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kinglazrus · 8 months ago

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this isn't the beginning (but it's a start)

An AU where Portal Danny went missing his senior year of high school, and he's back home twenty years later.

Ch. 2 | Masterpost | Read on Ao3 | Cover art by @lil-yardstick | Glass figures by @what-even-is-sleep

Chapter One: Oblivion

It was always going to hurt.

Words: 2085 Warnings: mild gore

The star is dying. Tiny flares stretch into the darkness, fiery tongues lapping at the air until the thread of light tethering it to the whole breaks and the heat is lost forever as it dissipates. The star grows smaller with every burst. Dimmer. Colder.

It’s dying, and he might be dying with it, but that feels trivial in comparison. He dies every day.

It always starts in the burial ground, where he roams between the graves. Most of them are little more than mounds, gentle slopes in the grass where something is buried underneath. But others have been tended to so carefully, marked by stone with flowers laid upon them, as if to show there can still be life there.

It’s a nice sentiment, if a bit mistaken.

His memories are buried there, interred deep beneath the dirt and beyond his reach. Most are lost to him, and the few he knows, he knows only by the words carved upon their tombstones. They’re stories he’s been told, faces described, names repeated so many times they should be burned into his brain, but somehow manage to slip away from him again.

But he always wanders, and digs and digs and digs, until his nails are torn and his fingers bleed, and still there’s nothing. If there are any caskets here, he’s never seen them. He lays at the bottom of an empty grave, hands folded over his chest, mud clinging to his fingers as the damp seeps into his clothes and hair. He closes his eyes and wishes the dirt would pour over him. Sometimes it does, stinging his eyes, filling his mouth and nose. Pressing down on him until his ribs creak. And another piece of him dies as he goes stiff and cold.

But he doesn’t get to stay dead. When he wakes, he has to claw his way back up, remind himself who he is and why he’s here. And the next time he pitches forward into darkness, it happens all over again.

So, he’s used to dying.

Then why does this hurt?

It was always going to hurt.

A whimper pulls from his throat, and he holds the star even closer.

He could cradle it in his arms, before. Curl around it as he was enveloped in its light and warmth. Now, it’s caged between his palms, casting soft shadows that sink into the creases of his knuckles as he tries to hold the light in, but it just streams through his fingers while the space between his hands shrinks. Maybe he’s killing it faster. Squeezing the life out of it. Suffocating it. Or maybe, if he lets go, the cold surrounding them will rush in and snuff the star out. Or, without his hands to contain it, all the fire will burst out in one brilliant flash that leaves him blind and aching.

Another shudder ripples through him, and as his head bows toward his clasped hands, a drop rolls from his eye, carving a path down his cheek. It touches the corner of his mouth, seeping into the cracks of his dry skin. When he licks his lips, he tastes iron.

He mistook the blood for tears, at first. Tried to blink it away when he felt his eyes growing wet, and stared down at the polka dot napkin in his hand as his vision went fuzzy. Pretty pastel flecks—yellow, pink, blue, green—scattered like confetti across the paper, except where it was already smeared with red.

He pressed his thumb against the wet spot, wondering how it got there.

“Hey, put that back,” an older woman said. She stood just in front of him, not too close, but enough that he was backed into a corner between her, the wall, and the row of lockers beside him. Her frown deepened the wrinkles around her mouth as she took his hand in hers, raising it up to his face and pressing the napkin against his cheek, just below his eye. She held it there for a second, then squeezed his shoulder.

“Do you know what we did today?” she asked.

“I don’t...” It wasn’t meant to be an answer, but she took it as one. Rightly so. He wasn’t sure what he was doing right then, much less earlier in the day.

“What about the date?”

He blinked at her slowly.

“Okay.” She worried her lip, then ran her fluttering hands over her hair, which was pulled back into a tight bun. “Okay, hon. Go sit down.” She grabbed his shoulder once more and tugged him forward, nudging him toward a nearby doorway. “I’ll get your bag and be right back.”

She lingered another moment before heading down the hall, walking so briskly that each step kicked at her long, flowing skirt. She wasn’t quite running by the time she turned the corner, but it certainly wasn’t a walk.

He wondered what her name was.

Then he blinked, flinching in surprise when his eyelashes fluttered against a napkin pressed into his hand, and pulled it back.

Hm. Polka dots. Like confetti. Marred by two bright red stains. He started raising the napkin back to his face, because she had told him to keep it there.

Who?

He paused. That’s right. Or wasn’t right. He was alone.

That’s okay. Everything is fine.

His head throbbed. He crumpled the napkin in his fist and stumbled toward a nearby doorway. Everything spun as if balanced on a point between his eyes, and he could really use a moment to sit down. As he stepped through, the world tilted around him. His shoulder struck the door frame, and he would have pitched forward if not for the door itself, into which he stumbled as his knees went weak. He braced himself against it, leaning heavily on the doorknob while squeezing his eyes shut, and didn’t move until the world settled enough that he could look without feeling a swoop in his stomach.

Identical tables took up most of the room, their chairs poorly tucked, tops strewn with empty chip bags and paper cups. A few crumbs here and there, and some spilled juice that hadn’t dried yet. Along the wall beside him, a row of hooks overflowing with jackets and backpacks. On the far side of the room, a solitary desk accompanied by filing cabinets and a shelf crammed full of books.

One of the fluorescent lights above his head, the second from the left, flickered, clicking and buzzing as it flashed on and off. He stared at it until the stripes of light were burned on the back of his eyelids, and he tore his gaze away.

He looked to the tables again, to the crumbs and empty wrappers, and the crumpled napkin in his hand, and knew had forgotten.

The first shiver brought him to his knees.

It’s okay. It’s okay.

He gasped, clutching his shirt while tears poured from his eyes, but the drops that hit the tile beneath him were red. A howl filled his ears, keening and desperate and echoing all around him. Or maybe it was him. He could barely hear anything above the noise, but somehow a single shout broke through, and his head whipped up to see a woman in the doorway.

Oh, her.

The last thing he saw before the shadows rose up to meet him was the shape of his name on her lips, and then he was swallowed. Plummeting into the darkness and spat out here, before the dying star.

So it hurts.

Because he might be dying, too. Really dying.

He can’t remember what that feels like, but he imagines it’s something like this. With a heat building in his chest while his hands shake from a chill seeping even deeper. Trying to swallow past the lump in his throat as his tongue scrapes, like sandpaper, against the roof of his mouth, and every muscle in his body constricts until his head is bowed toward his knees in a mockery of confession.

He grasps his throat, fingers wrapped so tightly that he might have been choking himself.

“No.” It’s barely a word. A croak. A wheeze. The smallest moan pushed between his lips. Maybe it’s not a word at all, but he knows what he means to say as the iron blooms across his tongue. “Please.”

He can’t breathe. He doesn’t even need to, but now he can’t, choking as something wells in his throat. Guilt, maybe. How much has he pushed this mind away this past year? It’s not like he didn’t feel it. The pull. At first, just the brush of someone reaching out every couple weeks. Then a firm tug every few days. Then every day, as the gentleness gave way to desperation and pokes and prods that made him snap his teeth.

He wanted to answer. Wanted nothing more than to sink into this dream and see that familiar face. He’s sure he would be received with a smile, despite turning his back on it for so long. But he couldn’t. Not until he was ready. Did he even notice when it stopped reaching out? He tries, now, to recall the last time he felt that nudge against his mind.

How long ago was it? A few days, a week, a month. He can’t say. Time is such a difficult thing.

And now...and now...

He tries to reach back. Presses the star against his chest and wills the dream open, waits for the light streaming into the darkness to coalesce into the shape he knows so well. Instead, heat blooms in his chest, as if all the warmth the star lost has found a home behind his ribs. A spark catching and settings his organs on fire as it tries to burn him out.

So maybe he’s choking on his guilt, or it’s maybe just the mass squirming in his throat. He can’t feel it against his hand, but it’s there. Wriggling as it tries to dislodge itself. Scratching against the muscle. He imagines his throat splitting open and a fleshy mass spewing into the stars, squirming amongst the gore as it drifts into space. But no blood wells beneath his fingers.

He wouldn’t even care if it did.

He tries to gasp out, “Please, no, please,” but his chest squeezes and crushes the words before they can form.

No, that’s not quite right. It’s not a press in, but out, grinding the plea against his rib cage. A fullness, like when you eat too much and your stomach stretches to its limits, except the feeling rises from a place deeper within him. Where his heart used to be, where his core now resides beneath layers of ozone and ectoplasm that he moulded in a facsimile of flesh. A little too much swelling against the limits of this body and pulling his skin taut, something that should not be possible for a being who contains galaxies.

His mouth opens, though no sound falls out. He’s not even sure which of them he would be crying for, now, if anything but blood were pouring from his eyes.

Don’t go. Don’t go. Don’t go, please.

The stars around them blur. Not dying, just swallowed by the spots dancing at the edge of his vision. His eyes want to fall shut, but he refuses, afraid that if he even blinks, the star will disappear while he’s not watching.

It’s slipped from his grasp while he was thrashing and gritting his teeth. Flares burst off it in every direction as it shrinks smaller and smaller. He reaches toward it with one hand while the other clutches at his chest.

Stop this.

How?

Get it out.

The thing in his throat squirms and slips further down.

Get out!

Cracks spread along his chest. His skin burns as it splits open along old wounds, up his neck and across his jaw. He digs his fingers into the cracks, reaching inside his chest until he finds something soft and fleshy, and he squeezes.

Lightning rips through him, setting every nerve on fire, and his jaw snaps shut. A crack rings out as something in inside him gives. The sound echoes through his head. Blood oozes alongside the ectoplasm as he withdraws his hand, and the cracks along his skin seal once more. The heat rushes out of him, and though the throb in his chest is still there, it’s ebbed slightly, and he finally goes limp.

At the same moment, the star goes out.

—

Masterpost | Next chapter

#danny phantom #Invisobang 2024 #danny phantom big bang #phicc #danny phantom fanfiction #Unlucky Alis #portal Danny #void Danny #Eldritch Danny #space core #this isn't the beginning (but it's a start)

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