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hannahmanderr · 11 months

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DannyMay Day 31 - Free Day

Words: 6,341

Summary: How do you convince someone to allow you to get yourself killed for them? (rewrite of a scene from "Reign Storm"; takes place a bit further down the timeline)

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Danny brushed the flyaway strands of hair from Valerie’s sleeping face. The sight of the burns and bruises dotting her skin filled him with an array of emotions - rage, terror, anguish, drive - each of them their own force to be reckoned with. He inhaled shakily.

Tucker and Sam inched closer to him. He didn’t need to see their faces to know they were looking at each other with that worried glance that they thought he never noticed. They could recognize one of his spirals before it even happened at this point.

“Dude, you can’t blame yourself for this,” Tucker said in a gentle whisper. He placed a hand on Danny’s shoulder. “It’s not your fault.” Sam’s eyes echoed the sentiment.

Deep down, Danny knew his friends were right. They’d been over the whole guilt thing before, and logically, he knew he couldn’t pile all the blame on himself. “Maybe not,” he admitted, even as flashes of everything that had happened in the past few days fluttered across his mind - provoking Vlad, provoking the other ghosts, pulling the Soul Shredder from the football field… Each one taunted him, singing songs of his failures and shortcomings, whispering his fears of not being enough back at him.

And yet there was another voice too, a sweet soprano voice peering through the clouds, serenading him with a different set of memories.

“I think I might’ve finally figured out what these powers are for…”

“So even with everybody thinking you’re a bad ghost, you’re still gonna try to be the hero?”

“Well, somebody’s gotta. Hey, if not me, who’s gonna protect this town? Besides, it’s not like I can ignore a scream for help.”

They bled together in a dulcet harmony and wrapped around his core and made it resonate with a sudden burst of clarity, reminding him of his purpose and his reason why he even tried in the first place.

Just like that, he knew what he had to do.

He turned and looked Tucker dead in the eye. “But it is my responsibility,” he said, the sincerity and boldness firm in his voice.

Before either of them could say anything, he stood and transformed. As his core flared to life, the surge of power coursed through his veins and strengthened his resolve for what he was about to do. It was almost enough to quell the wave of fear beginning to wash over him.

Almost.

No. He couldn’t focus on that. Now was not the time. Shaking his head, he grabbed each of his friends’ wrists and shot upward, setting them on the roof in front of the short addition Dad had added to house their defense system mainframes.

“Tucker, I need you to get working on hacking into the ghost shield,” he instructed as he phased his hand through the door to jolt the lock out of place. “With it working overtime to cover such a big part of the city, I don’t know if it’s gonna be easier or harder.”

“You want to take it down?” Sam asked, visibly confused.

Danny shook his head. “Just temporarily. I’ll explain more in a minute.” Except would he? Could he bring himself to explain just how far his plan went? Could he trust the two of them to avoid panicking and keeping him from what he knew he needed to do?

First things first. Sighing, he said, “Get working on that. I’ll be right back, I gotta grab something.” Without further explanation, he dove through the roof again, making a beeline for the basement.

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Maddie’s brow furrowed lightly as she watched her husband’s sleeping form. She’d insisted on taking him up to bed a couple of hours ago after overworking himself trying to get the ghost shield’s range increased and alerting the town. Even in his sleep, his breathing was labored, and tremors from the nerve damage wracked his body.

Curse that sleazy rat of a man, Vlad! He’d been the one to persuade Jack to use the Ecto-Skeleton’s lower half in the first place. And that was after Jack had told him use of the incomplete Ecto-Skeleton could be fatal! She closed her eyes to keep from seething. If only Jack hadn’t given in to Vlad’s sweet talk…

But Jack was an honorable man, especially to the people he held dear. Of course he’d follow Vlad’s suggestion. He trusted the man he believed to be his best friend, and she knew he loved her enough to move heaven and earth for her, to lay his own life down to protect hers. His fierce loyalty was one of the things she loved most about him.

It was what inspired her to do what she was about to do.

Two floors down, in the basement, sat the Ecto-Skeleton that she’d finished only half an hour ago. Well, nearly finished. The work was hardly her best, what with it being a rush job, and she still had yet to perfect the neural receptors. The suit was far from being safe for use, but with the threat of this self-proclaimed ghost king looming over her town, she had little other choice.

She leaned down and pressed a gentle kiss into Jack’s forehead. “I love you so much,” she whispered before standing and leaving their room.

As she made her way downstairs, she peeked in her kids’ rooms. Jazz’s was dark and empty; Maddie figured she was still outside, helping keep panic from spreading. The thought made her smile. It was a job Jazz was born for, especially with her love of therapy and psychology.

Danny’s room had the light on, and Damon Gray’s girl, the one who’d been injured during the initial wave, was still on the ground, propped up on a beanbag chair. Oddly enough, though, her son and his friends were nowhere to be found. It was strange, considering she’d just told Sam and Tucker a few minutes ago that she’d seen Danny and Damon’s daughter up here a while ago (the initial sight of them both asleep in his room had set off her mom alarms, but given the fact that he was on his bed while she was on the floor and there were far bigger things to be concerned about, she let it slide).

Maddie sighed. There wasn’t time to hunt the three of them down. She’d have to cross her fingers and hope they were somewhere safe and out of trouble - perhaps helping Jazz.

Steeling herself, she shut Danny’s door and headed down the stairs. She dashed into the kitchen and opened the door to the lab only to run into Damon.

“Oh, my bad!” he said, catching her arm. “I know we wanted to monitor the shield and the probe as close as possible, but I haven’t seen Valerie in a bit and I want to make sure she’s okay. Is that alright if I go and check on her? I might ask if she wants anything for dinner while I’m at it.”

“Of course!” Maddie answered immediately. “Take as long as you need! Last time I saw her, she’d fallen asleep in Danny’s room. I’m not sure where he or Sam and Tucker went, but she seemed comfortable and safe.”

Damon’s form relaxed just slightly. “That’s good to know.” He sidled past her and towards the kitchen entry. “I’ll go check on her real fast and then be right back down there to help out.”

Maddie smiled. She hadn’t known Damon for long - less than 48 hours, really - but she could tell he was a good man with a heart of gold. The fact that he’d so readily thrown himself into assisting her and Jack warmed her heart.

It seemed like so many people in her life were of such a high caliber. She only hoped what she was about to do allowed her to even measure up just slightly.

“Help yourself to anything in the fridge,” she said, nodding towards it. “Just be careful of what’s in the containment box on the top shelf - trust me, that’s our secondary refrigeration storage unit.”

He let out a good-hearted chuckle. “Thanks so much, Maddie.” He turned to head up the stairs, leaving her in the kitchen alone with her thoughts. Such a good father, she thought to herself before beginning her descent into the basement lab.

The moment she stepped into the stairwell, she knew something was horribly wrong. The air was cold and sharp, so much so that she was certain she was seeing her breath mist in front of her. A heavy, thick presence filled the air, one of worry and fear. Someone was in the lab, muttering under their breath.

Somehow, she knew exactly who it was.

A careful, silent creep down the stairs proved her right. There, flitting around the Ecto-Skeleton and examining it, was Phantom. In her lab. In her house. Under a ghost shield that had thus far been proven to be impenetrable by any ghost, including the supposed king attacking the town and his knight.

Without taking her eyes off of him, she drew the pistol holstered to her belt and aimed it at him. “Make another move and I’ll shoot you,” she said, surprising herself with the darkness of her voice.

His back was to her when she spoke, but, following her order, he didn’t turn around. “M-Maddie,” he whispered, his voice heavy with dread. “Please, I’m - I promise this isn’t what it looks like.”

“Really? Because from where I stand, it looks like you’re in the middle of sabotaging the one hope anyone has of saving this town!”

“Sabot- Really?” He turned around to face her, but didn’t move closer. She gripped the trigger just a little tighter. “Even in the middle of the worst attack we’ve seen yet, you’re still bent on making me into the main problem?”

“Well, what am I supposed to think when I find you tampering with our weapons?” She did find his insistence to turn the situation into something revolving around him haughty and very typical for him in particular, but she held her tongue about the issue for now. Unlike him, she was focused on the real problem at hand.

Phantom huffed, a move that should’ve been impossible for a being without lungs. “I’m not tampering with it,” he said with strained patience. “I’m trying to figure out how to get in this thing. Or where the ‘on’ button is, or something.”

“And just what do you plan on doing with it?”’

“Seriously? What do you think I’m gonna do with it?” He threw his hands up in the air in exasperation. “I have to stop that guy!” he exclaimed, pointing up and vaguely out of the house.

“Even if I believed you,” she scoffed, “you have no right to invade our home and steal our invention to use for your own gain!”

Without warning, his face grew suddenly somber. Before Maddie’s eyes, he seemed to age years beyond his portrayed age. For the first time since discovering Phantom’s existence, she wondered if his teenage stature was a conscious choice or merely the body he’d had when he died.

That thought chilled her to the bone.

He lowered his gaze to the floor. “It isn’t for my own gain,” he said quietly. “It… I know you don’t believe me, but I really am doing this for you. For everyone.” Then in a near whisper, he said, “It’s my responsibility.”

Maddie narrowed her eyes as she pondered his words. The claim was the same as it had been since day one: he was trying to be the hero, the one good ghost in a sea of evil ones. He hadn’t wavered from that, except for a few times, which, admittedly, could be counted on one hand. At least he was consistent, if nothing else.

She just couldn’t make sense of it. The MO went against everything she and Jack understood about ghosts. If she were to accept his claimed intentions as true, it would mean dozens of theories, hundreds of hours of heated discussion and research, many attempts at creating basic behavioral profiles, they’d all be thrown out the window.

Not to mention the inherent danger of letting their guard down. Ghosts were notoriously tricky, and their ability to do things beyond human capabilities made them even more dangerous of a threat. Phantom especially was one who seemed harmless at first, but who had displayed impressive, terrifying power (and the potential to take it even further). He, like this ghost king, could probably raze the town in less than an hour if he really wanted to.

So… did he want to?

She studied his body language closer. His eyes were still fixed on a distant spot on the floor, and they were glassy as his own thoughts raced through his head. Though he seemed more serious, more battle-worn, he also seemed to be retreating into himself, making himself try and appear smaller than normal. It was hard to believe anyone who looked so solemn and resigned could be secretly plotting to wreak destruction.

“No one ever said it was your responsibility,” she said, matching his tone.

He smiled wryly. “I know,” he admitted with a one-shoulder shrug. “But it doesn’t make it any less true.”

Maddie sighed deeply and holstered her weapon, much to Phantom’s astonishment. She crossed the room and laid a hand on the cold titanium exterior of the Ecto-Skeleton. “It doesn’t matter if it’s your responsibility or not,” she said. Now was not the time to decide ground-breaking things about his true intentions. More important things were at hand. “You won’t be the one using this.”

He glanced up at her, then to the Ecto-Skeleton. His gaze flicked back and forth a few times, growing wider as the realization of her implications hit him. “No, no,” he breathed. She jolted when he caught her wrist; his touch was freezing, but unexpectedly gentle. “Mo… Maddie, you can’t! You saw what that thing did to… to Jack, you can’t seriously expect to go up against a ghost that powerful with that thing!”

She didn’t know how he knew what had happened to Jack, but frankly, she didn’t care at the moment. “It’s the only shot we have of defeating him,” she said soberly, pulling her wrist away. “I have to do it.”

“No one ever said it was your responsibility.” Of course he would stoop so low as to use her own words against her.

“Figures a ghost wouldn’t understand the concept of putting your life on the line for the ones you love,” she muttered. There wasn’t time for this nonsense!

His eyes became thunderous. “That’s just - I’ve…” he stuttered, accentuating it with a shout of exasperation. “Argh, you have no idea what I do and don’t understand! Are you telling me that’s what this is all about?”

“What, proving a factual point to you? I shouldn’t -”

“No, trying to be some self-sacrificial hero for everyone!” he shouted, spreading his arms. “Like why choose now of all the times to play the martyr?”

“It hasn’t been necessary until now!” She hoped her eyes were as piercing as she wanted them to be. Phantom’s inability to understand this only helped prove her and Jack right about his hero act being just that. The fall into familiar territory only marginally soothed her frayed nerves. “My family is in danger. I’m not just going to sit idly by and let them get hurt!”

He lowered his arms and regarded her with a stony expression. It was difficult not to flinch under his gaze, and she got the same aura of a battle-worn boy that had washed over him earlier. Her heart fluttered faster and faster.

She was nearing her breaking point of lashing out just to stop that piercing stare of his by the time he finally did something. Sighing, he hung his head low and, so very quietly, said, “I know.”

That… hadn’t been quite what she was expecting. “You know?”

“Yeah. I know. You’re always looking out for the people you care about. You’d never just leave them hanging.” He lifted his head and she found herself taken aback by the reverent, proud twinkle that had taken its place in his eyes. He smiled sadly. “It’s always been one of the things I admire most about you.”

Her mouth opened and twisted, but no words came out. Where did she even begin with a statement like that? The idea that he’d been watching her, possibly Jack too, closely enough to form some sort of attachment sent her heart dropping into her stomach, but it was quickly wrenched back into an anxious thump as she realized the implication of him holding admiration.

It should’ve been a distinctly human conception. Ghosts did not admire one another, they couldn’t. They were too proud of themselves and their own power to look into another and find something to emulate. Their individual powers and cores were their entire world.

So how was Phantom demonstrating the exact opposite of that?

She wanted to shout. She wanted to bang her fist against the Ecto-Skeleton. She wanted to stomp her foot and throw something. Why did he always have to do this? Waltz in and out of their lives, poking careless holes in their life’s work? It wasn’t fair! Before he’d shown his face, they’d never held a shadow of a doubt that their theories were true.

But now, though she could never admit it truly, he had forced her to second-guess herself. She couldn’t help but doubt everything she’d ever known as his otherworldly green eyes bore into her own.

She hated everything about it with every fiber of her being.

He raised his eyebrows in concern as she floundered for a response. “Sorry,” he mumbled sheepishly. “I didn’t - well, I did mean what I said, I just… didn’t mean to say it.”

Her own eyebrows frowned, but softly. “If you admire that about me,” she said slowly, not believing the words coming out of her own mouth, “then you understand why I have to do this.”

His smile faded in tandem with the twinkle in his eye. “I… I understand why you think you have to do this,” he admitted. “But it doesn’t change the fact that you can’t.”

“Who are you to tell me what I can and can’t do?” she snapped. This game of cat and mouse was growing on her last nerve, and with each minute that passed, she knew the ghost king grew closer to launching his final assault.

For some reason, it made her angrier that his face was one of solemnity again, not anger. Anger, she could deal with. Angry ghosts were easy.

Ghosts that supposedly admired humans and understood self-sacrifice weren’t.

He bit his lip. “I’m not - no, I’m not trying to… to tell you that you - you’re not allowed to think that way,” he tried to explain, stumbling over his words. “I know I can’t stop you from believing that, and - and that’s fine. I get it. I’m the same way, even if you don’t believe me. I just… What I’m trying to tell you is that you - you physically can’t do this.”

Her frown deepened now into one of perplexity. “Why not? The Ecto-Skeleton is right here. It’s the only thing that could possibly work against that ghost.”

“Sure, you could take it,” he said, “but I keep trying to tell you, you saw what that did to Jack, and that was only the bottom half! Do you really think you’ll be able to use the whole thing and be okay?”

Again, the question of how he knew these details crossed her mind, but she shoved them into the back of her mind. “It may still be glitchy,” she admitted. There was no sense lying to him about the issues with the neural interface; if he knew it had hurt Jack, he probably knew it was still highly dangerous. “But it’s what I keep trying to tell you: there isn’t another choice.”

“Maddie, please.” She could hear the frustration growing in his voice. “This isn’t - it’s not a choice that exists! You really think you’re gonna be able to take that thing and stop him?”

“I’ll stop him or I’ll die trying!” she bit out.

Phantom looked like her words had just punched him in the gut. “Yeah,” he said hollowly. “Yeah, you’ll try. And one way or another, you’ll end up dead, whether it’s the king or the suit that gets to you first, and then what? What’s supposed to happen?”

She didn’t answer. The way it played out in her head, she imagined the Ecto-Skeleton being enough to cripple the ghost king, at least to the point where someone else, even another ghost could come in and take care of the rest of him. The way Phantom phrased it, though, he made it sound like she’d barely make a dent in his defenses before she got killed.

And the worst part of it was that she was inclined to believe him. The suit’s pants really had sapped such a huge chunk of Jack’s energy in such a short period of time, and though she and Vlad had managed to remedy some of the interface’s complications, there hadn’t been nearly enough time to fix them all, and none of the three of them were quite as familiar with the level of programming knowledge necessary to fix them quickly.

In other words, with the top half of the suit, using the Ecto-Skeleton as a whole was just as dangerous as it had been with the bottom half alone. She knew this perfectly well. For her to use it - for any human to use it - was practically a death sentence.

And Phantom knew this too. He stared at her, hard and intense. “If you take the suit and go off to fight him,” he told her in a low voice, “you’ll die. And he won’t care. You’re just a puny little thing to him. You’d be nothing more than some annoying fly to take care of before he continues on his warpath. And then what?”

Still, she hesitated. She refused to admit he was right, even as he continued to speak. “You’d be handing this town, your family - everyone over to him if you take that thing. He’ll destroy it before someone else can use it against him, and then it’s game over. Especially if we’re right about it being the only chance.”

Though his face remained cloudy, there was something else behind his eyes that made them gleam with an anxious shine. Could he actually be… worried about her?

“Then what am I supposed to do?” she whispered. She couldn’t stand how her voice shook with fear and uncertainty. It was a vulnerability she couldn’t afford to expose, not now.

He straightened and turned to look at the Ecto-Skeleton. “I already told you,” he said, laying his hand next to hers on the suit. “You’re not gonna do anything. It’s gonna be me that takes it.”

“What?�� She blinked once, twice as she tried to process what he said. “You’re going to use it?”

He drew in a shaky breath (again, something that should’ve been impossible for him to do) and nodded. “No human could ever have enough power to survive this thing long enough to fight off Pariah Dark.” His exhale was just as shaky. “But I’m no human.”

It was her turn to flick her gaze back and forth between him and the suit. “You can’t possibly expect-”

“Maddie.” He closed his eyes. “You’ve been watching and hunting me for a while now. You know my power, probably better than even me.”

He pressed his forehead against the metal and stilled. She watched him with a frown, but it was impossible to read him. For all that a ghost was supposed to be easy to understand, Phantom was the exact opposite.

“I don’t like to admit it,” he said quietly after a long moment. “I can’t… it’s not easy for me. I don’t like acknowledging what I’m capable of.”

In a flash, he opened his eyes and looked at her. There was a sort of desperation in his eyes that she couldn’t quite place. Just as quickly, he turned his eyes to the ground. “You know just as well as I do that I’m more powerful than I like to let on. We both know that I have a lot more power than just about any of the ghosts that show up around here. I… I’m the only one who even has a shot at stopping him.”

It was strange, hearing him so openly admit his power. He was probably telling the truth about not liking to acknowledge it; most ghosts loved to flaunt their power (the Wisconsin Ghost immediately came to mind), but Phantom tended to exercise restraint in that sense. Oh sure, he loved to mock his opponents and tease them when he was able to get one up on them, but things never escalated beyond battle banter.

But he was right. All of the measurements they’d taken of him, as marred by inaccuracies as they could be, put him at a level 7.3. The average level of the ghosts that attacked the town varied between 3.5 and 5.8. If he wanted to, he could take out those ghosts without breaking a sweat.

And yet he didn’t.

Nothing about him made sense.

“So you think you can actually beat him?” she asked. Normally, the question would’ve been laced with skepticism and venom, but at this point she was beyond it. Dealing with Phantom and his… eccentricities was exhausting, and that was on top of the fact that her husband was nearly bedridden at the moment, her kids were nowhere to be found, and an all-powerful ghost was about to descend on her town.

Yeah, she couldn’t bother to be scathing.

And, though she’d never admit it, as the conversation dragged on, she was beginning to become accustomed to his expressiveness. It was a sort of expressiveness that was human in the most uncanny way, and she couldn’t help but fall for it, even if it was an act. She found herself unwillingly believing his claims more and more, and it was having an effect on how she was viewing him.

To her, right now, he seemed less like the sassy trickster she and Jack had pegged him as, and he seemed less like the valiant hero he tried to be for the town. If she hadn’t known better, she’d have thought he was simply a scared boy who’d bitten off more than he could chew. It was too easy to forget the sheer power that pulsed underneath his skin.

And scared he looked. He folded his arms and gripped his biceps, tucking his chin towards his chest. His face was drawn tight in an anxious frown.

“You want the truth?” he asked so quietly, she almost missed it.

“Obviously.”

A tiny shudder rippled across his body. “I don’t know.” His fingers dug deeper into his arms as he kept his gaze fixed below him. “I don’t know.”

Whatever words she’d been preparing to say were ripped straight from her mouth, leaving her stunned and uneasy. Never before had Phantom allowed himself to be so… vulnerable in front of someone. Or admit doubt in his own ability. For him to do so now was unnerving for a number of reasons.

Thoughts and theories whirled around her head in a violent cyclone. The implications this show of vulnerability had…

No. She couldn’t let herself be distracted by that, not right now. There was something a little more immediate that needed to be addressed. “So wait, you won’t let me use the suit because you think I won’t be able to hold out, but you think you can use it even though you don’t even know you can hold out?”

“I at least have a better chance than you,” he said indignantly. Some of the fire in his eyes reignited, but the fear that remained betrayed him.

“But you’re not planning on coming back, are you?” she accused. “You don’t think…”

The words didn’t need to be said. They both knew exactly what she was alluding to.

He sighed, then set his jaw and looked her square in the eye. “I’ll go to whatever lengths I have to if it means you’ll be protected.”

All she could do was shake her head in disbelief. “Why?”

A weak laugh bubbled past his lips. “Like I told you,” he said with a crooked, feeble grin, “it’s one of the things I admire most about you.”

The two of them stood there (or floated, in Phantom’s case) for what seemed like an eternity, especially when the threat of the king loomed over their heads. She didn’t even want to try to tackle the subject of him holding her as a role model; with a brain that felt like it was full of static, she didn’t trust herself to try, either. As it was, she could barely process this situation.

Phantom. Clearly scared out of his mind. Ready to fight for the town to the point of fading. If she hadn’t been here experiencing it for herself, she’d never have believed it.

The fact that he hadn’t simply taken off yet baffled her further. There was only so much she could do to prevent him from leaving; they both knew that. So why not just take the Ecto-Skeleton and go?

He was waiting for something from her. Something physical, or the answer to some sort of question he hadn’t voiced out loud. It had to be the reason.

She suspected she knew what he was waiting for her to tell him.

“No,” she finally said, her voice hoarse. “I can’t let you.”

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Danny’s heart dropped as his mom spoke those words.

She wouldn’t. She couldn’t. What was she thinking? Wasn’t she supposed to hate him? Phantom, anyway? Shouldn’t she be perfectly fine with the idea of him meeting an early end to his afterlife?

At least more fine with the idea than he was?

“M-Maddie,” he said, stumbling over her name for the umpteenth time. Normally, he was so careful to make sure to call people by the names that the proper Danny would know. For Danny Fenton, his parents were Mom and Dad, but to Danny Phantom, they were Maddie and Jack. Something about this conversation, though, just kept leading him to slip ups.

Maybe it was the fact that he was talking about going off and offering himself up like a lamb to a slaughter in front of his mother of all people?

He shook his head. “I know you don’t trust me, but I won’t let you stop me.”

Would she have to push hard to keep him from going, though?

He’d been hoping to snag the Ecto-Skeleton and fly out of there before he had a chance to really think about what he was doing, but now, thanks to this conversation, he was starting to lose the same resolve he’d found up in his room. Most of what he was showing to Mom was a false mask of confidence at this point.

Speaking of Mom, she hadn’t reacted to his pushback yet. She was preoccupied with staring at a faint smudge of oil on the shiny metal of the suit. Without her hood, he could pick out the rampant emotion in her eyes that had been present this whole time, ever since she put the gun away. What she was thinking about, though, he had no idea. He didn’t have the same talent for reading people that Jazz did.

“It’s not a matter of trust,” she said eventually. She clenched her hand into a tight fist and averted her gaze even further. “It’s… you have to realize, I… I can’t…”

He felt his face soften in sympathy. “You can’t let someone else take the fall for you,” he finished for her. “I get it.”

She apparently hadn’t been expecting him to say that. Her eyes jerked up to meet his, and behind them, he could practically see the gears in her head churning faster and faster as she tried to make sense of it.

He didn’t blame her. He wasn’t even sure what he was saying anymore, he’d said so many things he would’ve never admitted in a million years at this point. Like telling her he admired her heroism? What was he thinking? After so many months of carefully guarding his secret, what on earth had possessed him to be so careless with this stuff?

Despite his own anxiety, he tried not to shy away from her intense gaze, as difficult as it was. Like worse than when Jazz was getting ready to serve him with a lecture.

The bottoms of her eyes scrunched up in absolute befuddlement. “Who even are you, Phantom?” she finally whispered.

His expression of sympathy relaxed even further into a frown weighed down by nearly a year of sleepless nights, sacrificed grades and relationships, and scrapes and bruises from being thrown into streets and buildings. “Just someone who wants to help.”

Mom narrowed her eyes further. He was really beginning to hate how he could not figure out for the life of him what was going on in her head. Frankly, he was still half-convinced she would pull out her gun again, shoot him, and take the suit anyway. Had telling her she wouldn’t change a thing against Pariah Dark been the right way to go? Would it just make her even more stubborn?

At least he knew what side of the family he got his stubbornness from.

It was also getting harder to resist the temptation to just grab the suit and run. After all, she really couldn’t do much in the way of stopping him, what with a handy thing called intangibility, and, with his courage waning by the minute, the idea seemed more and more plausible. Not to mention that as each second ticked by, the Ghost King grew closer to launching his final attack.

Time was running out.

Just when he thought he wouldn’t be able to take any more, Mom abruptly drew her fist away from the suit and stepped back. Her eyes were closed tight. “Go.”

He had to do a double take, he could hardly believe his ears. “Are you-”

“Just go, Phantom!” The tension in her jaw was visible and obvious. Even still, quieter than before, she added, “Before I change my mind.”

A single tear slipped from the corner of her shut eye, and Danny’s heart shattered.

This… this was all wrong. How could he do this to her? Ask her to allow her own son to go up and face almost-certain death? When she didn’t even know it was her son she was talking to? And then the fact that if he really didn’t return, she’d never know the truth…

In one shallow, shaky breath, he made another decision.

Carefully, he floated toward her and laid a gentle hand on her arm. “Thank you,” he said, pouring as much warmth, sincerity, and gravity into the two words as he could.

She cracked open her eyes to look at him, and then, before he lost the guts to do so and before she could stop him, he said, “You… you asked me who I am.”

This time, Mom opened her eyes fully and regarded him with confusion. Clearly, she’d been expecting him to bolt the minute she gave her permission. “Look, I already-”

“If I don’t - if something happens to me…” he interrupted, cursing the waver in his voice. The fluttering in his stomach was quickly becoming unbearable. “... you’ll find the answer in… in your son’s room, taped to the back of his bed.”

That definitely elicited a response from her. “What does - how…?” She couldn’t find the right question to ask as the emotion in her eyes suddenly turned to panic. Well, that was reasonable at least. He’d just confirmed some involvement of Danny Fenton.

He smiled weakly, apologetic and sheepish. “He’s fine, I promise. Just… yeah. Consider it… a failsafe.” One that he’d prepared months ago, after the incident with Freakshow. Nothing more than a letter explaining the truth. He’d hoped he’d never have to resort to using it, that he’d be able to tell Mom and Dad in person, but…

Her brow knitted together. It was agony, not being able to know what she was thinking. He could only hope she wasn’t about to turn on him for getting too close to her son.

“Well,” she said after what felt like an eternity. “Don’t make me need to use it.”

Without another word, she turned and walked towards the staircase. When she paused on the fourth or fifth step, he could only float there as she looked over her shoulder at him, one last time, her eyes wet and bloodshot.

The corners of her lips turned upward. “Give him hell, Phantom,” she said. And then she was gone, leaving Danny alone in the basement.

He watched where she disappeared up the stairs for a long moment. Somewhere in the back of his mind, it occurred to him that in terms of last words to hear from his mother, those were definitely not the ones he would’ve expected to hear.

He could live with that.

Huffing a short breath, he shook his head to clear it. He needed to focus. No more worrying about Mom and what she thought of him, or if she’d go and find the letter anyway, or why she even let him go in the end. No more dwelling on the fact that he was probably living the last minutes of his life.

It was go time.

He grabbed the Ecto-Skeleton by one of its arms and hoisted it into the air, phasing back up through the ceiling to meet back up with Sam and Tucker.

#danny phantom #dannymay #dannymay2023 #dannymay 2023 #danny fenton #maddie fenton #danny phantom maddie #danny phantom fanfic #hannah writes #reign storm #i love reign storm #but that scene where the adults just all slap each other a bit is kind of silly #this is how i'd want it to go down #long post

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