Everything Was White: Part 21
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read on: [ao3] [ffn] (please read tags)
Summary: After being accidentally revealed to the public and taken away by the government, Danny deals with the aftermath of his time with the GIW.
****
It had only been a few days since his core access had returned to him, but he still wasn’t used to the buzzing under his skin, cool and constant, pure comfort against the blistering pain of his nerve damage.
Looking back, he wasn’t sure how he had managed to make it this far without his core. His parents, his sister, his friends didn’t understand—they couldn’t, they were just human. But Vlad understood. Vlad was like him. Even if he was a complete asshole in every other way.
Danny flicked off the TV and stretched. Grabbing his walker, he made his way over to the kitchen where Jazz was sitting at the table, her attention devoted entirely to the book in her hand.
“Hey,” he said, dropping into one of the chairs.
“Hi, Danny,” she said absentmindedly.
He peeked at the cover. The History of Boston, it read with fancy, gold letters. Danny rolled his eyes. “You haven’t even…moved there yet. And be—besides, isn’t Harvard in Cambridge?”
“Cambridge is right next to Boston, and they’re both on the same transit system. They may as well be the same city,” Jazz recited as if she’d said it a thousand times before. “And anyway, it’s always good to learn about a place before you move there.”
“Yeah, but it’s ways away.”
“I start school next month, Danny.”
Danny blinked, whipping out his phone. Sure enough, the end of the year was fast approaching.
Shit, Christmas is coming up…
He hadn’t even begun to think about the holidays. Then it hit him…Aunt Alicia hadn’t come over for Thanksgiving, had she?
Why hadn’t she come this year? He tried to remember, tried to think back if anyone had mentioned anything, but he drew a blank.
It wasn’t…because of him, was it?
“I need to be prepared,” Jazz rambled, oblivious to any internal crisis Danny was having at the moment. “I’ve heard that the train system is unreliable, so I want to have a good understanding of the city in case of emergency. I don’t ever want to get stuck in an area that may be unsafe for me. And learning the historical context of different neighborhoods is key to understanding the city as a whole.”
“No one’s going to be asking you for tours.”
“As I said, preparation is key.” Jazz placed her bookmark—a plastic green ghost—in between the pages and set the book down on the table. She eyed him for a moment. “I talked to Mom and Dad about the whole chip thing, and, well…”
He was so thankful for having two years of Phantom to hone his acting skills. “They’re still—still building the new one.”
“Yeah,” she confirmed, grimacing. “But they assured me it was just temporary. They really do want this to work, you know. They want you to have your independence back too.”
“I know, I know,” Danny said flatly because he really didn’t know. They wouldn’t be jumping through all these hoops if they wanted him to gain his independence.
But ultimately, that didn’t matter because he had Phantom back. He had his core back. He had full access to his flight, intangibility, invisibility, everything.
He was free. Even if nobody else could know about it except Vlad.
“Sorry,” Jazz said.
“Thanks for trying.”
Jazz seemed surprised by something if the way she was studying him was any indication, and he wondered if maybe she was expecting a bit bigger reaction. Maybe she was waiting for the meltdown of emotions, for the yelling, crying, cursing.
And perhaps he would have done that before. Back when he was just an unstable, half-finished person. Back when he couldn’t tell Monday from Tuesday, when he was relying on drugs to get him through his day.
It was different now. Gone was his emotional instability, now he was turning a new leaf. He was going to be stronger in every way. He was going to be a better son, a better student—one who didn’t end up crying in Mr. Lancer’s office every week.
He had his core, so everything was going to be alright.
“I’ll be up in my room,” he said, pulling himself back up. “Gonna—gonna play video games for a bit.”
Jazz picked her book back up from the table. “Okay, have fun.”
He made his way up to his room and collapsed on his bed. The stairs almost seemed insulting now that he could fly, but he knew he needed to keep up appearances. He was just thankful he didn’t need to go through the humiliation of completely relying on a stairlift anymore, (even as the words of his therapist reminded him that stairlifts aren’t embarrassing, Danny, they’re an accessibility tool, plenty of people of all ages need them for all sorts of reasons, Danny, it doesn’t make you a failure).
But that was fine. If there was anything he had perfected over the years, it was the art of hiding.
Once he had recovered his breath enough to feel like moving again, he felt for the wash of cold under his skin. It was still there, same as it had been for the past few days, calling to him to switch, switch, switch.
So he did.
There was little fanfare this time. No battle cry, no profound moment where he threw his arms at the heavens and jumped into the air. He was just a human, and then a flash of rings passed before his eyes and he was a ghost.
And then he was gone, invisible, jetting through the window with such force that nearly gave him whiplash.
God, he hadn’t moved this fast in…he didn’t even know how long.
He swooped through the air, his muscles stretching as he weaved loop-de-loops around invisible barriers. More than likely, he was flying a far cry compared to when he had been in his prime. But that was okay. He would get there again.
For now, this was wonderful. Exhilarating. Everything. This was happiness, a concept that seemed so foreign to him, he’d all but forgotten what it felt like. But then it sparked in his chest, expanding out to the tips of his fingers, and he couldn’t help but face the sun and laugh.
The world had tried to knock him down. First the portal, then the ghosts, then the government, then his parents. But he was still here.
“Take that,” he shouted at the sky. “Take fucking that!”
He had never been a religious person. His parents were scientists, and he was fairly sure his sister prayed to her favorite authors before she went to bed every night. But just in case there was some asshole looking down, he wanted them to see him now. Flying here, invisibly flipping them the bird. Even after everything, Danny was still here.
“You can’t get rid of me,” he added for good measure.
Deciding his time of yelling at the clouds like some kind of crazy person was more than over, he flew into the city, passing by buildings, cars, trucks. He soared over apartments and dove into the ground, whizzing through foundations and pipes.
Some people reacted to his presence, glancing over their shoulders as a chill hit their skin. By now, most of Amity Park likely could recognize the telltale ecto-chill of a ghost core.
But he was invisible, and he had no intention of changing that. So eventually, the people shrugged and carried on, likely assuming that whatever ghost was passing by was too weak to be of much harm.
He couldn’t tell how much time had passed, but eventually, his core pouted, and he felt his strength puttering out under his skin. His weaves weren’t quite as fluid, and staying in the air seemed like more effort than it was worth.
Strange. He didn’t remember tiring so easily before.
But then he thought back to when he first acquired his ghost powers, and…yeah, maybe he did fatigue quickly back then.
It was okay. Like the rest of his life, he would just rebuild from scratch again.
He had help this time. Real help. One that felt…
Like bliss.
He opened his eyes. He was sunbathing on the roof of some building. Had he napped? Maybe he was more spent than he thought he was. Well, that wouldn’t be unheard of. He had passed out after his first ghost fight too.
God, that felt like another lifetime ago.
Two years as Phantom. Dozens of fights under his belt. A reputation across his sect of the Ghost Zone. And yet, he felt as new as he did back then after his first real fight against the Lunch Lady.
He would need to train. Work hard. Push himself. Do everything he could to get back to how he was before. He couldn’t let the public see just how badly the government had hurt him.
Right. He had a plan, then.
****
“Where’s Jason?” Star asked, writing what appeared to be an attempt at his name on the whiteboard.
Ms. Perez, the learning center teacher, sighed and checked her watch. “He’s got another five minutes before I phone the main office.”
In a singsong voice, Star said, “He’s gonna be in trouble!”
“Why don’t you sit down and start your math homework?” Ms. Perez asked.
“I can do it later.”
“Girl, no, you can’t,” Ashley said from her table across the room. She squinted at the board, twirling her coily hair in her fingers. “That’s not even how you spell his name.”
Star took a step back from her mirage of bubble letters and guffawed. “Oh my god, I wrote the J as a d! Haha, his name looks like ‘dason’ now!”
“You’re dyslexic,” Ashley said.
“Ashley, stop,” Ms. Perez ordered.
But Star was cackling too hard to be insulted.
Danny simply dropped his head onto his paper, having given up after writing his name in the top corner. He was supposed to start a new academic goal this week. And he was still committed to that, truly, but right now if he had to do one more fucking math problem, he was going to scream.
“DASON!”
“Danny, come on. Head up,” Ms. Perez said. “Mr. Lancer’s coming in twenty minutes and I want you to have that worksheet done before then.”
Danny did like Ms. Perez, but most of the time, he just felt bad for her. The learning center was chaotic on the best of days, even with the small class sizes and few students. Usually, there was a para teacher there as well, a man whose name Danny’s brain couldn’t commit to memory. But on days when the aide was called to a different class or he was absent such as today, even Danny had to admit he hardly got work done.
Not for lack of effort either. It was just so hard to stay focused when his brain took one look around the room and decided to go on vacation.
“Danny.”
“I’m tired,” he responded.
“What’s up, did you not sleep well last night?” Ms. Perez asked.
Danny shrugged. In fact, he had slept wonderfully. Just as he’d been sleeping for the past week. The problem wasn’t his sleeping patterns, it was when he woke up. His body still wasn’t used to all the ecto-energy he’d been recently expending on his little escapades all over town. He was sore and sluggish in a way he hadn’t felt in years. The hydrocodone he’d recently started taking in the morning dealt with his soreness, but it too had its own set of drawbacks. Though it helped his body not burn in pain at all hours of the day, it also made him want to crawl back into bed. Which, when surrounded by teachers who knew all about his little habit of falling asleep at his desk pre-reveal, was obviously not ideal.
“Let’s try to do five more problems, and then you can take a break,” said Ms. Perez.
Reluctantly, Danny pulled his head up from his desk to see that Star had begun to write ‘dason’ in various fonts all over the whiteboard.
Ms. Perez made her way over to Danny’s table and sank into a chair next to him. Her dark brown hair bobbed at her shoulders, tickling the floral designs of her shirt. “Alright, come on, let’s tackle a few of these math problems.”
Danny crossed his arms. “I don’t get it.”
“Yes, you do, we did these yesterday.”
“I forgot how to do it.” That wasn’t even a lie. If Danny had trouble in school last year, everything was just so much harder now.
Thank you, blunt force trauma to the skull.
“Then let’s go over them again.”
Danny groaned but did his best to pay attention anyway. He tried to ignore how Ashley was almost definitely doodling in the margins of her notebook instead of doing her readings, Star was still writing ‘dason’ all over the whiteboards, and Jason was…
Well, he was probably still roaming the halls somewhere.
True to her word, Ms. Perez only made Danny do five tortuous problems before she let him take a break so she could call the main office to report her missing student. And Danny wasted no time sinking his head back down onto the table and closing his eyes.
“Jason Cleaver, please report to room 101. Jason Cleaver, to room 101.”
Just another day in the learning center.
“Star, sit down. You need to start your math homework too. Mr. Bryan told me you didn’t turn in yesterday’s assignment.”
“Mr. Bryan didn’t collect the assignment in class.”
“Yes, he did, Star, and he told me yours was blank.”
“I forgot to do it.”
“I understand, so why don’t we take the time to do it now?”
Danny closed his eyes, letting fatigue wash over him. He stretched his fingers out along the table, and his body relaxed.
Just a few more minutes…
The door crashed open, and Danny snapped up, his heart pounding wildly in his chest. For a moment, his eyes flickered over to the white walls, and his throat tightened as imagery of the white halls of the compound flashed at him. He dug his fingernails into his palms, forcing the images away to be met with the stocky form of his missing classmate at the doorway.
“Dason!” Star exclaimed, jumping out of her chair once again. “You’re here!”
The boy—Jason—hardly glanced at the whiteboard before he stalked inside, flipped a chair against the floor, and stomped back out of the room.
“Take a chill pill, Dason,” Ashley called after him.
Ms. Perez simply sighed and picked up the phone once more.
Danny put his head back down on the table.
“Danny, head up. Break’s over.”
Curse these small classrooms.
He knew he wasn’t subtle about his displeasure at being called out again as he pulled his head from the table and forced his pencil back into his hand.
“Hey, Danny?” Star asked, blinking owlishly at him. “Why don’t you walk at school? I see you do it outside of school.”
Because school had long hallways and he was still too weak, too self-conscious.
“I have walked at school before,” Danny retorted instead. “You just haven’t seen it.”
“Really?” Star asked.
“Star, focus on your own work,” Ms. Perez said.
“She’s just trying to get out of doing her homework.”
“Ashley, you too.”
“Where’s Dason?” Star asked.
“Mr. Lancer is handling it.”
The door opened again, and Kwan stepped into the room.
“Back already? How did the quiz go?” Ms. Perez asked.
Kwan shrugged. “It was fine.”
Kwan dropped his bag next to Star and sat down. He briefly made eye contact with Danny, who immediately dropped his gaze back down to his paper.
He wasn’t ready to acknowledge Kwan’s existence yet.
“Hey, why is ‘dason’ written all over the board?” Kwan asked.
Star launched into another fit of giggles.
“Star did it,” was Ashley’s only explanation.
“Danny, Star, how’s that math homework going?” Ms. Perez asked.
Danny stared at the swirling mess on his paper. His brain just really did not want to do math today. “Fantastic.”
“Do five problems and then you can take another break until Mr. Lancer gets here.”
Danny lazily saluted the learning center teacher and tried his best to focus on the squiggly numbers and symbols before him.
Find f(x)...that’s all I need to do…
But who was he kidding? This was all pointless. His dream of working for NASA was as good as dead because his stupid brain didn’t hold information like it used to.
Not that he was ever particularly good at school. He wasn’t like Jazz. It felt like his brain was a colander and school was a pot of water. It didn’t matter how hard he tried, none of the information stayed in.
It didn’t take that long—or it took far too long—before footsteps were at the door and Mr. Lancer was carting Jason-Dason alongside him.
“Dason! Welcome back!” Star waved at him.
“...because you have to stay in class,” Mr. Lancer was saying quietly. “I’m not going to repeat this again, Mr. Cleaver.”
“Whatever.” Jason-Dason grabbed a chair on the other side of Danny’s table, dropped his backpack on the floor, and immediately put his head down into his arms. Ms. Perez didn’t even try to get him to pull out his notebook.
Turning around, Mr. Lancer’s expression morphed into something far brighter. “Alright, Mr. Fenton?”
Danny rolled his eyes and gave him a weak thumbs-up. “Can’t wait to learn about books.”
“I’m sure.” Mr. Lancer dropped into the chair beside Danny and glanced at the pitifully attempted math assignment. “Would you like me to go over anything else first?”
Danny was quick to stuff his assignment into his folder. Out of sight, out of mind. “No—no thanks.”
“Alright, let’s go over the reading from last night. Did you do it?”
Danny shrugged. “I tried.”
He honestly had. But as soon as he looked at the pages, it was like his brain turned into a zombie.
Mr. Lancer, presumably, got the not-so-hidden meaning. “That’s alright, let’s go through the passages, then.”
Danny opened his backpack and began shuffling around for his assigned book when a distantly familiar chill wormed up his throat. He dropped the book back in his bag and sat erect in his chair.
Wild eyes met Mr. Lancer’s, and then he opened his mouth, a puff of frost expelling from his lips.
Mr. Lancer’s eyebrows furrowed. “Mr. Fenton, are you—”
The ghost alarms went off, filling the classroom with green lights. Jack Fenton’s voice blared through the speakers, suffocating the air with, “WARNING: GHOST ALERT. GHOST ALERT.”
The small class was on their feet at once—even Danny, who wasted no time in letting the adrenaline course through his body. He wouldn’t be able to do much, but maybe some scary eyes would be enough to ward off the potential ghost from his territory.
“Damn!” Ms. Perez cursed. “Students, we need to evacuate to the ghost shield in the gym!”
Next to Ms. Perez, the bottom of the wall distorted with a green glow. Danny grabbed the table and braced himself to defend his classmates against—
“Arf! Arf!”
A figure shot through the walls and bounced, wagging its tail. Its purple tongue hung loosely outside of its mouth, and green-tinted ecto-saliva dripped onto the floor.
It took a second to spin around in a circle before it spotted Danny.
“Arf! Arf!” it exclaimed, bouncing through the chairs and quite literally jumping up Danny’s legs.
“Cujo?” Danny said, finally getting enough of a grip to speak.
“You know that dog?” Star asked.
“Yeah, but I don’t understand…” Danny pulled his brows in as he sat back down in his wheelchair, letting Cujo climb onto his lap and start lapping at his face.
It made no sense. His parents said that the emergency ghost alarms—the ones that ordered the complete evacuation of the building—only went off for ghosts that were level four or above. In his small form, Cujo was hardly a level three.
So either the ghost alarms were faulty, or Cujo wasn’t the only ghost here.
“Babypop!” a new voice sang out over the prerecorded wails of Jack Fenton.
A blue blur of a ghost rushed down from the ceiling and halted right in front of him. Her teal hair was pulled up behind her, accentuating the bluish tint of her pale skin. She wore her usual ghostly getup of a black top on black bottoms, and her purple and blue electric guitar was slung across her back.
Ah, that would explain the emergency alarms.
Ember McLain slugged his arm, grinning widely. “You’re back!”
Danny was more than a little aware of the audience watching the interaction. And, from some insecure ghostly part of himself, he was also more than aware that this was his first ghostly encounter where he was—well—forced to be human.
Not that the humans would understand the ecto-psychology at play here, and he would rather die than explain it to anyone, but Ember certainly would understand.
Which sucked.
“Hey—hey, Ember,” he said, trying to play it cool.
“Hey, what the fuck is up with this fire alarm thing?”
“Mr. Fenton?” Lancer asked from beside him.
“Holy shit, is that Ember McLain?” Kwan stared dumbfounded. “I listen to your album all the time!”
Star’s jaw dropped. “Ember’s a ghost?”
“WARNING: GHOST ALERT. EVACUATE. GHOST ALERT.”
Jack’s voice was starting to get more than a little piercing.
“Hey!” Danny called to Lancer. “Can we turn the ghost alarm off?”
“Mr. Fenton, you know we have to wait for your parents—”
“She’s an ally, she’s not going to attack! And this is my—er, uh. Well, my ghost-dog friend. He’s harmless.” So long as he doesn’t feel threatened, at least.
“I’m sorry, but you know that I can’t do that.”
“I promise there’s no need to evacuate.”
“You guys were going to evacuate on my account?” Ember repositioned her guitar on her back. “Well, I’m flattered that you think so highly of me. But no, if I wanted to start something, I wouldn’t have brought the dog.”
As if to prove the point, Cujo leaped off Danny’s lap and began bouncing over to everyone else in the room, lapping their shins and sniffing their shoes.
“Arf! Arf!”
Lancer sighed and walked into the hallway. A moment later, the ghost alarm was off.
Danny let out a breath of relief and turned his attention back to the two ghosts in front of him.
“Jeez, Danny, you better have a real good explanation for this.” Ashley folded her arms.
“No, it’s—” Danny sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. Ghosts weren’t good at deciphering boundaries on the best of days. To them, the whole of Amity Park was Phantom’s territory. So if they wanted to see Phantom, they just entered his territory.
And that included places they shouldn’t go, like the school.
“Well, alarm or no, Ms. Ember and, erm, her dog are trespassing, and I will have to ask her to leave,” Lancer said, reappearing at the doorway.
“Okay, can I just talk to her in the hall for like two minutes first?” Danny asked.
“No, Mr. Fenton. Absolutely not.”
“But she’s—“
“I’m more than aware of your little scuffles before,” Lancer said, crossing his arms. “Besides, your parents will be arriving shortly. Ms. Ember, if you would?”
Ember huffed, scooping up Cujo. “Whatever. Babypop, I’ll see you later.”
“Bye,” Danny said awkwardly, glancing around at his classmates. “I’ll find you in—in the spot.”
Ember nodded and left, disappearing through the ceiling.
There was a beat of silence before Kwan broke it. “I can’t believe you know Ember!”
****
The moon was bright later that night. Nearly full, Danny realized, and its light along with some wispy clouds blocked much of the glittering night sky from view.
He thought back to the Reddit post where the Amity Park astronomy club had told Sam and Tucker to pass him an open invitation. His friends had presumably forgotten about that comment, but Danny thought maybe he should check out the club anyway. Maybe it would be good for him to get back into his hobbies.
He hovered on top of the Nasty Burger building. He remembered the first time he and Ember had somewhat mended their differences. It had been here too, atop this building, when Ember had come to Earth for just a few hours to listen to a band’s new album.
Damn, it was so long ago. So much had changed.
Danny looked over where a burn mark had scorched the cement. He smiled to himself. Much had changed, sure, but some things were still the same.
A breath of cold air hit his lungs, and he turned around to see Ember holding a chip bag with one hand and Cujo with the other.
Cujo didn’t hesitate to wiggle out of Ember’s hold and bound over to him, tongue flopping. Danny sank onto the roof, holding his arms out. The little dog leaped into them and excitedly licked his neck.
“Hey, buddy,” Danny said, tilting his chin up to avoid the wrath of Cujo’s tongue on his face. “I missed you too!”
Ember snorted, touching down on the roof. She opened the potato chips, and the smell of salt and oil immediately permeated the air.
“Did you even pay for this?” Danny asked.
“What are you, a cop?” Ember munched on a chip. “I swear, this is like the one thing the Zone can never get right.”
Danny raised his brow, giving her an are-you-kidding-me look.
She rolled her eyes and held out the bag, rattling it. “Come on, I know you want some.”
“Whatever.” Danny rolled his eyes but nonetheless grabbed a handful. “You still need to pay for this, though.”
“Never change, babypop.”
Danny chomped on the (stolen) chips, basking in the two a.m. salty taste. And for a moment, the two of them just sat there unbothered, eating chips and throwing pebbles across the roof for Cujo to pounce on.
And when Cujo eventually tired, he snuggled between them, facing Danny. His paws pressed into Danny’s ghostly tail, and his nose nuzzled into where his thigh would be.
It hurt more than Ember would ever know that he couldn’t feel the dog against his legs. But she didn’t need to know the extent of his injuries, at least not right now.
“So, you’re back,” Ember started, failing to hide the curiosity in her tone.
He tried to give her a carefree smile as he responded with, “Yeah. Finally, right?” But he was sure he looked as uncomfortable as he felt, and he knew that the way his core faltered and tensed would not be lost on Ember.
“I mean…okay, I’m just going to say it. The hell happened?” asked Ember. “What did they do to you? When you didn’t come back right away, I figured they fucked with your core somehow. And I was right. Your core doesn’t feel right anymore.”
“What do you mean?”
Sure he was weaker, but he didn’t feel any different. Not like…before. When the scalpel had first pierced him. Not like that. Disgusting, violated.
Ember squinted at him, and Danny tried to quell the anxiety that he was surely projecting onto her.
Stupid ghosts and their stupid emotion-sensing abilities.
But then she snapped out of her scrutiny, rolling her eyes, saying, “Jeez, chill. I don’t mean like you’re a whole different ghost now, I’m just saying that your core feels weaker.” She punched his arm lightly. “Been a minute, huh? What took you so long to get back in the air?”
“Oh.” Danny flushed, embarrassed. Because of course, she didn’t mean it like that. He was just being anxious and insecure again. “You know, I—I wanted to…lull you guys into a false sense of security. Make you think I was—wasn’t protecting Amity anymore. Just some classic ghostly manipulation.”
“Yeah, sure. Totally believe that.”
“I know.” The grin fell off Danny’s face, fickle as it was.
Well, there was no use trying to sugarcoat the truth. Not with the ghosts in danger of this happening to them too.
“Courts decided I was human enough to exist. Cause, you know—” Danny held up his hand and shook out his wrist. “—I got a—a pulse and stuff. When I’m human, I mean. A heart—heartbeat too.”
He waited for the implication to process, and when Ember’s eyes sparked with recognition and her face immediately dropped to a scowl, he shrugged and let his hand fall back to his side.
“Oh, wonderful,” said Ember. “So you’re safe, but there’s nothing stopping the rest of us from getting messed up like that?”
Well, ouch.
“Sorry.”
Ember snorted. “Well, if you wanted ghosts to stay out of the human realm, you’ll probably convince most of them.”
“Haven’t they…everyone’s been avoiding Amity anyway, right?” Danny asked.
“Well, duh, idiot. You getting captured was kind of a big fucking deal in our little sect of the Infinite Realms. You should have heard the rumors.”
He wasn’t quite sure if he wanted to hear them. Because he wasn’t sure how much he could lie to the other ghosts, and he didn’t want to be the one to tell them just how many of their rumors were true.
He looked up at the sky, noting the sprinkle of stars that had won their fight against the city’s light pollution and the full moon. “I heard Skulker tried to bust me out.”
“Yeah.” Ember’s tone was off, and when Danny looked over, some speckles of green had appeared on her cheeks.
…huh?
“The idiot’s ego can be too much sometimes,” she said, a hint of a smile curling on her lips.
Danny didn’t know what that look meant, but he was also a hundred percent sure that he did not want to know, thank you very much. “Well, tell him I said—uh, said, you know, thanks. For trying. It meant a lot.”
“I’ll pass it along.” Ember shifted, and suddenly her face was serious again. “What did they want from you?”
“The Guys in White?”
“Yeah.”
“Well…” Danny gently rubbed behind Cujo’s ear, trying to crush the sudden anxiety that was threatening to spike him. “Power. They wanted power.”
“Like, from you?”
“Yeah. My core. Ectoplasm.” Danny took a shuttering breath. Despite the relaxation help he had pumping through his veins, just the mere mention of the topic had him suppressing the onslaught of memories that were trying to breach the metaphorical thermos he’d crammed them into. “The government liked my—my ectoplasm because it’s more dense than the blob ghosts they—they had. They…would hook me to these…these…these machines, and they’d take the ecto—ectoplasm from me. Just every day. And eventually—I don’t know. I don’t really remember how it escalated.” He touched his prickling chest, trying to cool the misfiring nerves above his core.
“Like…” Ember tilted her head, her eyes narrowing. “They cut you up?”
Danny squirmed. This was quickly getting into personal territory, and the ghosts and he didn’t exactly have the same relationship that he had with his therapist.
“Sort of,” he responded as evenly as he could.
She didn’t hold back. “They wanted your core.”
“Isn’t it obvious?” he said a little too bitterly.
There was a pause between them, and tension crackled in the air as Danny raised his aura to mask the shame that was crawling up his throat.
“Well, did they get it?” asked Ember.
Like hell was he going to react in front of a ghost.
“Why does it matter if they did? Since when do you care?”
“Of course I care.” Ember crossed her arms, frowning. “If the enemy got your core, who knows what they’ll do to the rest of us.”
Oh. Right.
Of course.
How could he be so stupid to hold even a flicker of hope that anyone actually cared about him? Least of all Ember, a ghost that he’d fought on more than one occasion.
But instead of snapping, he shrugged, defeated. Maybe disappointed. Who knew? Not him.
“Then don’t get caught,” he said simply.
Ember was already probably pitying him enough. He didn’t need to add ‘crybaby’ to the list of reasons why he wasn’t a good protector of Amity anymore.
The silence stretched on between them. Because duh, “don’t get caught” was a stupid, obvious thing to say. And it wasn’t exactly like Danny had been trying to get caught either.
He had never exactly been close with any of the ghosts, but this social divide between them? Yeah, that was new. Before, he at least had his strong core to go off of. Ghosts liked strength; they could respect him for defending Amity so well. But now…
Cujo yawned beside him, shifting around so his back was curled into Danny’s tail and his paws were outstretched to graze Ember’s thigh.
“So…they did get it, then,” said Ember. “Your core.”
“That’s—that’s not—” Danny stumbled, his brain once again more than acutely aware of the social dynamics at play. He grunted, frustrated, before pushing through. “That’s not why my—my core is…” He took a deep breath. “I know I’m out of practice, but I—I really am fine. My core’s not…you know, suffering permanent damages or anything. I’ll be—I’ll be back to normal with a little bit of training. It just…I couldn’t access my powers for a bit. That’s all.”
And he really hoped that was clear, because fuck no he didn’t want ‘Phantom is a weakling’ to spread across the Ghost Zone.
He felt a light tap on his arm again, and he looked over to see Ember’s glowing fist hovering just above his skin. “Well, you’re back now. Fuck those guys.”
“Right,” he said. “But seriously, you have to tell the ghosts what…I mean, it’s dangerous to be here right now. The Guys in—the government doesn’t—”
“Chill. I know I’m in danger by being here. Jeez, let a girl live a little.”
The only reason why the Guys in White went “easy” on him was because he had a human half at all. The full ghosts? The government didn’t have a reason to cater to their afterlives. If Ember was caught…well, she was disposable enough for the Guys in White to not give a crap about taking her whole core.
But Danny couldn’t say this without sounding like an asshole. “Just tell them. Please.”
“Sure, whatever, babypop.” Ember popped another chip in her mouth. “But don’t expect the others to listen, you know. They’ll probably just think I’m keeping you all to myself or something.”
“I’m not a toy, Ember.”
“But you’ve got the portal.”
“It’s not my portal.”
“But it’s in your territory.”
Yeah, by the unwritten ghost rules, that did actually make it “his” portal. “Even more reason for—for the others to leave me alone.”
Ember shrugged and poked Cujo. “Hey, lazy. If you sleep right now, you won’t be tired later and then you’re going to want to play when I’m tired.”
Cujo blinked up at her with sleep still in his eyes. Then he stuck out his tongue and lapped her fingers.
“Ugh, gross!” Ember shook out her hand. “The chips aren’t for you.”
Now with the taste of chips on his tongue, Cujo perked up and sniffed toward the bag.
“No! Not for you!” Ember scolded him, swiping the chips from the ground before he could make his attempted pounce. “You’ll throw up if you eat these. Hang on…I’ve got…”
Danny smiled absentmindedly, scratching Cujo’s back. Seeing these two interact…yeah, Danny was glad that he’d managed to convince Ember to take in Cujo last year after one of Cujo’s escapades into the Human World landed him too close to being captured by Jack and his Fenton Ghost Catcher. It was clear that Cujo needed an owner, and Ember needed some company other than Skulker.
Ember pulled out a glowing plastic baggie from her pocket. “Carrots! Here you go.”
“Carrots?”
“You never heard of that? Carrots are really good for dogs,” Ember said. She shook the bag, now addressing Cujo. “You want these? You want the carrots?”
Judging by his drooling mouth and the small whine that escaped his lips, Cujo did, in fact, very much want the carrots.
“Hang on, wait…” Danny guffawed, putting a hand to his mouth to stifle his laughter. “Wait, wait, wait. Ember, did—did you cut up the carrots?”
“Of course I did!” She said, pelting him with a tiny chunk of carrot.
It rolled off of his head, and he clutched his stomach, rolling into the air in a fit of giggles.
“It makes it easier for him to chew!”
“Oh my god,” he wheezed. Never in a thousand years would he have guessed Ember of all ghosts would be catering to a puppy.
Ember tossed a carrot piece in the air, watching as Cujo leaped up and caught it in his mouth. “You’re just jealous you didn’t think of it first.”
“Sure.”
“Whatever.” She turned to Cujo again. “Is babypop jealous of me? What do you think, little guy?”
Danny grabbed the carrot chunk from the ground and threw it back at Ember. Ever the ghost, she turned intangible, letting it sail through her.
Cujo, however, prevented it from hitting the ground again.
“Good boy!” Ember praised him.
Danny rose, stretching. “Anyway, I gotta get home before—before anyone realizes I—I’ve been gone. Uh…thanks for coming.”
“Yeah, nice to see you, dude. I’ll relay your message to the others. Don’t worry.”
“Thanks.”
“And babypop?” she said, her brows knitting together as she studied him once more. Her eyes lingered on his chest.
“Yeah?”
She was silent for a moment longer. Then the spell broke, and her easygoing smile was back on her lips. “Heal up quickly, alright? Skulker’s ego’s too high right now. Someone needs to take him down a notch, if you catch my drift.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Danny gave her a two-fingered salute and flew off into the night, glancing back only once to see their receding forms. Like with most of his rogue gallery, Danny didn’t think any relationship between them would ever become a true friendship. An allyship? Certainly, but there was still too much history combined with a cavern of differences between Danny and the rest of the ghosts to get much closer than a few minutes of awkward conversation. All of them, Ember included, were ghosts—full ghosts. And Danny? Well…he wasn’t.
Even if the media still tried to pin that label on him. When they weren’t calling him a mutant freak, that was.
A few minutes later, he was invisibly crossing through his window. Muscle memory was kind to him, and the motions of closing his curtains and checking his surroundings before popping back into visibility and transforming back into his human form were hardly more than an unremarkable thought in his mind. The government could take away much, but not everything, it seemed.
He settled into bed, his eyes lingering on his nightstand drawer. Maybe he could…
But no.
He was turning a new leaf.
He was the model halfa now. Someone who did well in school, who didn’t fall asleep in class, who was a good son, nice to his family, and wasn’t a failure in every way. He was better, he was going to be better.
He could be even better if he just opened the drawer…peeked at the inside…what’s one more pill, Danny? What are you afraid of?
No, he was better now.
He was better now.
****
Huge thank you to @imekitty for being an amazing beta for this chapter and honestly the voice of reason here. Ended up taking her direction a LOT during the writing process and I'm really glad I did!
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