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brokeitwiththepowerofmathamatics · 7 months

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Fanfic - What was Written on my Soul

This was beta read by my friends, Seraph and HeroineofTime. I had been talking about an idea with @eight-bitanarchist and

Danny had always known the Ghost Zone was dangerous, but he never realized just how badly it could be.

Somehow, he didn't die, even after his soul was ripped out of his body.

Ao3 link, ff.net link

Danny knew he had screwed up somewhere in life, but the fact he was now looking at a headless body wearing his jumpsuit really sold him on that. The hand and feet of it, his hands and feet, were being held in place by a creature that shouldn't exist. Barbed pincers breaking their way into the Ghost Zone from some other dimension, certainly not his home dimension.

He should have listened to Vlad, who, when he had found out where Danny, Sam, and Tucker were trying to map out, came and wiped the floor with them. He had beaten Danny so black and blue that he had trouble transforming afterwards. Though Vlad hadn't stopped there. He had also wrecked the Specter Speeder before dragging it back and planting it in the front lawn of the Manson's before calling all their parents.

All of them had been grounded for months.

Vlad had chewed Danny out, telling him not to dare going near that part of the Ghost Zone ever again if he valued his soul.

Danny should have listened.

But now, as a million skittering hooks pierced through space around him, Danny realized he really did know nothing about the Ghost Zone and Vlad was right.

And as the claws tore into his skin, reaching under the flesh to peel him apart, he knew he wouldn't get to ever admit it.

He was just glad Sam and Tucker had listened and ran when this thing came looming out from the spaces between dimensions.

It hurt, but his vision was plucked from him first. He had enough sense of self to think that maybe that was for the best.

He didn't want to see what it tore away to get at its meal.

The pain wasn't as bad as he would have thought, he could still think. That might have been because he remembered what it was like to die, to have his soul ripped from his body in a violent nanosecond.

But he would have screamed if he could, cause he wasn't ready for his soul to be ripped out a second time.

This time, there'd be no recovery. No going ghost, since his soul would no longer exist after this beast devoured it.

And for a brief moment, he knew it was done. He felt so raw, so exposed, so vulnerable as the pain stopped.

And then he knew no more.

***

It took a moment for him to realize what he was looking at. A fog in his head slowly cleared as the white splotches in front of him took on a more coherent meaning.

Polaris, the north star, connected to Baekdu, Kochab, Pherkad, and Yildun. The names popping into his head as he slowly realized what he was staring at.

Ursa minor, the little dipper, glued to a white textured surface.

It was the ceiling of his bedroom.

Slowly, Danny sat up, any thoughts of this being a last second hallucination swiftly and painfully fled as he let out a scream of pain.

He looked down at his hand to see a bright green glow coming from under his skin, it made a cross crossing pattern across his entire arm. He blinked as he processed what he was seeing.

It was familiar but he couldn't remember why.

Oh, there it was.

It was what happened when he got so injured in ghost form he couldn't recover properly before transforming back.

Something hard and cold, yet familiar, grabbed his chin and turned his head away from his arm and he looked into…

Something…

He couldn't quite remember.

"Danny, sweetie, can you hear me?" The voice in front of him was so familiar, so caring, and so worried.

He couldn't believe he had forgotten for a second.

"Yeah, Mom, I can. Sorry, I'm… I don't feel good."

She pulled forward and hugged him gently. The cold material of her jumpsuit crinkled as she pressed herself against him, enveloping him in a hug. "Oh thank goodness. Sweetie, you had us so worried."

"What happened?"

A new voice popped in, "We were hoping you could tell us." He blinked and turned, this time he recognized her as soon as he saw her.

Jazz was sitting in the doorway with her phone in hand. The screen was still on after she had used it. But she was looking at him, her eyes were red, and the bags under her eyes were apparent even in his fugue state.

"I don't…" Danny began. He worked his mouth for a second, realizing that the feeling that he had was parched. His mouth felt so dry and that speaking hurt.

If he could call it that, the recent pain that he had gone through made it a minor annoyance at best.

Maddie took his chin in hand again, and turned his head toward her. She pressed a cup to his lips and said, "Here, drink."

Water splashed into his mouth. He coughed it back out as his body tried to remember how to take this in, but it felt so good.

His mother tried to pull the water away, but he reached his hands up and grabbed her wrists, keeping the precious liquid in front of him, despite how much it hurt his body to move his hands.

Eventually, after two or three tries, he remembered how to drink and he guzzled the glass down. Water dripped down his chin and his mom wiped it away.

Danny remembered the question Jazz had asked. "I don't remember…" It was obviously not the answer that Maddie wanted to hear as she visibly deflated.

Jazz on the other hand tapped her phone against her hip. "Nothing at all? Sam and Tucker-"

Just like that, he remembered. The feeling of wrongness as they made it deeper in the Ghost Zone, further than they had ever gone before. The hollowed out ghosts, congealing ectoplasm with no will behind it.

The distortion of the world as something pierced into it, and the sight of thousands of sharp and gnashing pedipalps.

Him turning and telling Sam and Tucker to turn and run, and them wisely not even questioning it.

"Oh my god, Sam! Tucker!" Danny shouted, swinging around to try and stand. The moment his feet touched the ground, his entire body was wracked with pain, a deep slashing and tearing feeling deeper than almost anything he had ever felt before.

Almost.

He stood up, despite his mother and sister crying out. “Where are they? Are they alright?”

Jazz was roughly pushed into the room as his father came running in. “Danny! Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Danny brushed off, adrenaline filling his veins. “Sam and Tucker, where are they?”

“They’re fine,” Jack said, placing his giant palms on Danny’s shoulder and pushing him back down onto the bed. “They’re grounded, probably forever, but they’re fine.”

“It’s you we’re worried about.” Jazz said, stepping further into the room.

Danny put a hand up to his head and breathed. “They are? Really?”

Jack sat down on the bed next to Danny, and put a hand on his back. The physical contact hurt, his body was raw, and felt so weak, but the feel of his Dad's hand on him was comforting. “They are, they came back in the Specter Speeder and then they found us, told us you three had been exploring the Ghost Zone and that you had been attacked by something… it… didn’t sound like a ghost.”

Danny shook his head. “No… No it wasn’t. It was…” he shuddered as the phantom pain of his everything being torn apart. “It was definitely something else.” He rubbed at his throat, where the thing had torn his head from his body. “I’m… really alive?” he said, looking directly at Jazz.

Maddie noticed this, and followed his gaze to Jazz. Jazz nodded slowly. “You’re alive.” The statement was firm, and allowed no arguments.

“How?” Danny sputtered out, looking at his arms, the glowing hadn’t faded in the slightest, in fact, it had grown brighter, now casting a bit of light about the room and coloring everything in a slight green tinge.

“That’s… a really good question,” Jazz said, looking at Maddie.

Maddie took a deep breath. “When we got home, there was a lot of sound in the basement, we ran into the basement and found a bunch of pots and pans strewn about, and before we could do anything, you came out of the portal… Danny… you were bleeding ectoplasm.”

Jack and Maddie grimaced. “Ectoplasm in the body… that should have killed you. Especially so much that it was pooling underneath you.” Maddie turned and looked at Jazz, “Jazz and your friends gave us advice, and we stitched you back together, but…” Maddie turned back and ran a finger along the glowing lines all along his body. “This many wounds? You shouldn’t be alive regardless, no human could survive that.”

“That’s it? I just came through the portal, bleeding all over the place?”

That wasn’t the answer Maddie wanted. She leaned forward, “Danny! You were barely in one piece!”

Danny stared at his mother, the fuge state that he had been in hadn’t quite left him apparently because he couldn’t quite understand why she responded that way.

That frustration grew, and then Danny sighed and just exclaimed, “Exactly! That thing was tearing my soul out of me!”

Everyone in the room recoiled.

Danny continued, completely ignorant of their horror at what he was saying, “It tore me to shreds, and I was thinking about what I never got to say and then…” Danny indicated the bed. “I woke up here.”

Everyone looked at each other before Jack sighed and started rubbing Danny’s back. “Dan-o, can you be honest with us? Why were you in the Ghost Zone?”

Danny froze. It felt like the world had just completely stopped. If it weren't for his dad's gentle ministations on his back, he'd have thought that Clockwork had stopped time for him again. A thousand thoughts ran through his head, hundreds of possible lies and excuses. Some were believable, most not.

But one thought surfaced above all the others.

Danny should have died in the Ghost Zone, and his parents would have never known what had happened to him.

Or worse, they'd have charged in, guns blazing and ready to fire at some ghost, and would have fallen to the same thing that was going to devour Danny.

Danny hummed and leaned into his dad. “Because me, Sam, and Tucker have been trying to map out the ghost zone.” Jack’s hand stilled but Danny kept going. “We’ve gotten a lot of squared… er… cubed miles mapped out, and it’s a little rough because the islands in there are always moving, and I’m not entirely sure what they’re circling, probably nothing. That’d be fitting. But yeah, we’ve been mapping it out for the past couple years.”

Jack began rubbing Danny’s back again as Maddie leaned forward and gently put a hand on Danny’s leg. He winced and she went to pull away. He reached out and grabbed her hand, so quickly it made her jump, before putting her hand back on his knee. The pain was nothing, and there was nothing he wanted more than to have his family close.

Well, maybe having Sam and Tucker here too.

“Danny,” Maddie began softly, “Danny, that’s so dangerous.”

“Trust me, I know,” Danny chuckled. “I thought I had it handled, I mean, I’m scarier than most things around the portal and-”

“Danny, ghosts are dangerous.”

Danny looked up at his mother. “Mom, I know.” He pulled on that coldness inside of him, that was so easily spread through his body right now and threaded it behind his eyes, and he saw his mom lean back as his eyes flashed neon green for a moment, before setting into a glowing blue, before he pushed the cold back down and let the warmth of life return.

The two of them stilled, and Maddie got off her chair and knelt down in front of Danny, running her hands along him, trying to make sure that he still existed. Her hands ran along his arms, carefully squeezing and pressing her gloved hands into his skin, as if she'd find that suddenly he no longer existed in front of her. “Danny, there’s no way you can be dead… You have a heartbeat, you’ve grown, you’ve-”

“I know,” Danny interrupted, “I know I’m still alive, but… I’m dead too.” He reached out and squeezed his mom’s hand. “When I died? It didn’t stick. The portal killed me, but it brought me back to life too, at the same time. I’m both a ghost, and a human. I can be one or the other if I want to.”

The next few seconds were filled with silence. The idea of telling his parents before had left a feeling of dread in him. He never doubted they wouldn't accept him, he had seen them accept him before. However, there was always a fear that instead of being proud of his ghost hunting, they'd want to step in, take over this one thing that was uniquely his.

That fear was gone, replaced with a deep bone tired weariness. It sat deep in his stomach, aching so much more than the pain his body was in. It seeped through his entire body, chasing the pain away and distancing it, leaving only numbness.

“Phantom,” Jack said, rubbing circles into Danny’s back. His father's touch chased away the numbness with pain as it rubbed against the wounds underneath his skin, but more than pain, it filled him with warmth as he felt his father's care. “You’re Phantom, aren’t you?”

Danny nodded.

“That’s… that’s impossible!”

“It isn’t,” Jazz said, speaking up for the first time in a while. “He’s been changing back and forth for a while.”

“You knew about this?” Jack asked, looking up at Jazz. Danny didn’t need to look up to hear the hurt in his voice. That something so important was kept from him.

“I did.”

Maddie shook her head, squeezing Danny’s hand harder, causing pain to run up his arm like lightning. “That’s impossible!” she repeated louder. “I shot at Phantom! I shot at him!”

Danny smiled and shook his head. “Yeah, uh… you’re pretty good with that blaster.”

“I shot at Phantom! I shot at… I shot at YOU!” Maddie wailed.

Danny pulled his mom into a hug. “It’s okay, it’s okay.”

“No! Honey, sweetie, I tried to-”

“You tried, but you never did.” Danny said, mimicking his Dad and rubbing her back trying to calm her down. “It’s… it’s not gonna happen again. And… I don’t care.”

Maddie recoiled. “Danny!”

“Mom, I thought I was never gonna see you again. I don't care about that anymore. I just want… I don't… I need you guys…"

Jack took a deep breath. “We should do some tests.” Maddie and Jazz whirled on Jack, but he continued. “I know that it’s probably the last thing you want to do, especially with how many times I shouted I would tear you apart molecule by molecule.”

“But I shouldn’t be in one piece,” Danny said, looking at his arm. “I’ve only seen a few cuts glow like this… I don’t… I don’t know how I made it back home.”

“It’ll be okay,” Jack said.

“I know,” Danny lied.

***

The rest of the weekend was spent with Tucker and Sam having a sleepover with Danny. Their parents had protested at first, but when Jack and Maddie had told them that Danny had died for a bit, their complaints were silenced pretty quickly.

That the death had happened a while ago, back when Danny was just fourteen, was still true enough.

Sunday night though, everyone had gone home.

And Monday found Danny standing at his locker, and staring at it, wondering if any of this was really worth it.

He couldn’t bring himself to believe it was.

Why was he even here? It was so utterly pointless. Nothing here would ever actually matter for him. His dreams of being an astronaut had long been dead, ever since he turned that stupid machine on. Even if he had kept his grades up, there would have been no way to hide his ghostly nature during the recruitment process.

Not with a core of ice sitting in his chest.

There was no point in going back to school for him, he'd never graduate. With the ghost attacks every other day, the destroyed homework, the unstudied-for tests, he was lucky the school hadn't just declared him a lost cause outright.

They only just whispered it.

All he wanted to do was go home, and curl up against his parents, because who knew how long he'd be able to do that.

Assuming that this isn't all just a last minute hallucination… he thought to himself before the sound of heavy footfalls approached him, and he turned to see who it was.

Sam walked up to Danny, taking in the glowing lines across his body. Each line had faded since he had been torn apart, looking more like faint scar lines than the glowing ectoplasm that was trying to stitch his splintered body back together.

“Anything?” she asked.

Danny sighed and placed his hand against the door. His hand faded in and out of visibility, never quite getting all the way there to completely invisible, and the longer it went on it strayed further and further from being completely invisible.

Honestly, it was better than even a few hours ago.

“Not really, but it's coming back quick,” he said, sighing. He placed his head against the locker and huffed. “The tests all came back, I should definitely be dead, but I’m still alive. There’s no explanation for that. My blood is thicker than it should be, it’s an equal measure of blood and ectoplasm. It should be exploding.”

“Well… don’t do that.”

Danny chuckled. “But… also, I can’t transform right now. My parents are hypothesizing that my ghost form is keeping my human form alive and isn’t letting me transform in order to keep me in one piece.”

Sam nodded and leaned against the lockers. “And that’s based off what evidence?”

“The evidence is that I told them that’s what I thought was going on, and nothing else.”

Sam scoffed. “Figures…” She shifted. “So… if you can’t transform, then… what do we do?”

Danny pulled away from the locker and started putting in his combination. When the lock popped off, he opened the door to his locker and pulled out a couple books he left in his locker, and then put his backpack inside.

Then he pulled out an ecto-gun out of his backpack, a rather small one that would fit inside the palm of one’s hand. “My dad calls this the Fenton Cricket.”

Sam looked at it with a side eye. “Uh huh… what does your mom call it?”

“Overkill.”

Tucker ran up to the two of them. “Hey… hey guys…” he panted.

Danny turned toward Tucker and nodded. “Tucker,” he acknowledged. He tilted his head. “You good?”

“Gonna… be… late. Slept… in…”

Danny shrugged. “I really don’t care if Lancer gives us detention…”

Sam’s lips curled into a frown and she reached over and gently pulled on Danny’s sleeve. The soft movements still hurt, but no more than standing…

Or sitting.

Or existing.

“I know you don’t, but me and Tucker do, ready for class?” Danny shrugged, but turned down the hall anyway. Tucker fell into step next to him and Sam moved herself between Danny and the lockers. (After all, for all Dash’s faults he wouldn’t lay a hand on a girl, so Sam being between Tucker or Danny and the lockers was just common sense at that point)

The bell rang just as Danny and the others walked into the classroom. Mr. Lancer sighed and put his book down. “You three are late aga…” he trailed off as he looked at the scar-like patterns around Danny’s body.

“Sorry,” Danny said, not sounding sorry at all. “I died over the weekend.” The room was dead silent as Danny walked to his desk. He pulled out his chair, the feet dragged along the floor making an awful squeaking sound that made everyone wince as it pierced their ears. He sat down at his desk and put his books inside it before looking up at Mr. Lancer. “I got better.”

Lancer stared at Danny for a good five seconds before clearing his throat. “Yes, uh, well, Mr. Fenton, should you be at school? That… looks like it was serious?”

“I mean I died so…”

“Daniel.” Mr. Lancer's patience was already cracking at Daniel's commentary. He didn't seem to believe him at all, which frankly Danny didn't find too surprising. Sure there were ghost attacks every couple days, but no one was seriously hurt… usually.

Because Danny stopped that, but who was counting?

“Mr. Lancer, didn’t you have a parent teacher conference with my parents saying if I missed one more day of class I’d be held back? Kinda can’t skip, even if I should be.”

Lancer worked his jaw a couple times as his brow furrowed. Eventually, he obviously decided not to push it. He turned to grab his books and start teaching. Before he could get much farther, the school P.A turned on.

“Students, starting today, the school will be taking part in an experiment to try and help the learning process, and we’ll be playing music all day.” Immediately after, a soft quiet classical song started playing on the intercom.

Lancer let out a hum. “Right, that was starting this week…” he mused. He already had spoken very quietly but with the music going, it was even harder to hear.

Paulina raised her hand. “Mr. Lancer? How long is this gonna go on? Classical is so not my thing.”

Lancer stroked his beard. “Well, for a couple weeks at least, probably a bit more though.”

Danny frowned as he stared at the P.A. speaker in the classroom. Each and every line on his body itched as the notes played through the speakers. He leaned over and tapped Sam on the shoulder. “Fenton Phones.”

Sam blinked, before her eyes widened and she reached into her backpack and pulled out the devices. As she slipped the devices on, Danny leaned over to Tucker and repeated himself.

“Mr. Fenton, something to share with the class?”

Danny blinked, looking up at Mr. Lancer. Out of pure habit, Danny started shaking his head before stopping. What was the point of lying? It was all pointless anyways. He was keeping this stupid secret because… why exactly? ‘Cause he was weird? He was weird before all this happened to him, and now he'd never be normal.

At this point, all his cares were torn up and shredded. Just like he had been, ripped into tiny pieces so small that no one would ever find them.

“You know, what? Yeah, actually.”

Mr. Lancer raised an eyebrow and indicated with a wave of his hand that Danny should continue.

“Right, so I got ripped apart by a ghost over the weekend, and that’s why I’m all scarred. The music is making ‘em itch. I think that there’s something ghostly going on with that.”

Lancer didn’t know what to say about that, but someone else in the class sure did. “Yeah, right.” Dash shouted from his part of the room. “You’re just being a freak.”

Danny turned and stared at Dash, his eyes unblinking. “Dash, how many times have you shoved me into lockers that I’ve gotten out of? I think you’d know by now that when it comes to weird shit, I know what I’m talking about.”

That sent a ripple through the class. A collective intake of air as everyone flinched. The open secret was more open now. Danny felt rather than saw Mr. Lancer flinch at the open admission that Dash was a bully. Everyone knew it, even Mr. Lancer. He turned a blind eye to it enough times that it couldn't just be happenstance anymore.

But no one cared to admit it before.

Now, Danny didn't care to hide it.

“Alright alright, settle down,” Mr. Lancer said. “Daniel, this experiment has been discussed for several months by the teachers. I assure you, there is nothing ghostly about it.”

“Uh huh, and how long was the hiring process for Spectra?”

Mr. Lancer frowned. "The school psychiatrist from a couple years ago? What about her?"

Danny worked his jaw for a moment before slowly putting his head in his hands. "I need a moment…"

The sound of a chair scooting back made everyone turn to look at Valerie as she stood up. "Wait, are you saying that lady who kept telling me that my only value was my possessions was a ghost?"

"She did WHAT?" Mr. Lancer shouted.

Sam winced and muttered, "Oh, that… explains a lot." She leaned back behind Danny to look at Valerie better. "Yeah, do you remember later she showed up on TV doing a cooking show? Yeah, she had possessed some execs to get that air time."

Danny felt his breath freeze in his throat. Yes, he no longer cared about keeping this secret, but he didn't think Sam would follow his lead. Sam who wasn't dead. Sam who hadn't lost all her future prospects. Sam who wasn't enemy number one with the Guys in White…

Mr. Lancer turned toward Sam. "I'm sure there's a perfectly logical explanation that doesn't involve ghosts. But Valerie, what did-"

Sam turned to look at Mr. Lancer and gave him the most deadpan look she could. "And a few days later she was seen discussing plans with Ember McLain, who is a ghost, and Kitty, who is also a ghost. You know, in case you forgot ghosts actually exist."

"Oh Huckleberry Finn… Are you trying to tell me my coworker was a ghost? Let's be realistic, kids." Mr. Lancer gave a hard look at Danny and Sam before trying to turn back to the blackboard.

"Wouldn't be the first time someone didn't notice someone was dead," Danny scoffed to himself. He raised his hand. "Yeah, so may I be excused?" Trying to bring forth the same bravado he had just a few minutes ago.

It was easier than he thought it would be, to fall back into not caring.

Mr. Lancer raised an eyebrow. "The musical experiment has been planned for months, and as you said yourself, you can't miss any more classes." There was a coldness there that wasn't there before Danny brought up Dash's bullying. Danny could practically see the walls of authority come back up as Mr. Lancer continued, "No. If you're that worried about the music, I'll let you call your parents and they can come do… whatever it is they do in order to find out what's a ghost and isn't."

Danny scoffed again, but put his hand back down. "Yeah, no, I know exactly how much damage they'd do. I think that's the same reason you’re not calling them yourself."

Mr. Lancer sighed and pinched between his brow, obviously counting to ten before turning back to the blackboard. "Let's just get started, shall we?"

Danny put his elbow on the desk and sighed as Mr. Lancer started putting notes up on the blackboard. Only to start when he heard a sound behind him.

"Pst!" He turned to look and see Star leaning forward. "Are you serious about the music being from… like… a ghost?"

Danny leaned back. "I’d bet the lunch money Dash stole from me, it is."

Star looked over at Paulina who was watching the two of them. Usually if Star talked to Danny, Paulina had this face like she was smelling Dash's gym bag. Right now though, her eyes were slightly widened, and her lips turned into a frown. "When Spectra was the school counselor, it was one of the worst weeks in Paulie's life." Star turned to Danny. "If you think that's a ghost, why aren't you calling your parents?"

Danny shook his head. "My parents will come in guns blazing and it might wind up with someone else getting hurt."

Star frowned and leaned forward. "Let me ask a different question then," she hissed, "aren't you worried?"

Danny blinked at the sudden hostility. It took him a moment for him to realize it was that she was worried. He looked around the class and noticed the tension in the room that he had unleashed.

Dash might have put him down before, but Danny had a point. Everyone knew Danny was Dash's punching bag, even Mr. Lancer. But that also meant that everyone knew that Danny had some way of getting away with it. Danny never had a bruise from Dash, not since the accident. Danny didn't get bruised, period. And he had helped enough fellow nerds out of lockers for everyone to know that he had some unique way with them.

When Danny said weird shit was going on, people did listen.

And now all of them were worried because he didn't think to have any tact when speaking to Mr. Lancer.

Danny shook his head. "I mean, a little bit… but if a ghost did spend months setting this up, they're not gonna make a move soon." Danny gave Star a smile. "I'll call my parents at lunch."

***

"You're not actually calling your parents are you?" Sam asked as the bell rang for the next period to start, and Danny had yet to make a turn toward the lunch room.

"I mean, I am, but not for the reason you think," he said as he stopped at his locker. Danny quickly undid the lock before pulling out his phone. He waited a moment while the phone rang. It felt like ages, and he was hoping his parents would answer, but he wasn't that lucky. After the beep, he said, "Hey, Mom, I'm guessing you’re in the lab. Something ghostly is going on at school, so expect a call from the principal after I fight it."

Danny then put his phone back into the backpack and pulled out his thermos. He slammed his locker shut and turned around. “Alright,” he said, “time to do this.”

Sam narrowed her eyes and looked him over. He started walking towards the office where the intercom was located. It was about three steps later that she realized what was bothering her. “Danny!” she shouted, chasing after him. He glanced over his shoulder at her but didn’t stop. She caught up and gently placed a hand against his chest. “Danny,” she said, dropping into a whisper. “You can’t go ghost!”

Danny raised an eyebrow. “Uh, yeah? I told you that earlier…” He reached into his pocket and pulled out the Fenton Cricket. “That’s why I have this.”

Sam looked around the empty halls, checking to see if anyone would turn the corner. “But… they’re gonna fight back. Aren’t you worried about someone finding out? It’s not like you can disappear right now…”

Danny laughed mirthlessly. “Sam… I am so far from caring right now.” He paused and looked down. “Sam… It’s… I died. I-I know Jazz said I was 100% alive, just like before, but I have never ever been in as bad a situation as that before.”

He pressed his hand against his chest. He felt his flesh give just slightly, and logically he knew it was just his skin having some give, between his flesh, muscle, and fat that composed his body. But it still felt like he could jam his fingers in the cracks marked over his body and tear it all away and leave his soul exposed to the open air.

He shuddered and shook his head.

“That thing, it tore me apart, I saw my own body in third person. And it didn’t stop there, it ripped me apart until there was literally nothing left, just my soul. I couldn’t see, but I felt it. I felt myself get exposed, I was just laid bare with nothing protecting me.”

He looked Sam in the eye. “There was nothing protecting me, I should be dead and gone… I don’t really care about keeping this a secret anymore. I almost died without my family ever knowing what I was doing…”

Sam pursed her lips and then nodded. “Okay,” she said firmly. Danny turned to continue on his path, before Sam continued. “I’m coming with then.”

“No!” Danny shouted, whirling about. Sam jumped and took a step back. “No way, Sam, no! You can’t!”

Sam folded her arms. “Excuse me? You-”

“Sam, no!” Danny said again, putting his hand on her shoulders. “Sam, I… I can’t let you do that.” He shook his head. “If you get hurt… I won’t be able to live with myself.”

Sam pulled Danny’s hands off her shoulders. “Danny, I can take care of myself, you know. I’m not some damsel in distress. I’ve fought a LOT of ghosts with you.”

“Yeah,” Danny said nodding, “but that was before I nearly died, and before I’ve been having nightmares about you and my parents running back into that thing and it doing to you what it did to me…”

Sam opened her mouth to argue but then Danny turned her around. “Please, Sam,” he said, pushing her towards the lunch room. “Just… not today, okay?”

Sam turned around again to face him, but started walking backwards. “Okay, Danny, but I’m not gonna let you do this for long. You can’t shut me and Tucker out.”

“I… I know, Sam. I’m sure I’ll get over it eventually,” he said, trying to be as convincing as possible. He gave her a smile and waved goodbye as he started walking again.

It didn’t take long for Danny to make it to the office. He opened the door to find a young woman sitting at the intercom system. She was young, short for an adult, though still a few inches taller than Danny. The large blue sweater she was wearing added to the illusion of youth. “Oh, hello!” she said, sitting up. She folded her legs and put her hands on her pleated skirt. “I’m surprised to see anyone come in. Can I help you?”

Any idea that she wasn’t a ghost left the moment the words left her mouth. His injuries practically sang with pain as the words bounced around in his head. The pain washed over him and through him, trying to drag him down in a foggy haze and drown out her words. It almost made it difficult to understand what she was saying.

He had dealt with much worse, especially recently.

“What are you doing?” he demanded. The woman flinched at his voice and glanced in the corner behind Danny. It was enough of a hint for him to realize that her partner in crime was back there too.

Once again, he felt it more than anything, an itch on the tears of his body that felt like they were resonating with a ghostly energy behind him.

The woman smiled, though there was a distinct nervousness in it. “I think we got off on the wrong foot. I’m Dr. Specht, but you can call me Tracy. Doctor makes me feel old.”

Danny looked up at the ceiling and sighed. “Normally, I wouldn’t do this. We’d have this back and forth over the next couple days, but you know what? I really can’t be fucked right now.”

“Uh oh” was ‘Tracy’s response.

Danny pulled out his weapon, pointed it at her, and pulled the trigger. The recoil of the weapon made his arm snap up as a beam of energy a full six feet wide and six feet tall burst out from the deceptively small weapon.

The blast had completely destroyed the wall along with the hardware running the intercom. The PA system screeched with a burst of static before going silent and Danny lowered his hand and turned to the side.

Spectra and Bertrand were staring at him with horror and were holding onto each other, eyes wide and their bodies trembling in a fear that couldn't be faked. Spectra recovered first. “Are you crazy!? You could have killed me with that!”

Danny huffed air through his nose. “Doubt it, I’ve hit you with worse before.”

Bertrand raised a finger. “Point of order, I can say with absolute certainty that you have not. Thank goodness, I’ve heard stories of what your wail can do.”

“Well, first time for everything,” Danny said, brushing off the complaint. He held up the thermos and shook it. Something sloshed about inside, easily heard in the dead silent room. “Now then, we can either do this the way that shows I do in fact follow in my parents footsteps, or you can get in the thermos willingly.”

The ghosts looked at the massive hole in the wall, which had attracted the attention of the principal and a few other teachers. Before turning toward Danny, Spectra scowled. “You know what? Fine, I shouldn’t even be the one doing this. She just had to cancel at the last minute.” She started floating away, only to freeze when Danny pointed the weapon at her. “Hey, hey! I’m leaving!”

Danny uncapped the thermos. “No, I don’t trust you enough to let you go back to the Ghost Zone on your own. You get in the thermos, or I will make you regret not listening to me.”

“Spectra…” Bertrand warned, holding up his hands. “I think the boy is serious this time.”

Spectra frowned, and her eyes wandered over Danny’s face. “You know… I think you might be right…” She approached Danny slowly. Stopping just outside his reach. Danny raised the weapon and pointed it right at her face, but she just stared at him over the weapon. “You ran into an elder thing, didn’t you?”

Danny didn’t answer, instead just holding up his thermos.

“Poor thing,” Spectra said, “you got very lucky.” She then reached up and pressed the button on the thermos herself. Danny turned and looked at Bertrand who huffed.

“I’m going, I’m going,” he said before taking a dive into the thermos. Danny put the lid back and on and sighed.

"Uh… Mr. Fenton?" Danny looked up to see Mr. Lancer taking a step through the giant hole that Danny had made. The teacher adjusted his tie nervously and looked about the room, keeping Danny in his peripheral at all times. "Was Dr Specht… uh…"

"A ghost?" Danny finished. He waggled the thermos about in the air, and the sloshing from before sounded much heavier. "Yeah, I took care of her. Figured I could check it out before getting my parents involved."

"Oh… I think that's still gonna need to happen," Lancer said, finally looking back at the hole.

"Well, now they won't cause any property damage."

"Mr. Fenton…" Mr. Lancer began, exasperated. He indicated the hole with a tired wave of his hand. "May I direct you to exhibit A in the case of, 'You most definitely are a Fenton.'"

Danny folded his arms and huffed. "Hello? Caught two ghosts here? Pretty sure ghost hunting is more-"

"No. No it is not."

They made Danny sit in a chair in the principal's office while they called. When the principal told them that there had been an incident at school, Danny could hear his mom respond with, "Ghost attack, ghost hunt, or bullying?"

"Uh… ghost hunting?"

"Well, did Danny catch them?"

"I did, Mom!" Danny shouted.

The principal barely reacted, instead staring off with a thousand yard stare at the hole into her office. "He… uh… he did. We saw them literally put themselves in a… I believe you called them a Fenton Thermos?" The principal sighed and closed her eyes. "Ma'am… I really don't want to ask this, but did you know that your son terrifies ghosts? The… the um… prevailing theory amongst the staff was that he was terrified of them." Danny couldn't quite make out the response but the principal straightened up. "Oh… you did? Well, okay, yes, we can talk more when you arrive."

They sat there in silence for forty minutes.

"Mr. Fenton?"

Well, thirty five.

Danny looked up at Mr. Lancer from his phone. "Yeah?"

"How often have you gone out ghost hunting when you were asking for the bathroom?"

Danny thought for a moment. Tapping his phone against his chin, "Well… I think there was one time when the school was doing the fall play that I actually went to the bathroom?"

"Oh…"

Danny nodded. "Yeah, I remember, because that renaissance stuff you had us wearing was actually kinda hard to get out of? So I didn't get a chance to go between classes."

The principal looked up. "Daniel, the Romeo and Juliet play was last year…"

"Yeah, I think that was the last time."

Mr. Lancer leaned forward and put his head in his hands. "Oliver Twist…"

It was around then his parents walked into the office. Maddie walked over and gave Danny a kiss on the forehead. Before all of this, such affection from his mom would have embarrassed Danny.

But that was before.

Now, Danny couldn't ever get enough of that.

Jack came in and clapped Danny on the back. "Your mother says you caught a couple ol' ghosts!"

Danny nodded and produced the thermos. "Yeah, they're both in there."

Jack laughed and grabbed the thermos, tossing it in the air. "Ha! Great job, Dan-o!"

His mom snatched the thermos out of the air. "Yes, yes, you did good, Danny. But, we can talk about that later." She put it back in Danny's hands and placed a hand on his shoulder. "Now then, what exactly happened?"

The principal just pointed behind them. Both parents turned and looked at the hole. Maddie let out a soft, "Oh…" before turning around. "Yes, well, we can pay for the repairs for that."

Jack leaned around Maddie to look at his son. "You used the Fenton Cricket?"

Danny shrugged. "I'm still not feeling well," he said, twisting his arms about. The marks on his body were already looking somewhat better, less harsh white lines cut into his skin and more like pale traces of old wounds. He frowned, thinking about the feeling he had when Spectra started her whole plan of… something… and just the feeling of… despair? Frustration? Of just being plain done with whatever bullshit the ghosts were coming up with. "I can't be bothered to do the whole back and forth with them right now…"

Maddie and Jack both frowned. And Maddie nodded. "That's quite understandable, sweetie."

The principal cleared her throat. "I'm sorry, but well…"

Mr. Lancer spoke up next, taking over as the principal trailed off. "We'd very much like to understand why young Daniel is ghost hunting?" Even he didn't quite seem sure what to do at the moment. "You can understand that this is very unusual."

"Oh believe us," Maddie said, nodding. "We understand, we only found out on Friday night."

"You mean he's kept it from you this whole time as well?"

"Yes, well, there was… well, to call it an accident would be to downplay it…" Maddie turned toward Danny and even through her goggles and with the hood covering her eyebrows, Danny could see the confusion on her face.

He realized as the rest of the adults in the room turned toward him that they were waiting for his input. Maddie and Jack were obviously supporting him, but they didn't quite know where the boundaries were.

Danny's boundaries.

Did they tell the whole truth? That they found out Danny had died over a year ago? That he had been trying to live as a human and as a ghost at the same time? For whatever definition you could call that living, between the lack of sleep or the lack of recognition in his family's eyes when they saw him.

Because Danny Fenton was alive, there was no way he could be Phantom.

The convenient falsehood that kept him safe from the likes of the hunters that wanted him ended, which, up until a few days ago, included his parents.

"We recently found out that Danny has been ghost hunting," Jack said, reaching over and gently, oh-so-gently touching Danny's back. Carefully touching him and trying not to aggravate his wounds.

Apparently Danny had been taking too long to answer.

Jack chuckled. "Turns out he's a lot more like his old man than I had ever thought. I remember sneaking out of my house as a teen to go ghost hunting too. But unlike his old man, Danny-boy here is good."

"Too good," Maddie agreed. "I'm just thankful that Danny was able to get Phantom to take most of the burden."

Danny's head swiveled between his parents, as they began to spin a story, not a single lie told, but the truth hidden behind careful phrasing and clever manipulation of expectations. The same thing that kept his parents from recognizing Danny as Phantom now weaponized against his teachers.

There was no hesitation, no second guessing. His parents stepped in and put just as much effort as Danny had to protect his secret.

Their son was in danger, help him.

It was as simple as that.

And it was all Danny could do to not break out in tears right then and there. He had kept this secret for so long. He had long since chafed under the bindings of it that he had tied around himself, and it had all been pointless. He could have had his parents support this whole time. He was their son. He knew his parents weren't perfect, no one ever was. But while there were days it seemed his parents blind obsession with hunting ghosts caused more faults than most had, there was one core tenet that Danny sometimes forgot.

His parents loved him.

"I'm sorry," Mr. Lancer's incredulous voice tore Danny out of his thoughts. "Can you repeat that?"

Maddie sighed. "I know what it sounds like, but for the safety of everyone at the school, if Danny says he needs to leave class, he needs to leave class."

Jack leaned forward. "Danny and Phantom have… some kind of bond. We have no explanation for how that happened, theories yes, but a real scientific explanation? That we don't have." Because the fact of the matter was that there was no scientific explanation for ghosts. "But it's… undoubtedly true."

Maddie nodded. "The fastest way to get help in a ghost attack is to let Danny leave to find Phantom." She looked at Danny and gave him a sly smile. "Phantom usually appears where there's not many people, but he does hang close to Danny, just on the other side of an ectoplasmic state until Danny finds him."

Jack laughed and rubbed Danny's shoulder. "Which explains why our sensors kept going after Dan-o here!" He blanched after a moment and sheepishly rubbed the back of his head. "Err… sorry about that Danny."

"It's fine…" Danny said and leaned into his father's touch. It really was- for all the troubles his parents' inventions gave him, they never finished the job.

He could live with that.

The principal and Mr. Lancer looked at each other before frowning. The principal leaned forward, placing her elbows against her desk. "This… puts us in an awkward position. Mr. Fenton here is barely passing his classes as he is, and now you're asking us to help with that?"

"We're aware, but as we said, Phantom is one of the few actual protections the school has."

"What about the Ghostly Investigation Ward?"

"No." The simple word out of Maddie's mouth froze the room solid better than Danny ever could have. The sheer venom in that word made Danny jolt, but she wasn't finished. "After what we've discovered this weekend, we have found that the Ghostly Investigation Ward is a danger to those in the student body."

Mr. Lancer sighed. "Can you back up these claims?" he said, waving his hand all about.

Jack leaned forward and frowned. "We'd love to, but going back to the beginning here. We only know about this because things had gotten so dire, Danny's friends were forced to tell us."

"Sam and Tucker?"

Danny chimed in, for the first time in a long while. "I did say I died, Mr. Lancer."

Mr. Lancer and the principal's eyes widened. "Excuse me?"

Maddie breathed out slowly. "Sam and Tucker came and found us, told us what had happened. They had been exploring the Ghost Zone, with the help of Danny and Phantom, but they came across something, something other than a ghost, and Danny and Phantom held it back while they ran."

Danny scoffed. "We held it back? Not in the slightest…" He looked Mr. Lancer in the eye. "You know how some prey animals will leave their young behind in the case of a predator's attack? Phantom couldn't stop it, it just didn't feel the need to chase prey."

The room was silent, the only sound that could be heard was the school's air conditioning running. Which meant when Mr. Lancer muttered under his breath, "Fuck…" everyone could hear it.

Danny couldn't help it. Hearing the actual swear from Mr. Lancer made him giggle.

Mr Lancer coughed into his hand. "Well, then, ummm…" He paused, "Is… is Phantom okay?"

Danny shook his head. "He's just as bad off as I am. That's why I was hunting today, instead of him."

Jack rubbed Danny's back, again, gently to avoid aggravating Danny's injuries. "And doing a bang up job of it!"

The bell rang, indicating that Danny's lunch period was over. Maddie reached over and patted Danny's knee. "Well, it's less than ideal, since I don't think you had lunch, but why don't you go on back to class while we discuss fixing up the school a bit with the principal." She looked back at the Principal and said, "We're currently discussing a contract with a construction crew to remodel our entire house; we can pay for the school's renovation as well."

Danny turned toward his parents as the faculty's eyes bulged. "We're doing what?"

Maddie turned and rubbed Danny's hair. "Jack said it, our devices have been going off with you because of Phantom. After what Phantom did? We're removing everything from our house that can target him. At this point, it's best to just start from a clean slate."

Jack gave a big thumbs up. "Also, the Guys in White have been using Fenton tech for a while. We have a BIG lawsuit coming up and the best lawyers that we can find. Uncle Sam is either gonna pay up, or pay through the nose trying to fight us."

Mr. Lancer turned toward Jack. "Didn't you interrupt a school assembly to try and get an autograph from Agent Alpha?"

"Yes…" Jack growled through gritted teeth. "Yes, I did. And when we gut the house of everything that could ever hurt Phantom, I’m using that to start the fires burning the whole pile."

"Off to class, Danny," Maddie said, dismissing him, since the principal seemed to be blue screening at the moment. "Can't afford to miss any other classes."

Danny held up the thermos. "What about this?"

"Keep it, in case any other ghosts come knocking."

Danny slowly stood up, giving Mr. Lancer or the principal enough time to protest him leaving. When neither did, he made his way to the door before stopping. He turned and walked back, gave his mom a hug and then his dad, before going back to the door. "Bye guys, see you at home."

He made his way through the halls that were now very empty. He broke out in a light jog and barely made it to his class in time. Everyone in the class stared at Danny with wide eyes, something he felt very acutely considering the fact that up until lunch a soft music had been echoing throughout the school.

And now it was dead silent.

Tucker however, saw Danny and burst out in a bright smile. "Hey! Danny! You got it taken care of?"

Danny looked down at the thermos in his hand before holding it up and shaking it. The sloshing sound of Spectra and Bertrand in there was heard clearly in the room. "Got two of them at least."

"That's Phantom's thermos…" Paulina uttered, which then resulted in a set of gasps from the other kids.

Danny looked Paulina in the eyes and laughed. "It's a Fenton Thermos. Where did you think he got his?"

***

Privately, Danny thought the idea of doing homework right now was ridiculous. Just like school, it was just so… pointless. He should have died just a few days ago, and now he was expected to study whatever it was Pythagoras had come up with a millenia ago. Openly, Danny thought it was bullshit that after saving the school from a ghost attack, he still had to do his homework.

But neither of those two things were what he was thinking about right now.

He'd rather not be thinking at all. He didn't want to think, he wanted to just… exist. He wanted his parents home, he wanted Jazz to be here nagging him about his homework. Or at least, that he should be doing his homework at a table.

He was just glad that his flight powers had come back, even if he still couldn’t transform.

His parents had taken him floating around the house in stride, only pausing to tell him to be careful and to watch the house as he read his math text book on the ceiling of the living room.

But they had to go talk to the contractors who'd be updating the school, and someone needed to get groceries, so Jazz volunteered.

Leaving Danny in the house.

Alone.

He thought he'd be fine.

Instead, his thoughts were wandering and disjointed. Everything circling back to a few key things.

He should have died. He had his entire body ripped apart, in a way that no one had ever experienced before and been able to live to tell the tale. His soul was exposed; visible and vulnerable to anything and anyone.

He missed his family and friends. He wanted them here. He knew that there was a chance that he'd never see them again. Life felt so very fragile. They weren't half dead like he was. They didn't have a ghostly core that could keep their bodies together if they got injured like he apparently did.

But the last thought was very different than the others.

"She just had to cancel at the last minute," Spectra had said. That meant there was supposed to be another ghost involved. And other than Spectra, ghostly activity had been very quiet. There usually was a bit of a dip around the time that big ghost attacks happened, but…

This was different.

He knew it was different.

Danny frowned and let go of his pencil. It fell 'up' from his position as it landed on the living room table. It bounced around a couple times before rolling off the table and landing on the floor. Danny slowly followed it, turning half way down so that he could land on his feet.

His parents had basically sealed the lab as they tore apart everything they knew about ghosts. Rather than trying to piece the puzzle that was Danny into the picture they had, they chose to scrap the entire project and start over.

But Danny had been able to walk through walls for a while now.

Danny walked down the stairs into the darkness of the lab. The sound of the portal whirling behind the foot thick metal doors made the lab sound like there was a sleeping dragon down here.

Danny pulled on the coldness inside of him, and his eyes began to shine in the dark. He found a piece of paper with some theories typed up on one side, with red marks all over it. His mother's writing all over it. Pointing out where she knew she was wrong.

Wrong. False. Proven incorrect.

Clean concisely written pieces, where she excised her biases and incorrect assumptions out of her theories, like a scalpel cutting out tumors.

I shot my baby…

Danny flipped the paper over and grabbed the same pen his mother used to mark the papers. "There's something I need to check out in the Zone, NOT going anywhere dangerous. Be back soon," he wrote down, before going back up the stairs and phasing it most of the way through the door. It hung there, stuck in place where, hopefully, his parents would see it when they got back. Then he went back to the portal and opened it.

The room was bathed in an ethereal green glow. The light shifted as the surface of the portal swirled, making it look like all the bits and pieces, flasks, beakers, and torn apart tools were dancing if you looked at their shadows.

Danny let out a slow breath and stepped forward.

The ectoplasm felt cool on his skin. He could feel it seeping deep into him, filling the cracks and holes that were left by the wounds. He breathed a sigh of relief for the first time in a few days as the pain faded.

But that wasn't why he was here.

"She just had to cancel at the last minute."

Spectra hadn't been acting alone, and music wasn't usually her forte. But there was one ghost that he knew who lived and breathed (as much as any ghost lived and breathed) music. She had even worked with Spectra in the past.

So with a destination in mind, Danny flew towards Ember's lair.

It didn't take him long. He was relatively unaccosted on his way. A few wayward specters here and there had tried to bother him. But, in this dimension, humans were the ghosts who could pass by unimpeded if they so chose. So a five minute flight left Danny floating in front of a door with a giant treble clef embedded on it, and a guitar strap in lieu of a door handle.

And dozens of scorch marks.

Danny rubbed his hand along the door, feeling the burned… matter. (It felt like wood, sounded like wood, but most definitely was not wood.) The pockets left by ectoblasts and dents left by blunt instruments were new and weren't here the last time Danny had flown by this place. Just to be sure, Danny pulled on the door to confirm that yes, it was indeed locked.

But he didn't think she'd be far.

He was right.

She was a little ways off, hidden amongst a small series of floating rocks, sitting with her guitar laid out next to her. Flaming hair that usually was a full ponytail that flared and twisted in the air like a bonfire was burnt down to almost bare ashes, looking more like a pixie cut than anything else.

When he approached, her head tilted up to look at him. She gave him a wan smile and her eyes crinkled. "Hey there, Dipstick, you're still in one piece I see?" she asked, before rubbing her eyes. It really didn't help hide the fact that she had been crying, especially with the way her makeup had begun to run down her face

"Hey, Ember," Danny said, touching down next to her. This was the closest he had ever been to her without her swinging at him. But he knew that probably wouldn't ever happen again, though he wasn't sure why. "I think I have you to thank for that?"

"Good thing you know that," she huffed. She curled up again. "That… that was terrifying, Phantom. You have no idea."

Danny frowned and turned away, getting the feeling she didn't want to be stared at right now. "Yeah, well, I was the one torn apart, so I think I might have a bit of an idea."

"No," Ember interrupted. "No, you don't." She shuddered. "Don't you ever go in that part of the Ghost Zone again, you hear me?" There was too much desperation in her voice for it to be mistaken for anger, as much as she tried to pretend that it was.

"Cross my heart and hope to die," Danny said, making an X across his chest. "I don't want to go through that again either."

"Good," Ember said. The two of them fell into silence. Ember quite content to leave it at that.

Though, Danny wasn't. "Why though?" Ember whirled on him, and he turned to face her. "Why did you help me?"

Ember opened her mouth and then closed it again. She repeated that several times before looking away. "Can't a girl help someone out if they see them about to die?"

"You know I'm stronger than you," Danny said, bluntly. She glared at him but didn't argue. "I've beaten you multiple times, but that thing? That was beyond anything I had ever seen before."

"Kshkspsp ths psp xhch xlhchks," Ember whispered. It sounded more like the sound of rustling air than a sound that came from her mouth, but Danny understood it all the same. It was the name of the thing that had attacked him. "It means 'that invisible thing which flays souls'."

Danny scoffed and rubbed his chest. "Other than the invisible part, I'd call that a little on the nose."

"If you had seen it before it popped up on you, and you still went in, you're a bigger dipstick than I realized." Ember sighed, and looked up. "You're not stronger than me. Not all the time." She rubbed her face again. "Do you know what the difference between a spirit and a ghost is, Phantom?"

Danny shook his head. "Not… really? I can guess but-"

"A ghost is someone who died, like you or me, but a spirit is more than that. They're a concept, they're not bound by existence the way that we are. A spirit's power is only limited by the domain of what the spirit is tied to."

"So a spirit of time…" Danny began.

"Would have all the powers that one could think of when one thinks of time." Ember finished. She turned to face Danny and gave him a bright cocky smile, that somehow wasn't ruined by the black tear marks running down her face. "I'm the Spirit of Rebellion, Baby Pop." Even as she said it, her hair, which was burnt down to almost nothing, flickered and rose.

Danny believed her. The fact that he wasn't gone was proof of her words, but still… "Didn't you say that you and I were ghosts?"

Ember scoffed and pushed him with her shoulder. "I'm the Spirit of Rebellion. You think I'm gonna let myself stick to one label? Nah, fuck that shit. I'll be whatever the fuck I want to be. That's what being the Spirit of Rebellion means, it means when the world says, 'No, you bow,' you put both fingers up in the air and yell back, 'Make me, bitch'..." She leaned forward, pressing her cheek to her knee, keeping her eyes on Danny. "So when I see a thing that tears apart souls tearing into someone I don't want to see gone and the world would write them off as gone, I can tear an eldritch god a new fucking asshole, and when I'm holding that soul in my hands and everyone would say 'you need to let them go', I can tell them, 'hold my beer and watch this' and put them back together with bubble gum, spit and a paper clip. Good as almost new."

Danny looked at the faint scars on his arm. "Uh… did you put me back together with bubble gum?"

Ember chuckled sadly. "I wish I had some on me, it might have helped." She frowned and reached out. Running a finger across his arm, following the line. "I had to find you, every piece of you, and stitch you back together. You were torn into so so many pieces…"

"How did-?"

"I told you, when the world says ‘no’, I say ‘watch me.’"

Danny paused and let that sink in, Ember's fingers continued their dance along his arm, like a weaver inspecting their craft. Slowly Danny reached up and put his hand on her arm. "You still haven't explained why though."

Ember froze. She bit her lip and looked up at him before looking away. "You've never seen a soul before." It was a statement, not a question. They both knew that the answer was no.

But it wasn't an answer either.

"It's not about that. You said it yourself, when you see a thing that tears apart souls tearing into someone you don't want to see gone… You can't deny you'd want me gone. I ruined your plans multiple times."

"No,." Ember snapped. "No, there's a difference between wanting to see someone go away and seeing someone gone." She glared at Danny for a heart beat before she huffed and shook her head. "But… you're right… I'm just… scared."

Danny chuckled. "The Spirit of Rebellion is scared of me?"

"No…" Ember whispered. "The Spirit of Rebellion isn't scared of you, the ghost of Madeline McClain is."

Danny sucked in a breath, as he processed what he heard. That wasn't a name he had heard before, and he doubted he ever would hear it again. Because, it was the name of a girl who died long long ago.

Danny held his breath as long as he could, he refused to break the moment, to try and let Ember finish her statement; to move on from the secret she just shared. He wouldn't call her Madeline, that girl had long since died and became something new. But the fact that he knew her name was… incredible.

His lungs began to burn and he was forced to let the air out. Slowly, as to not disturb the moment. But even after he had emptied his lungs of their air, she hadn't moved a bit.

So he was forced to break it himself. "What reason would you ever have to be scared of me?"

Ember smiled sadly. "I saw your soul, Phantom. I saw what you are underneath everything. It's… it's not a thing I can truly process – to see a soul is to see something we're not meant to. I-I can't even really explain it with words. I could write ten thousand songs and I wouldn't even come close to being able to describe what it is. But… there was one thing…" Ember trailed off at that, chewing on her lip and staring at their intertwined arms.

"What thing?"

"My song…" Ember whispered, "when I saw your soul, I saw my song inscribed on it. I never ever believed I would see a person's soul, that someone would trust me so completely that they’d be willing to show me theirs, and if I did they'd never be marked as mine…" Ember took a deep breath and looked Danny in the eyes. "I saw that you were my soulmate, so I fucking killed a thing that cannot die." Danny's jaw dropped. "What?" He wasn't sure if that was in response to the knowledge that Ember was his soulmate or that Ember killed the thing that was going to kill him.

Ember shuddered. "I didn't even know I could do that, but I just… I saw my song on your soul, and I knew right then and there, that I couldn't let that thing have you. I would never let it have you."

Danny reached over and put his hand on Ember's shoulder. "If I am your soulmate, which I'll admit, I didn't believe in those before today, then why are you scared?"

Ember shook her head. "Phantom… I said you're my soulmate, not that I'm yours…" She pulled away, or rather tried to, but Danny held her firm. She didn't seem to mind. "It's… it's not always the case that it's reciprocated."

"Then… how do we find out?"

Ember froze, but Danny refused to take the words back, because he wanted to know. Because maybe she was right, and this soulmate thing only went one way.

But if she wasn't…

Ember sniffled and Danny realized she was crying. He startled and began to pull away. But Ember's hands tightened on his arm. "It's okay, it's okay. I'm just… I'm scared. I'm really really scared. I'm scared you'll see something, and you'll hate me forever. That for an eternity, I'll long for you, but you'll hate me."

Danny blinked as he processed what she said. He wanted to interrupt, to say something but what that would be, he had no clue.

Ember continued talking, trying to fill the time and not let either of them sit there in silence. “There’s… it’s possible, I know you haven’t been one of us for long, but I remember more about being a ghost than being a human now. I could… I could show you it, my soul that is…”

“You made it sound like it’s serious to do that…” Danny muttered.

“It is.”

Then the silence came, leaving them to their thoughts. Danny felt like a pilot trying to keep a plane from crashing. A million things were screaming to grab his attention, and he was trying to find the important thing. That being, what he needed to say to Ember. He was never really good at this kind of thing, it was something he relied on Jazz for. Hell, he was D+ student in English.

But well, Ember said he was her soulmate, so maybe he couldn't screw it up too badly.

"If that was the case, and the world said that you weren't my soulmate, then it's up to you to hold your middle finger up in the air and scream 'I'll make it work anyways'…'' He stopped there, before another word popped into his head. "'Fuckers'," he added.

Ember stilled for a moment and tears began to form in her eyes. Danny felt his heart stop and he started to curse himself for not thinking. When Ember suddenly pulled him off the rock they had been sitting on and into the open air of the Ghost Zone.

She didn't pull him far, just deeper into the asteroid field of rocks, before tucking the two of them between a couple. The Ghost Zone was a desolate place to begin with, but here there was no chance that anyone would see them. Ember straightened up before wiping away a tear. "Eyes on me, Baby Pop…"

And then placed a hand against her chest, and she started to burn.

It started at the edges of her form, the shapes and curves of her body burning away like she was made of paper. Danny sat there, transfixed as Ember turned to ash in front of him, leaving just a few bright flames in her place.

Her soul was… impossibly bright. It felt like not just his eyes but his mind was getting overloaded just looking at it. If it weren't for the fact that blinking didn't produce any of those afterimages like when one looked at a flash, he'd have worried about going blind.

It took effort to focus on her, and even then when he did, he felt his stomach drop as he realized he wasn't sure what he was looking at.

It was circular, a whirlwind of glowing red and bright white ash circling a series of scattered flames. The red glow pulsed like a heartbeat, while five flames flickered in place.

He bit his tongue and looked over her soul again. Trying to make sense of what he was looking at. To find something, anything, that showed a reflection of himself in Ember. That he hadn't just set her up for disappointment.

And then It clicked.

Polaris, the north star.

It was connected to Baekdu, Kochab, Pherkad, and Yildun. Each of the names clicked as he looked at the flames amongst her core.

Ursa minor, the little dipper, sitting in a nebula of ashes.

This was Ember, the remains of Madeline McClain, burned away till nothing but ashes remained, the Spirit of Rebellion, the one who when the world told her to move she planted her feet and told it, no. The girl who did not die when her time was up. The one who had the world screaming her name because she wanted to be remembered.

She was beautiful.

Carefully, slowly, like someone reaching out for an injured creature, Danny reached toward Ember, and he gently scooped up her soul into his hands. "You're my soulmate…" he whispered, right into her soul.

Then it was gone, the details of her soul that he'd never be able to put into words already fading from his mind. It'd forever be burned there, even if he could never fully recall it. Instead, he found Ember pressed against him, her arms wrapped about her neck and his hands about her waist. "And you're mine."

Danny squeezed her tightly in his arms and breathed out slowly. "This… is gonna be one hell of an explanation to my family."

"Taking me to meet the family already, huh? Baby Pop?"

"Yes," Danny said firmly. "I… I was almost gone, Ember. I refuse to keep more secrets from them. I almost never got to tell them who I was or what I was doing." He looked down at Ember who was looking at him with understanding. "I want to tell them."

Ember nodded and placed her forehead against his and closed her eyes. "I get it, Baby Pop, I… I died, and I left so, so many things unsaid, so many songs unsung." She opened her eyes and smiled at him. "Plus uhh… my lair might not be safe anymore? First thing I did after killing kshkspsp ths psp xhch xlhchks was take a bunch of its finger things and chuck them at Skulker telling him that I was a better hunter… and then broke up with him."

"Well, no time like the present…" Danny said, taking a step back and pulling Ember out of the crevasse they had jammed themselves into. Then he gently guided her to take off with him.

Danny had hoped that when he had made it back, he'd have beaten his parents back and they wouldn't have worried. But that wasn't the case. He stepped through the portal, hand in hand with Ember, to find his parents plus Jazz waiting in the lab.

Jack had been pacing back and forth, and Maddie had thrown herself into working on some weapon. Jazz was sitting on a chair, holding onto the Fenton BOO-merang.

Their feet hadn't touched the floor before all three of them had abandoned their stations and were crowding the one and half ghosts. Danny held up his hands in surrender, which only made him easier to be hugged by each of his family members.

"I'm alright! I'm alright!" Danny shouted, which did nothing to actually appease their worries.

"Sorry, Baby Pop, gotta take your lumps when you do stupid shit."

"Who said I did stupid shit?"

"I did, because I know you."

Maddie looked up at Ember and gave her an appraising look. "He went into the Ghost Zone, alone, without any weapons, and just left us a note saying he'd be back soon."

Danny folded his arms. "Hey, I said I wasn't going anywhere dangerous!"

"Baby Pop, you're enemy number one for every ghost in a thousand miles from that portal," She shrugged, giving him an evil smile. "So, uh… everywhere is dangerous."

"Speaking of," Jack said, "who're you?"

"Mom, Dad," Danny began, "This is Ember, she's…" Danny paused. There were a lot of things he could say here, but there was one thing his parents would care the most about right now. "She's the one who patched me together after…"

"Kshkspsp ths psp xhch xlhchks," Ember supplied.

"Yeah, that guy, tore me to shreds."

There was a brief moment of silence, before Maddie took a step towards Ember. Ember instinctively took a step back, but Maddie enveloped her in a hug. "Thank you, my dear."

"You're… welcome…" Ember whispered back, unsure on how to react to being hugged by Maddie, Danny's mother.

It had probably been ages since she had been hugged from a mother figure.

Jazz, who probably remembered the effects of being brainwashed the best out of everyone, let out a hum. "Not that I'm complaining but… how did that happen?"

Maddie took a step back and Ember bashfully rubbed the back of her head. "It's… a bit of a long story."

Jack clapped her on the back. "Well, come on in." He laughed joyously. "Thanks to you, we have a long time to talk about it."

#danny phantom #dp fic #ember mclain

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