#which DOES of course lead me back to the danny phantom au that i talked about lo these many months ago

[words-writ-in-starlight]

Jame/Tori. 12 and 16. Happy Birthday! Wishing you a year full of understanding medical professionals.

SAME!!!  Anyway, last night I was reading God Stalk out loud to my partners, because we are all very adorable, and I almost paused the chapter to wax adoring about Jame and Tori because Jame made an idle comment about not understanding how someone could decide not to support their brother, no matter what their brother did.  So you get to go first.

12) What first changes when it starts getting serious?

The first thing that Jame notices as a change, a real change, isn’t something anyone else would notice.  Tori kissed her, and didn’t run--kissed her, and held her face between his beautiful scarred hands, and rested their foreheads together like they did when they were children, like she was safety to him again, and that was--that was new, but she didn’t really think of it as a change.  Everyone else sees it as a change, but not Jame.  She thinks that Tori might not see it that way either.  It wasn’t a change, it was a return to the right shape of things.

The first thing she notices as a change isn’t until a few nights later, when she collapses in a chair and falls asleep.  The dream is pleasantly nonsensical at first--a nightmare, but a real nightmare, which is a relief, of dancing in the Res aB’tyrr in front of the randon council, while her feet bleed and her balance slips on the slick tabletop.  She realizes she’s dreaming when she stumbles, but dances on as if a puppet on strings, until finally the dance ends, and she bows, and takes her bloodied feet and her weariness up the stairs to the loft.  

It’s her brother’s study, at the top of the stairs, and he’s there, sitting in the chair by the fire with one leg crossed over his knee and frowning in concentration, and he blinks at her as she stumbles through the mirror and lands clumsily on the floor.  She braces herself to watch horror flicker over his face--sees the moment of instinctive alarm--and then he asks, “What are you wearing?”

“What?” Jame asks, blank, and then says, “Oh.  It’s a dancer’s costume.  What are you doing?”

Tori’s lips twist briefly and he says, “Trying to sleep.”

“Are you hiding in here on purpose?”

He looks uneasy, almost--apologetic.  “I just need some rest.”  And then he hesitates, and then Tori says, “You can stay.  There’s another chair.”

“What?” Jame repeats.

“I can keep us both here for a while, I think,” Tori says.  “You look tired.”

Jame is nodding before she thinks it through, and collapses in the chair across from Tori--the dreamscape can’t manufacture pain or weariness the way the soulscape can, but she is tired.  She hasn’t slept in days, and she’s all too aware that she’s as likely to wander out the door into a disaster as she is into a restful night.  And Tori’s study--the dream he’s made for himself, a shelter from visions and souls--is warm and quiet, with the fire and the old chairs, and with her brother.  It’s--nice.

Tori offers her a faint smile, and takes his foot off his knee and stretches his legs out in front of him, mirroring her, so that their ankles cross in front of the fire.

16) When the zombie apocalypse comes, how do they cope together?

I genuinely do not think they would bat an eye at a zombie apocalypse.  They essentially grew up in one.  Honestly I think they would be THE clutch people to have in charge, because they are very good at this, before Jame and Tori were dancers or fighters or leaders or soldiers or anything, they were dealing with the undead.

The first thing Jame, in northern Tagmeth, does upon seeing the first haunt in the Riverlands is to sit down with a map and every report she can barter, beg, or borrow, and draws out the advancing line.  She gathers her people and gives them exacting instructions, on how to kill the dead, and she sends a letter to Mount Alban that simply says I need help, cousin, meet me at Gothregor, and she sends out scouts for one week.  At the end of the week, she rolls up her maps, tells everyone to pack everything they want to keep, and takes her people south.

She arrives at her brother’s doorstep unannounced, and the Knorth Kendar are getting used to the way their Highborn do things but also they hate the way their Highborn do things.  It’s not really right for their lordan to show up with every single one of her people in tow and demand to see her brother now.  But, then, most of them have served their lord for years now, and they know that hard-eyed silver stare, and no one stops her from storming out to the barracks where Torisen is going over their census with Rowan.

Tori is already looking at the door when Jame opens it, and he says, “Jame,” and Rowan says, “Lordan,” and Jame says, “I have bad news, and I think we’re the first ones to get it, so we need a plan if we’re going to save our people.”

And Jame thinks it says something kind, about her brother, that even at his worst, he cared about their people to the point of desperation.  And he’s not at his worst anymore, and so she’s not surprised when he gestures to the chair at his other side, facing Rowan, and says, “Of course, what happened?”

[anthropwashere]

Phic Phight: it’s all downhill from here (honey don’t be scared)

Prompt from @aggressivelyclueless: Halfa Valerie AU: Valerie becomes half-ghost. Apart from that being a total nightmare, this also leads her to discover Danny's secret as well. How is she going to handle it?

@currentlylurking @phicphight

Word count: 7,825

=

Mr. Heppenheimer, the latest in a long line of chemistry teachers that have come through Casper High since actual, real life ghosts have begun treating Amity Park like their own personal Las Vegas retreat away from the rigors of whatever normal life is like for ghosts in the Ghost Zone, gives Danny a lingering stink eye. Clearly the last teacher, Mrs. Jamshidi (who barely lasted a month, and submitted her two-week notice while recovering in the hospital after an admittedly memorable encounter with Ember), had left notes behind for her successor. Danny doubted a single word of it was in his favor.

"This practical's worth a quarter of your grade this semester," Mr. Heppenheimer says in his usual droll way. "You're not going to make me regret handing you glassware, are you, Mister Fenton?"

Danny, still a bit sore and off-kilter after another Jack Fenton-approved growth spurt, grins down at him. "No, sir."

Mr. Heppenheimer hums doubtfully. Clearly Mrs. Jamshidi had left extensive notes. "Don't make me regret this."

"Short of a ghost attack, I doubt you will," Danny answers truthfully. He really has gotten a much better control on his powers since the last time any science teacher let him near anything fragile, well over a year ago now. Mrs. Gorman hated him from the start for reasons he never figured out, anyway. He's looking forward to a fresh start.

Of course, worryingly enough Danny’s been sensing a pretty powerful ghost lurking around Casper High for over a week now. Along with the usual big green beasties that like to come sniffing around crowds of humans, which he’s had to dip out to handle three times now. No one’s noticed his on-going ghost sense, though it helps that he’s long-since gotten into the habit of keeping one hand cupped lazily over his mouth—just in case. That’ll be harder to pass off here in a practical lab, but there ought to be a lot of things bubbling and steaming soon. He just has to be careful until he’s got some cover.

Mr. Heppenheimer hums again, more dismissive than doubtful, and lets him approach the counter. His partner in this practical is Star, which is—randomized, definitely. Whatever, also definitely. He and Star have as much in common as him and an actual star, which is to say—nothing. He doesn't even generate heat anymore, not really. He's got a modified Maddie Fenton-approved belt buckle that lets him fake it, but it's not remotely the same thing, and not a

ll that convincing at close quarters anyway. Star, at least, knows him well enough that she's been bringing a mint green cardigan to class ever since they were assigned project partners.

Danny, well-aware he’s only good in the eyes of his peers for a laugh and anti-ghost tech, smiles thinly at Star and gestures at her to take the lead. She sniffs pointedly and does just so, which is fine with him. She's well on her way to valedictorian, whereas he's just trying to graduate. If deferring to whatever she wants gets him a passing grade, sure! He'll do whatever she says and accept whatever belittling comment she tacks on along with it. No skin off his back, right?

About twenty minutes into class there's a magnificent crash of glass that puts Danny 110% on edge; it's only Sam appearing at his left with a reassuring hand on his arm that keeps him from blasting a hole through the wall out of pure reflex. Which, maybe, possibly, likely says something about his state of mind after three straight years of fighting the kind of monsters that don't have any place outside of his very worst nightmares, but—whatever. Point is, thanks to Sam, he doesn't trash the lab or draw any unwanted attention to himself, both of which are good things! Another point in his favor: it’s finally somebody else’s turn to destroy a whole tray of beakers.

"Miss—Gray!" Mr. Heppenheimer shouts after a brief glance at the clipboard Danny hasn't seen him put down in the two weeks since he took the job. "What's the meaning of this?!"

"S-sorry!" Valerie stammers, her eyes firmly on the mess at her feet. Her project partner, Wes, is scowling at Danny. Likely because he believes the mess is entirely his fault. Wes can believe whatever he likes; just because he's the only one not fully in on The Big Secret who figured out The Big Secret out doesn't make him automatically right 100% of the time. Case in point: now. Danny's only touched his notebook, where he's got three pages of dutifully written notes on what Star's tasked him to write as she did all the metaphorical heavy lifting. He could swear on a stack of Bibles that this latest chemistry accident doesn't have a thing to do with him. It’s kind of refreshing, honestly.

Mr. Heppenheimer hums again. It seems to be his default over all the loud swearing he'd obviously prefer to be doing. "Clean it up. And do be careful, Miss Gray. I'd prefer to avoid sending anyone to the nurse's office today if I can help it."

"I—yeah. Yes, sorry." Valerie dashes off to the closet where all the safety-slash-cleaning gear is stashed to fetch cat litter, broom, and dustpan. Star scoffs on Danny's right, while Sam, hand still firmly squeezing Danny's bicep, has a worryingly thoughtful scowl on.

"Valerie has been such a mess since her dad lost his job," Star remarks in the usual scathingly cruel A-lister tone.

"He got his job back." Danny points out as he tries to shrug Sam off without making a big deal of it.

"So?" Star's tone has shifted from scathing to incredulous, which means she somehow didn't know something Danny's known since the tail end of their freshman year. It's admittedly bizarre to find himself able to lord some classmate gossip over an A-lister, but—with a glance at Sam to confirm it is, in fact, cool to lord this gossip over an A-lister—he gives Star a slow, sly grin as he gestures her closer. She leans in without an ounce of self-restraint or disgust, which means Danny's moved higher up the food chain since the last time he bothered to pay any attention.

"Valerie's dad used to be some bigwig in Axion Labs," he says, one eye on Sam and the other on Tucker, both of whom in turn are watching the teacher and the rest of the class. Just in case. "After Vlad—uh. Vladco, I mean—took over the company, Mister Gray got his position back despite Phantom screwing him over, and it's been smooth sailing for him ever since."

The sound of Valerie sweeping up broken glass gets discordantly loud, somehow. Danny doesn't have to look at her to know she's glaring daggers at him. He sets his shoulders and sticks the angle of his nose twenty degrees snootier, mostly to spite whatever murderous and/or weepy glower Valerie might be trying to laser into his soul. Which, whatever. He knows the shape of his own soul by now. He knows it's Phantom, plus or minus some degree of fiery white hair and green-tinged skin.

A bit of the old guilt niggles in the back of his head though. Accident or not, it was Phantom who cost Mr. Gray his job in the first place and Vlad who gave it back. And Vlad only did it at all once he realized his favorite little ghost fighting minion would be a better thorn in Phantom’s side if she didn’t have to work a part-time job at the Nasty Burger. Which—well. Danny’s glad she doesn’t have to deal with that anymore, for all that it does make her a better thorn in his side.

But—guilt. Dumb guilt, but on his plate all the same. He manages to edge the conversation to some other Gossip with a capital G that even Star's not aware of. Oh the things a guy can hear when he can literally turn invisible. It's kind of fun, honestly, to fill her in. The rest of the hour is spent hissing old-as-shit hearsay that still manages to make Star's eyes light up like she's watching Paulina’s favorite cabin burn down again. They do, somehow, manage to get their project pushed along to step three, which will pick up with the rest of all the normal and unobtrusive partnered projects tomorrow. He's not sure which of them is to thank for that, but he is more than a little pleased with how neatly he wrote their notes. It's the most like a regular student he's felt in months. It's honestly pretty great!

"We have a problem," Tucker hisses no less than five seconds and no more than ten after the bell rings. It's that perfect middle ground time of everyone shoving all their shit into their bags so they can bolt out the classroom door as fast as normal-humanly possible, so it's also that perfect middle ground time of nobody paying the three of them the least bit of attention.

"You noticed too?" Sam asks with her usual omniscient scowl. Danny truly and whole-heartedly wishes she'd stop with that, but he's yet to find an opportunity where he can say that to her face without coming across as a total shitheel, including now, so he grits his teeth and raises a pointedly baffled eyebrow at the both of them.

"Noticed what?" He asks with a patience he hasn't actually felt since junior high.

"Valerie's—" Tucker does a casual look around to see if anyone's close enough to eavesdrop, intentionally or no, which means this is a Phantom Thing. And if this is something Phantom and Valerie related? Yeah, no, he's in too good a mood for whatever latest gadget or trick Vlad might be cooking up via Valerie.

He holds up a hand with a sigh he automatically pretends is a yawn to cover up the blue wisp that escapes with it. "Can this wait? Better yet, can we just—not? At least for today? I'm really not up for counter-scheming."

"No need for that," Tucker assures way too quickly. The nervous laugh he follows it up with really doesn't help.

"Right," Danny says wryly, but motions to let them talk. Sam and Tucker share one of those weird non-verbal psychic looks where they have a whole conversation in the span of two seconds that goes right over Danny's head. He wishes they’d stop doing that, but if he called them out on it they’d deny it loudly, and it’d be a whole thing, and—ugh.

"Valerie's acting weird," Tucker says once they've finished. "As in, 'we definitely need to intervene' weird."

"Possessed?"

"No. But this might be worse."

"But this isn't the first time she made a mess in class,” Sam says.

Danny slips his one (1) notebook and one (1) pencil into his bag. He's learned the hard way to pack light and get real good at shorthand, as well as keep all his textbooks down in the Fenton dungeon where they're least likely to get torched in a ghost fight. Again. "Isn't it?"

"Nope," Tucker says as they make their way to the door. Danny's sure to give Mr. Heppenheimer some ever-so-slightly iridescent stink eye of his own to make him flinch, and then doubt himself for flinching. One good turn, and all that. "Seventh actually. Third a teacher noticed, but she's been weirding out a lot of the other students."

Danny grunts, more interested in shouldering other people out of the way to make it easier for Sam and Tucker to squeeze out into the hall. Hey, may as well get some mileage out of being one of the tallest guys in school, right? 

Sam touches his elbow to make sure she's got his attention while they make their way to their next classes. She's got sign language, Tucker's got photography, and Danny's got a free hour to nap in the auditorium ceiling. "She's constantly dropping things, she's always shivering, every lie I've heard her tell a faculty member has been total nonsense, she hasn't gone after a single ghost in almost two weeks—"

"Well, that would explain why there's been an uptick in my fifth period snake-wrangling," Danny remarks dryly, then grins nastily at some girl giving him a serious case of side-eye. She squeaks—actually squeaks!—and ducks behind some broad-shouldered guy in an eye-wateringly neon football jersey.

Tucker wacks his other elbow, scowling up at him. "Dude, this is serious."

"I haven't heard a reason to care yet."

He doesn't have to look to see they're doing another round of psychic Concerned About Our Bestie back-and-forth. Sam's the one who trips him—damn her preference for steel-toed boots—but it's Tucker who shoves him into a nook between two battered banks of lockers. "Danny," they both snap.

He blinks down at them expectantly, staying quiet. Hey, they're the one's worried about the badass ghost fighting black belt who would love nothing more than an opportunity to strap Phantom down to an operating table and go wild with a cattle prod. He's just trying to graduate. Preferably with all his teeth.

"Valerie is acting just like you did freshman year," Sam hisses. "Right after the you-know-what."

Danny barks laughter. "Yeah, right."

Sam and Tucker remain stone-cold serious. Worse, they look worried.

They wouldn't suggest something so crazy without a lot of thought put into it.

Fuck.

= 

It's another two days before Danny gets a good—"good"—opportunity to talk to Valerie one-on-one. During that time he sees first-hand no less than 37 incidents of irrefutable acts of half-ghost-hood. How nobody else—including that ass, Wes!—has caught on yet is nothing short of a miracle. Valerie cut ties with every other person in their graduating class after some disastrous party embarrassment Danny never cared enough to find out the details of secondhand. She's kept her head down and her teeth bared at anybody who’s tried to meet her halfway, and it seems everyone's accepted the fact that Valerie Gray is the second worst delinquent in the entire school.

(The first is him, naturally.)

He corners her three minutes before the bell to end lunch will ring. He's got calculus next—an unexpected good turn in his life that still makes him giggle every time he actually has time to do his homework—and she's got English. They can't afford to skip either class, but hey, you only half-die once, right?

She scowls up at him, twitching her head out of a habit she's not yet broken. She only shaved her head a month ago. He's still reeling over how good she looks, and also how much it makes her look like the awesome older Valerie from the horrible future where he and Vlad ghost-melded and murdered a dismayingly large number of humans. If that future is still somehow lingering out there in the tangled fabric of spacetime like a bad hangnail, he’s pretty sure that Valerie died, fullstop. 

He’d like it if he could do something to help this Valerie not die, fullstop. 

She scowls up at him harder. "What do you want?"

He allows himself another couple seconds to just—bask. Yes, she's hot as hell, and if they were both normal humans she could easily break him over her knee like a fistful of kindling. He's not yet gotten an inch of the Fenton width. He's basically all elbows, and it's now all but impossible to find shoes in his size. It's great, really, just super.

Mostly though, he holds his breath and lets his ghost sense settle in a chilly, wriggly knot in his lungs. How the hell did he not realize she was the cause before now?

He smiles down at her. It becomes immediately apparent that this is the worst possible thing he could have chosen to do. He stops smiling. Somehow that's worse.

"We need to talk," he says, and immediately wants to hit himself. Has daytime television not taught him anything? That's the worst thing he could have said!

"I don't think so," she says, and tries to edge past him. He catches her elbow—

—and she's got him smashed up against a classroom door before he can even blink. 

"Uh," they say at the same time. He feels one of her hands go ice cube cold against his skin. Since it's him and not a normal person, it's far more likely her hand just dropped to some negative three-digit temperature. If he were human, he'd be at risk for frostbite. As he's not, it's more like a refreshing breeze. He swears he even gets a whiff of the Ghost Zone off of her; like a hard shock of static on his tongue in a midnight snowfall. It's... nice. Is that what he smell-feels like? 

Hmm. Distracting himself. Best to stop doing that.

She realizes after too long a beat of awkward silence that one of her arms has gone full-ghostly, and springs back with a half-hysterical yelp. He turns around to look at her again, rolling his shoulder out of a long habit of pretending that Dash trying to rough him up actually feels like anything. She looks—

Well. Kind of like some kind of frazzled toy dog that's had to deal with way too many idiot humans manhandling her, and like she's pissed that all the finger-biting she's tried has only gotten her a bunch of braindead cooing. Danny finds himself sympathizing, and also like maybe he needs to vent to somebody else aside from Cujo on their 3 a.m. Thursday walkies. He considers several facial expressions he could make at her, dismisses all of them, and settles on upping the grimacing and shoulder-rolling. It sort of works? She looks guilty, which is honestly one of the better reactions she could be leveling at him right now.

"We really do need to talk, actually," he says, feigning an apologetic tone while pretending very hard he hasn’t noticed her left arm suddenly stops at the elbow. 

"Pretty sure we don't," she retorts.

He makes a show of rolling his eyes, and then a show of looking pointedly at her invisible arm. She looks down at herself, does a double-take, yelps again, and hides both of her arms behind her back as she makes several stammering attempts at a believable excuse. Danny winces, torn between sympathy and secondhand embarrassment. Sam was right; this is exactly how he stumbled his way through the first six months of figuring out his powers. At least he had the benefit of a couple of friends and eventually Jazz too to help cover his tracks. Valerie's on her own. She's going to get found out at this rate, and accidentally or not she will drag him and Vlad down with her.

"It's okay," he says calmly.

"Everything's fine I don't know what you're talking about!" 

He looks at her, unimpressed, until she looks appropriately embarrassed. "Let's try this again," he says, and puts both hands up to stall when she goes to retort. "Please?"

She purses her lips, huffing through her nose, but nods. Good enough.

"You're not okay," he tells her. "You're freaking out because something crazy happened to you, and you don't have anybody to turn to for answers without risking everything. You think you're a monster, or that you're dead, or you're dying, or some shitty combination of all of the above. You're scared because you can't control what's happening, and you're scared because you know you're gonna get caught at this rate, and you're scared because you know exactly what the GIW does to the ecto-entities it manages to get its hands on, because you're the reason half the ghosts that frequent Amity Park have done time in a GIW containment cell. Right?"

Valerie stares.

She keeps staring. 

Eventually her mouth starts making some feeble attempt at protest.

A while after that she musters up the stamina to stammer out, "W-whahaaat are you talking about? I think you've got—ha! The wrong idea! Yeah! I bet you're thinking I'm, uh. Um. Possessed! Yes! I'm definitely possessed! You caught me, oh fuck, I'm definitely just another one of Walker's goons—nobody important though! No nefarious schemes going on either, honest! I just, uh, wanted to take a human… out for a spin? Yes, that’s what I’m doing. You definitely don't need to say anything to your parents—"

"Valerie," he says.

Her mouth snaps shut so hard her teeth click. She looks terrified, furious, and miserable all at once. She looks like she knows she's cornered, caught red-handed, and like she fully expects Danny to rat her out. Does she really think so little of him?

He winces inwardly. Of course she does. She's kept him at arm's length since freshman year because he never owned up the truth to her. She's been protecting him from himself all this time by staying away. She only knows the front he puts on for everybody else.

The bell rings. In a matter of seconds this hallway is going to be packed with students, and this is not a conversation to risk anyone overhearing. He looks around. Their options are to either continue this wedged in a janitor's closet (she'd probably shoot him), ghost her up to the roof (she'd definitely shoot him) or duck into a classroom. Luck's on his side for once. He'd cornered her just outside the wreckage of the wood shop; it's not going to be fit to teach in until after they graduate, and even the other, regular delinquents know better than to hang out anywhere with that much Fenton ectobiological hazard caution tape. 

He nods toward the door. "Please?"

She looks like she'd much rather go toe-to-tail with Desiree, but the sound of a crowd surging their way decides for her. She bolts for the door, Danny at her heels, and they're in and hidden out of sight before anyone could see them go. He watches through a small hole in a stretch of opaque plastic sheeting, patiently waiting for the rest of the school to disperse into their various classrooms. There're too many holes in the wood shop's walls to risk talking even with all the noise out there. 

Eventually the hall outside quiets. The late bell rings. It's about as safe as it'll ever get to have this talk.

"I can explain," she begins, her voice quiet and shaken. 

"You don't have to," he says, and turns on the scary eyes as he faces her. 

Three years of fighting nightmare monsters hasn't done Valerie the right kind of favors either. A metal cube materializes over her shoulder and flares brightly as it powers up a shot. She in turn steps smoothly into a defensive stance, light humming up and down her as she... doesn't pull her ghost-fighting suit out of the spectral hammerspace it sloughs off to whenever she doesn't need it. He blinks. He looks at the cube properly once it becomes clear she isn't going to shoot him. The light coming off it isn't pink anymore, but the same ghost-green as his own powers.

"Explain," she growls.

Probably not a good time for jokes. He keeps his serious face on, scary eyes and all. "I was in an accident freshman year. My parents couldn't get their ghost portal to work. They got lax about not letting Jazz and I down there unsupervised. I took Sam and Tucker down there one afternoon while they were out. One thing led to another, and I accidentally got their portal to work. While I was standing inside it."

She winces. Not like Jazz or Wes did when he stammered out the story to them just so they'd stop asking. Not in sympathy as they tried to imagine what that would have felt like and falling a thousand miles short (not that he ever said so). She gives him the same look he's seen in the mirror every time a bad dream of that day grabs him by the throat and shocks him awake. She knows.

"Don't shoot," he jokes weakly, and reaches for that cold spark that shares the same illogical, impossible space as his heart. 

Another three cubes appear in a neat arc over her head when he changes, not that he blames her. She's just found out she dated her sworn enemy once upon a time. He's definitely surprised she doesn't shoot. She does go a bit deer in the headlights again, but more like a ghost deer that's just as likely to shoot lasers as it might bolt into traffic. "I," she tries. "You. You're. The whole goddamn time?!"

"Okay," he says. "Point of order. Cujo really wasn't my dog yet when I got your dad fired. That was an accident and I'm still very, very sorry about that."

Her eyes go ghost-red. "You wanna try that again?"

He sucks air in through his teeth, sighs out another blue wisp. She's doing it too. Has been the whole conversation actually, and plenty of other times before. He wonders if she's figured out what it means yet. He adds it to the list he's mentally compiling, keeps his hands up, and starts running his mouth as contritely as he can. 

=

The sun's almost set by the time Danny's really, truly, fully convinced Valerie not to turn him into the half-ghost equivalent of Swiss cheese. He's so hungry he feels like he's nursing a gut wound, but he thinks it's the smart choice to not suggest talking all of this out over dinner. It's not like his allowance (and black hole of an appetite) would pay for more than clearing out the dollar menu at Jack-in-the-Box, and no way is he stupid enough to suggest Valerie pay. So he remains perched on one of the few remaining tables left in the wood shop, still in Phantom mode mostly to watch Valerie grind her teeth. She's sitting cross-legged on another table, cubes and scary eyes gone. She's reached the fun sort of balance between bone-tired exhaustion and impotent frustration with no good outlet that isn't the kind of violence that will draw a lot of unwanted attention. She sits there and stews awhile, turning over everything he's told her.

He pulls out his phone—tossing her a wry grin when she flinches—and lets her stew. He shoots out a "safe, taking longer than a thought it would" into the group chat he's got with Sam, Tucker, and Jazz. Tucker lets him know he's rooting for him, and also they handled the Box Ghost's usual afternoon showing with a game of checkers, and Wulf's in town avoiding Walker again. Sam reminds him to work on his book report if Valerie doesn't skin him alive first. He shoots back a neutral affirmative to them both, then pulls up Bubble Blaster to kill time until Valerie feels like talking—

"It was two weeks ago," she starts.

Danny resists the urge to sigh and pockets his phone again. Well, he mimes pocketing his phone. It sort of phases into that weird imaginary skin between his halves with a buzz of protest. When he changes back it'll be in his back right pocket, fully charged. 

"Mister Masters," she pauses to make this really complicated grimace, like she'd sort of prefer calling Vlad something like Captain Fuckface but she's too polite to do it aloud. Danny makes a mental note to call Vlad exactly that the next time they run into each other. The fruitloop'll make a hilarious noise, he just knows it. "Mister Masters sent me info on another job. He told me some of his employees at Axion Labs had reported some ghost sightings, and my dad had mentioned seeing some weird stuff too, so. So I snuck out and went to go check it out. It didn't sound like anything bad, just. Y'know. Another ghost."

Two weeks ago her tone would have been one of complete, dismissive disgust. Two weeks ago she was still human though. Danny stays quiet, which is probably the smart thing to do.

"There was something on my radar when I got there. I thought it was gonna be you, honestly—" She glares, a flicker of red coloring her eyes. He shrugs and gives her a charming grin that's all, Who, me? She doesn't buy it for a second, not that he expected her too. Two weeks ago Vlad was being a real prick though, setting all sorts of nasty ghoulies he'd Frankenstein'd in his super gross secret lab loose in the downtown area. Danny's honestly not sure if he got any sleep for like, four straight days. There was a lot of doctored coffee involved, by which he means the kind of coffee a regular human couldn't drink without requiring a fairly immediate trip to the ER. 

(Tucker Foley tested.)

"Most of the reports were from some department I've never heard my dad talk about, and it's all three levels underground. If Technus hadn't juiced my suit up again I don't think I could've gotten down there—"

That's an alarm bell Danny super doesn't like the sound of. "Again?"

She waves her hand dismissively that's all, So last year, honey, try and keep up. "Doesn't matter. Point is, I got down there, and it—well. It looked like the Fen—uh. Your parents' lab. Kind of identical, actually. In a kinda creepy way."

Yeah, that's Vlad all over. Kinda creepy and not all that original. Oh well. He raises his eyebrows pointedly.

"Uh. Well, my radar went crazy down there, but I still couldn't get a real bead on anything. So I went poking around and found the framework of this—well, portal. I didn't realize it was a portal though, since it didn't look like the one in your parents' lab. It was standing on its own in the middle of the room, covered in cables—"

"Ours is a mess too," he points out. "You can't tell unless it's off though. I'm not really sure where all those cables and weird hunks of tech go while it's on...."

She gives him a look like she's regretting not shooting him earlier. He does the smart thing by not pointing out that shooting him is still very much on the table, and that if history's anything to go by she's a huge fan of shooting him. He can't help but think that opinion might, just possibly, if he's very lucky, have changed in the last couple of hours. Fingers crossed? Those cube cannon things hurt like a bitch.

"I was looking around that thing because it was freaking my radar out when Plas—Mister Masters showed up."

He reels a bit. She must've expected it, because it's her turn to raise her eyebrows pointedly. "Wait," he says, holding his hands up in a time out T. "Wait a minute. You knew he's Plasmius? The whole goddamn time?!"

"No," she snaps. "Only after Danielle."

"That's nearly the whole goddamn time. What the hell, he's been lording you over me as a reason not to blab the truth for years. For fuck's sake, Valerie—"

"You wanna maybe shut up and let me finish, ghost kid?"

He scowls. She scowls back, plus scary eyes. He's pretty sure she's not doing it intentionally, so the effect's not as impressive as it could be. Red continues to be a great color for her though, not that he's dumb enough to say that.

"Plasmius showed up, blasted me into the portal, and hit the switch before I could do anything," she bites out, hunching in on herself like she's wishing the ground would swallow her whole—aaaand there she goes, sinking through the table. He clears his throat loudly, she realizes what's going on and ends up flailing around like an idiot for a few seconds until her body gets physical enough to stay put. 

"Sam was right," he muses. "This is entertaining."

"Fuck you," she snaps without much venom. Mostly she sounds tired.

He sighs, hating himself a little for reasons he's not gonna explore right now. He's too hungry for introspection. "Did he evil-monologue why he did that to you?"

"A little. I was kinda out of it, after." She grimaces, gesturing at herself. "I didn't catch all of it. Something about being a distraction for you, though I didn't know that he meant you at the time."

"Oh goodie, this evil plot has layers, and ruining your life is apparently a fucking footnote." He scrubs his face with both hands and changes back into his plain Jane self. Valerie twitches badly, eyes flashing red and a fun eye-watering white shimmer shivering up her whole body. Huh. "Hey, have you tried changing back since that asshat zapped you?"

"Of course not," she hisses, looking at him like he just suggested she go streaking through the administration office. "I'm trying to keep a low profile while I figure out a way to fix what he did to me."

Ah, hell.

"I'm sorry," seems the smart thing to start with. He hops off the table, hands up where she can see them as he approaches her. He takes a risk at reaching for her hands. She surprises him again by continuing to not shoot him. "I'm really, really sorry. But there's no fixing this. You just get—better at being this." He squeezes a little when she starts shaking her head and pulling away, amping up the 'I'm sorry for your loss' face he's had to get way too good at. Superhero, he ain't. "I'm serious. Vlad's been like me—like us—since like, '85 or whenever he got zapped by a proto-portal, and he got really sick after."

Her eyes go big and laser pointer red again. "S-sick?"

"Ecto-acne. Ever hear of it?" She shakes her head. "You'll probably be okay, if Axion's portal is based on my parents' portal, or even Vlad's."

"He has a portal?"

"In Wisconsin," he confirms grimly. "He's been trying to build a second one ever since he moved here, but I kept messing with him. I didn't think to check the basements of any of his evil companies."

"Axion Labs isn't evil," she retorts instead of doing the sensible thing and blaming him outright for the shit she’s mired in for keeps. 

He raises an eyebrow. "Sure. And Invis-o-Bill really is hellbent on establishing a ghost-human empire capital in Amity fucking Park."

She winces.

"Wait. You didn't actually believe that, did you?"

She winces harder.

"Ohhhh Valerie," he sighs, dropping her hands to melodramatically sag against another table. "I'm wounded. Honestly, truthfully, hurt that you'd think so highly of fucking Invis-o-Bill. Haven't you been paying attention to the shit the gossip mags shill about me? I'm either a ghost blob with delusions of grandeur in a skinsuit or the ostracized son of Pariah Dark and Desiree. You don't think my evil ghost parents have been around enough to teach me how to be a good evil emperor, do you?"

She's trying—and failing—not to laugh. "Shut up. How was I supposed to know what to believe, huh? None of the ghosts ever say shit about you."

"Yeah, 'cause they're cool with keeping my secret!"

She presses forward to jab a finger in his chest. She's still kind of flicker-y at the edges, like she hasn't quite decided she isn't going to go full ghost hunter on him, so it sort of feels like another hard burst of static. Goosebumps break out all down his skin; it's all he can do not to shiver. "What's with that, anyway? Most of 'em are so hellbent on destroying you for stopping them again and again, but none of them have ever come blabbing your big life-ruining secret to me or your parents!"

He shrugs. "Honestly? I don't think it's ever occurred to any of them. I'm pretty sure Skulker's the only one who knows like, for sure that Vlad's the same as me, and that's only 'cuz he likes to take jobs from Vlad now and then. The others?" Another, more expansive shrug as he slides sideways out of her range. So she makes him uneasy. What about it? She's only shot him point blank like, five hundred times if she's done it once. He'd really like to get out of this whole situation without any new burns to hide.

"Huh," she says. "Seriously?"

"Yeah. It's not—I dunno. I think it'd be like cheating for most of 'em to go blabbing to some humans or even Vlad. They wanna take me down, sure, but they wanna do it on their own steam. I'm definitely not complaining."

"Course you're not, because you are ludicrously overpowered compared to most of the ghosts out there itching for a little world domination."

He grins down at her, big and sloppy. "Hey, give it some time and you'll be OP as fuck too."

She reacts to that little nugget of wisdom just like he expected her to; retreating halfway across the room and shrinking in on herself like she's dearly wishing for a bit of time travel to undo what Vlad did to her on a selfish whim. Well. A conversation with Clockwork is an option still on the table. He'll give her a few more days of adjustment before suggesting a fun little jaunt into the Ghost Zone. He's honestly not sure if Clockwork and her are properly acquainted. That should be good for a laugh if nothing else. 

"Hey," he says companionably. "I mean it. You're gonna be okay."

She scoffs. He pretends not to hear the dampness to it. "Oh, sure. So long as I do exactly what you say, right?"

"This isn't blackmail," he says, injecting as much calm as he can to his voice. "Honest. I mean, I won't lie and pretend I'm not hoping you listen to me. If you get found out it's both of our necks on the chopping block. Sure, I'll make sure Vlad takes the fall too, so that's some nice revenge wrapped with a bow, but it's not like we'd be around to really appreciate it, y'know?"

She makes another, slightly damper noise. He considers the risk of hugging her against the risk of walking away with all his parts where they ought to be, and he decides the smart thing is to stay put and pretend right along with her that she's definitely not crying.

"I want to help you, Valerie. I've been where you're at. I know how much it sucks. And I had Sam and Tucker helping me while I tried to figure it all out. You... you need somebody to help you. Trust me on this much at least, okay? This isn't something you can do alone."

Her various damp noises evolve into an outright sob. "Fuck."

Yeah. That about sums it up.

"Fuck," she hisses out again, pawing roughly at her face. "This. I didn't want—all this time and you never—I coulda killed you but you didn't—and now I'm—!"

Okay. Yeah. Superheroes don't leave anybody to cry so miserably on their own. He's hardy. Even if she shoots him he can hang out, make sure she's okay to get home on her own. And they both skipped their last two classes. He ought to go rummage around their teachers' desks and try to figure out what tonight's homework is. She's got every reason to burn her textbooks and scream fuck it at the moon (Danny's sophomore year was a personal low point), and it's just as likely Skulker will pull some new scheme to try and skin him tonight as any other school night, but it's the principle of the thing. They're both just trying to graduate at this point, and they're so close. 

It might seem so incredibly, completely stupid, to care about graduating with all the other bullshit in their lives. Most days, it is stupid to care. But there are some days that stupid, pointless piece of paper is the only reason Danny chooses to get out of bed. He chooses to remember that he's still human enough for human consequences. He needs that diploma to get into college, and he needs to get into college so he can earn his bachelor's, and he needs to be stable enough to earn his pilot's license, and then somehow net 1,000 hours as pilot-in-command in a fucking jet, and on and on and on, because there's still this stupid, stupid, stupid little voice in his head that won't shut up about how cool it'd be to actually manage to become an astronaut despite—

—everything.

He wants to ask what Valerie wanted to be when she grew up, but that's... not now. That's a conversation for later, if he's lucky enough that she'll trust him with that little, foolish dream every kid clings to even when they're loudly proclaiming how stupid it is. Everybody grows up and realizes how stupid the dream jobs they wanted when they were kids was; it's the real dreamers that grit their teeth and keep working despite—

—everything.

He takes the risk, the leap of faith. He closes the distance between them and plays a pattern across her shoulder to warn her he's coming in for a hug. No cubes or guns or accidental ecto-rays materialize to blast him into next week, so he calls it a win and finishes the deed. She's all hunched shoulders and hard fingers knotted in his shirt, hot tears and probably some snot at war with how neutrally temperature-wise the rest of her feels. Everybody else—everybody human—feels hot as a sunburn if he gets too close. Ghosts are still too cold, though thanks to his handy-dandy ice powers none of them are ever cold enough to hurt like humans do. 

Here and now, hugging Valerie and whispering soft, pointless bullshit into her frizzy hair is the closest to human he's felt in—

—in too long.

"I'm sorry," she says.

"Don't be," he replies, instead of Me too.

"Thank you," she says.

"Nothin' to thank me for," he replies, instead of You should be blaming me for this.

"I'm scared," she says.

"It's going to be okay," he replies, and means it.

=

It's almost nine by the time he makes it to Sam's house, and he's so hungry he tunnel visions twice on the flight over. Lucky him, his friends and secret keepers know how bullshit his anatomy is, and there's a veritable buffet awaiting him when he gets there. Luckier him, his friends and secret keepers know better than to try and hold a Serious Conversation when he's like this, and leave him alone for the better part of 20 minutes before they both start loudly clearing their throats.

He slows his flawless imitation of a combine harvester long enough to muster a, "Hngh?"

Sam and Tucker waste precious moments he could be upping his calorie count with another psychic conversation that they're clearly both enjoying. He scowls, for all the good it'll do him.

"How'd it go?" Sam asks.

"Well," he says, setting his fork down to wipe his mouth with the back of his hand. Manners, schmmaners. "She didn't shoot me."

"Damn it," Tucker says loudly, and pulls out his phone.

"Seriously?" Danny asks.

"He owes Jazz twenty bucks," Same explains as Tucker begins a furiously-typed text. Danny suppresses the urge to shudder. Something about the haptic feedback on cell phones really sets him on edge. He genuinely doesn't know if it's a pet peeve or a ghost thing. Either way he always has to squash the insane urge to pitch Tucker's phone at the nearest brick wall, and right now that is an honest struggle.

"Seriously?" He repeats. "You bet against me?"

Tucker pauses long enough to level an incredulous glare at him. "Dude."

...yeah, okay. That's fair. Danny would've bet against himself too, if he'd known to. 

"Rude," he says anyway, on principle. 

Sam and Tucker both make a huge show of rolling their eyes, but at least Sam pushes another three slices of pizza in his direction. They even ordered in, so there's actual meat and cheese on it. He has the best friends a guy could ask for, even if Tucker is an ass nine times out of ten. Serves him right to lose 20 bucks, voting against him against his sister of all people.

"Details," Sam demands. "How's she doing, what happened, is she gonna stop trying to kill you, et cetera."

"Vlad happened," he manages through half a slice of pizza. Sam and Tucker both wince; Tucker hard enough he actually drops his phone.

"Fuck," Tucker hisses. "Why?"

"Dunno yet. And I dunno about you, but figuring out his latest scheme has definitely become number one on my honey do list."

They both nod. Tucker's the one to ask the important follow up. "And Valerie? How's she doing?"

He makes a seesaw motion with one hand. "Again, gotta stress the whole 'didn't shoot me' thing." He grins real sleazily while Tucker groans. "She's not great though. I foresee the next like, two months helping her out taking priority over all the usual ghost bullshit. Short of like, apocalyptic ghost attacks, of course."

"Fair," Sam and Tucker both say. Sam gives him a pointed capital L Look, going so far as to pull his plate a few inches away so he can better direct his instinctive growl at her. "She's not gonna rat, is she?"

"No," comes out more snarl-y than he means it to, but—pizza. Sam takes him at face value at least, and gives him his plate back, with an extra slice of meat lover's for good behavior. She's his favorite. 

"We're gonna co-op," he adds, and pretends not to notice the Extraordinarily Concerned Psychic Look Sam and Tucker share over that bit of news. Whatever. They can stress over the idea of Valerie being included in their group. Him? He's gonna polish off the rest of this pizza, pull his one (1) notebook and one (1) pencil out of his bag, and he's going to get as much of a headstart on his homework before patrol as he can. If he actually manages to finish his two pages of grammar problems he's going to call it a great day. Anything else? Well, that's gravy so far as he's concerned. 

He grins to himself a little, thinking of Valerie's new phone number burning a hole in his pocket. If anything toothsome decides to show up tonight he got the okay to text her. And honestly? For all that she's in the same bullshit hell as he, Vlad, and Elle are....

Well. It's probably shitty of him, but it's still nice to have an ally and friend in this half-ghost bullshit hell.

[ayamari-no-goshi]

Eidolon 11 | (T)

ff.net | AO3

Fandom: Danny Phantom (DP)

Summary:  AU: What started off as the result of a simple act of rebellion ends up causing his life to spin out of control. How will young Danny cope with the results as well as a past that has a strange habit of coming back to haunt him.

Warnings: rated T for violence, mentions of death, kidnapping, and various other things

Parings: hints of Danny/Sam much later on

Notes: originally uploaded to Ff.net. Cross-posted to AO3 and tumblr

11: Alternative Paths

The police officers told him they needed to ask him a few questions. What they forgot to mention was he would be locked in a small, remarkably bare room for five hours with a police officer who was dead set in viewing him as a suspect. Danny had never been more relieved to get out of a room before in his life. Yeah, he understood family members needed to be questioned due to the statistics surrounding such crimes, but seriously! Did someone as scrawny as him really look like he could have hurt Winston that badly without getting any sort of injury in the process?

However, he couldn't really blame them for being suspicious, especially when it came to his whereabouts the previous night. How do you rationally explain you were chased by a murderous robot-ghost-thing? The obvious answer was to avoid the topic all together. He hoped he was convincing enough when he said he and his friends had taken a walk in the evening and returned to Sam's house to watch some movies. He specifically avoided mentioning the park. There was no telling what the officers would think if they learned he might have been around when it got torn up. He was actually kind of surprised no one in the precinct had mentioned it.

A few times during his interview, he had nervously flattened his bangs a few times, hoping to hide the cut he had suddenly remembered getting at the beginning of his terrifying adventure. The officer interviewing him had noticed the motion, which caused him to leave it alone the rest of the time he was in the room. Surprisingly, Danny wasn't asked about it. A little wary after he was finished and allowed to exit the room, he touched the spot only to find smooth skin. It took a lot of self-control to not dash to a reflective surface and examine his forehead. There was no use in making the officers more suspicious. As weird as a missing cut was he could wait until he got home to check.

Scratch that… he could check after he found a place to stay for a while. As he was about to exit the station, an older officer kindly reminded him of the fact his house was currently considered a crime scene. After apologizing for a lack of effort from the staff for trying to contact his family and promising to personally look into it in the morning, he directed Danny to a nearby phone situated at the front desk.

Danny was a little surprised at the kind attitude of the officer as he had been dealing with a special type of dick for the past several hours, but it was a nice change. Shaking his head a little, he moved to the phone to call Sam, praying she was still awake as it was approaching midnight. Both of his friends told him they wanted an update, but with it being late and he being emotionally, physically, and mentally drained, the only topic he wanted to discuss involved where he would be staying for the night.

As he was dialing her number, the door to the station opened and a tall man strolled in. The newcomer was tall and rather thin. He wore a clean black business suit which appeared to be expertly cared for and rather expensive. Gray hair had been slicked back into a neat ponytail, and calculating cold blue eyes surveyed his surroundings. Danny dropped the phone in surprise as he realized the man in front of him was the one and only Vlad Masters.

The sound from the phone brought him to Masters' attention, causing the man to adopt an unsettling grin. "Why here you are! I've been looking all over for you!" The tone of his voice and his expression adopted a semblance of concern, but it did not reach his eyes. "I was so worried after I found out what happened to Winston. My condolences, but I'm glad you're safe and sound."

"Don't talk about Winston like he's dead!" Danny snapped. "Look, can you just go away? If you haven't realized, it's been a pretty bad day for me, and I don't feel like talking to you right now."

"Of course. How inconsiderate of me. After everything you've been through today, you must be exhausted. Come, I'll make sure you're well taken care of."

It took Danny a moment to grasp the implications of Vlad's statement. "Wait… what? There's no way I'm going with you!"

"Poor boy, you must be more tired than you realize." The businessman pinched the bridge of his nose as he let out a dramatic sigh. "Don't you remember? It was determined that you would be placed into my care if anything were to happen to Winston."

"That's news to me!"

"Excuse me, but what exactly is going on here?" The sound of the officer's voice made him jump. He had forgotten there was another soul in the room. However, he couldn't be more relieved. Being in the room alone with the businessman was an unnerving thought. It was even more relieving when he realized the officer seemed to be equally suspicious.

In a truly professional manner, Vlad introduced himself and explained his relationship to Danny as well as his involvement in the custody battle. Again, he mentioned how he was now to act as a guardian in Winston's stead.

"I already told you, I'm not going anywhere with you!" Danny growled as he glared at the man. Something was very wrong with the picture. Winston didn't trust Vlad, and there was no way he would let him fall into the billionaire's hands.

"You have to forgive the boy. We had a little spat the last time we saw each other, and I'm afraid he hasn't forgiven me," Vlad apologetically explained to the officer.

"Spat? You broke into my house?"

Before Vlad could respond, the officer held up his hand to halt the brewing argument. "Mr. Masters, do you have some sort of proof you can take the boy?" Vlad's expression quickly changed from shocked to insulted as the officer spoke. "Surely a man of your standing can understand our position. With the way Mr. Wolfe was attacked, we cannot rule anyone out as a potential suspect. With you being involved in a custody battle and Danny's status as a minor, we are rather uncomfortable sending him on his way like this. I'm also fairly certain you weren't notified of the situation…" The officer's eyes narrowed as he appraised the man. "Which leads me to wonder how you found out."

"One of my staff members was going to drop off some papers at the house when she saw the police cars and asked what happened" Vlad explained with an impatient air. "But that's not important right now…"

As he watched Vlad begin to argue with the officer, Danny couldn't help but feel a rush of gratitude. For whatever reason, the officer did not seem to believe Vlad's story and generally seemed concerned for his wellbeing.

Everything seemed to be going in his favor when Danny was nearly bowled over by a sudden blast of cold air rushed by him. Startled, he started looking around to find some possible source… and open window, a vent, something to explain it. While he tried to wrack his brains for some other answer when the normal explanations were ruled out, he noticed the officer stumble slightly. He didn't think anything of it until the man rubbed his forehead and excused himself for a moment.

Rather unsettled by the officer's display and being left alone with Vlad, Danny moved back to the phone to attempt to resume his call. Though he was able to reach Sam's house this time, a presumed butler answered and informed him that "Miss Samantha is asleep and no longer taking calls for the night." While Danny was pretty sure it was a lie, he went with it and asked the man to give a message to her when he could.

Displeased by the turn of events, he was about to try calling Tucker when the officer returned to the room. Something did not seem right as he looked at him. The man's posture seemed stiff, and his eyes were unfocused and reddish. Wait… Danny blinked and rubbed his eyes before checking again. The man's eyes were actually red! Weren't they brown before?

"Sorry for the inconvenience." The officer's voice had an unusual mechanical quality to it… almost as if the words he was saying weren't actually his. He held up a document of some sorts as he spoke again. "It seems like someone did verify this earlier, but just forgot to place it somewhere it could be found."

"Does this mean everything's in order?" Vlad asked with a voice filled with hardly concealed delight.

"Yes. You can take the boy. We'll be in touch within the next few days to let you know how Wolfe is doing."

"Splendid! Come on my boy, it's time to go!"

Danny backed away as Vlad beckoned to him, nearly tripping over the desk in the process. His mind was screaming all sorts of warnings at him. The entire situation felt wrong, but he had no idea how to escape it. Vlad was blocking his way to the front door, and he doubted the few officers left in the building would appreciate a desperate search for the rear exit.

"What did you do to him?" he demanded as his eyes darted between both men before he pointed at Vlad. He knew he probably wasn't going to get an answer, but he hoped he could stall the man long enough to come up with some sort of plan.

"Pardon me? Whatever do you mean?"

"Y-you know what I mean!" While he tried to keep the anger in his voice, it was quickly giving way to panic. Vlad kept moving towards him wearing an increasingly predatory expression which was really creeping him out. Strangely, the thought of accidently falling through the wall crossed his mind. Unsettling as it was, it was a far better situation than the one he was currently in. "The officer's not acting right!"

Vlad replied, but his words were drowned out as a strange coldness started to seep into his body, quickly filling every aspect. He tried to escape, thinking it was somehow tied to where he was standing, but his legs wouldn't respond. They felt heavy and strangely detached; his arms were beginning to feel the same way. He tried to yell out without any success. He soon realized his mind was being pushed further away from the sensations of his body and into something like a dark crevasse to be stored and forgotten.

But the coldness was not finished. It briefly brushed against his mind and seemed to whisper in an almost familiar voice, "Relax… It'll be safer for you and me if you do…"

Danny's last conscious thought before the darkness completely took him was to wonder if he was ever going to wake up.

….

When he came to, Danny found himself lying on his back and staring at an unfamiliar white ceiling. His mind felt groggy and his body heavy. Though he wasn't sure, he felt as if he had been asleep for quite some time. Sitting up, he tried to remember how he got where he was… only, he didn't know where that might be.

Looking around, he realized something wasn't right. The room he was in was rather large. It was a bedroom, not much different from Sam's, only it didn't have any posters or the same dark decorations. In fact, the room was mostly white save for some wooden furniture. Even the four-poster bed he was sitting on had a white comforter and curtains. The only real decoration in the room was a painting on the wall directly across from him which seemed to show military conquest with… a paranormal influence. It was rather grotesques.

The blank room gave him an uneasy feeling. Although it definitely wasn't, it gave him the feeling he was in a jail of sorts. Unnerved, he slowly got up and moved to the room's single window. After moving the curtains aside, he cursed as he realized the glass was heavily frosted, preventing him from seeing any scenery. His next move was to try the door, but it was locked.

After a panicked few minutes trying everything he could think of to attempt to open the door, he placed his back against the door and slid down it. What was he going to do? The better question was what was going to happen to him? With the room being blank, it gave him no indication of what he should expect. He should, he supposed, be thankful for it, but the wait might be too much for him to handle. What was the old adage? The suspense is worse than the actual event? He really hoped that wouldn't be the case.

xxxxxx

The sound of one of her parents calling for her to come into the downstairs wafted through the room, however, Sam was dead set on ignoring the summons. There were far more important things on her mind than dealing with whatever new 'daughter improvement project' they had come up with.

She was incredibly worried about her friend who neither she nor Tucker had heard from in a little over two days. At first she thought it might be due to being overwhelmed by suddenly finding out the man who raised him had been severely attacked and/or the police being jerks, but a call earlier in the day really concerned her.

She had been thinking about calling the police in the morning (while skipping class due to a feigned illness), however they beat her to the punch. Around eleven, she had received a call from one of the detectives asking her if she had heard from Danny. She told him no right before demanding to know what was wrong. Though it took a little bit of coaxing (and a reminder of her parents' influences), the officer admitted they had no idea where the boy was. He disappeared after his interview with another officer, and though they hated to admit it, after failing to contact him or anyone else who might have the boy, he was being labeled as a missing person. Her immediate response was to insult the competence of him and the rest of the force as the boy had gone missing from underneath their noses, but after she calmed down a bit, she promised to help in whatever way she could.

Sam sat down on her large purple clad bed and stared up at one of the posters on the ceiling as she tried to understand the situation. Her friend, who seemed to attract terrible and odd events, was now missing. Danny had tried to contact her the night he disappeared, but her family had forbidden her from further calls when she had returned home that night after they learned about the attack on Winston. Somehow, they had gotten the notion whatever had harmed Winston could attack her if she continued to talk to Danny. Though it was kind of nice to know they cared, they had taken it way overbroad.

But what was strange about the situation was there was no security image of Danny leaving the precinct. The officer had explained to her they had installed cameras a while back after someone had tried to break in to the office in an attempt to steal their guns. Due to safely concerns, they regularly had them checked, but the night Danny disappeared, they had a major malfunction. There was an image of him entering the entrance area, but after a few minutes, the image distorted so badly they could not make heads or tails of it. It also seemed to return to normal rather suddenly after a while, but Danny was long gone by then.

A look at the clock told her she was going to have to wait a while before she could contact Tucker. Unlike her, he had been forced to go to school. She had no idea if he already knew Danny was missing, but no matter what, he was going to help her try to find him. Tucker was the probably the only person in town who could possibly get an image off of the damaged security tape, and the only other person (besides her) who Danny had trusted with his issues. They had to try and do what they could to help him.

…

"So, any luck?" Sam asked the boy currently sitting on her rug surrounded by any number of other electronic equipment. He had been staring at the screen of his PDA with an intense look for quite some time.

She had managed to contact Tucker mere moments after he was finished with his classes for the day and explained the situation. After freaking out a bit, he told her he would be over soon after he made a quick stop. He arrived about forty minutes later looking more determined than he had ever seen him while carrying a bookbag filled to the brim with tech supplies she had never seen before. After asking if he needed anything, Tucker quickly went to work with his task.

"…Whoever did this to this footage is really good…" he eventually replied after a few more minutes of silence.

"What do you mean?" Sam asked hesitantly. It was rare to hear such a tone in Tucker's voice when it came to technology. He could usually work his way around a system in a few seconds, minutes if it was more complicated, but this was really causing him problems.

"It's hard to explain… Usually, people just modify existing images when they don't something seen, but this guy actually managed to replace some of the footage with an error screen…"

"So… it's gone… Like completely, gone? You can't trace it or anything?" There was no way for her to hide the hint of panic in her voice. If Tucker couldn't bring up anything, no one could… which meant they weren't going to have anything to use to find Danny.

A small laugh escaped Tucker, which caused her to stare at the boy. "Jeez, Sam, you shouldn't think so little of me. Who do you think I am? This guy, though good, made a small mistake. I guess he got interrupted or something because he started just covering up the image after a while instead of changing it. To most people, it's nearly impossible to catch, but it's there. Just give me a little bit of time…."

"A little bit of time?" Sam repeated as she watched him frantically work with his PDA. "How long are we talking about?"

He hit a few more buttons on the screen before he looked up and smiled. "Does 'now' work for you?"

"Tucker, you're amazing!"

"I know, I know. But it's nice to have my fans remind me."

Sam pulled down his hat in response as she sat next to him on the floor. "Anyways, do you have the entire footage?"

"I couldn't get part of it due to the replacement… but it looks like a little less than half was just modified…. So, let's see what no one wanted us to find…." He pressed a button on the screen and a fuzzy image began to appear. On the footage, they could see Danny backing away from someone standing near the door. It was difficult to make out, but judging from Danny's posture, he did not seem to be happy to see the person. After a little bit, Danny stopped retreating and followed the unknown man out the door.

Without any prodding, Tucker tried to see if he could clear the image a little or at least clear up the image of the suspect. After frantically trying several different techniques, he sighed and rubbed his eyes with his free hand. According to him, even though the person had changed methods, they were still able to damage the rest of the footage.

"I'll continue to work with it when I get home," he promised. "This is going to require some big guns for me to get something useful out of this. But don't worry; I'm not going to give up. After he saved our lives, I think this is the least I can do for him."

…..

Tucker had been booted from the house as soon as Sam's parents caught him being there. Thinking back, she was a little surprised he had managed to sneak past them in the first place since they were particularly good at catching people going up to her room. They had punished her in response by having her stay in her room for the rest of the night, which didn't bother her in the least bit.

Around seven in the evening she received a call on her cell. Noticing the number, she picked it up as quickly as possible, hoping her parents didn't hear it ringing. "Did you find anything?" she asked the caller as a form of greeting. The caller's reply was spoken too quickly and frantically for her to understand. "Whoa, slow down Tucker! I can't understand you!"

"Sam… it's worse than we thought!" came his panicked reply. "I managed to identify who was in the police station with Danny."

"Yeah? Well, who was it?"

"It was… Vlad Masters…."

Sam barely registered the phone slipping from her fingers and landing on the floor. How could she be so stupid? She knew that man had an interest in getting hold of Danny and should be the first logical suspect, but she didn't realize he would have stooped so low.

Angry with herself, she reached down to grab her phone so she could calm a frantic Tucker but stopped midway as a thought crossed her mind. How were they going to be able to get Danny back from a man who had mastered in lies with an unimaginable fortune to back him up?

=============================================================

I just wanted to point out that the way these officers are depicted is due to experience. The ones in the borough where I grew up were usually nice, but if they had it in their minds you did something wrong, you could be treated like trash. But at the same time, they're the reason why my childhood bully wasn't excepted into the NFL - they slapped him with assault charges when he decided to get into a fight while he was in college. I have mixed feelings. The officers from the neighboring borough were wonderful.

[darks-ink]

What A Nice Surprise CH.3

Yay, Jazz is finally here! Can you believe that I initially started writing WaNS because I wanted Jazz to meet Danny in this AU, and then it took 10.000 words for it to actually happen. Yikes.

(First Chapter - Previous Chapter - Next Chapter) (AO3 - FFnet)

Danny rushed through his breakfast. He had been planning on leaving the house early and then waiting a bit before dropping back in as Phantom. Just to make sure no one would connect the two, even if he had been seen hanging out with himself before. Better safe than sorry and all that.

But, unfortunately, he had slept in a little longer than intended. It wasn’t entirely his fault; there had been a couple of ghosts during the night that he had had to fight – including Technus, who put up an actual fight.

Sometimes Danny wished that he knew enough about technology to hack Technus’ robots. Or that Tucker was there, so he could do it for him.

It was just wistful thinking, however. Danny had no time to learn hacking. And he definitely wouldn’t endanger Tucker – or Sam – by dragging them into his fights.

With his breakfast done, Danny chucked his dishes in the sink and shouted a goodbye to his parents down in the lab. Their echoing voices called back, and he ran out of the door. He would’ve turned into the alley next to the house, but a little more time between him leaving and Phantom appearing would probably be good.

So he walked down a few streets. Moved closer to Amity’s park before ducking into an alley. Shifting to Phantom was as exhilarating as always – the feeling of cold energy crackling down his skin, through him.

Then he zipped off. Back towards his house, although the journey was far quicker now. The advantages of flying at high speeds, he supposed.

He made sure to go invisible before he got back. It was a bit of a habit – making sure that no one connected Phantom to the Fentons. Even if they did have a truce now.

The doorbell rang. Loud footsteps could be heard almost immediately, and Danny smiled despite himself. As much as his dad annoyed him sometimes, he couldn’t help but love the man.

“Phantom?” his dad asked, already stepping aside to let him come in. “Mads and I were just in the lab. Want to join us?”

Behind him, the door clicked closed. Danny dropped his invisibility, shooting his dad a smile. “Sure. Lead the way.”

Jack nodded, walking past him to the kitchen. Danny knew where the lab was, of course, but Phantom didn’t. Sometimes it was a little concerning how natural it came to him, pretending to be someone he wasn’t. Someone else.

But then he remembered how often it had almost gone wrong. The times he almost endangered himself or other people. All the work he had put into making it come natural.

His dad entered the lab, and Danny floated in right behind him. His mom looked up, her face brightening when she saw him. “Hey Phantom. Came to get the Thermos?”

“Yeah,” he said, hovering closer. “But I’m in no rush, so if you want you could continue your ghost studies.”

She nodded, leaning over her worktable. When she turned back to him, she chucked something at him.

He caught it by reflex. Looking down, he saw it was a new Fenton Thermos – shiny steel and green accents just like the last one. It was impeccable, smooth metal with a white lid. The only thing that differentiated it from the last one was the metal ring attached to the cap.

“I added a loop so you could attach it to your belt,” his mom explained, seeing his confusion. “Unless you prefer to sling it over your back?”

“No, uh. This is fine.” He bent down to hang it off of his belt as she suggested. “I didn’t like the back strap a lot anyway – too much risk of it getting crushed if I get slammed into a building or the floor.”

“Good thinking, kid.” His dad sat down next to Maddie, still with a smile on his face.

“Thanks.” He grinned back. Somehow he never got over this – over getting complimented as Phantom. Especially by his parents, by the people who had been Phantom’s biggest opponents for years.

It was a little bitter-sweet perhaps. And maybe, maybe, he shouldn’t have forgiven them so quickly. But they were his parents. They would always be his parents, even if they don’t know. He can’t hate them. That’s just… not the kind of person he was.

“So, uh.” He gestured to the lab as a whole. “Ghost studies? What are you interested in learning about today?”

“Would you be opposed to examinations?” His mom folded her hands together, looking pensive. Her goggles were pulled up – a rare sight in the lab. “There is much we could learn from how ghosts function on a physical level.”

Danny grimaced. He didn’t think he could count the amount of times he had feared dissection – at his parents’ hands, mostly. “I, um.”

“Nothing serious!” she assured him. “We will explain everything we’re doing, so you’ll know what’s happening. And you’ll be allowed to tell us to stop any time.”

“It’ll be like a medical checkup,” his dad added. “If we know what is normal for ghosts, for you, we’ll be able to use that later. If we don’t know what your normal body temperature is, we won’t know if you have a fever. If we don’t know what your pulse is, we won’t know if it’s dropping. That kinda stuff.”

That… made a lot of sense. “And I’ll be able to quit whenever I want?”

“Of course sweetie. And anything you’re uncomfortable with, you tell us and we won’t do it.” Her violet eyes were warm, loving. The kind of look he associated with Fenton, not Phantom. He barely repressed the urge to check if he was still in ghost form, even though he knew he was.

“Alright,” he said. Then, more strongly, he repeated, “Alright.”

He wrung his hands together, then squared his shoulders. “What’s first, then?”

“Let’s start with body temperatures,” his dad suggested, digging a thermometer out of a box. “Normally we would try and measure the temperature of your core as well, but I can’t think of a way to do that without, well…”

Danny snorted. “I get it, I get it.” He took the thermometer from his dad, looking it over. “D’you think it would work if I turned it intangible? I could try phasing it part-way through my chest so you can measure my core?”

“It’s worth a shot.” His mom pulled a notebook closer to her, clicking her pen. “Try measuring your temperature normally first, and then you can try repeating that with the thermometer intangible. If that matches your normal temp, you can try using it on your core as well.”

“Sounds good.” Danny twirled the thermometer around, then stuck it in his mouth. He had to admit that he was a little curious. He knew some of the very basics of how his ghost form worked – but only the things he had to know. How blood and ectoplasm measured up against each other, how ectoplasm was visible in his blood but blood wasn’t visible in his ectoplasm. More mundane things, like his body temperature, he had never checked.

They sat in silence for a few minutes. Danny couldn’t talk with the thermometer in his mouth, and his parents didn’t seem to be bothered by the resulting quiet. Maybe they just enjoyed the moment of peace that they had achieved. A ghost and two ghost hunters, sitting around. Like a family.

Which they were, but, well. The other two didn’t know that.

Finally his mom gestured for the thermometer. Danny pulled it out of his mouth and handed it over without comment. He simply leaned forwards, elbow resting on his knee, and asked, “And, what’s the prognosis? Am I gonna die?”

She snorted, shaking her head at him. “Might be too late for that, Phantom. Although your body temperature is fairly high for a ghost. Still nowhere close to a human, though.”

Danny nodded. He had figured as much. Ghosts felt cold to him when he touched them, and humans felt warm. It was to be expected that he was somewhere in the middle, then.

His dad pulled out some other equipment. The stethoscope, Danny recognized. He wasn’t sure what the other machine was for, though. He frowned.

“This is used to measure your heartbeat,” his dad explained, apparently catching the cause of his confusion. “It might pinch a little – it’ll inflate to put pressure around your arm. Do you want to start with this, or with your breathing?”

He shrugged. “Might as well start with the pulse thing, right?”

Kneeling, his dad started fastening the armband around Danny’s upper arm. “We’ll measure it twice, if that’s okay with you. Once now, and then again after a few physical tests. See if your heartbeat gets elevated, and if it does, what your normal max is.”

“Sounds good to me.” The machine hummed as the band started to inflate. Like his dad had said, it felt a little uncomfortable, a little too tight. But it was alright. And knowing what it was supposed to do, the purpose behind it, made it feel less like a trapping and more like… well, like the machine it actually was.

After a few minutes the armband deflated again. “Well kid, if you were a human I’d be worried.” But his dad said it with a smile, so Danny wasn’t too concerned. Besides, he already knew his heartbeat was slow, even in human form.

“Good thing I’m not, huh?” He phased the armband off and handed it back to his dad. “Breathing first, or exercises?”

“Let’s do breathing first,” his mom suggested, looking over the notes Jack had taken. “If you’re okay with it, we can test your abilities for the exercises.”

He hummed an affirmative and started to unzip his jumpsuit. It felt a little weird to sit around his parents bare-chested, but, well. They had seen him naked plenty of times, hadn’t they?

His dad kneeled in front of him with the stethoscope. Danny had to repress a shiver when his dad gently put the thing to his chest – the metal was cold even on the skin of his ghost form.

A couple of breathing exercises later, Jack stepped away again and Danny gratefully pulled his jumpsuit closed. It hadn’t been anything spectacular – take a deep breath, now huff it out again – but it was a bit of a hassle.

It might come in handy later, he knew. But for the moment he was mostly doing it to placate his parents.

“Let’s do weight next,” his mom said, snapping Danny out of his thoughts again.

“Weight?” he repeated, frowning at her. “What do you need to know that for?”

“Curiosity, mostly.” His dad shrugged at him, still smiling. “Your structure is a lot more complicated, a lot more human, than most ghosts. We want to see how that impacts your weight.”

A scale was dragged out of one of the many boxes in the lab. Internally, Danny marveled at all the stuff his parents owned that he never knew about. Why did they even own some of these things? A heartbeat monitor couldn’t be normal equipment for people specializing in researching ghosts, right?

Obediently, he stepped on the scale. Made sure to tamper down his ghost powers as much as possible without shifting back. Floating, after all, came naturally to him in ghost form.

“Interesting.” His mom noted down the weight. Danny had to repress the urge to lean over and see what she wrote down. So sue him for being curious! He was the kid of scientists, after all. “Heavier than most ghosts, but not by as much as I expected. Ectoplasm is ectoplasm, I suppose.”

Danny shrugged. “I guess so? I never really looked into it.”

Now his dad stepped forward again, a measuring tape in his hands. Frowning, Danny turned to him. “And measuring my height is good for what, exactly?”

“You look like you’ve grown since you started protecting Amity Park, but we have no real way to prove this.” His dad held up the tape, as if presenting it. “But if we measure you now, and then try it again later, that might do it. If you get taller, that’ll be official proof that you do grow.”

“Oh, I see.” He cocked his head towards the nearest wall. “Want me to stand against that to make sure I stand straight?”

“Good idea, kid.” His dad followed him to the wall, and Danny pressed himself against it. Made sure to flatten himself completely – and made sure not to stand on his toes. He would’ve worried about his parents connecting his two forms because they just happen to be the same height, but his parents haven’t measured Danny’s height in forever. And with his teenage growth spurt (his unfortunately very slow growth spurt) he no longer matched that, anyway.

“5’7,” Jack concluded with a nod. “A good height for a teenager, but with room for more growth.”

“That’s what I’m hoping for.” Danny shot him a grin, leaving his parents to conclude if it was a joke or not. He already knew that he grew – his ghost form continued to match his human one, and he had kept a fearful eye on his height. He hadn’t been able to repress his fears that he might be too ghostly to grow – stuck the same way forever.

Thankfully this hadn’t been the case – and he was not doomed to be a teenager forever. Or the shortest one in his friend group.

Well, he hoped he was still gonna catch up on Sam and Tucker. Sam, at least, he could surely surpass. His dad was enormous – Danny couldn’t imagine being short for the rest of his life with genes like that.

“So, uh. Powers?” he asked, realizing that things had gone quiet.

His mom nodded, flipping to a new page in the notebook. “Well, we would like to record all of your powers, of course. If we know how many you have now, and how good they are, we could look into a training regime to help improve them.”

Wow. It was like Vlad, except less “let me kill your dad”. And less knowledge about ghosts, but that was something that Danny was more than happy to give up on in return for the “no killing” thing.

“Sounds good to me. But I can’t show you everything. Some things, like enhanced healing, I can’t really demonstrate.”

“Of course kiddo.” His dad pulled out another box, revealing a bunch of weights. “But we’ll start with the more mundane things, so we can count them as exercises.”

Danny floated closer, then landed on the floor next to his dad. “Let me guess. We’re starting with my physical strength?”

He grabbed one of the weights out of the box. It didn’t feel very heavy. “So am I just supposed to hold as many of these as possible?”

“Yup.” His dad grabbed a weight in each hand, then handed one over to Danny. “I’ll pile them on for you, you just have to hang on to them.”

Nodding, he took the two weights from his dad. After a moment of thought, he curled his arms against his chest, forming a pit of sorts he could stack them in. “Load me up!”

With a laugh, his dad did exactly that. He started stacking them on two at a time, occasionally glancing at Danny to make sure it wasn’t too heavy.

They kept that up for a while before Danny’s knees buckled and he almost crushed his dad under the weights. The final weight was noted down, despite Danny swearing up and down that he has carried more than that before.

“We’ll try again after getting your elevated pulse,” his mom soothed as his dad pulled out the stethoscope and monitor again. “It’s possible that you can carry more while you’re flying. After all, flying depends on the low-gravity properties of ectoplasm, which might make it easier to carry heavy weights.”

“Yeah.” The armband was fastened around his arm again. “That makes sense.”

So, as it turned out, his elevated heartbeat matched his human one. It made him a little curious to see what it would be in his human form. Maybe he would swipe the monitor at a later moment to test it himself. Like his parents had said, it could be useful to know!

And maybe he was a little curious. Maybe.

Per his insistence, they went back to measuring his strength. And, as his mom had suggested, he was able to carry more while flying. That, especially, was a good thing to know. Knowing that he could lift more while airborne would help him keep people safe, after all.

Testing his enhanced senses was a lot easier. While his range of vision and hearing were the same as a human’s, they were more sensitive. He could see further, had almost impeccable night vision (while in ghost form at least), and he could hear noises from much farther away. Taste and scent were, thankfully, equal to when he was human. He couldn’t imagine those being of much use, anyway.

After that, testing his enhanced reflexes was a logical choice. His parents would throw objects at him, often without warning. Although they did switch to bits of trash or other disposable objects after Danny destroyed the first few things by reflex.

So sue him, usually if things flew at him while he was Phantom they were meant to hurt him! The few times he had caught the weapons, they had always been turned against him. 9 out of 10 times they would turn out to be explosives, or otherwise traps.

Thankfully he hadn’t hit his parents – or anything besides the stuff they threw at him. More training might be a good thing after all, if only to make it so that he wasn’t so quick to lash out.

Wow, it was almost like he always used his ghost form to fight ghosts. If only he had more people in the know, he could spend more time as Phantom without fighting. There was, after all, a limit to how much time he could spend in the Zone with his allies. Sooner or later his parents would start missing him.

Maybe he would have to start visiting more often as Phantom. That might be… nice.

“We have no way to test your enhanced healing, so I think it’s time to move on to your regular ghost powers. Don’t you agree, Phantom?”

Danny snapped out of his thoughts, locking eyes with his dad. “Um. Yeah. Yeah, that sounds good. Starting with the three main ghost powers?”

“Yes. Let’s start with intangibility, please?” His mom clicked the pen in her hand, ready to take notes.

“Uh, right.” Turning himself intangible, Danny flew out of the lab and back in through the walls. Then he dove through a few tables for good measure. “And as you know, I can turn objects or people intangible as well. But last time Jack said that it felt weird, so I don’t usually if I can prevent it.”

His mom turned to raise a skeptical eyebrow at his dad. The man just shrugged, a sheepish smile on his face. “It felt kinda tingly. Made me feel weird in the stomach.”

“Tingly?” Danny repeated, brow creased. “Yeah, I think that that describes it well. That’s how I first started identifying it as well, when I couldn’t control it well yet.”

“You couldn’t control your powers at first?” She turned back to him, looking intrigued. “I would assume that ghosts form with perfect control.”

“Nah. Not over all their powers, at least.” Danny shrugged. “I know I didn’t have good control. I couldn’t maintain powers well, and I kept accidentally using them as well. It was kind of embarrassing. And new powers are difficult as well, but that seems to be common. Most ghosts don’t gain new powers very often, but they often need guidance with them if it does happen.”

She nodded, quickly noting it down. “Would you mind using your intangibility on me as well, then? I have to admit that I’m curious what it feels like, now.”

Laughing, he flew over to her and grabbed her shoulders. “Sure. I’ll fly through the wall and then back again, okay?”

Another nod, this time of approval. Danny tapped into his intangibility again, this time letting it flow through him and over his mom. She shivered but didn’t protest.

He flew them through the wall and then immediately back again. From experience, he knew that it was weird to be fully underground while intangible. A little scary, even. There was always this fear of going tangible again while buried. It had gotten better for him – he often used the ground now to hide for ambush attacks – but his mom wouldn’t be protected by that.

“That was…” she trailed off, falling silent.

Letting go, Danny floated a little back. “We warned you that it would feel weird.”

“Yeah, you did.” She shook her head. “But let’s move on to invisibility, okay?”

“Sure.” And he blinked out of visibility instantly. Slowly, he flew some laps around the lab. While he could turn himself invisible, he could still give himself away with the wind that rushed past him.

Coming to a halt right next to his dad, Danny leaned in right next to his ear. Then, quietly so his mom wouldn’t hear, he whispered, “Don’t be scared, it’s just me.”

Then he laid his hands on his dad’s shoulders and turned the man invisible as well.

His mom started, turning in the direction where Jack had been. “Phantom?” she asked, a little wary.

“Sorry,” he said from much closer, popping back into visibility. A smirk was on his face, and a wide smile on his dad’s face. “I couldn’t resist.”

She shook her head disapprovingly, but sighed somewhat fondly. “I suppose all ghosts are pranksters, even if they aren’t malevolent, huh?”

“Might just be a teenager thing,” Jack suggested with a wink. “But it was a very interesting experience! Didn’t feel as weird as intangibility, but it was a lot different visually.”

“Yeah?” That was interesting. Danny never heard about what his powers felt like to others. The only reason why he knew about intangibility was because his dad pointed it out before – and sometimes people he saved complained that it felt weird. Invisibility he rarely shared with other people. Or never, even. “How’s that?”

“Well, for starters, seeing myself see-through was strange.” He raised his hands, wiggling the fingers. “And being able to see you while you were invisible was pretty unexpected as well.”

“Really?” His mom frowned, eyes darting between the two of them. “You could see Phantom even while he was invisible?”

“I think it makes sense,” Danny admitted with a shrug. “He was piggy-backing off of my invisibility, so it makes sense that he was immune to its effects. I can see anything I turn invisible as well – it just makes sense.”

“Yes, if you put it like that it makes perfect sense.” Maddie shook her head, pen scribbling on the paper. “But knowing that it works the same the other way around is very interesting. Flight next?”

His legs melted together in a ghostly tail. “I’ve been flying around the whole time. What else do you want to know about it?”

“How fast can you go?” his dad asked, looking interested. “Top speeds seem to differ between ghosts, but you might be one of the fastest we see in Amity Park. And it would make sense – you need to be able to catch up with enemy ghosts.”

Danny blinked. Yes, that did make sense. “I’ve… never measured it. Never thought much about it, to be honest. Do you guys have some way to measure speed?”

“We should.” His mom put the notepad down, eyes roving over some of the storage boxes. “There should be a speed gun in one of those boxes. We used it to measure the top speed of some of our inventions – like the GAV and the Specter Speeder.”

He flew over to the boxes, hovering over them. Then he turned his hand intangible and stuck it in, rummaging around. “Shaped like a gun, right?”

“Well, yeah, but you won’t find it–” his mom started to say. Then he pulled his hand back out, white gloved fingers clenched around a speed gun, “– like that. You can touch things even while intangible?”

“Uh, yeah.” He played with the gun in his hand, slowly floating back to his parents. “I can reach out with my power to kind of… ‘feel’ the objects? Like turning them intangible on touch, except I don’t actually supply enough power to do anything?”

“Clever,” his mom complimented, taking the gun from him. Then she grew serious again. “Does intangibility affect your speed?”

“Nope.” He shook his head for good measure. “But corners do, so I’ll fly through the wall.”

She aimed the gun at the wall, then nodded at him. “Ready when you are.”

Zipping through the wall, Danny forced himself to go as quickly as possible. Not just for himself, not just to prove he could do it, but to make his parents proud.

He hadn’t realized how little he saw them with pride in their eyes until now. Seeing how they looked at Phantom whenever he impressed them. It made him realize how far he had grown apart since he had become Phantom. Keeping his secret away from them, from everyone… it had caused a divide. One he hadn’t noticed until now.

Confident that he had reached his top speed, Danny dove through the wall. Wind whistled through him – not just his ears, but his entire body – and he saw little more of the lab than colorful blurs.

Once the world had gone dark again, he slowed and turned around to phase back into the lab.

Panting a little from the effort, he leaned back against the wall he had come through. “And? Any good?”

“Well, 186 miles per hour sure isn’t shabby, kid.” His dad grinned, wide and bright and proud. “That’s about 300 kilometers per hour, too.”

Danny couldn’t help his impressed whistle. “Damn, that’s even higher than I thought.”

“Language,” his mom snapped. Then her eyes widened as she realized that, once again, she had corrected him for cursing.

“Darn, that’s even higher than I thought,” Danny repeated, emphasizing the first word. He re-angled himself so his feet touched the wall, letting himself stand on the vertical surface so he wasn’t floating anymore. “Was that better?”

“How’re you doing that?” his dad asked before Maddie could say anything. “Are you standing on the wall?”

“Uh, yeah.” He walked around a little, demonstrating. Then with a shrug, stepped onto the ceiling instead. “It’s like a subset of flight. But it’s kind of useless – most ghosts prefer regular flight.”

“Fascinating.” His dad’s voice was quiet with awe. Or, well, as quiet as Jack Fenton got. “But what would make a ghost prefer this over flight?”

Danny let himself drop from the ceiling again, flipping mid-air to land on his feet. “Usually overshadowing ghosts prefer it. I think it might be because the bodies are so much heavier than the ghost is used to carrying? But I dunno. I don’t overshadow a lot, but it never bothered me.”

“But you’ve overshadowed people before?” His mom looked at him critically. Criticizing.

He grimaced. Couldn’t exactly tell them that he had overshadowed his dad before to get out of trouble with school. “A couple of times,” he ended up admitting. “But only for short moments, and usually only to drive out other ghosts. It’s either that or ecto-rays, usually, and neither are well-received.”

“No, I would imagine not.” But her eyes softened, and the corners of her lips turned up a little. “The lesser of two evils might still be seen as evil, after all.”

“Let’s not give this one a field test, then.” His dad clapped him on the shoulder, and Danny almost stumbled at the sudden contact. “I already know what it’s like to be overshadowed, and it’s not a power we should train.”

“Definite agree.” Danny lifted up a little, floating at shoulder-height with his dad. “I don’t like using it anyway.”

His mom looked over the notebook, then glanced at the clock. “Maybe we should save the rest of your powers for another time. It’s getting late, and we haven’t eaten since breakfast.”

“Same, to be honest.” He looked at the clock as well, surprised to see that it had been a good few hours already. “Jeez, it’s like 3 in the afternoon already. Time flies, huh?”

“We’ll make it a light lunch,” his mom decided, closing the notebook and laying it down on a desk. “If we eat too much it’ll mess with dinner.”

Then she turned to face him, a warm smile on her face. “Speaking of which, do you want to stay for dinner, Phantom?”

Danny froze. Licked his lips, uncertain. “I, uh. I sh– can’t. Gotta patrol Amity, make sure no one is causing trouble, y’know?”

She wilted a little, but nodded. “I see. Will you stay for lunch, at least?”

His stomach rumbled, answering for him. Sometimes he forgot how much energy he burned through using his ghost powers – and maintaining his ghost form in general. “Yeah, I can do that. Just can’t stay until tonight.”

Lunch was a rather familiar event. Not just for him, because this was his family, and it felt natural to sit around and eat together. But also, it seemed, for his parents. Maybe they, too, settled naturally around him because he was their son, even if they didn’t know it.

Or maybe he just ate lunch with them too often. He was pretty sure that this was the third time he had eaten with them as Phantom, despite it only being his fourth visit.

The three of them had teamed up to do the dishes. His mom washed them, his dad dried them, and then Danny floated them to the right places using his telekinesis. He had to ask for instructions a few times, pretending he didn’t know where the dishes were stored, which was a little weird. But not too weird, considering, well, everything about his life.

Besides, it was good practice! Telekinesis was still new to him, after all. And while he had enough control over it to not drop small items, moving with precision was still tricky.

He didn’t even hear the front door opening. Not until a sharp gasp came from the doorway.

The sound startled him so badly that he lost grip of his telekinesis. He lunged forward to catch the glass. Barely saved it from shattering on the floor.

“Phantom?!” his sister said, incredulous. She turned from him, lying flat on the floor with a glass in his hands, to his –  their – parents. “Why is he here?”

His mom, having just dried off her hands, took the glass from his hands. He shot her a grateful smile, pushing himself off of the floor again.

“Well, as you could see, we were doing the dishes,” he explained, with the smirk he knew frustrated his enemies. The stupid snarky smile that everyone loved or hated.

The dry look Jazz shot him back just made him grin wider. “Uh huh. And was that all you were doing?”

“He was just helping us with some research Jazzy-pants, no worries!” Jack quickly started drying the last few dishes. “Nothing he wasn’t okay with.”

She still didn’t look very convinced. “Right. And he chose to help?”

“Well, yeah.” Danny took the dried plate from his dad and put it away – this time not using his telekinesis. It was already tricky enough while he wasn’t maintaining a tough conversation. “That’s kind of the point of our truce, isn’t it? They help me, I help them?”

“Are you telling me you guys have a truce?” Jazz, eyes growing wide, looked between him and Maddie. “Since when?!”

“Couple of weeks, a month? Something like that.” Jack handed the last dish to Danny. “He dropped by heavily injured, and we helped him. After that he forgave us for hunting him, and we’ve been working on being, well, better.”

Putting the last plate away, Danny rolled his eyes. “There was nothing to forgive you for, you know? You were just doing what you thought was best.”

“Unbelievable,” Jazz said, voice quiet. “You’re all frigging unbelievable. You’re just gonna move past all the trauma, just like that?”

“Uh. Yeah?” Danny shrugged, turning to face her properly. “They didn’t do anything too bad, anyway. And they’ve been really helpful since – I wouldn’t be around anymore if it wasn’t for them.”

“Oh.” Some of the tension drained from her posture, and suddenly she looked more tired. Still, she eyed him speculatively. “You’re… different. Not how you usually are.”

“You know, I’ve noticed the same,” his mom admitted, now also eyeing him. “You act different in public.”

“Of course I do.” He sat down on a chair, gesturing for the rest to join him. Might as well sit down for the conversation, right? “Out there, I’m like a hero, right? An icon for Amity Park, a protector. So I gotta be a hero. Not just do heroic things, but I have to act like one.”

“But the snark is all you, huh?” His mom smiled at him, knowingly, as she sat down. “The constant jokes?”

“Oh, definitely. Besides, it’s got a purpose. A well-placed quip can act as a distraction, letting me take the upper hand in a fight.” He shrugged. “Gotta take every advantage I can get, y’know?”

Jazz sat down as well, taking the chair opposite of him. “Doesn’t that ever hurt, though? To put up a facade, to constantly fight for Amity and never get appreciated for it?”

“Absolutely.” He huffed out a breath. “Especially back at the start, when everyone hated me and called me Inviso-Bill instead of my name. When people framed me and ruined the reputation I worked so hard to build up.”

He shook his head. “But I couldn’t – can’t – let that get to me. Protecting Amity Park and its people is more important. Whether or not they liked me didn’t matter.”

“But why,” she insisted, her elbows resting on the table as she leaned forward. “Why is this so important to you? I thought ghostly obsessions were a disproved theory?”

“They are.” He rolled his eyes, looking away from her for a moment to collect his thoughts. “But as I told your parents the first time I was around, I got a good reason to protect Amity. Just because I’m dead doesn’t mean that my family is.”

She pulled back, her eyes growing wide again. “Your family still lives here? Wow. They must be really grateful that you’re here to keep them safe, then.”

Oh, the irony. One day they would look back to this and laugh. But not now – he wasn’t ready to reveal his secret. Not yet.

“Not really,” he said instead. “They don’t know that I’m Phantom. I never told them – they hate ghosts, and I didn’t want to hurt them with that. With knowing that their own kid became the thing they hated most.”

His mom sighed, sad and weary. “I just wish you would tell us who they are, Phantom. Maybe we could convince them. Don’t you miss them, your friends and your family?”

“It’s fine the way it is now,” he insisted instead. “They’re… getting better. They’re changing, slowly but surely. And it’s not like I never see them, anyway. I can keep an eye on them, and when the time comes…” He fidgeted with the edge of his glove, looking for the right words. “When the time comes, I’ll tell them.”

And he wanted to. He really did plan on telling them, eventually. Because, sooner or later, they would all find out.

It had happened before, after all. In alternate timelines, changed realities. And they had always accepted him – in the moment, at least. But he couldn’t know it would go afterwards. Would they still let him hunt ghosts? Would they insist on endangering themselves, trying to help?

He couldn’t know, and he didn’t want to risk it.

“No wonder that Spectra was so fixated on you,” Jazz mumbled, breaking the silence. “She was crazy for negative emotions, wasn’t she?”

“Yeah.” He rubbed his eyes, trying to focus back on the present instead of what-if’s and could-be’s. “She’s a nasty one.”

“What’s this?” his dad asked, leaning forward as well. “What are we missing here?”

“Phantom saved me from a nasty ghost, back when he was still new.” She shrugged, looking surprisingly casual about it. “She wanted to kill me, I think.”

“I saved you?” Danny snorted, incredulous. “Dude, without your save with the Fenton Peeler she would’ve wrecked me.”

“Alright, so we saved each other.” She smiled, but the corners sagged and she looked more sad than anything. “Either way, what she said was wrong. You shouldn’t believe anything she told you, okay?”

Wait. How much had Jazz heard of that conversation?

“I know. That’s what Spectra does. She finds the thing that hurts you most, that you feel most insecure about, and digs in. And then the negative feelings make her stronger, and she then makes them worse, and it becomes this horrible spiral you can’t break out of.” He paused, licked his lips. “But, uh. How much did you hear from that?”

Wow. Smooth, Fenton.

“Not much,” Jazz admitted. “Only the last bit, I think. But I heard enough.”

She shook her head, frowning. “’Who cares for a thing like you’, jeez. Like you aren’t constantly out there, making a difference. Like it matters that you’re a ghost.” Her smile widened again, becoming more genuine. “If my parents, the most ghost-hating individuals in Amity Park, can be convinced that not all ghosts are bad, what does it matter?”

He huffed out a laugh. “Nothing Spectra says matters. She just spews vile lies. And when you fight her off, you start realizing that. I already knew she was wrong. But, uh. Thanks.”

“No Phantom, thank you. For keeping Amity Park safe.” She looked from him and to their parents. “For doing the right thing, even when everyone was against you. I can’t imagine how hard it has been for you.”

She turned back to smile at him again. Her hand came down on his, the warm fingers curling around his gloved ones. “Thank you, Phantom. And if you ever need someone to talk to, just remember us. Okay?”

“Uh. Yeah.” He tugged his hand away from hers, a green blush crawling up on his cheeks. It felt a little like Jazz was crushing on Phantom, and that thought made him more than a little uncomfortable. “Um. Thanks, everyone. For everything. But I gotta, uh. Gotta go.”

“Patrol, right?” His mom shook her head, resigned. “Stay safe, Phantom. And drop by more often, will you?”

Nodding, he was already lifting out of his seat. “I will, for sure.” He gave a short wave. “See you guys later, and stay safe!”

As he flew off, he heard the three of them shout back, “You as well!”

[goathouse]

the allydia hogwarts au i kept meaning to write two years ago

so, now that teen wolf fandom is making its resurgence even though none of us actually want to watch the show anymore i’m gonna share this teen wolf-harry potter fusion au i’ve had kicking around for ages

it’s based off of this awesome post about a squib faking her way through hogwarts and going on to join the ministry. that post gave me a lot of feelings, and i like to imagine that squib would go on to pass some important laws. 

-

allison grows up in one of the oldest, most respected wizarding households in the country. Her parents are both aurors, her grandpa and cousin are influential figures in the ministry, and everyone is so excited to see what little allison will do when she starts to show signs of magic. except she never does. 

so there’s whispering between the adults in her life about the s word starting when she’s around 9, and they try to hide it from her but allison’s smart and very good at listening in on conversations, so she figures out what’s up pretty quickly. she starts doing some research. she hears all sorts of tales about the horrible lives squibs lead, how they’re all totally dependant on their families, or homeless. there’s lots of stuff in the papers about squib rights debates, too, and the possibility of the situation getting better, but it’s all very nebulous up-in-the-air. she keeps hoping desperately for that spark of magic to come.

it never does, and when she’s 11 she doesn’t receive a letter from hogwarts. the argents decide to prepare allison for her inevitable life as a muggle by enrolling her in a muggle school for the next year. they pick a very nice expensive private school with uniforms just like hogwarts and say “everything will be fine” but of course it’s a total disaster. math is alright but she’s way behind in science from the get-go, and everyone gives her weird looks in history when she hasn’t even heard of the world wars, and then she has to deal with these things called computers that leave her utterly confused. by the end of her first day, all her classmates are joking that she’s an alien, and no one wants to talk to her. 

but she puts on a brave face and pushes through. she learns about geology and how to use a mouse and keyboard, and about muggle history. she still has no friends but that’s fine. she’s needs her family to stop worrying about her. she needs to be OK. 

then the news comes through. a very controversial law has just passed. squibs can now attend hogwarts on an altered curriculum. starting next year, hogwarts will accept not only 11-year old squibs, but any squibs under the age of 17 who would like to enroll in the first year class. allison hugs her parents and tries not to cry (because crying is weak and argents are supposed to be strong). she doesn’t go back to the muggle school the next day. 

allison and lydia get their hogwarts letters on the same day, and both feel a sense of great relief and cautious excitement. lydia has never heard of hogwarts, but she is so glad to finally have an explanation for all the weird things that have been happening around her all her life. she goes to diagon alley and buys all the books on hogwarts and the history of the wizarding world she can get her hands on, and spends the summer preparing. lydia wants to be the best at hogwarts - the most popular, the most successful. most of all, she doesn’t want to be the weird kid like she has been at her elementary school. but how could she be weird at a school full of magic, she reasons. when she reads about the houses, she hopes for ravenclaw; blue is a great color on her. 

on the hogwarts express, allison meets scott and stiles, two fellow first years who’ve known each other almost all their lives. they’re friendly and have no idea she’s a squib who’s a year older than them, so she doesn’t tell them. lydia meets a boy named danny, who seems nice enough, but she doesn’t want to decide who her friends will be until she’s got a full picture of the school’s social structure and all the important players. 

then they arrive and everyone gets sorted; allison ends up in gryffindor along with scott and stiles. they’re so nice to her but she can’t help but wonder how nice they’ll be when they find out. when lydia sits on the chair and the hat is placed on her head, she hears “Interesting...are you up for a challenge?” to which she thinks, of course, and the hat says, “good, because this is something I’ve been hoping to do for a while now.” and before she can figure out what exactly is going on, lydia has become the first muggleborn ever to be sorted into slytherin.

her first few weeks at hogwarts do not go at all as lydia had hoped. most of her housemates are cold to her and the people who are friendly seem to see her entire existence as a political statement they can support. she hates it, and sets out to take control of the narrative. she befriends jackson, a fellow slytherin who’s not especially fun to talk to but to does seem to have a lot of clout because of his family. he doesn’t like it that she’s clearly smarter than him, so she stops raising her hand in class. 

meanwhile, allison is outed as a squib on the second day when it becomes apparent to all her housemates that she is only in about half of their classes. to replace charms and transfiguration, she is allowed to pick two third-year electives, and she chooses muggle studies and care of magical creatures. the former is a breeze after her time in muggle school, and the latter is very interesting subject matter, but she hates being in a classroom filled with older students who whisper loudly about how they can’t believe she’s allowed here. 

she’s the only squib in the program (apparently there was one 15-year old squib who declined the invitation, and no others fit the age specifications) and feels hyper visible because of it. it doesn’t help that she constantly needs accommodations in her classes (like needing someone else to light the flame under her cauldron in potions because hogwarts has no magical means of producing fire), and that she only attends half of defense against the dark arts (the first half of each period is supposed to be focused on theory, although much of the time it isn’t and she just has to stand awkwardly to the side). For the other half of the credit, she has an individual seminar with the instructor in which she learns “non-magical defense,” which sounds cool but mostly just involves more theory from a professor who’s intimidating and clearly doesn’t want to be there. 

scott and stiles stick by allison, thankfully, but she doesn’t really have any other friends. the experience is better than muggle school, but that’s about all she can say about it for the first two years. 

third year, everything changes, because third year, they get a new defense against the dark arts teacher, and it’s harry fucking potter. the real-life war hero from the chocolate frog cards. as he tells them all on the first day when a student asks what he’s doing therem he’d decided that auroring is a little too dangerous now that he had a kid, and he’d always been interested in teaching. 

naturally, everybody loves professor potter, who is funny and kind and has lots of cool war stories to tell, but no one loves him more than allison because he absolutely changes her life when they meet for their first seminar. “what have you been working on so far?” he asks, and when she tells him he says “well, that sounds completely useless. how would you feel about learning some hand-to-hand combat instead?” and so allison spends two afternoons a week learning to throw a punch and kick, to strike with her elbows and knees, to deflect a blow, to dodge a spell, to take someone’s wand away from them if they’re standing close enough. she’s a quick learner, taking down every phantom attacker professor potter summons to practice on. 

meanwhile, lydia starts dating jackson and they become all anyone talks about (well, not the older students, obviously, but most of the people in years one through three are suitably awed). lydia learns that her magical talents and academic success will get her nowhere, but that her pretty face is a powerful asset indeed. she wields it with pride. 

in 4th year, allison dates scott for three months before she finds out that he’s a werewolf. she’s not really upset about the werewolf part, but she is very upset that he never told her even though he apparently told stiles ages ago. he’s apologetic and they become friends again after a bit, but she can’t shake the feeling that she’s the extra piece that doesn’t really fit, that scott and stiles need each other so much more than they need her. 

allison takes out her frustrations on professor potter’s conjurations. he’s moved on from human attackers to magical beasts, and she rips them apart with the knife she's now allowed to carry. “how would you feel about learning to use other weapons?” he asks one day, and when he offers her a selection, she picks the bow.

it’s the start of fifth year when allison and lydia have their first real conversation. they’ve encountered each other plenty but never had reason to talk until their potions professor announces that everyone needs to find a partner and he will no longer be allowing groups of three. allison looks to scott and stiles, her partners from the last 4 years, and knows instantly what’s going to happen. she tells them it’s fine and gets up, looking around for a friendly face. lydia, meanwhile, is telling jackson that no, she doesn’t mind at all if he partners with danny, and silently rejoicing because it’ll be a break from cleaning up after her boyfriend’s idiocy. 

“do you know what you’re doing in this class?” lydia asks allison with a penetrating expression. “yes,” says allison, “do you mind that you’ll have to do all the spells?” “i don’t like to let anyone else do the spells anyway,” lydia says with a smile, and then it’s settled. they make the best pepperup potion in the class that day. “it is such a relief to finally have a competent partner in my favorite subject,” lydia remarks. “it’s your favorite subject?” says allison, “mine too! and, uh, i love my friends and everything, but i’m definitely glad we’re partners now too.”

after that, they get along like a house on fire. they talk about their shared love of potions (lydia loves how exact and scientific it is, and allison loves how it allows her to make a sort of magic herself), wizard fashion, and, after a few weeks of bonding, the feeling that everyone around you thinks you don’t belong and resents your presence. lydia’s mostly flippant at first, obviously uncomfortable talking about it, but allison understands and pushes just the right amount. lydia realizes one night around winter break as she’s falling asleep that allison is almost certainly the only person in this school to ever ask how she’s doing and actually want to know the answer. it feels good to have a real friend; she hadn’t known what she was missing before. 

allison and lydia produce the best potion in the class every single session. jackson gets jealous and starts making snide comments, and allison tells lydia she shouldn’t put up with it. “why do you let him think you’re so much less smart than you are?” she asks one day and lydia starts wondering about that herself, too. 

the first day of sixth year, after a long summer of sending and reading letters in paris, lydia pulls allison into a tight hug when she finds her on platform 9 3/4. when scott and stiles arrive a few minutes later and sheepishly announce that they’re dating now, allison doesn’t feel any of the jealousy she’d thought she would. she’s just really happy for them, and content about her place in the world for the first time. 

NEWT potions doesn’t have partners, but allison and lydia still sit next to each other, and study together for every test. jackson didn’t do well enough on his potions OWL to get into the class, so he’s taken to making comments about how potions is the weakest field in magic. “you don’t even need a wand to do it!” he says once. “all the respectable work is in spellcasting; a muggle could make a potion.” lydia bristles “what’s wrong with something a muggle could do?” she says, glaring, and jackson is shocked into silence for a moment. she’s never talked back during one of his rants, she realizes. she always just let him go on and made sympathetic noises. and when did that become her life?

jackson starts to get more and more insecure and jealous about lydia’s academic success. “i think you need to spend a little less time on school and a little more time on me,” he tells her one day in a very firm tone. she doesn’t even look up from her book as she says “no.”  they’re broken up a few minutes later.

as she sits in her room alone after, lydia realizes she doesn’t even feel sad. if a version of herself from a few years ago were here, she’d be screaming at her to go apologize, that her status as jackson’s girlfriend was so much more important than a potions grade, but the version of herself she had become had different priorities. better priorities. 

a few days later, they’re walking through the halls between classes when one of her fellow slytherins calls lydia a mudblood, and she doesn’t even have a moment to think up a good retort before allison is punching the guy so hard he falls to the floor. “what’s your magic blood doing for you right now?” she says as she kicks his wand out of his hand before he can get a hex out. 

they duck away down the hall as a crowd is gathering and lydia can faintly hear stiles yelling “that was awesome!” behind them. “you didn’t have to do that,” says lydia once they reach a quiet corner far enough away from the noise. “no,” says allison. “it was fun though.” and she smiles and lydia has never wanted anyone to defend her, never wanted to need defending, but she finds that right now she doesn’t mind at all. it helps that allison was defending herself a bit too, that they’re kind of in the same boat, even if they’re opposites in so many ways. 

“god, the look on his face was amazing,” lydia says, and they both laugh, and lydia can’t remember ever being so happy before, and allison looks absolutely beautiful with her head thrown back, her hair in disarray, and blood on her knuckles. so lydia kisses her. 

allison is still laughing as she kisses back, and it’s so easy and simple and so fucking perfect.

jackson tries to get lydia back a few weeks later, putting his arms around her from behind and whispering in her ear about how he can make people stop talking shit about her family, and she kneels down and flips him onto the ground in one swift movement, exactly as allison taught her a few days before. “no thanks,” she says as she begins walking away. she can hear him wheezing on the ground but she doesn’t look back. “i’m good.”