Chapter Text
Danny remembered pain. He remembered that there was a bright light, a scream, and then there was pain. Not just pain, The Pain. He remembered the horrible tearing sound as reality was ripped around him. He remembered what it felt like as the weight of a foreign dimension crushed into him. He remembered what it felt like as the weight of his own crushed back . He remembered how it felt as strange energy invaded his body, shredding apart his skin, muscles, bones, tissues, and organs, seeping down to a cellular level. He remembered that ectoplasm had not been kind to him when it dismantled his DNA. When it burned through his body and rewrote him as it saw fit. As it took a part of him, a fragile, human part of him, and burned it without remorse. He remembered what it felt like when something else took its place. He remembered what it was like to be ripped apart. What it was like to be put back together different. Wrong. He remembered what it felt like to die screaming.
When asked, he said he didn’t. Everything would be easier if he didn’t.
At first, all Danny wanted to do was forget about his...accident. He wanted to push the memories behind him. Beneath the surface. If he didn’t think about it, maybe, just maybe, it wouldn’t hurt as much.
Sam and Tucker tried to help. They comforted him and they made sure to hold his hand through dropping science beakers. Through every school embarrassment and near mishap around his parents. He appreciated their dedication. But he knew they didn’t really understand. They didn’t know what it was like. What it felt like. Because they didn’t want to talk about it either. Because if they did they would have to admit what all of them really knew, deep down.
Danny was dead.
And he wasn’t coming back.
Then, the ghosts started coming through. And everything got worse.
At first, he tried to ignore them. Most of the ghosts that came through were small little creatures. Shades. He didn’t know how to explain it, but he knew they weren’t a threat. He knew he was bigger than them. Stronger than them. He didn’t know how he knew. He didn’t want to be able to sense the emotions of the little green and blue blobs that occasionally trailed after him, too weak to be visible to anyone else. The small little ghosts that seemed to follow him around like puppies, excited and chittering. But he was the only one that could see them. Hear them. At first, they freaked him out. But eventually, the things his parents told him his whole life, the things they said about how dangerous ghosts were, didn’t seem as true. Another thing Danny tried not to think about.
But then the ghosts started getting bigger. Angrier. And then they didn’t just come through the portal, they started coming through and attacking. They started hurting people.
And something in Danny seemed to snap every time it happened.
So he started trying to stop them. He had to stop them. Because something in him was hurting. Something in him was burning . It was burning like the Portal. Like The Pain. Something in his chest would start to itch and heat up, spreading through his body and running through his veins. Like it was trying to eat him alive. Well. Mostly alive.
And every time he defeated a ghost, every time he saw Sam and Tucker and Jazz and his parents and his classmates and his neighbors and his town safe? Well, The Pain in his chest didn’t hurt quite so much. Didn’t seem to burn him from the inside out, claw at his throat, and threaten to drag him screaming into the dark.
He counted it as a win.
🝢
Danny had been dead for two years, 118 days, and 9 hours. Danny had been admitting he was dead for around 7 months.
Jazz told him it was “progress”.
Danny wasn’t so sure.
He was, however, able to use it to his full advantage. The number of jokes that opened up with his acknowledgment of his death and other related traumas was absolutely astounding.
“Danny, please. You are going to be late for school.” He heard his sister beg, his half-opened eyes catching a glimpse of her bright, orange hair in his doorway.
“Can’t go to school if I have a temperature.” He argued back bluntly. He heard his sister heave a deep sigh. He held back a grin.
“You don’t have a temperature, Danny.”
“No,” he countered, “I don’t have a fever . I definitely have a temperature unhealthy for the typical human body. I’m practically hypothermic. I should stay home. Really, it’d be for the best.”
Jazz heaved another great sigh. There was a moment of silence, and Danny assumed Jazz had finally relented.
“I’ll give you money to go to Nasty Burger after school if you go.” Danny debated for a moment, before rising from his bed, grumbling the whole time. He tried to ignore the blatant grin of victory that was spreading across his sister’s face.
“I hate that you know how to bribe me.” He complained.
“Don’t be mad because I’m right. No one needs to be that angry all the time.” Jazz easily replied, triumph clear in her very posture. Danny rolled his eyes, mentally preparing to suffer another day at school.
🝢
Danny groaned as his back collided sharply with the lockers. It wasn’t as if it particularly hurt. He got thrown through buildings every other night. But that was Phantom. Right now? Right now he was Danny Fenton; the idiot who got himself killed. The weirdo with only two weird friends. The freak who ditched class and pulled low grades and was out of school every other week. The loser who was the all-time favorite punching bag of one Dash Baxter.
“So, what’s new with you, Fentina? Do anything interesting lately?” Dash asked toyingly, his bad breath hot on Danny’s face, his knuckles digging into Danny’s collar bone as he lifted him up off the ground and into the lockers. Danny tried very hard not to roll his eyes. (He didn’t succeed).
“Really, Dash? We’re in the 21st century. Isn’t it a little erroneous to still be insulting people with female connotations?” All Danny received for his smart-ass remark was a right hook across his jaw, a bruise already forming. (And fading).
“You better watch your mouth, Fentina .” Dash snarled, ready to go for another blow across the jaw. Danny was however saved by the bell, as second period began. Dash let out a sharp huff.
“You better hope I’m not late to class from dealing with you, freak. Otherwise, I’ll be seeing you extra tomorrow.” And with that “witty” remark, Dash stalked off down the hall to whatever poor teacher had the displeasure of dealing with him next. Danny let out a long sigh, slouching down against the lockers, settling into a seated position on the cold linoleum floor of the school hallway. Today was going to be a long day.
Danny was about to get up and head to his own second period, accepting he would be tardy but hoping he wouldn’t be marked as truant when he felt a sharp tug in his chest. He rubbed it, brow furrowing. That wasn’t what his ghost sense felt like. The discomfort in his ribs settled after a moment and he was ready to dismiss it as a weird growing pain when it happened again; sharper this time. He couldn’t help the stilted gasp as the tugging became more and more intense. A harsh, yanking sensation, as if someone was trying to rip out his core with their bare hands and brute strength. The pain started to burn and he felt the ectoplasm in his blood begin to heat up, growing uncomfortably hotter every moment. With a blurry-eyed glance around to make sure the hallways were empty, Danny let a freezing cold sensation run across his body. He hoped that turning into Phantom would ease whatever weird heart-burn thing he had going on. He let out a breath of relief, the cold of the transformation pushing back the boiling heat, the ache in his chest lessening as his bones and muscles softened into ectoplasmic structures.
His relief was very short-lived. The burning pain shot through his core, seemingly a thousand times stronger than it had been in his human form. He couldn’t help but let out a sharp yelp as the pain seemed to spread through his entire body. He felt his ectoplasm begin to buzz, seeming to hum with motion. The tugging got worse even still. Ancients, he knew he should have stayed home.
Finally, the buzzing and the tugging and the pulling and the burning and the strain on his core and his chest got to be too much. His whole body felt like it was being pulled apart at the seams and his mind was blanking in and out from the pain. And he just. Let go. He let himself be pulled wherever his core was being pulled to because anything was better than this straining pain that had tears in his eyes and made him feel worse than going toe to toe with Plasmius.
And when he finally felt himself stop stretching across whatever distance, when he stopped feeling like he was being pulled through time and space by a bungee cord duct taped to his core, when he finally felt his chest release, Danny opened his eyes. And when he did, he couldn’t help it when he didn’t believe them.
Today just got a whole lot longer…