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vigilant-insomniac · 15 days

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Ashes rain upon your scalded palms final part

Prev | Part 3/3 | or read on AO3

Chapter words: 2205

Fic word count: 9655

Maddie is yet again displaced and has to face another ghost. One that claims to be the god of time. He is the one behind it all it seems

Contains Clockwork and Maddie having a chat. And descriptions of off screen death.

Made for @phicphight

____

Chapter three

Never in her life had Maddie ever felt more helpless than when she opened her eyes and she was, again, somewhere new and alone. Unharmed, even though she was certain her son’s grief had torn her apart. There was no rubble this time. No destruction or any other signs of the nightmare she had just lived through. She still was way from home and her family. Instead she stood in a place like the inside of a clock. Gears floated and spun around pointlessly and she herself was standing on something that seemed to be a giant clock face. The sound of slow ticking was the only thing she could hear for a while and she wondered if this was another quest to find her son.

She closed her eyes and exhaled shakily. He must have been so scared. So lonely. She could feel it back there, what had happened to him.

That last wail, it did something, since her head was filled with memories. It was like all his grief and despair had been projected right into her min.

She really didn't like any of what had happened to her son. And that he was. Maddie had no doubt. Actually she had lost that doubt the second Danny had looked at her back there.

But there was undeniable truth to the things she saw during those last moments.

Her Portal had done this to him. It had been nothing other than his well intent, that made him step into the machine in an attempt to fix it. It cost him his life and the destruction of everything he had known. Himself included. And then there was a hundred years of grief and despair while his heart broke to pieces.

When she had found him, he had already been fractured beyond saving.

Maddie didn’t get time to release the tears that were welling up, because just as uncannily and unexpectedly as before, she was face to face with a ghost.

Resignation made her merely frown at the purple cloaked spirit who shifted his appearance like they were made of sand.

"You've found your son." The old man stated.

"I have." She replied.

He studied her intensely, and Maddie had the impression he was seeing more than just her face.

He didn't seem very forthcoming, Maddie realized, he was somewhat distracted.

“So I assume, you are the one who’s been pulling me along?” Maddie didn’t have it in herself to keep her hostility in check.

“you are correct.” The ghost replied almost sagely.

“Who are you? What’s the purpose of this?” she demanded.

The ghost turned away from her, and stared at who knew what. Was he senile? After a moment too long, he began his introduction.

“I am Clockwork. I am Chronos. I am The Ancient of Time…. some even call me Time itself. I have many names, but I am not known to many mortals. Yet still I felt the need to talk to you, Maddeline Fenton. You were a necessary exception.” Maddie already knew this conversation was going to be miserable. She just wanted to have a good cry and go back to her family. She wanted to hug Danny while he was alive and happy. She did not want to deal with this ghost. Even her scientific interest was not enough at this moment to push itself to the forefront of her priorities.

“You were the voice I heard back then? The one to send me to find and save Danny? The one to send me there, into the future?” she pressed when it seemed like the ghost was again just staring off into space.

“I was.”

Maddie was going to strangle him.

“So what now? I failed him. I couldn’t save him at all. Whatever I was meant to do back there, I didn’t and my son-” She couldn’t say it.

“You didn’t. Not yet. Not anymore.” Clockwork turned to her with sorrow.

“But you want me to? Right? I don’t know why someone akin to a god would be concerned with my family, but for some reason, you care about him and you want to save him, but you can’t do it yourself, you need me to do it.” He confirmed it with a sage nod.

“So send me back!" Maddie pleaded. "Send me back to a time when it isn’t already too late, and I will make sure the portal won't ever find its completion. Let me prevent this. Even if I have to turn my back on science and everything my life stands for. Even if I have to tear everything I’ve built, down with my bare hands. If it means I can stop this future I would do anything.”

And Maddie meant it. Her Portal was a scientific marvel and the pinnacle of her achievements to date. But if it killed her son and her family and everyone else in the neighborhood, then she wouldn't. It was as simple as that. Even if it hurt.

For a long time, Clockwork just watched her as she fought back her grief. This ghost, so powerful, and apparently yet so impotent, oddly enough, seemed to share her grief. His expression wasn’t an easy one to read, especially on someone who’s face kept shifting between ages. But Maddie could tell.

“You cannot interfere with this. The portal needs to be. And so does he need to be as he will be. This cannot be changed.”

“You are telling me, what,... That this is his Fate? Some perverse Destiny that chains my son to an early death? How dare you call yourself a god.” Maddie spat.

“Let me show you something.” he said calmly even in the face of her disdain.

Without waiting for her reply, vivid visions erupted in her head. Maddie doubled over in pain. Her head was bursting, but what really made her scream into her balled up fist was the endless stream of-

When it was over Maddie was rendered breathless.

“Is there really none?" She asked with growing hopelessness. "No future in which he will get to grow old?” she managed to whisper.

The after images of blood, broken bones and so so much sickness haunted her head. This time she was glad the ghost took so long to reply she struggled to gather herself. It had hurt, to get Danny’s death shown to her when he had broken apart in her arms. But what the ghost, Clockwork had done, was as if she had seen into an infinite amount of realities and in each one, Danny would die. Sometimes he wouldn’t make it out of infancy, sometimes it would be a sickness or an accident. Sometimes it was murder or catastrophe. No matter the cause, the effect was always the same.

“That is why you won’t let me go back to tear down my portal? Because it would not make a difference?”

“He will die. That is Fate.” said the God with regret in his voice. “But, you are misunderstanding the crucial part."

Maddie looked at the ghost with weariness. "Danny will always die early. In every reality, no matter what measures are taken. Yet in the timeline you hail from, in which he steps into your Portal, he conquers and fools the very Destiny that has him bound. He died, yes, but just this once, he did the unimaginable-”

It suddenly clicked for her. All those deaths blinded her to what Clockwork was trying to get her to focus on.

“He lived.” Maddie concluded.

"He did."

“You.. you don’t need me to save him from the portal at all, then?”

“I do not.”

Hope was a mean beast. But she welcomed it with open arms. Her mind reeled at the implications of an existence that would be torn between life and death.

She had seen Danny. He had been a ghost, yes, but then he had turned back into a human. He had been alive. Even the short moment she had to embrace him, she could tell he had breath and a pulse.

Suddenly though, she wasn’t sure if she should be as relieved as she was. That version of Danny had been miserable.

“So as long as he lives on after his death, he will be… safe?”

“Fate isn’t easily fought,” he stated.

Maddie considered this. “He still… died. In the Time you sent me to. Not just that, he lived in a wasteland for a century and suffered through every moment of it, I… I don’t want that for my son. This can’t be the timeline you want him to arrive at. Surely it’s not.”

“Fate has a will of its own and will not let go of who it has burrowed it’s claws into. It is determined to drag Danny back by force. After he enters the path towards becoming fully liminal, he may be one step ahead of Fate, but its meddling will have already set off the chain of events that will cause him to break. His Heart, you see, which is his greatest strength, is also Fate’s final attempt to stop him.”

The way the Ghost spoke of it, it almost seemed like Fate was its own entity. Standing here with Time itself, as he had called himself, it made sense that it would be. But then…

“I’ve asked you before, why you were so concerned with my son, but the way you speak, I would rather know why Fate seems to be so determined to interfere with him. What is…Fate so afraid of.”

The Ghost’s eyes glinted “Because if he isn’t stopped, Danny will be something beyond Fate's reach. That’s the loophole. Danny is effectively running a race to become an entity that will be above mere things like Fate. And Fate was never fond of having anyone oppose it.”

Maddie’s eyes widened “He’ll… He’ll be like you.”

The God of Time smiled gently, neither confirming or dismissing her.

She needed a minute to just sort her thoughts. Danny would… live. As long as he escaped fate and became something beyond a human or a ghost. But it was a race to find a path that would lead to that result before he died without the portal or despaired after the portal.

There were conditions he had to meet and Maddie wasn't a scientist for nothing.

So she sorted it in her head:

1. Danny had to die in the portal.

2. He had to ascend in some way or form.

3. … and he had to do so without having his heart broken irreparably.

So her portal needed to turn on, but without causing the apocalypse. Her portal had to work. So all she needed…

“I see.” she sighed. Her smile was accompanied by tears of relief. “So this is what needs to be done. You know, you could have just said so.” She wiped at her eyes with something between a laugh and a sob.

“Your stubborn nature is a great strength, Maddeline,” Clockwork said warmly, “strong enough to rebel against Fate and Time. I know not one reality in which you would follow a plan, not forged by your own mind. You had to see for yourself, know for yourself and come to your own conclusion.”

Maddie wished he wasn't speaking the truth, but she was glad. They would save Danny.

“I never liked those things like Fate. But Time, I see, can be tolerable.” she admitted, “Although, do not be fooled, I intend to stay ahead of my Time. Who knows, maybe someday I will even show you something you couldn’t see coming.”

“I will be keeping my eye on you and your family." The god of time promised.

_________

Maddie woke up like she had for the last many years. Next to Jack and with her kids still sleeping just down the hall. She stretched languidly before picking up her phone and skimming her to-do list.

Today would be the day.

Maddie hummed along to Jack’s favorite playlist while they were down in the basement lab. She installed the final piece of titanium plating in her portal's insides with a triumphant cheer that Jack joined in from the outside where he ran a final check on the programming.

Today they were writing history.

Before joining her husband outside to do the honors of plugging in the portal, she paused in front of the small console she had added to this version of the portal.

With a melancholic smile she pressed the “off” button.

Today they would be “failing” to turn on the portal.

She consoled her husband when the Portal stayed silent after plugging it in. “We'll have it up and running in due Time, Jack.”

Today their son would die.

Jack cried when they returned to the lab after their break, to a functioning portal.

Maddie did too.

Today their son would live.

Maddie stepped out on the roof of the ops center later that day for some fresh air. There was not a cloud in the sky and the dusk colored the wide expanse in front of her in a beautiful set of colors. She let herself breathe deeply.

Today their son had defeated Fate and the future never looked brighter.

#danny phantom #phandom #dp fic #dp clockwork #mydannyphantom #mywriting #danny fenton #ao3 fanfic #maddie fenton #comments and notes are appreciated #originalwork

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vigilant-insomniac · 16 days

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One piece Meme redraw #2!

Why does it feel like they are co-parenting

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vigilant-insomniac · 16 days

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Ashes rain upon your scalded palms pt 2

Prev | Chapter 2/3 | next | or read on AO3

Word Count 3571

Complete Wordcount: 9655

Maddie builds a Thing and finally seeks out the Ghost to get some answers. She had to find Danny. She had to save her son. The Ghost was her best lead, and if she had to face it, armed with nothing more than her determination, she would.

Contains: Maddie & Danny, Post apocalyptic vibes, and the usual bucket full of angst! @phicphight submission

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Chapter Two

Before she could save anyone, Maddie needed to be more prepared than she was. Fenton Works was very much out of the question, since the only part of it still standing was the leftovers of the Portal. Scavenging from it felt like a bad idea.

But, there should be some workshops around that would carry the necessary equipment to build a very rudimentary shield or device. Jack's ancestors had a lot of know-how on how to contain evil spirits without high tech. Maddie had used their papers in a lot of her research and was pretty confident that she would be able to build something from what she would find lying around.

Danny had been an apprentice at a copper smithy, and she was fairly certain she still knew the layout of the workshop from when he had shown her around.

Mind made up, Maddie grabbed whatever she found promising in her current location. Which included the vacuum. That was some of the most advanced technology she would find in an average household, and if Jack’s ancestors got this far by just relying on analogue mechanics and plants, she could definitely do even better with some cutting edge tech. She also found a jar of salt that would help as a rudimentary protection against ghosts.

The radio she found was a bit too bulky to carry around, so she hoped that the workshop had one.

Her walk through the outskirts of the ruined townscapes felt eerie, she didn’t quite feel the same gooseflesh inducing sensation as she had closer to the portal, but she felt on edge in a way that felt purely instinctual.

The copper workshop was easy to break into since it decidedly lacked one of its walls. Maddie had hoped to escape the heat some more, but to get to the coppery, she had to get back into the zone of destruction, which meant that the buildings wouldn’t be intact anymore.

Still she was lucky. The workshop was mostly in one piece. Ash still coated everything, but she could still see that only some parts of the main room had really caved in.

So she started to rummage and explore.

Fairly quickly she had gathered a generator and fuel, enough copper and tin to build almost anything, tools to cut and bend, and wires and components from the vacuum. She even did find a radio that was in just as bad a state as the rest of the technology she had found so far, but still, it was a welcome addition to her arsenal.

The best thing was the soldering station though. In less time than she could have hoped for otherwise, she managed to build a construct that, in theory, should act like some kind of vacuum.

She didn’t have a container for the spirit she was hoping to catch, so she would need to watch out to keep the generator up and running.

As long as it did, the suction of the device would keep the ghost from going anywhere. It was a risk though. Even the generator itself was about to just fall apart, and her fuel supply was a joke at best.

She still needed a weapon. That was the conclusion she arrived at when she looked at the somewhat misshapen pile of wires and plates that were soldered together sloppily. To think she was going to bet her life on a device that was maybe as big as a dinner plate, that was untested and unheard of…..

A glance at the sky made her stomach sink. It was hard to tell with the diffused lighting, but slowly and steadily the sun had made its way across the sky. It was August, so days were fairly long, but she maybe had two more hours before dusk. Once it got dark, she’d be even more defenseless. Running would already be difficult enough with all the rubble, but in the dark? When ghosts were the most active too?

Maddie turned around and tried to find something that would work as a weapon.

There were the workbenches and the cupboards and the drawers with tools. She opened them haphazardly but nothing really stood out. She did manage to find a knife, and there was the salt she had pilfered from the house earlier, so she might be able to at least coat the blade and hope the theories were sound.

While she looked for another, better, alternative, her eyes fell on something she had dismissed as another pile of broken equipment.

She drew closer though, on her search, and noticed that the misshapen lump was a tarp over something.

Her hands moved carefully and she held her breath when removing the tarp shook up a cloud of ash and dust.

It took a moment to clear, but when it did, Maddie let out a shuddering exhale. Before her was a half finished telescope. It showed off craftsmanship and passion even in its half finished state. And it would never be finished. It would never be used to look at a night sky.

This was Danny’s.

There was paper under the parts. Plans and schematics, and more than a few drawings of constellations, that Danny would surely have gotten into trouble for, to be writing them on the margins of his work as just an apprentice.

Maddie couldn’t help the anger that flashed unbidden. She would fix this. Danny would get to see the stars through his telescope. She was going to find him and then bring him back somehow. They would find a way, and then Danny would finish his telescope and she would finish the portal and make sure nothing like this future would ever happen. She would eradicate every ghost beyond existence before letting them use her portal as a bomb.

“Focus on the tasks at hand, Maddie,” she told herself. She had her ghost trapping device, and she had a knife that she could coat in salt.

Next would be finding said ghost, and getting answers.

She nodded to herself and began pulling the tarp back over Danny’s unfinished telescope. It felt strangely mournful, but fitting in a way. She just didn’t like this association with her son. He had to be alright.

Maddie couldn’t stay here any longer. Time was of essence.

Quickly she found another tarp, folded up half heartedly on another shelf, and began gathering her makeshift machinery in it. She’d have to sling it over her shoulder so she would have her hands free to carry around the generator. She cursed internally that there was nothing like a battery that would both fuel an invention like that, and survive 100 years in an apocalyptic oven.

It mattered none. She wanted to get out in the open. Ghosts would be at an advantage anyways, whether she was within four walls or an open field, but with their supposed ability to walk through walls, which she herself decidedly lacked, she didn’t want to encounter the energy where she could be cornered.

The ghost had been around the portal and some part of her, the one that would shudder when she thought about going back to the epicenter of it all, knew that they were connected. She would bet that the ghost was the one to blow up her portal in her future.

It still mainly counted as a guess, but it was the only lead she got, so there was that.

She looped the tarp around her torso and made sure it would hold the delicate machine. Her handkerchief was back over her mouth and tied behind her head. The knife was in her belt and just one motion away.

So with a grunt she hefted the generator on her shoulder and began to move back out into the open.

Even just after a few meters, every step was already a struggle, and in no time she felt sweat run down her back.

One foot in front of the other.

Breathe in hot air, exhale hot air.

Find Danny. Save him.

Find Danny. Save Him.

The mission became Maddie’s mantra throughout the trip and no matter how much her legs shook, she didn’t stop until she could make out her portal's shadowy silhouette again.

Heat flared up and gooseflesh rose on her arm. Not yet to the same extent as it had back then, when she saw the ghost. But she knew it must be close. She could even feel its eyes on her. That, or her mind had decided to give in to the heat.

But it proved her right. She hadn’t been certain before, but now she would dare say, the ghost wouldn’t come find her without an added incentive. She had made quite some noise back in the coppery, and had almost expected to be discovered. So if it didn’t seek her out itself, she had to come to him.

The problem just now presented: setting up would take some time.

The closer to the portal she got, the longer she’d had to endure the heat, which already felt more than she could handle for long, and the more likely it would be that the Ghost would actually engage her before she was done.

She put down the generator with a resounding thud. Her legs almost gave out. Maybe she didn’t have that much room for choice anyways, it felt impossible to lift the generator back up again.

At least she was at a relatively flat part of the whole mayhem.

It would have to do.

Maddie began setting up her invention in silence. It was unnerving. The heat and exhaustion were making her hands shake and more than once she almost broke something off.

The sun was now definitely reaching towards the horizon too, so she felt compelled to hurry. To rush.

The threat of being stranded here at night sat in the back of her mind- she felt uncomfortable to even take a moment to double check if everything was connected properly before turning on the generator.

The disc shaped machine sat in place though. No wire disconnected and all parts undamaged from her trip ups during the walk.

There wasn’t a lot of fuel, so she had to make it count. Meaning, she had to get the ghost to come to her, before turning it on. Otherwise it might run for minutes or hours that she couldn’t spare.

She could still feel the ghost. The hair on the back of her neck, that refused to lie flat. It was somewhere around here. And just because she couldn’t see it, didn’t mean that it couldn’t be watching her this very moment.

Her running hypothesis was that the ghost had, for some reason, destroyed her portal to use it as a bomb. So, assuming it didn’t know all that much about tech, she could bluff her way through this.

Her mouth felt dry. Find Danny. Save him. She had to do this. For her son.

She kept her hand over the switch of the generator. For her son.

Deep inhale and hope her voice would hold after a day of impure air. For her son.

Showtime.

“VILE SPECTER! YOU MAY HAVE CLAIMED THE FENTON PORTAL, BUT YOU SHALL NEVER HAVE MINE. I WILL TEAR THROUGH THE VEI-”

Green.

Her vision was filled with the sight of a pair of glowing green eyes inches away from her own. She flipped the switch and for a terrifying moment she couldn’t breathe. She was in a furnace and any inhale would surely burn her lungs. Instincts screamed at her to runrunrun get away!

But her SON. Her SON needed her. She stood her ground even as teeth were bared and a growl made the very air oscillate.

A maw filled with razors opened so close she could feel its hot breath on her throat. Black smoke coiled around her like bindings.

Then the generator hummed and she could only sink to the floor with her entire being shaken, while the ghost thrashed and spat in fury at the sudden interruption of its meal..

The Disk was doing its job. It sucked the ghost towards it, like on a retractable leash. It had a bit of a radius it could struggle against, one that Maddie had to stay conscious of, but it couldn’t get away. It was confined, even if it hadn’t sunk in for the creature yet.

It screeched furiously and Maddie wondered suddenly if it was even capable of human speech. It had to. If it didn’t, her whole plan was about to fall apart.

For now, she could get back into her composed self. She was deeply shaken, the ghost had appeared out of nowhere. From one moment to the other it just had been there. Right in her face. It could have snapped her neck before she would have known what had happened.

Now she would be relatively safe. As long as the generator held.

The Scientist in her made her stop and observe for at least a moment. This still was quite groundbreaking, even under the circumstances, and who knew when the next time would be, that she could look at a ghost from such a short distance.

Now that she looked, she was fairly certain the ghost would be able to understand human speech after all. It only hissed and snarled right now, but it was fairly humanoid. It was built like a lanky teenager. Long limbs ended in clawed and blackened hands. Its body looked like it was covered in a black fabric that stretched over bony ribs and shoulders. The face was distorted in its fury, but while the features were humanoid enough, they were also somewhat otherworldly. Its white hair that was as long as it was tall, hid some of it, but she could still make out the most important bits. The eyes were a shade of green shed never seen before. Glowing and bright. The sclera was black though, which added to the strangeness of the green. Its bone structure looked rather delicate for a being this terrifying. Now that she looked closer, not much muscle could be seen either. Yet she had no doubt it would be able to overpower her with one hand.

Well, she would like some answers before that became the case.

“Stop that.” she ordered with a hoarse voice. The ghost growled in response.

“Let me guess, it’s your first time being caught? Then let me tell you the rules. I ask you questions, you answer them. If you do, you will be let go, and will not learn what sort of inventions I'm keeping in my lab coat.”

It still snarled at her, but it had its eyes locked onto her now. It definitely understood, it just didn’t seem to agree. Maddie fought to suppress a shiver at the intensity of its glare.

“Why did you destroy the Portal.”

More posturing was what she expected, but it actually froze for but a moment. Not for long though. It found renewed energy to throw itself against its incorporeal restraints.

“Hah!” she scoffed, “So I was right! You are the one responsible!” Maddie hissed herself. It didn’t take a verbal reply to get answers. Its behavior was clear enough.

“So you just decided to do all this?” she gestured around the wasteland, acutely noting the rise in temperature. “You somehow blew up the portal, about a century ago, to do what? Was this your goal? To turn a whole city into a hellscape?” Her voice rose and for the first time the creature seemed to not just want to get out of its cage, but away from her specifically.

"Answer me!” She yelled and the ghost all but flinched.

"Why did you do all this?!” Maddie’s fists shook as she held them pressed to her side. She wanted to kick and bite and tear apart. But this thing. She wouldn’t stand a chance. It made her sick.

The ghost didn’t reply.

“No matter." Maddie took a steadying breath. It was getting hard to really think. The air was thick and heavy. The temperatures have been steadily rising and her makeshift mask was soaked and starting to make it even harder to catch her breath.

“What I’m really here for is to find Danny. You have something to do with this, don’t you?!” She snarled not less viciously as the ghost had. “You’re the key to finding him, so I will not let you go, until you tell me where he is!”

“No.” That was the first thing she’d heard from the ghost that wasn’t just a sound. Its tone was disbelieving.

But then it said it again. And again. Anger rising and heat flaring. It’s body turned to smoke at the edges like it was getting singed.

“you know something!” She yelled in the face of that admittance. The ghost lashed its tail like an angered cat.

“Go away!” it screeched.

“Not until i have found Danny.” She screamed back. It was flying in circles, looking for a way out of its enclosure. It was furious, Maddie could tell, but so was she.

“What did you do to him? Whatever it is, he didn’t deserve it. He is kind. He is bright. And he deserved nothing you could do to him.”

It turned to her and bared its fangs once more. “Oh, you didn’t like that, huh? Cant handle the truth that you are none of those things?” Maddie grit out.

“How would you even know?!” The ghost roared in fury and Maddie couldn’t take the heat anymore. She needed more air. She tore off her makeshift mask and gasped.

“How couldn't I know,” she breathed into the unexpected silence " when I’m his mother.”

The air that had been charged with tension until then, suddenly imploded.

“No,” it began to mumble again, “No, this cannot be.”

“I killed you.” it confessed, and Maddie had expected as much. What she wasn’t expecting was the shift in mood. Where before there had been anger, now there was despair. The sky darkened and flakes of ash started to fall like a sick mimicry of snow.

“So you did. And if you have any morsel of humanity left, you will give me back Danny.” Her voice was firm in the face of its dismay.

“I killed you.” It repeated again.

She was about to snap.

“I killed everyone.” it whispered and the expression on its face distorted to one of pure anguish as it clutched its chest.

Wind, something that had been absent since her arrival, picked up and whipped her hair around. Ash stung her eyes and exposed skin and she had to brace against the gusts of hot air.

The ghost started to rock back and forth with wide unseeing eyes.

“I killed them. I killed everyone. I-” Maddie reached for her knife nervously.

Its head snapped up and-

crack.

A noise that was akin to a clap of thunder suddenly originated from the ghost and everything stopped.

The temperature too, cut like hot metal being plunged into water.

But Maddie barely even recognized it, when following the cracking sound, the ghost dropped the rest of the way to the ground like gravity had suddenly been turned back on and a ring of blinding light sprung forth from the center of its- his chest.

It took barely a moment, but something had fractured and the ghost, like a broken illusion, got replaced with a human.

He looked up and Maddie dropped her knife. Framed by black hair that pooled on the ground, her son's face, his eyes stared at her with an expression of utter grief and despair.

“I know that Danny isn’t any of those things, because I am Danny.” There was none of the echo anymore.

But this- surely this was a lie-

“But I killed them. I killed everyone I ever cared about. Everyone is dead. They are all dead. It’s all my fault, If i hadn’t- I had to bury you. I killed you. I killed my own mother, my own family. I’m a monster. I-” in agony he doubled over and Maddie scrambled up to rush to her son. This was wrong. This had to be a mistake. She had to find Danny. (He’s here.) She had to save him! (he was already gone.)

Her hands hovered over his thin shoulders.

“Danny-” The boy in front of her, didn’t even hear her. He curled up, and a scream built. The sheer desolation was palpable. Then the scream grew in intensity, it got hard to breathe again, she clasped her hands over her ears but it pierced right through, until it became a wail and Maddie knew nothing but her son's agony as if it was her own.

The image of him kneeling on the ground next to her, his forehead pressed into the ash would probably be the last thing she would see. It made her heart break almost as audibly as whatever had broken in her son.

She knew whatever was happening would mean an End, and after a century, maybe that was what he needed. She embraced him then, even as her eardrums ruptured and her lungs burst. Maddie had found him. If only she could have saved him too.

At least she would hold him, until this ashen world of gray, finally turned to black.

“Time out.”

#phic phight 2024 #phan phic #phic phight #phic phight 24 #fanfic #ao3 #dp #danny phantom #phandom #mywriting #originalwork #mydannyphantom

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vigilant-insomniac · 16 days

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vigilant-insomniac · 17 days

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Felt cute, might delete later.

#cute #q

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vigilant-insomniac · 18 days

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Needs to be dipped in Ranch 2

What tha fuck

#danny phantom #jazz: forbidden dorito #danny: not for me its not #i live by the hc that Danny could eat battery acid and be fine #in that case he probably did #just to know what it tastes like

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vigilant-insomniac · 19 days

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Ashes rain upon your scalded palms pt 1

Part 1/3 | Next Part | or read on AO3

@phicphight submission for @ecto-mochi's Prompt

Maddie is unexpectedly sent to an ashen future. She doesn't even get the chance to meet the mysterious man who sent her to this apocalyptic world - she's only given a single command, ringing over and over in her head: "Find Danny. Save him.

Also Very Much inspired by @zillychu's fire core AU because it has me in a chokehold.

Contains: Danny & Maddie bonding (?), Post apocalyptic vibes. NOT the ultimate enemy. A bucket full of angst.

_____

Chapter One

"Find Danny. Save him."

Maddie awoke with a start and immediately fell into a vicious coughing fit. Her lungs ached. The air was thick and polluted. She had to squint through irritated eyes once she had her handkerchief pressed to mouth and nose.

She registered heat around her, sweltering, like standing in front of a furnace rather than lounging out in the sun during a hot summer's day.

With half opened eyes, she took stock of what was going on. Fear and foreboding had consumed her mind by now and were only proven to be warranted. She had been half buried under ash coated rubble.

Her first thought was a house fire. Or the aftermath of which. But there was no ruin of a house, just the rubble that covered the area around her, and above her a dusty sky. Through the smog she could make out shapes that were vaguely shaped like the structures of houses in the distance, so she was certain she was in a town, probably even Amity Park. Had there been an earthquake?

Her hands pressed into a layer of ash, heat slowly sinking through her thick gloves, as she pushed herself upright. No pain registered as she stood. A small miracle. Not even her jumpsuit seemed damaged, only stained into a colorless gray.

"Jack?" She yelled through the cloth that she kept over her mouth against the worst of the pollution. It still sent her into another coughing fit. There was no response she could hear, even after her lungs had calmed down.

She needed a better vantage point then, if her voice wasn't strong enough to yell.

So she climbed the next biggest pile of broken stone and looked around in hopes of spotting a flash of orange or any other hints or signs of her family. But there were only broken buildings surrounding her and everything else was unrecognizable in its state of ash-covered debris.

What had happened here? She could still remember the last things she had done before waking up. She had sat in the living room writing a report on her last experiment.

Jack had been next to her, busy with his handcrafts. Jazz had been off with her fiancé and Danny-

"Find Danny. Save him."

Maddie almost fell off the pile of broken bricks. "Who's there?!" She yelled hoarsely.

But the world had gone quiet again. She hadn't noticed it before, with the pounding of her heart and the clattering of rubble as she scrambled around, but, if she held her breath and stood still, the world turned utterly soundless.

Not a scurrying of a rat or the yelling of someone in distress. No howling of wind or rustling of leaves. Time itself seemed to be depraved of sound- of Life.

Her breathing became short and shallow.

"Find Danny. Save him."

She flinched when the voice sounded again. So close it seemed to come from inside her head.

Was this her own panic sparking her into action?

Danny. Her son. She had to find him. But, didn't she have to find Jazz and Jack as well?

Or was this not her own thought? Maddie sank to her knees and forced herself to take in hot air. She wiped over her brow with her sleeve. The heat was getting to her, that was probably an onset of a heatstroke.

She had to find shelter, food, water…, find out where she was, find out what had happened between her last thought and this wasteland.

She had to find her family.

With new determination she looked up again and scanned her surroundings more carefully this time.

It was hard to make things out through the smoky fog. Everything turned into a monotone shade of grey, no further than a well tossed stone's throw away.

So she almost missed it, a glint far in the distance. Skeletal shadows stood blurrily, too washed out to really look like much, but they at least looked different from the rest of the ruins around her.

Mind made up, Maddie clambered down from her perch and headed towards it.

Her walk was a somber one. The heat seemed to be getting less bearable with every step and mirages distorted the ground and air ahead which made it hard to keep her turned towards the right direction.

Her breath through her makeshift mask hitched slightly whenever she tripped over hidden rubble and her clothes were quickly soaked. Ash mixed uncomfortably with her sweat. It clung to her whenever her steps disrupted the inch thick layer with every step and made billowing clouds of burned dust rise up like smoke from a fire.

Maddie frowned at that. She paused for a moment to look behind herself, and sure enough, a path was left behind. From where she had woken up, straight to where she was now. It wasn’t surprising that she’d left a track, but judging by the lack of any other footsteps she could spot, she might be the first person to have come through here in a while. She also wasn’t sure how long she must have been unconscious. She hadn’t felt all that dehydrated when she first woke up, but she had to have been lying there for a while for so much ash to settle.

Gooseflesh ran up her arms and Maddie rubbed fiercely at them. This was all pointing towards a direction she did not appreciate. Had she been spirited away? Had she been sent into some kind of Hell? The involvement of the Supernatural seemed the most likely explanation so far. More so than a house fire or an earthquake.

Her whole life though, she had dedicated to the science of the unknown. And she was getting close to the completion of the Portal. Her and Jack had been relentless recently.

So, while she should be ecstatic to maybe gather definite proof of the very thing she had been studying, she felt bothered by it… Her encounter with the Supernatural had been supposed to be caused by her scientific prowess. Not whatever was going on here. Completely unprompted hexing. Like this was all just a coincidence. A fluke or some kind of cosmic joke. She kicked a pebble.

“Oh you small woman want to play scientist and spend your life enduring the ridicule of people disallowing women the capacity to use their brains? Well none of that, my dear, let’s just throw all that hard work away and have the unnatural come to you, without the need to use that head of yours.” Maddie mumbled in a mocking voice. She was going insane. But still that thought irked.

She didn’t like those things called Luck, Chance and Fate. They felt so antithetic to her exhaustingly hard work she had to put in. It made it feel less. Her mother never had seemed to understand her issue with that. Maddie hoped she never made Jazz, or Danny for that matter, feel like that. Like their Efforts were any less powerful than Fate.

She exhaled a long breath before turning back towards her destination. This time she kept on the lookout for any signs of disruption in the soft blanketing. Any signs that she wasn’t the only person around. She had to find Danny. She shook her head. “And Jazz. And Jack. All of them.” she spoke with emphasis.

What lay in the distance was hard to gauge, with how everything looked like just another shade of nothing. But she had been right. The structure she was getting close to was different from anything she had seen on her path. Even more so, it seemed to be the center of the whole area of sorts. The temperature had been climbing steadily and the landscape had become almost completely flattened. It reminded her of tales of bombs and explosions that the men would bring back from the front. Her father never had told her much, but on the rare nights when he had sat down with world weariness and a glint of injustice in his eyes, he would answer all her curious questions and tell her about the dark side of science. About things that were made to cause only destruction. The alcohol had surely helped in making his tongue loose, even if she had always found it decently ironic, that for someone who would be so insistent on rules, that he would so easily break them himself when it came to something like smuggling in whiskey.

But she could understand it, somewhat. If she was disturbed by the sight of her current hellscape, she didn’t want to imagine what it must be like to experience it littered with blood, guts and bodies. If she had to live through something like that, then a bottle would also seem appealing to her.

She could go for a drink now, if she was being frank with herself. Her legs shook both from exhaustion and heat, but when she finally got to the structure, it made her trip backwards with a start. Because it didn't take too much of a closer look to recognise it. And it startled her because It was familiar machinery. Intimately familiar. It was the Portal. Her Portal.

A skeletal frame was all that was left of it. Warped steel reached towards an uncaring sky. She could spot drops of molten copper that stuck to some of the carcass' innards.

Maddie didn’t even care to suppress the sob that built in her throat. Her eyes burned from more than the dusty air, and she only had half a mind to not rub them with her gritty gloves.

Her portal was dead. Imploded or exploded. It took everything with it in its final moments. She wondered if it had spared her, out of recognition. Her life's work might have.

The pain of seeing her own in such a state was overwhelming. And all the destruction.. the portal was meant to break a new frontier, not be the root of catastrophe.

Calming down was difficult, but she had to put her grief aside until she knew where the rest of her family was.

Her theory of being spirited away didn't fit her new evidence anymore.

She was …home. Except her home was devoid of her family and her greatest creation had destroyed everything in its wider vicinity. It might have even killed-

Anger flared up then. This wasn’t right. Her Portal hadn’t even been close enough to completion yet. It had been in its infancy at best. There had been no permanent connection to a generator either. Even the ones her and Jack used, wouldn’t have had enough voltage to do more than run a few basic connectivity checks.

There was not even the slightest chance that it would be able to level a city. Not yet. Their plans would involve more voltage, more fuel, more unstable elements eventually. It would have had the potential in the future. But not yet. Even if Jack and her had wanted it to be much further down their project timeline. Their issues had always started and ended with materials. It usually took them compromises for what parts they would need, or patience while they first had to develop what they'd need. A lot of their plans even hinged on hypothetical materials that might exist in another time. Finding substitutes for them...it did bear greater potential for accidents and malfunctions, but so far her and Jack had been very conservative with what they'd use.

So this mass destruction couldn't have been her Portal's fault…. Yet, it sat right there, at the center…

Though when she looked closer, even less things made sense. There were parts, melted and deformed as they were, built into place, even though they should still have been sitting on a workbench. Some parts, she had only just put the order in for.

So what was this? It definitely was the corpse of a portal. She’d even swear that it was her Portal specifically. She had walked around it once now, but there was only so much she could tell, so she did the thing she would always vehemently advise against when it came to unfamiliar or broken machinery. She stepped inside.

She half expected something to happen. But it was just more of the same mutilated metal.

Still she couldn’t help the gooseflesh that returned to her arms as she inspected the remains.

Her brows knitted together when she saw the texture of the surface of some of the support beams. There was corrosion.

She knelt down and dug around until she pulled out wires from under metal plating that was thick but loose enough for her to pry apart.

“Why do you look like this?” Maddie mumbled under her breath when she held partially intact wires in her hands. They looked wrong. Not just like they had been caught in an explosion, but as if they were plain old. Brittle insolation that had faded from their bright colors, to soft pastels. Oxidation that would not happen in even a month or two, now discolored the copper. Even the beams she had spotted were rusting and flaking. They looked off-

Maddie’s head snapped up at a sudden noise. After the silence she’d been in since waking up, the sound came unexpectedly.

Even more so, It was a hissing growl that cut through the quiet like a knife.

Maddie had grown up in the countryside, she would recognize almost any local wildlife by their noises, so she knew exactly that this was not one of them.

She crouched low and moved to a spot with a large enough gap between the metal to look through. The noise had come from a distance, yet its echo had betrayed its force. Maddie felt the gooseflesh again. A shiver that ran up and down her body and made her shudder even in this furnace of a place. Instincts. That’s what that must have been about all along.

Her breath caught in her throat when her eyes focused on what she could see through the makeshift viewport.

Ghost.

Ahead of her, far enough that it almost got swallowed by the smog, floated and growled a ghost. Its un-nature was given away by its glow to anyone who had eyes. Even through the curtain of impure air, the light it emitted was unmistakable. Its shape was harder to make out. It looked vaguely humanoid, but she would have to get closer to make out any kind of detail. But she wasn’t armed very well, she only had her standard tools in her coat pockets and she was in an unfamiliar environment and without Jack. She wasn't ready to fight, no matter how much her desire fought against her reason.

Luckily it didn’t seem to have spotted her yet anyways..

It looked to be facing away from her too and growling further into the void beyond the fog.

There must be another one, she concluded. This was bad though. Ghosts were theorized to be highly territorial. So if there were two, a fight was likely to break out, if the posturing and growling didn’t deter the challenger.

Maddie decided to follow her instincts and retreat. Getting caught up in this would not end well.

She was glad for the ashy blanket on the ground that muted her steps, even as she all but ran. She didn’t dare to look back and only stopped for breath, when the ruins became taller and more resembling buildings and the air became cooler. Her newer theory must have been correct. The Portal was the epicenter after all. She could also recognise landmarks now. It was hard to reconcile this disaster zone with her home, but those were undoubtedly the streets she's known for the last twenty years.

After catching her breath and reveling in the comparably low temperatures, she continued in the direction she’d been running towards.

She wanted answers. The further away she got from the epicenter, the more likely she was to find things that were left unmarred.

She walked until she found a building that was left whole. Its red bricks shone through in places, and the windows were intact in some of the floors.

“I’m sorry” she whispered as she broke into the home of a family she'd known in passing.

It was no matter, as there was no sign of anyone having been here in ages. This time dust coated the surfaces and furniture, opposed to the ash she had almost gotten used to.

This place was exactly what Maddie needed.

She walked carefully through the hall and towards the kitchen. She found the living room during her search and the bathroom. She ignored the living room for now, but tested out the faucet in the bathroom. Nothing. Well, she hadn’t expected it to work. The city’s water system wouldn’t have been able to take such an explosion anyways. The watertower would have been in the zone with medium destruction, but that would be enough to render the town without a drop.

She noted how the faucet had been stuck and took a fair amount of force to even budge.

She continued towards the kitchen.

There were signs that someone had rummaged around and then left in a hurry. Maddie hoped that meant that whoever had lived here, had gotten to evacuate.

Maddie opened all cupboards and shelves until she had a decent pile of conserves. There was no water, but some of the tins were filled with soup. The labels weren’t pristine like something freshly bought. But Maddie was not prepared for the smell that hit her when she opened the first can.

Almost all of them were spoiled. Some tins had rusted in places. It took her some courage to drink from the one broth that smelled the least nauseating.

Yet it was a relief to wash the taste of smoke off her tongue.

She didn’t waste time after that to explore the rest of the home. The homeowners must have been on the wealthy side, since they were equipped with all sorts of modern gadgets. They even had a vacuum cleaner. Not that she would consider that high tech by her own standards. She had tried to get her own version patented long before that stealing bastard snatched her idea and made his own “vision”. You could only suck up dust with his. How was that superior to her home defense version? But that would probably not be the last stolen patent that quack would sell as his own … at least she could turn his pile of junk into something she could use for her own situation in a bit.

The living room had also turned out to be useful for her. Books, letters, and most importantly, a newspaper were to be found.

That one made her pause the longest in her scavenger hunt.

The date on it was impossible. It was well of a year into the future. When she picked up the brittle and gilbed pages, it almost fell apart, so she carefully skimmed over the articles.

“I must be hallucinating.” she breathed out. There, on the third page of the Amity Times, her name stood out from the headline of a column.

The Fenton Portal, her portal, had been completed but a test run had been a failure. The article was mocking. But right now she barely noticed.

She put down the paper and let herself sink onto the couch, not caring about the dust that got stirred up.

She'd been running around and mentally cataloging her findings for a while now. There was probably enough now to come to some conclusions about this situation.

Examine the evidence. That's what she had to do next.

There was no mistaking it, she somehow ended in the future. The paper read it was August 22nd 1924. That was one year later than it should be, … but that was also only the date when the newspaper stopped.

The paper itself held some answers.

It looked like the old records she'd get from libraries for her research.

And she was a competent scientist, she could make an educated estimate on how old things were based on their state. And this newspaper? It looked old.

And not just the paper. The portal too. And the conserves. And even the furniture inside this house. It all consistently showed signs of aging.

She didn't want it to be true, but the evidence spoke for itself.

She was in the future. A far off one. Most of it pointed towards it being around a century or so from when she should be.

Maddie rested her head on the back of the couch and stared at the ceiling.

So she had been spirited away. Not locally, but temporally. To a time that seemed like the aftermath of an apocalypse. Or post judgement day, as her mother would surely call it.

And her Portal was supposed to be the cause of it?

That part she still couldn't agree with.

Even in the newspaper, and she assumed it had been of the day everything had gone to hell, it said the portal had been tested and failed. But that must've been a safe affair, since the news of it existed. If it had gone up during the test, then there would be no one left to report on it.

She knew herself well enough to know that she wouldn't just turn it on carelessly after a failed run.

She couldn't even imagine Jack being so careless as to just turn it on or short circuit it.

An accident…. Maybe.

But they still had a procedure they followed when turning the Portal on even for its, in her actual time, half completed state. That included powering it back down and disconnecting it from its power.

But there were more factors at play here anyways.

There was a ghost. Lingering around here like it was its haunt.

And there was a reason she had been sent here.

The order to "find Danny. Save him." Had not left her head. It was like a song she'd hear on the radio once that would keep playing over and over in her head, even hours later.

Danny might've been sent here as well. Maybe she even set out herself to go after her son, and just had amnesia from whatever invention of hers brought her here.

It would be a relief at least. If she was here out of her own volition and with a mission.

Then that would mean she held strings in her own hand, and wasn't just being pulled along. It would also mean that the rest of her family wasn't here.

This would only hold up as a theory. But for now she would accept it and act upon it.

So the last piece:

The ghost.

Her instinct back there at the portal had screamed at her to run. And instinct, her intuition even, were rarely something she wanted to dismiss.

And her intuition was telling her the ghost was the key to it all. To figure out the apocalyptic event that flattened the city with her Portal at the center, and what happened to Danny. She would find him. And she would save him.

#completed #danny phantom fanfiction #ao3 fanfic #dp clockwork #dp fic #fire core au #Maddie Fenton #danny fenton #phandom #myDannyPhantom #myWriting #originalwork #danny phantom #phic phight 24 #phic phight 2024 #phic phight

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