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an-odd-idea · 4 years

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A Bad (Good?) Day

By @an-odd-idea for @baloobird

Rating: G

Relationships: Peter Parker & Tony Stark

Characters: Peter Parker, Tony Stark

Summary: Tony is having a bad anxiety day. Peter might have an idea to help

Warning: Fairly detailed description of an anxiety attack

It was a bad day.

Tony wasn’t sure why it was a bad day, exactly, but it was. It was a bad day in the way his heart beat faster than he knew it should, even though nothing was happening. And the way he hadn’t eaten all day, because he was honestly feeling pretty fragile in the not-throwing-up department. And the way his hands felt weak, although he could easily chalk that up to the fact that he hadn’t eaten, so maybe that part didn’t count.

And the looming sense of dread. That was always fun.

He didn’t even know what he was dreading; that was the worst part. Not for lack of trying, as his brain was clamoring to fill that void for him, but he carefully blocked it out. If he could just get through for a while, maybe he’d be in a better state by the time Peter showed up, and that would at least be something.

He was not in a better state by the time Peter showed up.

Peter, thankfully, was his normal chatty self, and Tony felt himself relaxing slightly as he was forced to focus on the new distraction from his unease. That was good, he thought. Maybe he’d be able to get out of it soon.

Alas, it wasn’t to be, and as soon as he had gotten used to the new level of input, the anxiety came creeping back. That was fine; it wasn’t as if he hadn’t dealt with this before. Tony busied his hands again with the wires he was replacing, not liking how weak they felt.

“Are you okay Mr. Stark?”

Tony frowned. He thought the kid’s senses only applied to immediate danger?

“Never better,” he replied. “Yourself?”

He offered a less than convincing smile, and Peter narrowed his eyes.

“Okay, I haven’t slept much and I’m a little out of it, but it’s all good.”

Peter didn’t look entirely satisfied, but he didn’t press further, and Tony was grateful. Anyone who found out how anxious he was at the moment would assume there must be a cause, and he’d definitely sound crazy trying to explain that there wasn’t. People always thought there must be a cause, like public speaking or spiders or-

Aliens.

Tony’s heart faltered. Well now there was a cause.

He threw his mind into reverse and tried furiously to push the thought right back out, but it was like trying to snatch a piece of fruit out of a blender that was already running. Ordinarily it might not have been, but on a day like this he was already lost the instant the thought had occurred to him.

“Hey Mr. Stark?”

Dammit. “Hm?”

“Have you ever seen Emperor’s New Groove?”

Emperor’s New Groove? Tony braved the churning mess his mind had become, but he came up empty. “Can’t say I have.” Did he sound normal? He hoped so. “Do I need to?”

“If you want to.”

“Well, give me the rundown.” He definitely didn’t sound normal.

“Well it’s about this guy who gets turned into a llama...”

Peter went on. Tony wondered when the chitauri would come back, or when the new aliens would come. Because one way or another, the aliens were coming, he could feel it in his bones. They were going to show up in the sky, and the world would panic, and he wouldn’t know what to do. He’d have no idea what to do.

“So then they have to go get the thing to change him back and it’s a big adventure, but really funny,” Peter concluded, and Tony mentally kicked himself for missing most of it.

“Sounds great, kid,” he lied. He wished he didn’t sound so winded, but air was a precious commodity as he forced himself to take slow breaths when all he wanted was to start panting.

Peter beamed. “Wanna watch it with me?”

“I’d love to.” God, what was going to happen to them?

“Cool.” Peter took him by the arm and started tugging him toward the elevator.

“Wait, now?”

“Sure!”

“But we’ve...” Actually, watching a movie might be perfect. He’d have at least an hour to get his thoughts under control without Peter observing him. “All right.”

“You’ll love it.”

Tony forced a smile and allowed Peter to pull him into the elevator. Did aliens have elevators on their ships, that they used to transport prisoners to execute them or experiment on them or whatever aliens did? Tony stared at the numbers of the floors going by. If they did, he hoped he’d take this ride alone. If he made himself the biggest threat, he might.

“I can hear your heart, you know.”

Ah.

“Mr. Stark?”

“I’m alright.”

“No offense, but you’re a liar.”

Tony was pretty sure that being a human stethoscope was cheating, but he couldn’t argue.

“Would watching a movie actually help? That’s just what I thought of,” said Peter.

“Honestly I have no idea. I might need some time to just... think.”

“Just be scared?”

Tony sighed.

“Come on, I have an idea.” Peter took him by the hand and pulled him along again when the doors opened. “Do you think Miss Potts would mind if we borrowed her nail polish?”

“What?”

“It works, I promise. I’m good at this.”

“Sure, as long as we don’t set it on fire. Got in trouble for that once.”

Peter gave him a quizzical look.

“It’s fine.”

Peter was still holding his hand, and Tony gripped back a little harder than was probably necessary. He wondered what Peter would think when the aliens came. He didn’t think to question the kid’s plan any further while they went in search of nail polish.

“Pink is good,” said Peter. “Usually I do clear cause Flash makes fun of me enough already, but it’s nice to be able to see it.”

“And what are we doing with pink nail polish?” Tony asked, once Peter sat him down at the table and took a seat across from him.

“I’m gonna paint your nails.”

Tony withdrew his hands.

“Or you can do mine first. I know it sounds weird but it really, really works, and you don’t have to leave it.”

His tone was pleading, and Tony tried not to imagine what he might say when they found themselves surrounded when the aliens came. He offered his hands.

“Good.” Peter patted the back of his left hand where he had put it flat on the table and opened the bottle of polish. Tony wrinkled his nose at the sharp smell. “So it’s kinda weird; you can feel the cold through your fingernail if you pay attention.”

“And that helps?”

“Yep.” Peter leaned studiously over the table and swiped pink polish onto Tony’s smallest nail with the tiny brush.

Tony looked over his head at the wall. If the aliens came, when they came, he didn’t want to think about what would happen to Peter. Or Pepper. Or Rhodey. He had to admit he was afraid for himself too, or at least for what the others might see.

“Here, you do mine first,” said Peter, pulling him out of his thoughts again. “You have to pay attention or it doesn’t work.”

Tony accepted the tiny brush from him and hesitated, hovering over his finger.

“Don’t worry about doing a good job.”

He was definitely going to worry about doing a good job. Tony carefully brushed the color onto Peter’s nail. It was weird the way the brush slid, much smoother than he might have expected for how sticky nail polish appeared to be. It looked decent, too, not bad for a first try. The next one definitely wasn’t.

“You have to get more,” said Peter. “It doesn’t hold much.”

Tony dipped the little brush into the little bottle and wiped it delicately on the slender neck like he had seen Pepper do, and went for another try at Peter’s ring finger. It was quite nice, actually, how the color swept out smoothly under the brush. If he watched hard enough, he could get his mind to focus on that, and his anxiety was left to stew quietly in his chest for a while. Honestly it wasn’t much of an improvement yet, and he felt rather like throwing up, but at least he didn’t have to think about it as much.

“Look how it goes swoosh, Mr. Stark.” Peter must have been eavesdropping on his heartbeat again. That really wasn’t fair.

“Swoosh?”

“Give it.” Peter took the brush back and grabbed his hand to paint a long stripe of polish down his middle fingernail. “See? Swoosh.”

“Uh-huh.” Tony took the brush back and continued, long smooth strokes of pink polish that were, honestly, strangely calming to watch.

“You have to say it.”

“I’m not saying it.”

“C’mon, just once.”

“Not on your life.”

“Please?” said Peter, and Tony didn’t even have to look to feel the puppy dog eyes he was making.

“Fine. Swoosh.”

It was such a strange word coming out of his mouth that he caught himself on the beginning of a laugh. Peter, being Peter, dissolved into fits of giggles, and his laugh was so irresistible that Tony actually cracked a genuine smile.

“Enjoying yourself?”

“Sorry!” Peter squeaked, clearly not sorry at all. “You don’t usually say stuff like that and it sounds funny!”

“I’m sure it does.” But Tony’s chest felt lighter as he finished painting Peter’s fingernails a shiny pink.

“Now I do yours. See if you can feel how cold it is.” Peter took the brush and Tony’s hand and made him lay it flat on the table. “But if you don’t pay attention I’ll make you do ‘em yourself, so watch.”

Tony watched. He was definitely breathing easier now, and if he focused on the sweep of the brush, he could almost ignore the still-irregular flutter of his heart. It felt like a dying moth.

“Can you feel it?” said Peter.

If he concentrated, Tony found he could indeed feel the cold of the polish through his nail, unless he was just imagining it. “Barely.”

“Isn’t it weird?”

“A little.”

Without any trigger, the thoughts from before were flooding right back in. They were like that sometimes, and Tony should be used to it by now, but he still found himself floundering because he didn’t want them to come back, he didn’t want them to come back.

“It’s okay.” Peter picked Tony’s hand up off the table and held it lightly to paint his thumb nail. “You know, it’s always hard to make it nice on your thumb because it needs more paint, but I think I did a good job, look.”

“Uh-huh.” It felt hard to get a decent breath again.

“I know you’re freaking out again, but that’s okay. If you watch how smooth it is, it helps you take smooth breaths.”

Tony watched, and he tried. Fortunately, it was a bit easier to control the same thoughts the second time around. He kept breathing. The nail polish was still weirdly cold, and Peter’s hand was warm, and the brush was a little bit mesmerizing if he watched closely enough. He tried to push all the other thoughts out.

“I still want you to watch Emperor’s New Groove,” said Peter. “It’s really good, and it might help.”

“Let’s do it,” said Tony, not one to argue at the moment.

“Good.” Peter repositioned his hand slightly to finish painting the last two nails. “You find it while I put this away. Don’t touch anything or it’ll smear everywhere.”

“Got it.” It was funny to be the one following Peter’s directions, but they seemed to be working again, so Tony wasn’t going to complain.

“Done!” Peter stopped to admire his handiwork. “I think you look nice.”

“I always look nice.”

Peter snorted and left with the bottle of nail polish. Holding his still-drying hands awkwardly apart, Tony made his way to the couch and asked FRIDAY to pull up the movie. Rather than give himself a chance to slip back into any of his old thoughts for a third time, he examined his hands, noting the place on his right middle finger where a small bubble in the polish had apparently been. It was interesting to look at; his fingernails were never shiny and pink, and they didn’t often have craters in them either. It was a good distraction, anyway.

“I’m back!” Peter hopped onto the couch next to him, and Tony was pretty sure its life expectancy had decreased significantly as soon as the kid had been introduced to his own life.

“FRI, start movie.”

Peter scooted closer, and Tony moved his arm to let him lean against his side.

“Will I turn you pink?”

“It’s probably mostly dry now.”

Tony wrapped his arms around Peter and squeezed him tightly. He was solid, and something about that helped Tony’s heart feel a little more solid too. Not so much like a dying moth now.

“Are hugs good?” said Peter, with his eyebrows raised in such a hopeful expression that Tony would probably have said yes no matter what.

“Hugs are good.”

Peter gave a satisfied little nod and leaned a bit more heavily against him, putting his head on Tony’s shoulder. “Now you have to actually watch.”

Tony wasn’t sure what he actually thought of the movie, but Peter cracking up next to him definitely made it a good one in his book. If he could just stay right here, in whatever headspace he had found now, that would be good. It was far from perfect, but it was good. He drummed his fingers absently on Peter’s arm.

“Are you still doing okay?”

“I thought you could just read that with your weird senses.”

“Well it’s nicer to ask as long as you’re gonna tell me.”

“Then I’m good.” Tony laced their pink-nailed fingers together. “I think I owe you a thank-you.”

Peter shrugged. “I get like that too sometimes, and it really helps for some reason, so I thought I’d see if it would help you.”

“It does.” Tony hugged him a little more, not liking the idea of Peter in the same state he’d been in earlier. He dropped a quick kiss to his forehead for good measure. “Thanks, kid.”

“You’re welcome.” Peter snuggled more fully into Tony’s arms like he was made to fit there. “Look, we’re almost to the best part!”

“Haven’t you said that six times already?”

“They’re all the best part, but this is really the best part.”

Tony ruffled Peter’s hair, and it was a bad day, but maybe part of it could still be considered a good day.

#friendly neighborhood exchange 3 #irondad & spiderson #fanfic #anxiety #anxiety attacks #i think that's enough tags just in case of triggers #friendly neighborhood exchange

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chrismerle · 3 years

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what’s up i spent way too long typing up a post about my thoughts on P5S, and it isn’t even all encompassing. i guess if you’re curious about anything i didn’t mention in this trainwreck just ask.

my spoiler-heavy thoughts/pseudo-review below the cut

THINGS I LIKED:

The characterization, broadly speaking. If you, like me, loved the Thieves in P5/P5R then you’ll be pretty happy with them here. There are a couple moments that made me roll my eyes (lookin’ at you, hot springs) but on the whole, the main cast are unchanged.

The new characters. Sophia and Zenkichi are great. Sophia is precious and Zenkichi straddles a very fine line of ‘realistically out of the loop, but gives as good as he gets.’ I don’t even care how silly their costumes were. Sophie looked like the Stay Puff Marshmallow Man, though I did like her little emoticon visor, but also she had no pants. Wolf’s mask was badass but the fact that his stupid pointy hat was riveted to the top of his stupid disco high collar killed it and I wanted to see someone grab his hat and pull it back to see it fling back into place like a drinky-drinky bird. Even so, the characters were great, and when I noticed that all the attacks for Sophie’s initial pseudo-Persona had question marks after them (Kouga? Dia?), it made me laugh, and Wolf’s a good all-purpose party member because he hits like a fucking truck and nothing is immune to Almighty. Plus in some of his post-battle dialogue he calls them all ‘kiddos’ and they consistently call him Gramps.

The gameplay. I mean, yeah, it’s VERY different than P5, but you all know that. And hey! The game no longer immediately ends if Joker gets knocked out (unless he’s the only one left in the party, obviously). It ran pretty smoothly, there’s something weirdly charming about the other Thieves showing up perched on cover points, and the only consistent issue I ran into is that in segments where the camera gets forced into a certain angle, it can switch back so abruptly at the end that you accidentally go walking right off a ledge.

I’ve never really played a Dynasty Warriors-type game before, so it took me a Jail or so to get used to it, but then I was just cackling as I mowed down swarms of Jack Frosts like a weed-whacker in a flower field with a knife the size of Joker’s torso. Honestly, it took me the longest to get used to the fact that the circle button became the all-purpose ‘interact’ button than anything else.

Actually, that’s a lie. It took me the longest to get used to the fact that if I left a Jail, I wouldn’t be losing any time. I’m very used to Persona games having the calendar constantly counting down, which wasn’t the case here.

The story, broadly speaking. It had some hiccups and some issues, which I’ll get into, but for the most part, it was fun. I’m...not going to outline every detail of the story here, but it felt very P5-y and I enjoyed it.

THINGS I LIKED BUT THAT NEEDED WORK:

The writing. It was a little inconsistent, beyond just the usual weirdness that I have accepted comes along with Persona games. (//patiently clicks through numerous conversations of the gang going ‘did this super obvious thing that this memory threw in our faces happen? Let’s debate about whether the most likely answer by a huge margin is the answer’ and several conversations of ‘are we sure this person is bad? We saw them playing nice, like literally every other villain we’ve faced’) A lot was great! Like, the bit with the Okinawa locals breaking into the RV while the kids hide in the bushes? Genuinely unsettling! Akane’s Jail and the fake Thieves was fun, and seeing Zenkichi scuttle from hiding place to hiding place without Thief powers was funny, and his Shadow’s glowing eyes watching him before becoming his Persona was both badass and unsettling. The realization that EMMA was actively lying to Konoe was nice. Character interactions were great and I loved that Sophia went with Ichinose at the end. There was a lot that was good. But there were also a lot of missteps.

Like, it kind of felt like the direction for the writing changed partway through. It started out as if each member of the Phantom Thieves was going to get their own time to shine, identifying and empathizing with a Monarch. Ann realized she could have been Alice. Yusuke realized he could have been Ango and also saw redeeming him as sort of like redeeming Madarame by proxy. Mariko was a link to Haru’s childhood and her father. The ghost Jail on Okinawa lured Sophie in and by the end she realized how much she meant to her friends ryuji said fuck. Akane was Zenkichi’s literal daughter. And then it went to Konoe and then EMMA, so Ryuji, Futaba, Morgana, Makoto, and Joker didn’t get a chance to shine in that regard. The switch from ‘a Jail for everyone to identify with’ to ‘whelp here’s the decoy and the end boss’ felt like they came from two separate drafts of the script, and it’s not like they had to watch the time; I got through P5S in about a third the time it took me to get through P5R. It took me about 35 hours. Considering the game kind of relies on you having played P5, they already knew their target audience has a longer attention span than that.

Owada was talked up as kind of a big deal, but he had like two scenes on-screen and otherwise was an entirely off-screen character. There’s a lot of mid-combat dialogue that is very difficult to focus on, which was sort of annoying when some of it was actually relevant. Ichinose’s reveal as a villain is very info-dump-y.

Plus, Joker wasn’t utilized particularly well as a silent protagonist. He’s got more implied personality than basically any other Persona protag. Which means he’s actually pretty expressive throughout the game, but I can probably count his lines of dialogue outside of combat with fingers left over. No one expects Yu Narukami to actually react to anything, so it doesn’t feel odd when he doesn’t. But the combination of Joker being reasonably expressive and having a demonstrated personality means you’re perpetually EXPECTING and WANTING him to say something about the shit going on, and when he doesn’t it feels like mentally missing a stair.

THINGS THAT I DIDN’T LIKE:

The cut corners. Like, a lot of things just seem lazy. There were scenes that really should have been included that weren’t, like how the Thieves escaped from the hotel after the police showed up; it cut from Zenkichi warning them and getting arrested to them arriving at the temporary hideout, so we never even got to see how the Thieves reacted to realizing the cops were outside. Requests to bond with the other Thieves only got a couple of text boxes, when they could have shown a tiny scene of them hanging out like they had all over P5. Rather than having Sae actually on-screen for her brief scene, the camera instead very unnaturally switched to an angle as if it was from her point of view, which was literally the only time the camera did that in the entire game. All of the Sentries look the same from Jail to Jail, instead of being unique to each Jail. Igor is completely absent for the entire game, and other than a throwaway ‘my master can’t be here’ from Lavenza it’s just not really acknowledged.

The missed opportunities. Like, there is no way to look at this except to assume that Joker was a horrible friend to literally everyone in this world state. Like, I can pass off the fact that everyone has their baseline Personae as being because they haven’t had access to their powers for a while, but when you combine it with the fact that NONE of Joker’s other confidants show up or even know he’s back in Tokyo, it leaves little to assume except that in this world, no confidants got maxed out. On top of that, the Personae are all basically pointless. They could be Pokemon or Stands or Digimon or fucking YuGiOh cards, and it wouldn’t make a difference; NOTHING about the game says ‘these entities are integral to this world and important to these characters.’ Also they could have had Akane actually realize who the Thieves were and it would have been hysterical, but that’s just my personal sulk.

The Requests. I liked the Mementos missions in P5/P5R. They felt like they had a point. Requests in P5S are all basically just fetch quests. ‘Go to Location A, fight so many of Enemy B to get so many of Item C. Turn in Request.’ Hell, one of them bugged out on me, I swear. There’s a Request to teach Zenkichi how to cook a simple meal, and Haru gives you a recipe including beef. I had no beef on me at the time, because if you want SP restoratives you gotta cook a fair amount and I used it, and I could find literally no beef in the city I was in at the time so I had to abandon the Request. On top of that, outside of getting food or a few moments where another character specifically asks for Joker’s attention, character-specific Requests mostly replace the ability to bond with the other characters individually.

The restoratives. Or, more specifically, the disparity between HP restoratives and SP restoratives. There’s essentially one cookable recipe to restore SP for every four recipes to restore HP. Even if I stopped at every store and vending machine, I’m pretty sure there were a couple cities where I could find NO SP restoratives for sale, while most stores and vending machines had at least two or three HP restoratives. And while it is true that you can go in and out of a Jail whenever you please to restore SP, that doesn’t help you if you run out during a boss fight you weren’t expecting (mini-boss encounters are virtually identical to regular monster encounters) or during one of the times where you CAN’T leave the Jail for reasons XYZ.

The final boss, and not just because I died and had to start over a few times. As a concept, EMMA could be cool, but in reality she just seemed like the writers threw Yaldabaoth and Maruki in a blender and poured the results into the game. Like Yaldabaoth, she is a false god who seeks to control humanity, claiming it’s what they want. Like Maruki, she seems genuinely deluded into thinking it’s for the best and that she’s not doing anything wrong. Her Jail looked like a slightly sci-fi reskin of the Depths of Mementos. The shtick with the multiple platforms and getting to actually SEE an all-out attack at the end were nice, but for the most part the fight itself was nothing special. Ultimately, EMMA had nothing unique going for her except her name.

Plus, EMMA’s entire rationale was that the majority of humans want someone else to control their lives for them, essentially out of convenience. And she’s presented as being more or less right, but that just being one of the hurdles of being human. It seemed a little dour and far-fetched. Like, the Thieves repeatedly point out that struggling allows people to grow, and they’re right, but in my experience, I’ve never actually met anyone who, upon hitting a roadblock, decided ‘Jesus take the wheel.’ Considering the greed with which her weird tentacle arms snatched up the solidified Desires, the pettiness of the complaints she used as a “gotcha,” and the fact that she just kind of reiterates her ‘people want to be controlled’ point over and over, I think it would have felt a bit more true to life and given her more agency if, instead of presenting her as largely correct, it instead acknowledged that everyone at some time or another hits a wall and wants someone to tell them what to do and had her capitalizing on those individual brief moments to hook people in, despite her having reams of data that for most people, those moments are temporary.

#persona 5 strikers #persona 5 strikers spoilers

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shinobicyrus · 7 years

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Let's Go Get Lost

Twenty miles outside Amity, Danielle threw up ectoplasm in a gas station bathroom.

She overdid it when she overshadowed Danny’s mom (his mom not my mom) and teacher before flying off, but it wasn’t like Danielle had a plan. All she knew was that she needed to be gone, the farther away from Danny the better. Didn’t matter where, so long as it was away from his face, his voice, home, his friends, his town, his life. So she picked a direction and flew, barely making it ten minutes over the too-hopeful ‘Come Back Soon!’ sign on the edge of town before she starting losing steam.

It reminded her of being carsick on family RV trips, vacations Danielle vaguely remembered from a childhood that wasn’t hers. She scanned the buildings below for a discrete landing spot and tried to alleviate the strain by switching back to human, but transitioning from floating to weak, wobbly feet just made it that much harder to stumble through the aisles of the Big 10 and barely made it to a stall before her legs gave out and she spilled green into the toilet for so long it felt like she was being hollowed out, inside.

Her throat burned, mouth retching on the taste of bile and the raw, roiling taste of ectoplasm that was like someone had soaked grave dirt in formaldehyde and battery acid before throwing it all in a blender with expired jello.

“Awsome,” she groaned into the bowl. Flushed it so she wouldn’t have to look at the otherdimensional goop. The plumbing here had probably seen worse.

Hard tile on her bare knees. Her fingers clutched around cold porcelain. A wave of deja vu hit her like nauseau in the brain: Danny young and small in his NASA pjs, puking his guts out while Maddie rubbed soothing circles on his back.

“It’s okay sweetie, just wait for it to pass and then I’ll get you something to settle your stomach.”

(notmymomnotmymomnotmymom)

Danielle shook her head to clear it, but all it did was make her dizzier and she hacked up a few more times until her insides stopped spasming. Panting, exhausted, face slick with sweat, Danielle sat down on the filthy tile floor. The walls of the stall were defaced with gouged initials, sharpied slurs, and promises for a good time. When her legs didn’t feel quite so much like puddy and she could stand without getting sick, Danielle pushed out of the stall, went to the sink, and washed off the sweat and tears from her face.

The door behind her opened. Dani looked up at the grunt of surprise and saw a confused middle-aged man and his son staring at her in the mirror.

“…this is the men’s room, isn’t it.”

Danielle started calling them ‘Danny Thoughts.’ Little leftovers of inherited memories caught in the green goop that made up half of her. Sometimes it was little things: a smell, a song, a brief moment of recall. Other times it was more intense, like a memory. A powerful feeling of deja vu.

What was the opposite deja vu? Did it even count if she technically never experienced it before? Her whole existence was defined in the betweens. Ghost and person. Boy and girl. Teenager and three-month old. Real person and crappy copy.

The Kennedy Space Center was down south. Danielle knew it was there because it’s embedded there in her DNA, courtesy of mad science and a space-obsessed 14 year old. She doesn’t even care if it’s his obsession because dammit, she wants to see a space ship.

So she walked until her feet hurt. She flew until she had to land and throw up. Huddled in the alley behind a Waffle House, she glared at her hand and willed it from melted plastic back into something more hand-shaped. Then she threw up again, got up, and walked some more.

Another in-between. Living and dying.

The guilt from stealing was devoured in a fit of mental cannibalism about two states back. She risked phasing her hand through vending machines, ancient payphones, and rigged arcade games for loose change. Even a few dollars could be stretched out if you stick to the fast food dollar menu.

First she got a backpack, then she bought cheap clothes at thrifts stores to keep in it, along with her food and road maps. Songs she’s never personally heard got stuck in her head.

“I got a bad disease…” she tunelessly serenaded the cars ignoring her on the Interstate. “Up from my brain is where I ble-eeed.“

Once and a while, a car might stop on the side of the road ahead of her, windows rolling down. Sometimes the people are nice; Danielle starts getting good at lying. Oh no, ma’am, I’m just walking to the next town over- visiting my Aunt over in Batesville. Well, sure, if you say it’s not trouble, that’s be real nice of you, thanks!

She made the mistake of getting into the wrong car, once. Once, and only once. Ten miles later he was stumbling and screaming into the woods on the shoulder of the road as Danielle watched him, eyes burning the same ghostly green as the fire consuming his car.

After that she got better at spotting problems before they got that bad. A lot easier to intangibly stow aboard a big rig than ask permission. The most useful leftover memories were from that summer Danny, Tucker, and Sam were on the run. Danielle enjoyed the irony; using secondhand memories of things she never did from a summer that got magically retconned. That made them like, double fake memories.

Sam taught her how to blend in, which clothes were practical and would attract the least suspicion. Tucker had her dig through an electronics store’s dumpster and use a dead phone like a prop; much less suspicious to be lingering outside of a store when you’re pretending to be just another text-happy kid.

The drawback was, those memories hurt. Remembering when the three of them (notmyfriendsnotmyfriendsnotmyfriends) were on the road together was a raw reminder that she was alone.

When her hair got too long, she used some stolen scissors to cut off her ponytail and chop her bangs. In some situations, it was easier to make everyone believe she was a boy. A young girl out on her own attracted attention- sometimes from people that meant well, sometimes not. It was another moment of Danny Vu, wandering down a hallway with his hands in his pockets, being invisible without any ghost powers at all.

Which was a good thing, because she had to use her powers sparingly. Every time she used them, it got a little worse. Sweats, nausea, shaking hands, coughing up ectoplasm, her body melting a little, before she got it under control.

(I got a bad dis-eease)

Cold breath came out of her on a humid night in Smyrna. Danielle ducked into an alley and waited for three ghost-vultures to pass above her, squabbling among themselves. One insisted that they must have made wrong turn in Knoxville.

Daddy was still looking.

Danielle measured time in miles and meals. She had no idea how long it had been since she left Amity. Didn’t much care. All that mattered was the goal. She slept using her backpack as a poor pillow at bus stops, in abandoned buildings, under bridges. Not afraid of ghosts, she even broke into old mausoleums, or took advantage of a hotel vacancy and phased through the wall, enjoyed a real bed and a shower.

When she finally got to Cape Canaveral, she splurged by stealing a shower at the Y, washing her clothes at a coin laundry, and spent the afternoon at a cheap buffet, recovering her strength so she could sneak in at night and explore all the exhibits as much as she wanted, making new memories that were hers. Just hers.

There were no shuttle launches to watch, but it was still a beautiful place to wait for the sun to set. She sat down on sand still warm from the long day, kicked off her frayed, disintegrating sneakers, and let the tide tickle dusty toes.

She’d made it. South. Unless she planned to walk into the ocean or hijack a boat, there wasn’t much farther she could go. Danielle had a whopping seventeen dollars in her pocket, was being hunted by some persistent-if-incompetent ghosts that were either supposed to kill her or bring her in to get killed, and even if she dodged them for long enough, it was only a matter of time before she coughed up her own liquefied kidneys and melted into a puddle of green goop.

…she was going to have to go back, wasn’t she?

That was a sobering thought. She loved Danny like you could only love someone you knew so completely- but that place, everyone and everything in it. She knew it all, too. Knew if from a life she never had, couldn't have; had no claim to, but it still felt like it had been stolen. His parents. His sister. His friends, his home, his school, his town. She’d dreamed that life when she was slowly growing in that tank- and being born was like waking up and realizing your Everything wasn’t real.

Her fingers dug into sand, relishing its warmth and texture. This was hers. Everything outside of that town. A thousand thousand places he’d never been to, never experienced. A thousand thousand opportunities to remake herself- to be something distinct. To live.

She had no idea how much time she had left, but Danielle stayed where she was on the beach, watching the sun crawl into the sea, in absolutely no hurry to go anywhere.

“Where I go I just don’t know, I might end up somewhere in Mex-i-co-oooh. When I find my piece of mind, I’m gonna keep you for the end of time…”

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