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kuzann · 4 months

Text

The Last Letter

@schnuffel-danny approached me with a delightful premise for a Vlad/Jack fic and here's the result! 💜 Had an absolute blast writing this!

Also on Ao3!

Summary

Vlad at last receives a love letter from Jack that was written long ago and realizes he might have to change a few things...

The Fic

Vlad was trying, he really was. Maddie had told him that if he wanted to get on her good side he would have to get along with Jack. She’d already wrung several apologies out of him for his past interactions with her, which he’d gladly given once she was direct about it; clearly his past approach wasn’t working anyway, it wasn’t worth sinking any further effort into regardless and she’d provided a potential path forward for him. Hanging around with Jack was worth a try, since nothing else had worked. And he was trying.

But toxic associations and bad memories meant that getting close to Jack was like trying to cozy up to a cactus.

Jack was on board the moment Vlad asked if he wanted to spend some quality time together, even to the point of canceling all other plans for such days just to make sure they had no need to rush. He doted on Vlad like a lovesick teenager, overflowing with compliments and enthusiasm for anything Vlad was presently interested in. The whole thing turned Vlad’s stomach. He hadn’t liked it from the merciful distance he’d maintained before and he liked it even less up close.

It felt... Fake, coming from Jack. Twenty years of radio silence and suddenly Vlad was one of the most important people in Jack’s life now that he was worth something. ‘Fairweather friend’ would be the appropriate, least-vulgar term. Vlad wasn’t born yesterday. He knew how these things went.

A distant part of Vlad wondered if this was how Maddie saw him and made a mental note to stamp out any similar behavior when he noticed it. He was supposed to be better than Jack, after all. More refined, less of a clown.

Supposed to be. These days he got the sneaking suspicion that he was more like Jack than he wanted to admit, and it bothered him to no end. He would have to take a day to make sure those suspicions were only that, and to make changes if they proved true. Take stock, ask ‘is this something Jack would do?’ and then act accordingly.

Today’s hangout was thankfully out of the public eye, down in the FentonWorks lab. Unfortunately that didn’t stop Danny and his friends from wandering through, and even now Jack was gushing about Vlad to the three of them. Vlad was only half-listening as he tried to fight the embarrassed blush that was settling over his face and ears.

The second-hand embarrassment was almost too much to bear at times. Why couldn’t Jack just be normal about this? Did he really think Vlad was stupid enough to fall for such tricks? That assumption alone was an insult to Vlad’s intelligence. He had to be after something, there was no possible explanation other than that.

“Yeah, that’s great, dad,” Danny said quickly, before Jack had a chance to launch off into another Vlad-related tangent; he’d undoubtedly intended to keep an eye on the two, only to be roped into Jack’s nonsense the moment he’d been spotted. “Are you guys gonna finish up soon or what?”

Jack chuckled. “We can’t stop now, we’re on a roll! We’ve almost got this new invention all figured out, right Vladdie?” He pulled Vlad into an abrupt side-hug.

Vlad barely kept a lid on the sudden flare of anger at being touched without permission. “Yes, indeed we have,” he said, after a pause that stretched just a little too long.

Danny gave him a suspicion-filled squint but didn’t interrupt.

“That’s right! Once the Buster-Vack is operational we’ll be cleaning out the ghost infestation in this town in no time at all!” Jack said proudly.

“Dad, don’t you already have a ghost-fighting vacuum?” Danny asked. “You know, the Fenton Weasel?”

“Now Danny, it’s not like they’ll do the same thing. The Fenton Weasel sucks up ghosts, but the Buster-Vack will drain the energy right out of them and store it for use somewhere else! Much more useful!”

“Yeah, I’m sure Vlad’s gonna find a real great use for it, huh?” Danny shot a pointed look at Vlad.

“Well it could be used to charge devices that require ecto-energy to run, certainly,” Vlad said, not rising to the bait. “But that does require that we get it working first.”

“Right you are, V-man!” Jack said, giving Vlad a back-slap that would’ve sent a weaker man to the floor. “Let’s get back to it!”

~~~

In the end they made little progress on the Buster-Vack. They’d gotten hung up on the present problem of how to peel the energy off whatever ghost it was aimed at without just taking the whole ghost—there was a certain dimensionality that had to be tuned just so—and had decided to sleep on it once Maddie came down and asked them if they wanted dinner. Vlad had excused himself, unable to stomach much more of Jack’s presence, and gone home for the night.

Vlad only realized how exhausted he was after he got through his front door. He sighed, and considered whether he wanted to bother with dinner or not. An early bedtime was looking quite attractive, and eating would mean he’d have to stay up longer to avoid indigestion.

He started toward the kitchen regardless; whether he was going to have dinner or not didn’t matter when there were cats to feed. They appeared like a pair of pale shadows as he neared the kitchen, giving him burbling happy meows of greeting and inevitably getting under his feet in that special way cats did. He picked up each in turn and gave them a little kiss on the head; Maddie only half-tolerated it and immediately tried to clean the top of her head when he put her down while Marty simply purred.

His mind inevitably wandered back to the situation with Jack as he prepared their food.

He was trying. It should’ve been getting easier. He’d been doing this for weeks and he was still just as exhausted now as when he’d first started hanging out with Jack again.

Why was it still so hard to just be around him?

Because he hurt you, abandoned you, and then never even did the bare minimum of apologizing for it, his inner voice replied. Some days he wondered if Maddie’s esteem was even worth this. He’d suffered for years because of Jack, and the man just pretended nothing had even happened between them! Was he supposed to forgive and forget? Brains didn’t work that way! Humans didn’t work that way! Why was he having to do so much when Jack hadn’t even said such a simple phrase as ‘I’m sorry’?

In the end Vlad decided to go to bed without dinner. He’d only end up wandering in endless angry thought-spirals if he stayed up, and that was simply a waste of time. Better to reset, avoid Jack tomorrow, and try to recuperate.

~~~

This time Vlad waited a few days before approaching Jack again. He gave Vlad that puppy dog smile of his when he found him at the front door and immediately took him down to the lab where the Buster-Vack was still waiting. They would be able to pick up right where they left off.

“Why did you even call it that?” Vlad asked after a half-hour of batting calculations back and forth. No matter how much time he’d dedicated to puzzling over the name he hadn’t been able to figure it out. “Shouldn’t it be called, oh, the Fenton Specter Buster or something like that?”

“Well it made sense to put both our names on it,” Jack said with a grin.

Vlad gave him a blank stare. “Huh? But it doesn’t have our names on it—”

“Sure it does! The Vack part! V-A-C-K.”

“Oh, so just half of my name and most of your name?” Vlad asked, a little more snippily than he’d meant to. Only half an hour in and he was already feeling tired.

“Well I had to keep it sounding like ‘vac’, and there’s no ‘l’ or ‘d’ in vacuum,” Jack said matter-of-factly.

There’s no ‘k’ in vacuum either! Vlad thought, but he stopped just short of saying it aloud. He forced himself to drop the matter and returned to his set of calculations.

A few minutes passed in blissful silence before Jack spoke up again. “I missed working with ya, V-man. I’ve been having a blast with you lately,” Jack said with a warm smile.

Vlad’s patience was already paper-thin. That apparent lie or supreme bout of forgetfulness was enough to tear it in half. “Missed me?” Vlad muttered, partially to himself. “I don’t believe you.”

Jack stopped his math scribbles and looked up at Vlad, the smile dropping from his face. “What?”

Vlad didn’t meet his eye right away. He was at a crossroads: make something up and convince Jack that he’d misheard, or tell him the truth. Jack would be more than happy to take the lie, Vlad knew that very well, but the truthful option… Well, that might get him thrown out, but at least it might put a stop to this exhausting dance they’d been doing for weeks. If Jack really wanted Vlad to believe in him then he could prove it.

“I don’t believe you,” Vlad said, louder and more clearly this time, though he still didn’t look up at Jack.

Jack stared at him, absolutely dumbfounded. “But why not?”

“Oh, I don’t know, Jack,” Vlad said sarcastically, making a show of pushing his chair back and getting to his feet. “Maybe it’s the fact that you left me to die and then never bothered to reach out to me in the entire twenty years we’ve been apart.”

“But the letters—”

“What letters?” Vlad snapped. “I never got a single one from you or anyone else.”

“They never got to you?” Jack surged to his feet and moved to take Vlad’s hand.

Vlad stepped back and out of reach. “Oh, what? Did they conveniently get lost in the mail? So you can claim you sent them without giving any proof?”

“They all came back,” Jack replied. “I still have them.”

That was enough of a surprise to derail the rising anger that had taken hold of him. He’d been expecting a convenient lack of proof on Jack’s part. “Show me,” Vlad said.

The house had a subtle spin to it as Jack led him through it. To think Jack had been trying to reach out after all... No, he wouldn’t believe it before he saw proof. He would not be tricked by Jack’s fake friendship again.

Jack led Vlad upstairs, to a hall closet near the master bedroom. He reached into the very back, behind the extra blankets and sheets, and dragged a decently-sized cardboard box out of the depths. “I had to hide them,” Jack admitted sheepishly as he set the box on the floor between them. “Maddie already threw away the ones she sent, I kinda worried she’d do the same to mine.”

Vlad said nothing and knelt beside the box. A light chill from anticipation settled into his fingertips as he looked down at it.

The box had been closed by folding the flaps under each other, suggesting that Jack hadn’t intended to store it for long periods of time. Jack pulled them open and revealed that it was full almost to the top with old letters.

Vlad slowly selected one at random and checked the postmark: November 15th, 1983. Two years after the accident. He’d been stuck in that government medical facility for four years after it happened...

His head was swimming a bit now. He turned the letter over and started to open it.

In his peripherals he noticed Jack stiffen slightly and reach into the box to take one of the letters. Vlad continued as if he hadn’t noticed. Idiot, he really must’ve considered Vlad to be an oblivious fool if he thought he wouldn’t spot him.

Jack did his best to discreetly slip the letter under a set of folded sheets. It would be easy enough for Vlad to retrieve later as long as Jack didn’t get a chance to move it. All he had to do was wait a little bit and take it once Jack wasn’t paying attention.

Vlad slid the present letter out of its envelope—this one had been written inside of a blank card decorated with a picture of a forest in autumn on the front—and read through it. The letter was brief, unmistakably penned in Jack’s blocky and direct handwriting, and split between news from Jack’s personal life and pleas that Vlad come back to them if he could.

So here it was, the box full of proof that Jack had not forgotten him. At least at first.

Without a word Vlad slid the card back into its envelope and folded the seal flap under its bottom counterpart. “I’m surprised,” he said, finally.

“You can take them home if you want. They were meant for you,” Jack said, shifting a little awkwardly on his knees. Whether his unease was from the delicate emotional matters at hand or because of the letter he’d just hidden Vlad couldn’t say. “I don’t really understand what happened. We thought you were sending them back...”

“Whoever handled the mail at the facility must’ve returned them before they got to me,” Vlad said, his voice sounding distant in his own ears. Yes, that did make sense. Why would they bother letting him get correspondence from the outside? It would be easier to simply send them back. They were both lucky that said person had decided to return them at all rather than disposing of them.

Vlad put the letter back, a pall of exhaustion settling over him. “I don’t feel well,” he said. “I think I’m going to head home for today.”

“Do you want to take them?” Jack offered again.

“Yes, I’ll take them,” Vlad replied slowly. Along with the one you tried to hide, he added silently.

Jack folded the flaps of the box under each other again to hold the top shut and passed it to Vlad, then led the way back down the hall.

Vlad followed, sending an invisible duplicate back to the closet as he did so. The letter was there under the sheets, and addressed to him when he checked the front. Now why had Jack wanted to hide this one? He would have to find that out once he got home.

~~~

The box of letters sat on Vlad’s desk with the previously-concealed letter on the tabletop before him. Vlad picked it up and turned it over in his hands. It seemed normal enough as far as letters went, and a quick comparison to the dates on the topmost letters revealed that it had been the final one Jack sent. August 10th, 1984 said the postmark. Jack had sent it a few months after he and Maddie were married.

Vlad took his little sword letter opener and cut the seal flap. The letter within was written on stationary paper this time, its edges decorated with pale blue clouds. It was... Worn, somehow. Like it had been folded and unfolded and smoothed out multiple times before finally being sealed within its envelope. Something had smudged the blocky handwriting of this one too; perhaps Jack had gotten a bit sloppy with food or drink while writing it. That would be just like him.

Vlad, I really miss you. It’s just not the same without you here. It hurts every time I think about you being gone, I can’t find the right words for it. Please come home. We’ll help you out with any medical bills you have, no matter how long it takes.

From this point on, the writing became noticeably more sloppy, requiring many white-out corrections to stay coherent and more portions that had simply been scribbled out and left behind, looking like partially-smashed insects on the page. Words compressed on the right side of the paper where Jack ran out of room and tried to fit too long a word on too short a line. The stains from water droplets were also more numerous here.

My life’s just not complete with you gone. I miss your laugh and your lips smile and how we used to talk and how close we used to be. I miss holding you in my arms hugging you. I hope you’re doing okay. I hope you’ll be cured soon. I’m sorry I hurt you. I was stupid. I should’ve listened to Maddie. I should’ve made sure you were safe before turning it on.

The next paragraph had been blotched out entirely with a felt-tip pen. Vlad glared at it and turned the letter over; Jack used a lot of pressure when he wrote by hand, and the paper was thin enough that Vlad might be able to read the impression of the letters on the other side. The reading was slower, for obvious reasons, but the hidden paragraph was plain as day:

I’d marry you too if I could. I don’t know if Maddie would be okay with that. I know the government wouldn’t let us. I wish you could be part of my family that way.

Vlad stopped reading. It was suddenly hard to breathe. He carefully placed the letter on his desk and stood, swaying a little as his head spun from the confession.

Jack... Wanted to marry him? How long had he felt that way? They’d been close back in college, sure—far closer than even best friends tended to be—but he never suspected that Jack would want...

He was coming unmoored. It was a strange, empty feeling. Like something had hollowed out his skull and chest cavity, making him weightless.

Vlad picked up the letter again, his fingers cold and clumsy and clammy, and read the final part.

I love you, and I miss you every day. I hope you’re doing okay. Please write back. Love, Jack

Again Vlad set the letter aside. He braced both hands against the desktop and took a deep breath. Then another. The cold weightless feeling refused to go away, and thoughts came and went at a meandering pace.

Jack... Loved him... In the same way he loved Maddie.

Did he still—

Vlad stopped the thought before it could go further. No… He had to think about this. Jack had tried to hide the letter from him earlier, and the confession had been crossed out before the letter was sent. A momentary miscalculation on Jack’s part, quickly hidden once common sense got the chance to set in.

Another part of him asked: But why send it like this? Jack could’ve rewritten the letter with this one as the rough draft, avoiding any possibility of the crossed-out sections being read.

Laziness was the simplest answer. Yes, that would be it. Jack wanted to make the gesture but was too lazy to properly go about the execution. He didn’t really mean it...

Vlad glanced over the box of letters again.

But he had indeed been writing to Vlad. He hadn’t forgotten, as Vlad had been so sure he did over the past two decades.

The letter even had an apology, something he’d wanted so desperately from Jack all along...

Vlad wished he could believe it. But he’d been hurt too badly to trust Jack again. At least, not without additional proof...

The cold, hollow feeling still hadn’t gone away.

He picked up the letter and carefully returned it to its envelope. Vlad needed time. Perhaps this was still too little too late to change things, but regardless... He had been wrong about Jack, at least in part. That was a revelation that needed proper time to sink in.

~~~

Danny looked over the mess of sheets and blankets and then back up at his dad again. Jack still hadn’t noticed him, being too busy turning the closet inside out as he looked for something.

“Uh, dad?” Danny said.

Jack yelped and jumped up so suddenly that he immediately tripped on a half-folded blanket and sat down hard on the floor. “Danny! Don’t sneak up on me like that!” he said once he caught his breath.

“What are you doing?”

“Oh well I uh...” By the pause Danny knew his dad was about to give him a lie, and a hasty one at that. “I hid some snacks in here yesterday and was trying to find them but wouldn’t you know it, they’ve gone missing!” Jack declared, only managing half of his usual confidence. “Guess someone else found them.”

So the location was probably accurate, but the thing he was looking for wasn’t. And Vlad had been visiting just yesterday too... “Well good luck finding who did it,” Danny said; it wasn’t worth trying to get a straight answer out of his dad when he was so determined to lie like this, but Danny already had a good idea of who might be the cause of this situation. He started back down the hall, only to pause after a few steps. “Oh yeah, dad?” Danny said as he turned back to him.

“Yeah?”

“Don’t forget to clean that up,” Danny said, pointing at the mess of sheets and blankets strewn in front of the closet. He then dashed down the stairs before Jack had the chance to ask him to help.

Danny found cover a little ways down the street from FentonWorks and transformed. Time to see what Vlad was playing at.

~~~

The mansion was quiet when Danny arrived. He phased through the nearest wall, then drifted through the library and into Vlad’s office.

Vlad was at his desk, eyes closed as he rested his chin on his interlaced fingers. He looked tired, melancholic; the usual smirk he wore whenever he dealt with Danny was nowhere to be found, and the shadows under his eyes were darker than usual. After a few moments passed opened his eyes and looked up at Danny. “What do you want, Daniel?” he asked, his tone sharp but lacking energy.

“Did you steal something from my dad yesterday?” Danny asked, arms crossed over his chest as he looked down at Vlad. He couldn’t help the curiosity over Vlad’s current state, however much the man annoyed him, but he kept that question in reserve for the time being.

“I did not,” Vlad replied simply.

Danny noticed the worn and marked-out letter that was even now open before Vlad and drifted a little closer to look at it.

Vlad put a hand over it and pulled it closer to himself. “Don’t you know it’s rude to read someone else’s mail?” he snapped.

“What, did you get bad news from home?” Danny asked. “Did papa Dracula write to say he’s disappointed in you?”

“Both of my parents died years ago,” Vlad replied, his voice completely flat.

The reply knocked Danny completely off-balance. “Oh uh. Sorry for your loss,” he said weakly.

“Now if you have nothing else to pester me about...” Vlad said. “I ask that you leave.”

~~~

Vlad tried to return to business as usual. Work on his own inventions, research various artifacts of the Ghost Zone, take care of human-world business dealings...

At every step the letter and the questions it raised haunted him. Not the hauntings he’d grown so used to, as a result of dealing with real ghosts for twenty years, but the ones found in rumor and urban legend. The ones you read about in tales by the old horror masters. Quiet and subtle most of the time, only to loom out of the shadows to claw at him when he least expected it.

A text from Jack interrupted Vlad’s routine stock market research, asking how he was doing. Vlad gave a quick ‘I’m fine’ in return and set his phone aside. He’d only just gotten Jack out of his mind, and there he was barging right in again. Typical.

Vlad sat back in his chair, chin resting in one hand, and stared at the far wall for a time. He hadn’t gone through the other letters yet. Their mere existence was enough of a statement for now, and he didn’t have the stamina for another shock like the final one had given him.

Twenty long years of hate were not so easily dissipated, but the existence of the letters gave a certain hollowness to it all. It was the abandonment that had cut deepest back then. The fact that Jack didn’t even have the decency to try to fix the damage he’d done, that he’d just tossed Vlad aside like a broken toy once he’d become too much of a burden.

So Vlad had thought. And how could he think otherwise? It was a perfectly reasonable conclusion to come to from where he’d been sitting.

But that conclusion had been wrong in the end. Part of it, at least. There was nothing to stop Jack from trying to reach out once Vlad escaped that wretched facility and started making a name for himself. He hadn’t even tried, and Vlad knew Jack couldn’t be so under a rock that he would’ve missed some of the strides Vlad was making back then.

So why? Had he written all those letters, just to forget Vlad in the end anyway? That might be worse than what Vlad had assumed for all these years.

He had to know, even as he dreaded the answer. From the beginning he’d thought himself justified in his enmity toward Jack, in his schemes and attempts at revenge, all because of the harm Jack had done to him. But the letters... The love confession... Threatened to change that, threatened to cast Vlad’s past actions in a new, uglier light. The thought brewed a dull feeling of nausea deep in his stomach. Things would have to change if the letter was true.

Perhaps if he’d confronted Jack years ago they could’ve settled things between them, perhaps even mended their friendship and again intertwined their lives as they had before. If Jack really was genuine about his words. If he really did mean what he wrote in that letter. Vlad could’ve had a happier life up until now.

They’d wasted so much time...

Vlad shook his head. No. He refused to get his hopes up. With his luck Jack had sent that final letter and then written Vlad out of his life, and had only re-entered it later because of Vlad’s status. He would not be fooled again.

He shoved such musings out of mind and returned to his work.

~~~

The book he was looking for was not in his library. Or the lab. Or his office. Vlad checked everywhere it could be yet again and came up short. He scowled at the span of bookshelf where it should’ve been and wracked his brain for where it might be. It was a book he hadn’t needed since before his move, a text on Ghost Zone fabrics, which meant he might’ve forgotten to unpack it after all this time.

Vlad hurried to the hall closet nearest to his bedroom, where he’d tucked a few of the unpacked boxes away to be dealt with later—quite a lot later, in this case. He moved the blankets and sheets aside and pulled three of them out.

The first contained a mix of books and clothing—he’d been in a hurry while packing due to the whole lack of roof thing, so item types had ended up jumbled together. Vlad took out the topmost books and found that they covered only mundane subjects—disappointing—then removed the clothes to see if he’d packed any more books underneath them.

His fingers brushed denim, worn and familiar, before he saw the garment it belonged to. Vlad flinched as if he’d been stung and withdrew his arm. Just his luck, to think it would be here of all places at this particular moment... After taking a few seconds to gather himself he lifted the other clothes out, revealing an oversized denim jacket at the bottom of the box.

It had originally belonged to Jack. He’d bought it just before going to college, but shortly after they got their dorm room together, well... It unofficially belonged to Vlad, given how often he wore it. He could still remember the night Jack first placed it on his shoulders to ward off the chill; Jack could make heat like a furnace and claimed he didn’t need it as much as Vlad did, and his warmth had lingered on it for some time after he’d passed it on.

They’d been far closer than mere friends back then. Their nights together were never cold, even in deep winter—

He cut the memory off before it could go further. No point thinking about that right now...

Vlad took the jacket in both hands and lifted it out of the box. It was heavy and cold and smelled faintly of the sandalwood cologne he’d been wearing when he last handled it; over the years and various washings it had lost its original owner’s scent, and Vlad had never bothered trying to recreate it. He shifted his hands and slowly let it fall open. The blue fabric was marred by a few burn marks here and there; the first set was from when he’d tossed it into the hearth in a fit of anger, only to claw it back out again when he realized what he’d done; the second was from the fact that it was one of the items to survive when his ghost portal exploded.

He’d felt a strange sense of kinship with it when he found it among his belongings all those years ago, after finally reclaiming what had been in his dorm room once he was out of the facility. Jack had carelessly left it behind, same as he’d done to Vlad.

But now Vlad wondered if Jack had specifically left it behind for him instead...

~~~

Sleep was elusive that night. Vlad stared up at the ceiling, his eyes wide and his face slack and otherwise expressionless. The jacket lay spread out on the comforter next to him. Occasionally he reached over and took it in one hand, rubbing the fabric between his fingers or simply holding on to it for a time.

At a glance he looked the same as he always did, but now everything unseen was shifting underneath him. A current of emotion and subconscious thought that dragged him farther and farther away from the familiar shore.

A deep, aching sense of longing settled in his chest. He took a deep breath in an attempt to ease it and closed his eyes, for what little good it would do.

Even if Jack still held those feelings after all this time, there was no way they could be what they once were to each other. Jack was happily married to the woman they both loved, any secret relationship would only serve to drive her away from both of them. He would lose Maddie, and he would lose Jack too. He would be alone again.

His own feelings hadn’t completely gone away in the twenty years since then. He’d been terrified when he first noticed them rising out of the depths once more in the wake of reading the letter. If Jack still shared those feelings now then it would only become all the more painful as he stifled them.

Vlad’s grip on the jacket tightened. He liked neither option when it came to the answer Jack could give: he was only now realizing just how miserable he’d been before while he still hated Jack, but the thought of having to settle for never being able to be with him despite mutual romantic feelings didn’t make him happy either. Maddie... Disliked Vlad, after all. There was no way she would ever be okay with a romantic relationship between him and her husband. Things were looking bleaker and bleaker no matter what the outcome was.

Vlad pulled the jacket over and spread it across himself like a blanket, then rolled onto his side and tried to will himself to sleep.

~~~

A few days later Vlad was working on calculations for a new invention when Maddiecat stood in front of his monitor and stared at him.

He briefly tried to look around her—a futile effort, given how much visual space she took up thanks to her long fluffy coat—then moved his chair back to make room.

She examined his lap for a few moments, then stepped down and flopped onto her side with a loud purr.

Vlad smiled and scratched under her chin, instinctively shifting his legs so she wasn’t in danger of rolling off. His thoughts drifted back to her namesake. Doing so did not bring the usual burst of happiness the way it tended to most of the time.

Had his continuing love for her been determined by Jack’s betrayal back then? Why did it feel so incorporeal now? Did it all go back to that?

It almost made him wish he’d never taken that letter. The others were enough to suggest he’d been wrong—at least in part—but that final one... He had yet to regain his balance after finding what it contained.

An indescribable feeling had settled over him ever since. The sensation of something that cannot be undone, of entropy’s relentless march to the future. Even if Jack brushed off the letter there would be a new status quo to replace the old one. There was no perfect reset after this.

Things were changing, and it terrified him. The grudge that had defined him for twenty long years was feeling more tenuous by the day, and he had no idea what would be left in its place if it dissipated completely.

~~~

Vlad proposed another visit with Jack a little over a week after reading the letter. As usual Jack jumped at the chance and cleared his schedule for the day, already making plans to resume work on their joint invention.

The usual hate Vlad felt whenever he was around Jack had that hollowness to it now. Perhaps if Jack brushed off the letter there would be substance to it again. But Vlad would have to ask Jack about it in order to find out.

They went down to the lab and set about calculations for the Buster-Vack. Vlad did his best to focus, but his attention was split between the math and the question of the letter. How to bring it up? He couldn’t just come out and ask about it, could he? But perhaps that would be the best way... Subtlety was not Jack’s forte, after all.

Vlad’s first attempt at bringing it up was abruptly cut short by Danny intruding to ask Jack about some item he’d misplaced. He dropped it once Danny was gone, having remembered that the boy was a possible eavesdropper for any conversation he tried to have with Jack. That added threat of possible embarrassment kept Vlad silent a while longer.

The day passed without an answer. Vlad was lagging behind on his calculations thanks to the divide in his attention, something that he explained by saying he was feeling a little under the weather. Jack didn’t mind; to him the only thing that mattered was that Vlad was here at all.

Vlad returned the next day. Jack worked on the main canister of their invention while Vlad turned his attention to finishing his calculations. For a time the lab was filled only with the hum of lab equipment, the clank of metal and tools, and the scratch of a pen.

“Jack?” Vlad said, at last breaking the silence between them.

“Yeah?” Jack looked up with a big smile on his face.

“I’ve been meaning to ask you something,” Vlad began. Anxiety threatened to choke him even as he spoke the words. Why did this have to be so hard? What was he so afraid of?

Jack waited patiently, the sheer force of his attention seeming to settle on Vlad like a lead weight.

“Erm, do you think we should celebrate once we’re done with this? It’s the first invention we’ve built from start to finish in twenty years,” Vlad said, even as he mentally kicked himself for chickening out on the real question.

“That’s a great idea!” Jack said with the utmost gusto. “We’ll have a special dinner and drinks, just the two of us!”

“Yes, that sounds wonderful,” Vlad said weakly. He returned to his calculations again, only to find that it was impossible to focus due to sheer frustration.

Vlad wanted to physically kick himself for that fumble. Maybe he actually would! Duplication was an option, once he got home he could use it to give himself a good kick in the rear for being such a coward. He was one of the richest men on the planet, making progress on bringing the Ghost Zone to heel in a similar manner, he’d fought many powerful ghosts without flinching, and yet here he was balking at a question. A question! A mere string of words with an upward inflection on the end! What was he so afraid of?

The answer to that question proved somewhat murky when Vlad looked for it. There was the fear of change of course, but that wasn’t the only thing that made him hesitate. There was the other side to Jack’s possible reply, the one where he told Vlad that the letter didn’t mean anything. For years he’d thought that Jack didn’t really care about him, but to actually hear it from Jack rather than assume...

It would... Break his heart all over again to actually hear it. The mere thought made him sick to his stomach.

But he still had to know, one way or the other. He couldn’t just sit in limbo agonizing over what the answer might be. He had to ask the question.

~~~

Another day went by. Vlad at last finished his batch of calculations and passed them off to Jack to be incorporated into the rest of their work and went home for the day. He did not, in fact, use duplication to give himself a kick when he got home. It was still tempting, but he had more important matters to attend to. There were cats to feed, dinner to make, and as much sleep as possible to catch once those were taken care of. He would need his wits about him when they tested the prototype tomorrow. Perhaps it would also be easier to ask the question if he got enough sleep tonight.

~~~

Vlad found no opportunity to ask his question as they put the final touches on their prototype. All their focus went into assembly and tuning the internal chamber. Vlad’s calculations were key for getting the energy drain to work properly, and he was confident that he’d done them to perfection despite all the distractions.

Jack placed a collection of faintly-glowing beakers on the testing table. “If this baby can suck the ecto-contamination off of these we’ll be ready to move to the next phase of prototyping. And the final version will be great for cleaning up the lab on top of dusting ghosts!”

“It will be quite the useful device if so,” Vlad said as he took up a position next to Jack. He was a tad dispirited despite their progress, but it was good to see their joint invention make such a milestone.

Jack took up the Buster-Vack’s wand—the device already looked very much like a canister vacuum—and hit the switch.

The device was quiet, giving off a low pulsating hum as Jack brought the wand over to the contaminated beakers. As expected the glow on the beakers was drawn into the end of the wand and soon enough they looked like perfectly mundane pieces of lab equipment again—

Vlad became aware of a horrible weight in the room, as if the air had suddenly become thick as water. He snapped his head around to look at the canister and noticed the odd shadow that seemed to be gathering around it. The rhythmic hum took on a more discordant pattern as something went wrong inside the prototype.

His calculations—

They were both standing far too close. Fear and instinct stamped out rational thought, his inner dialogue going silent as he grabbed Jack by the jumpsuit and leaped away—

The Buster-Vack imploded with a dull thud and an abrupt screech of warping metal. A shockwave flowed out, the leading edge glowing with ectoplasmic energy as it forced the ghostly power out of everything it passed over.

They landed on the floor some distance away. Jack was at a safe range. Vlad was still far too close. The shockwave broke over him like boiling water, the sheer pain of it tearing his voice away. It flowed through him and dragged every speck of ghostly energy from his body as it left—and tore most of the mundane energy from his cells as well.

Vlad collapsed as his consciousness surrendered to the cold darkness.

~~~

Jack sat up once the lab had gone quiet. It was pitch-black, save for the lingering glow left on the walls. Even the Fenton Portal had gone dark. “Phew! Never thought that would happen. Great reflexes there, V-man!”

His words were met by silence. No reply from Vlad, and even the lab equipment had gone dead quiet thanks to the shockwave shoving all the energy out of it.

“Vlad?” Worry crept in, sharp and cold.

The silence was broken not by a reply but by a flurry of footsteps coming from upstairs.

“Vlad!” Jack felt around in the darkness at his side where Vlad should be. A sudden wave of panic rushed over him, and it felt as if his heart was trying to force its way into his throat. What happened—

“Dad!” Danny’s voice rang out from the stairwell just as the beam of a flashlight hit the floor at its foot.

Jack found Vlad as Danny entered the lab. Vlad lay on his side with his eyes closed, arms limp with one draped over his waist. He didn’t respond as Jack shook his shoulder, and Jack could feel an unnatural chill even through multiple layers of fabric.

“Dad, what happened?” Danny ran over to them, rounding a table as he did so. “What was—” he spotted Vlad and stopped to stare for a few moments. “Is he—?”

Jack lowered his head to Vlad’s level and listened. For a few heart-pounding moments he heard nothing, and then—shallow, with long pauses between as if Vlad barely had the energy to pull air into his lungs, but it was there. Vlad was alive.

For now.

“He’s breathing,” Jack said. Now that Danny had the flashlight on Vlad’s face he could see that all the color had gone from it, leaving Vlad’s skin nearly gray. Jack picked him up and held him close, trying to share a little warmth; Vlad had always had issues with being too cold, but he’d never seen it this bad before. “Where’s Maddie?” he asked as he looked up at Danny. He needed someone who could think more clearly than he could right now. At least Vlad had been conscious after the proto-portal accident, but this time—this time he looked like he was on the verge of death.

“Mom’s out shopping,” Danny replied.

“What do we do? Should I take him to the hospital?” Jack brought a hand to his head as he aloud to himself. Could a hospital even treat this? He knew that the hospitals back then hadn’t been able to cure Vlad’s ecto-acne—he and Maddie wouldn’t have had to do that recently if they had—so their knowing that to do for this—

“We need to get to Vlad’s lab,” Danny said, disrupting Jack’s train of thought.

“What?” Jack looked up at him.

“I bet Vlad has something to help with this in his lab. He’s always doing ecto-tech experiments, and a hospital wouldn’t be able to treat this anyway.”

“You know what’s wrong?”

“Um.” Danny paused, the question taking him off-guard. He glanced around the room as he thought of his answer. “Well it looks like whatever happened shoved all the ecto-energy out of everything in here. So that must be what’s affecting Vlad.”

“But I was just fine at the same range.”

“Maybe having ecto-acne left him permanently ecto-contaminated?” Danny asked with a shrug. “Even after it’s been cured it could still leave permanent changes, right?”

“That’s possible...” Jack admitted. Truthfully they still didn’t know as much about ecto-acne as they would’ve liked, such as permanent effects after the cure. Long-lasting ecto-contamination could be one of them... “If his body adapted to having constant levels of ecto-energy then having it suddenly removed could make him sick...” he reasoned to himself as he stared down at Vlad. With his mind made up, Jack took Vlad in his arms and stood. “You know how to get to his lab?” he asked, raising an eyebrow as he looked to Danny.

“He showed it to me once,” Danny replied. “I think he was trying to show off.”

“Let’s go.”

~~~

They took the Specter Speeder over to Vlad’s mansion to save on time. Vlad’s house keys were in his breast pocket, and soon enough they were inside looking for the lab. Danny led the way, meeting only two missed attempts to find the entrance before locating the correct one.

Jack watched the wall slide back as Danny released the lamp that had served as its lever. Vlad definitely had style, it was just one of many things about him that Jack admired, and they had similar tastes in this respect—the entrance to Jack’s own lab wasn’t a secret, but there were certainly a few special functions of the Fenton residence that he’d hidden around.

Danny led the way down into the lab. Jack had never seen it before, despite his newly-rekindled friendship with Vlad. He hadn’t pressed him on it, figuring that Vlad would give him a tour when he felt ready. If only the circumstances for finally being able to see it weren’t so dire...

The lab was dimly-lit by the faintly-glowing lights of slumbering equipment and other devices. The two of them looked around for a light switch, only for the lights to come on mere moments after they’d begun their search. Lights on the equipment pulsed in a wave toward the other end of the lab, leading them toward something that they couldn’t see yet.

They continued on around a corner where they found a large tank with various panels and devices forming its framework. The pulsing lights ended here. This had to be the healing device that Danny figured Vlad would have. A panel lit up next to the tank and its screen declared that the entire array was indeed a recovery chamber meant to speed up healing and re-energize the patient. Instructions on how to prepare Vlad for it followed as a nearby cabinet opened with a whir of servos to reveal something similar to a wetsuit.

“Hey Danny, could you step out for now? I can take care of this,” Jack said with a glance back at Danny.

“Okay,” Danny said after a brief pause. He stepped back around the corner, but the sound of his footsteps stopped there.

It was reassuring to know that his son wanted to stay and support him, but Jack was confident that he could take care of this himself. He laid Vlad out on a nearby exam table as instructed. A scanner popped out of the side and ran its bar of light over Vlad. The readings on the chamber changed with an accompaniment of foreboding beeps, showing that Vlad was at critically low metabolic energy levels and giving the estimate that he would likely die within the hour if left to his fate.

Jack worked swiftly, changing Vlad into the chamber suit and gently pulling out his ponytail so it wouldn’t interfere with the breathing mask. Once ready the chamber’s information panel directed him to a set of spiral stairs that would allow him access to the top of the main tank. Jack ascended with Vlad in his arms and found the top hatch already open. He attached the necessary tubes to the breathing mask, then lowered Vlad into the tank, his movements slow and deliberate. Jack stepped back as the hatch closed with a heavy metallic clank.

He returned to the front of the tank and checked the main screen: it estimated three days to get Vlad back to full consciousness. They’d made it just in time.

Jack’s shoulders went slack, and he breathed a long sigh of relief.

“Everything okay, dad?” Danny called from around the corner.

“Yep! Everything’s gonna be a-okay!” Jack declared, straightening a little as the weight of worry eased off his shoulders.

Danny peeked around the corner, then joined Jack near the healing tank. “So how did this happen, anyway?” he asked as he looked up at Jack.

“Something went wrong with the Buster-Vack. Won’t be sure what until I can look at what’s left, but Vlad pulled me to safety just before it went off.”

“Vlad saved you?” Danny asked with plain disbelief.

“He dragged me away just in time,” Jack said, watching Danny closely as he did. Just what had Danny thinking Vlad would let him die like that?

“Huh.” Danny turned his attention to the tank instead and said nothing more on the matter. “Says it’ll take three days. We can head home for now.”

“I’m not leaving,” Jack said.

“Dad, you don’t have to stick around. He’s gonna be fine.”

“But something could happen before he’s ready to wake up. I’m not gonna leave him alone.” Jack crossed his arms over his chest but didn’t look Danny in the eye as he spoke. The unspoken ‘this time’ hung in the air like a piece of cobweb, slight and drifting but unmistakably there.

Danny let out a grumbling sigh. “Fine,” he mumbled.

Any further discussion was cut off when a nearby screen flashed and displayed a message asking that the two feed Vlad’s cats for him.

Danny stared at the screen. “Wait, he has cats?!”

~~~

The first thing that he became aware of was the pain. A bone-deep ache accompanied by the sensation of having had every one of his muscles wrung out like a damp rag. Next and more pleasant was the temperature: a comfortable warmth that uniformly embraced every part of his body. Then the muffled quality of incoming sound… He was submerged given what he could hear.

The Revitalization Chamber?

He briefly clutched for any recent memories that might reveal why he was here. The Buster-Vack, something going wrong with it… Ah, the shockwave from its implosion shoved nearly all the energy from his body when it hit him. That was why he’d felt so cold as he passed out.

But who had gotten him into the tank, then?

Vlad slowly opened his eyes and looked out through the clear glass at the front of the tank.

Jack was seated at its base, sleeping with his head and near shoulder resting against the glass. It was a surprise to find him here and it... Did kindle some warmth in Vlad’s heart. Just how long had he waited?

Vlad’s gaze lifted to take in the room at large. Only then did he notice the mess of food wrappers and discarded pizza boxes that had been left on various lab tables and on the floor. The resulting spike of aggravation immediately stamped out any fond feelings. Vlad scowled behind the breathing mask. Jack had been waiting around long enough to make a pig sty of Vlad’s lab, that was for sure!

The chamber reacted to his movements and began to drain the healing medium away.

Jack stirred and opened his eyes at the noise. He spotted Vlad and broke out into a happy grin as he stepped back from the tank.

Vlad took the mask off as the front of the tank unlocked and swung up and away. “Jack Fenton, just what do you think you’ve been doing to my la—” the rest was cut off by an awkward yelp as Vlad’s knees buckled under his own weight.

Jack caught him easily—sparing him the indignity of a faceplant—and swept him into an equally-undignified hug. “Vladdie! You’re okay! I was so worried when you passed out!”

Any reply Vlad tried to give was smothered by his face being shoved into Jack’s chest. He tried to yell at him anyway and only managed a lot of incoherent, muffled grumbling as he weakly swatted Jack’s arm in a wordless demand that he let go.

It took a few swats for Jack to realize what Vlad wanted. “Whoops! Sorry, Vlad. I was just so happy that you woke up!”

Vlad gasped as Jack loosened his hold on him, then let out a long groan. “How many days has it been?”

“Three.”

The bottom fell out of Vlad’s stomach. “My cats!” He had automatic systems in place to ensure their needs were met if something happened to him in the short term, but that didn’t stop him from worrying that something might’ve gone wrong.

“Don’t worry, Vladdie. We took good care of them,” Jack said. “We even followed the feeding schedule that popped up.”

Vlad let out a long sigh of relief as the worry receded. “That’s good. I don’t know what I’d do if something happened to them.”

“Aww, I’m glad you have cats, Vlad,” Jack said, giving Vlad a warm smile. “They’re so sweet, too!”

“Yes, yes, it’s very nice,” Vlad grumbled, though he couldn’t deny the warmth that bloomed in his chest when Jack looked at him like that. “Thank you for looking after things. You can go home now.”

“I can’t leave you like this, Vlad,” Jack said, his smile replaced by a look of earnest concern.

“What do you mean you can’t leave me? I’m awake now, you don’t have to worry!”

“Vlad. You can’t even walk right now.”

“Yes I can!” Vlad snapped indignantly. “You just haven’t put me back on the floor yet!”

Jack lowered Vlad to the floor as asked and let go; Vlad’s legs held for only a few seconds before threatening to give way again. He scooped Vlad up once more.

Vlad let out a grumbling sigh and let his head rest against Jack’s chest. “Fiiine, you can stay until I get my feet under me again. Just don’t make more of a mess while you’re here.”

“You can count on me, Vladdie!”

“Yes, good. Now could you take me up to my bathroom? The healing medium tends to get sticky as it dries and I don’t want it on me when that happens.”

“On it, V-man!” Jack carried Vlad bridal style—Vlad refused to examine how this made him feel right now, despite the blush that was already settling on his face and ears—and hurried back up to ground level.

After some directions from Vlad—and a few wrong turns from Jack due to his sheer enthusiasm to help—they made it to the master bedroom and its attached bathroom. Despite Jack’s insistence Vlad got him to at least let him shower on his own; Vlad was able to walk a little bit by then as long as he had something to lean against, and he still had his shower chair from the particularly bad ecto-acne flare-ups that would keep him off the floor while he cleaned himself up.

Vlad sat under the stream of hot water for a while and let his mind wander. How many times had he cursed Jack’s name while sitting on a shower chair like this? For all the years of medical agony he’d had to endure, the most terrifying flare-ups where his body lost functions and he wondered if this was finally the end, all from Jack’s five seconds of carelessness. And he’d endured every second of it alone. It would’ve been so much easier had Jack at least been there for him.

A knock at the bathroom door cut off any further ruminations.

“Everything okay in there, Vlad?” Jack asked, his voice just loud enough to reach Vlad over the sound of the water.

“I’m fine,” Vlad replied.

“Alrighty then!” There was the sound of the door closing again as Jack withdrew.

Vlad lingered a little longer under the shower’s stream, then finished up and dressed in the underwear and pajamas he’d picked out before coming in. His legs were a little more steady this time as he walked out of the bathroom and over to his bed—a relief, he wasn’t sure how much more of Jack carrying him he could take—and once there he slipped under the covers and was almost ready to fall asleep immediately upon resting his head on the pillow.

Jack followed and stood next to the bed, looming over him like the comforting bulk of a familiar mountain. He did always tend to hover when Vlad was sick back in college...

“Jack?”

“Yeah?”

“Go clean up the mess you made down in my lab before you forget,” Vlad said. No way in hell was he letting Jack get away with leaving that for him to tidy up, no matter how nice it was for him to be so attentive right now.

“Oh yeah, I’ll get on that,” Jack said with just a smidge of sheepishness, apparently aware himself that he was quite likely to forget to do that without the necessary reminders.

Vlad drifted off as soon as Jack left, soon joined by his two cats who curled up on his bed beside him.

~~~

There was something hovering over his bed. Vlad lashed out instinctively without even opening his eyes and was rewarded with a solid punch to whatever it was, accompanied by an awkward yelp from the intruder.

“Hey! I wasn’t even doing anything to you!” Danny cried indignantly, his voice now coming from a few feet away.

“Invading my personal space counts as doing something to me,” Vlad replied as he opened his eyes. He turned his head and spotted Danny standing with his night stand between them. “And for all I knew you were planning to do something more. Why are you in my bedroom?”

“Unlike you I don’t pick on people who are helpless,” Danny snapped, crossing his arms over his chest and trying to stand up straight after the blow he’d taken to his stomach. “I’m here cause I wanna know what you’re playing at.”

Vlad let out an annoyed groan and ran his hands down his face. “Playing at? I’m trying to recover from a near death experience at the moment! There are no games to be played in this case.”

“Why’d you save my dad?”

It was a question Vlad hadn’t gotten the chance to ask himself, in all that was going on; he’d only been conscious for a grand total of less than an hour today. “I don’t know,” Vlad replied after a few moments’ thought. “I just moved without thinking.”

Danny was watching him carefully when Vlad glanced at him again.

“What now?” Vlad asked. He was still exhausted despite the sleep, and he didn’t care to be pestered with difficult questions at the moment.

“You’ve been kind of different lately,” Danny mused, his eyes narrowing. “What happened?”

“Will you go away if I tell you?”

“Fine.”

“Very well...” Vlad paused, choosing his words as carefully as he could in his exhausted state. “I recently acquired some information that forced me to reevaluate my previous judgments of your father’s character.”

“Wow. All those words just to admit that you were wrong about my dad,” Danny said with a knowing smirk.

Vlad’s last nerve snapped at the disrespect. He threw caution to the wind. “Well it’s not every day that a love letter written years ago finally reaches me,” Vlad said, making a show of examining the backs of his fingernails. “So raw and heartfelt, too. Jack certainly meant it when he wrote it.”

Danny stared at Vlad with a mix of shock and horror on his face that Vlad found every bit as amusing as he’d expected it to be. “You’re lying!” he said, pointing an accusatory finger at him.

“I can show it to you if you need proof.”

“Ew! I’m not reading that!” Danny leaped into the air and gave Vlad a glare. “Don’t— Don’t think this is over just cause you’re not trying to kill my dad anymore! I’m watching you!”

Vlad burst out laughing; watching the boy try to act intimidating now was just too funny. “Watch all you like. Maybe you’ll see some of that proof for yourself.”

“Ugh!” With that final declaration of disgust Danny went intangible and flew up through the ceiling, leaving Vlad alone at last.

The mirth remained as Vlad drifted off to sleep again. He would find a way to deal with the repercussions later; it had been worth it just to see the look on Danny’s face.

~~~

Jack was seated next to the bed when Vlad woke up next.

“My lab had better be spotless when I see it again,” Vlad said as he looked over at Jack.

“Don’t you worry, V-man. It’s as tidy as when I found it,” Jack said, giving him a thumbs-up.

“We’ll see about that,” Vlad grumbled. At least the lab would be cleaner than he’d seen it earlier. It was better than nothing. He stared at Jack for a few moments as he made up his mind; the lingering exhaustion had caused his previous hesitation to evaporate, and he’d already told Danny about the letter...

“Actually, there’s been something I’ve been meaning to ask you, Jack.” Vlad sat up and draped his hands across his lap.

“Er, what’s up?” Jack asked, looking a little worried.

Vlad stared down at his hands for a few moments, then he looked up at Jack as he spoke, “That letter you sent to me, the final one. Did you mean what you said in it?”

“Can you give me a few specifics...?”

“Oh, it was in a sloppy state, lots of corrections, an entire paragraph blotted out that said you wished you could marry me...”

“So it did end up with you...” Jack said slowly. “How did that happen?”

“Some ghost played a prank on you, perhaps?” Vlad suggested. It was somewhat true, in a way. “And your answer? Did you really mean it?”

Jack had no immediate reply for him and stared at the far wall for a while. At last he sighed and scratched the back of his neck, unable to look Vlad in the eye. “Don’t tell Maddie.”

“Don’t tell her? Why? It’s not like you still—” Vlad stopped short as he made the connection. “You don’t still feel that way, do you?!”

“Yeah. I never stopped feeling that way, really,” Jack said, shifting awkwardly on the chair.

“Then why did you never try to reach out to me? You could’ve done so at any point after I got out of the hospital.”

“I thought you didn’t want me in your life anymore,” Jack replied, looking a little hurt. “The letters came back, and you didn’t find me after you got out. So I figured I messed up so badly that you were just done with being my friend, and I didn’t want to bother you after that.”

Vlad stared at Jack as a new wave of emotions crashed down on him: relief, shock, regret, longing... The tension he’d been unconsciously holding onto left his body all at once. His head swam, the room slowly starting to turn around him. It was all—just a little too much to handle at the moment—

He was only out for a few seconds at most, but he woke up with Jack holding him in his arms again.

“Vlad? You alright? What happened?”

It was all still sinking in. He had his answer now. He’d been proven wrong about Jack, and now he had to figure out how to handle that. How to navigate a world where he’d have to smother his own lingering feelings for the man even while knowing that Jack felt the same. He had no idea how Maddie would react when she found out...

“Still a little woozy from healing up,” Vlad replied weakly. “I’ll be better in a moment.”

Everything was different now. Still, he couldn’t help but feel a little hopeful, with the warmth of Jack’s arms around him. His pessimism had been disproven before, perhaps it would be again...

#Danny Phantom #Vlad Masters #Vlad Plasmius #Jack Fenton #Vlad/Jack #Danny Fenton #Hurt/Comfort #dp fanfic #Kuzannfic #So happy to be able to post this!!

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