he just has to be okay.
Everything is okay.
Everything is okay.
Jazz doesn’t try to talk again, which is better for Danny. He’s unsure if he can open his mouth without some strained sound escaping him. The inside of his lip is already ragged and bleeding from how hard he bites down.
When they turn onto their street, he thinks he’s in the clear. Jazz parks on the backstreet, in front of their garage, and Danny hears her shuffling around. At first, he thinks she’s getting out, and hopes he can wait her out and go inside a minute later. His hopes are dashed when something drops onto his chest.
Danny bites his tongue to keep from crying out.
“You left your backpack at school,” Jazz says. “After you got suspended. Do you want to talk about it?”
Danny clenches his jaw, breathing as deep as he can through his nose, and swallows the blood pooling in his mouth. Once he can speak without gasping, he says, “Yeah. I put it down, and then I forgot it was there, and then I left because I'm not allowed to be there anymore.”
“Only two weeks, and you still have to do schoolwork. I'll be bringing it home for you. Maybe you can use the rest of the time to get caught up on everything else you haven't done yet. And then you can tell me what the hell happened with Vlad back there.”
“Can we just… not do this right now.”
“Danny—”
“Jazz.” He doesn’t mean for it to come out angry, but there’s a bite to her name that he can’t take back. Being in this car, with her, is too much right now. He doesn’t need this. He needs things back to the way they were when he was oblivious and hurt, but not as hurt as he is now.
Jazz purses her lips. “Okay. I'll tell Mom and Dad about the suspension. You can talk to me—and them—when you're ready.”
“Yeah. Right.” Danny gets out before Jazz can say anything else. She follows, but he refuses to look back, fighting to hide his limp. He doesn't stop until he's inside, up the stairs, and in his bedroom. He doesn't even make it to the bed, crumpling against the door, curling over his knee as tears prick his eyes.
There are daggers under his skin, chipping away at bone and muscle, driven deeper with every step he forced himself to take. He thumps his head against the door, mouth open in a soundless scream as he lets the pain wash over him. It tears through his body, every bruise and burn throbbing in time with his heartbeat.
Outside his room, the house comes alive as his parents return, their voices filling all the empty spaces. Danny's room stays dead and quiet.
For hours, he leans against his door, staring up at the stickers on his ceiling. While his eyes trace the familiar constellations, his mind has receded deep within himself. Moving from his head to his toes, he focuses on all his aches and pains, giving himself a few moments to feel each one before shoving them out of mind.
Some pains are worse than others. The bruises, he files away without a second thought. The headache and the twist in his gut take a bit more effort. But his chest? His knee? Danny doesn’t have the words to describe how much they wreck him before he can push them away.
It’s just pain. He can handle pain.
At some point, someone comes by and knocks on his door. Danny doesn’t answer, barely conscious enough to hear it. His chin dips to his chest as he watches the shadow until it leaves, relaxing only a fraction when it does.
Eventually, the sounds outside dim. Jazz whispers goodnight. The floorboards in the hall creak, first under his mom’s light steps, and then they groan as his dad traipses across them. A door closes. Everything goes quiet. With the quiet comes an all-encompassing numbness.
The clock on Danny’s nightstand reads two a.m. by the time he drags himself from his stupor. In his backpack, abandoned at his side the second he sat down, something glows. Danny reaches inside and gropes around until he finds it, small and cold to the touch. He draws the item out.
“This is all your fault,” Danny mutters. Whether that is to himself or the relic in his hand, he doesn't know. Doesn't care. Both are true.
As Danny opens his palm, the Ring of Rage glows brighter.
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lexosaurus · 7 months
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The Phantom Martian: Chapter 1
Huzzah! I am here to provide a fic for Invisobang 2023!
This is a crossover between The Martian and Danny Phantom. You do NOT need to have read or watched The Martian to understand this fic (though, I recommend it because it's amazing!)
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Summary: When Astronaut Mark Watney went to Mars, he knew there was a chance he'd never come home. Now, though, he's determined to last long enough for NASA to save him because this whole dying for science thing is not as fun as it sounds.
Meanwhile, Danny Fenton is just trying to keep his identity a secret amidst a potential crisis with his powers. Seriously, what's up with that weird current under his skin? Why is he having so much trouble controlling it? And why does it feel so familiar...?
In a fit of determination (and possible stupidity), Danny goes to Mars to save Watney, only to add to both their crises when he arrives and can't get home. Will NASA save them? Will Danny have a home to return to if they do?
Chapter WC: 6,186
Fic Tags: Danny Fenton & Mark Watney, Canon Divergence, Ecton AU
Art by @pompomqt (it's so freaking good AHHHH!) Art by @friendzoned61 (screaming sobbing this is amazing)
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I am going to be updating a chapter each day of this posting week, and then I'll settle into a normal weekly/biweekly posting schedule.
I go into more detailed thank yous on AO3, but quickly I'd like to extend a hugeeeee thank you to @armed-with-knitting-needles, @bibliophilea, @lexiepiper, and @underforeversgrace for aiding in this fic. Between sitting on discord with me for hours doing math, betaing my infamous spelling habits, and in general providing much needed support in the form of memes, graphs, and good humor, these people are all AMAZING and I am forever in all of your debts 🙏
Since I'm not posting the chapters themselves on Tumblr, I put a preview excerpt under the cut! Enjoy!
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It had been a day since the news about the disastrous Mars mission was released.
NASA's website where satellite images of the Ares 3 camp were published had gotten so much traffic that the server went down for twelve hours.
Everyone wanted to see it. The wind storm. The camp in ruins. 
The aftermath.
Of course, NASA wasn't pointing their satellites at Ares 3 anymore. There was no reason to now that the surviving five crew members were well on their way back to Earth in the Hermes . 
God, what Danny would give to see the inside of that ship. If it was on Earth, the temptation to fly down to Cape Canaveral and invisibly peek inside would have easily won him over. But unfortunately, the Hermes has never been to Earth. It wasn't powered by regular rocket fuel, it was powered by ion engines — whatever that meant. 
All Danny knew was that the Hermes needed to be assembled in space instead of on Earth. It was shipped up chunk by chunk to the International Space Station where it was put together in orbit.
Which was just rude. 
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bajaectoblast · 2 years
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Chapters: 2/? Fandom: Danny Phantom, Control (Video Game) Rating: Mature Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Relationships: Jack Fenton/Maddie Fenton/Vlad Masters, Danny Fenton & Vlad Masters, Danny Fenton & Tucker Foley & Sam Manson, Danny Fenton & Jazz Fenton Characters: Danny Fenton, Vlad Masters, Jazz Fenton, Maddie Fenton, Jack Fenton Additional Tags: Amity Park Is Strange (Danny Phantom), Original Character(s), Body Horror, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, good dad vlad, Ghost Cores (Danny Phantom), Ectobiology, Polyamory, Swearing, Ghosts Are Cosmic Horrors, The Fentons' A+ Parenting Summary:
In another timeline, Jack, Maddie, and Vlad never parted, instead growing closer. Years later, Vlad learns that his son has become a halfa like himself and does his best to help Danny understand his ghost half. Meanwhile, blackballed government scientist Arden Verity's search for answers has led him and a cadre of his fellow outcasts to Amity Park to prove to his bosses at the FBC that ghosts are more than just extradimensional beings. As ever greater horrors threaten the town, Danny and friends do their best to keep everyone safe while mysterious guys in white seek knowledge, no matter the cost.
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sceptiseptic · 3 months
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The best i can do without my laptop😭 be proud
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