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darthfrodophantom · 1 day

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Friendship Blossoms (in the wake of shared trauma)

Summary: Nobody Knows AU. A week after the asteroid nearly destroyed the world, Sam is back at school trying to adjust to daily life after a traumatic worldwide event. That adjustment is hard enough, but the presence of her former best friend who was just revealed to be Danny Phantom complicates it even further. After not speaking for two years after he seemed to give up on their friendship, how is she supposed to act around him now? And why does she keep running into him around the school?

Phic Phight Prompt: AU where no one knew Danny was Phantom until PP (or some alternate big reveal of the author's choice). Sam and Tucker are sure that a famous hero like Danny Phantom is too cool to be their friend again, especially since they haven't talked since before freshman year of high school. Danny just wants to be part of the trio again and has no idea how to ask - for Pax

AO3: Link

Going back to school after an asteroid nearly destroyed the entire planet felt so anticlimactic. It felt so banal and normal. In some way it felt good to go back to a routine. The planet kept turning, so civilization kept moving on. People went back to work, cars returned to the roadways, prices for items returned to normal, and now school was back in session. It felt comforting that society could bounce back after such a terrifying tragedy, but it also seemed like no one had really recognized the collective trauma felt by the entire world.

In a way, a week was not enough time to deal with the emotional ramifications that the entire world had almost died. That an unexpected asteroid had almost obliterated their entire planet and everything in it. That attempt after attempt to destroy or avoid the asteroid had failed. That their only saving grace had been a last ditch attempt by the Fentons of all people and the ghosts that had terrorized the city to turn the world intangible. It was a crazy idea. No one thought it would actually work, and yet the world threw so much effort into this insane plan because it had nothing else.

She could still remember clear as day (too clearly - probably some newly acquired PTSD that refused to let her forget any moment of it) sitting with her parents, her grandma, and the Foleys in the safe room (of course her insane parents had a safe room) watching the news feed of the crazy attempt to turn the world intangible. She sat and prayed with them and actually cuddled with her mother for support as they waited with bated breaths to see if Phantom’s crazy plan would work.

She forced herself out of her thoughts and back onto the cracked faux-leather of the bus seat in front of her. If she let herself, those memories of the day would consume her, and she knew that wasn’t healthy. Did she need a therapist? Probably. Could she get one now? Nope, because there weren’t enough of them to go around. Her parents agreed that going back to a routine would be good, that it was proof that the world kept spinning and kept moving and that life could get back to normal. She could see the logic there. Getting back on the bus felt familiar in a reassuring way, but it still felt too soon. It had only been a week, and she felt like she hardly had enough time to deal. Even the ghosts had been quiet and hadn’t attacked, so it was too soon even for them.

The bus slowed to a stop and Sam felt her stomach lurch with nerves. What could she possibly be nervous about? The school day would likely be pretty easy since it was everyone’s first day back.

“You think he’ll be here?” Tucker asked from beside her. They spent most of the trip sitting in the comfortable silence of two friends who spent far too much time together, but the finality of the bus making its final stop outside of the school seemed to pull his internal thoughts out.

She didn’t have to ask who he meant, because Sam had been thinking the same thing, and as her stomach churned again she realized the source of her nerves. “Does it matter if he is?” she replied plainly as she gathered her bag and got ready to file off the bus.

“Well…yeah. Shouldn’t it?” Tucker pressed.

Sam shrugged. “Even if he is, it’s not like he’s going to talk to us.” She stepped off the bus and gazed upon Casper High. A strange sense of security washed over her that the school still looked exactly the same despite everything. She had complicated feelings about public schools, especially her time spent in one, but it felt reassuring to know that it still stood strong. Darn, maybe her dad had been right about her needing a routine again. Well, she certainly wasn’t going to tell him he was right at least.

“Well, no,” Tucker said with a sad sigh. “But it feels like it would be good to know. Just so we could like, prepare.”

“Prepare for what?” Sam barbed as she turned to give him a hard look. She could see that hope blossoming in his eyes and she had to squash it before he was hurt again by their former friend’s behavior. “Prepare for him to ignore us? Prepare for him to avoid us? How would that be any different than any other day of school?”

“Yeah but–”

“No, there’s no ‘buts’ here Tucker,” Sam interrupted. “He’s ignored us for two years. Two years. And you think that now is the time he’d talk to us? Now, when he’s apparently a superhero of all things? No. He’s a celebrity now. He has even less reason to talk to us now than he did before.”

Maybe that’s why she’d been struggling so much. She wasn’t just working through her own trauma, but she had to somehow acknowledge and accept that one of her former friends was a superhero. The superhero. Her former friend Danny Fenton, who had been thick as thieves with them throughout middle school before he ditched them, was Phantom: the ghostly superhero who protected the town from other ghostly threats.

That realization had left her spinning, sometimes into dangerous and dark places. How did this happen? When did this happen? Had he always been like this or was it a recent thing? Was her friend dead? Sure she had been mad at him, but she never actually wished him dead! That thought chilled her to the bone. Had her friend died and none of them even realized it? Did he die and she just continued on with her life as normal? Is that why he pulled away? Did he pull away because he died and none of them even noticed? Was she more to blame for Danny ditching them than she ever let herself believe?

That was absolutely a road she refused to mentally traverse. He pulled away. He stopped talking to them. He kept running away every time she tried to talk to him. He avoided texting until she finally realized that a string of fifteen unanswered texts was a sign enough that she needed to stop. If he was going through something he should have said something. If he died he should have said something. She would have understood. She could have helped him. He did all of this, not her.

A group of students rushing past them pulled her out of her maddening thoughts. A moment later another group ran past. Excited chatter echoed down the hallway and seemed to reach a fever pitch as sunlight streamed down the hall from the outside doors opening. The excitement of the student body charged the hallway around them with an uncomfortable buzz. Sam instantly knew what happened: their local celebrity had arrived.

As if confirming her thoughts, excited murmurs of “he’s here!” or “it’s him!” fluttered around her as students pushed in closer to the doors. They flattened Sam and Tucker against their lockers as more and more students flooded the hallway. Tucker was so close she could feel his breathing grow shallow, and she reached over to squeeze his hand because she knew he got claustrophobic. She was fine - enjoying tight spaces was almost a requirement for being a goth - but being surrounded on all sides by hard metal and smelly teenagers wasn’t the kind of tight space she enjoyed.

A bubble of unoccupied space formed in the middle of the crowd of students. In the center of the bubble a familiar tuft of black hair caught her eye. Danny walked purposefully through the swarm of students with his hands tucked into his pockets and his head down. The students naturally parted around him as he moved through the hall, like water naturally parted around soap. Or how fish part around a shark. Everyone wanted to gawk at him, but no one wanted to risk getting near him. Sam felt a twinge of sorrow for her former friend because no one ever wanted to be avoided like that. Well…no one except Danny. He seemed to love avoiding people. Maybe this was actually what he wanted?

As soon as he broke even with them, he looked over in their direction. Their eyes locked for just a moment before Danny quickly averted his gaze. He sunk deeper into his hunched shoulders and walked faster down the hall. The students clamored to part around him faster to still keep that natural distance. He moved out of sight as the student body followed from their safe distance, taking the crowd with him.

Tucker breathed in a couple large gulps of air. “Was that really necessary?” he complained as he stretched out and tilted his head towards the ceiling to bask in the open space around him. “I mean, yeah it must suck for Danny, but did they really have to force us into the crowd too? Horrible.”

Sam didn’t even listen to half of his complaints as she silently fumed. Why did he look away so quickly? Was he worried that their mutual acknowledgement of the existence of the other would somehow obligate him to talk to them? He’d learned a long time ago how to avoid that. But then why did he even look over at them in the first place if he wanted to avoid their gaze? It didn’t make any sense.

“Come on, let’s go to class,” she decided. She wanted to take advantage of the clear hallway while she could.

“Are you sure?” Tucker hesitated as he looked down the hall that Danny and his new throng of terrified admirers disappeared down. “It feels weird to–”

“No,” she snapped, still sore from the reminder that her friend had been through some shit and hadn’t even bothered to reach out. “It feels exactly the same way it’s been feeling. He’s avoiding us again, like he always does. Come on.”

They packed up their things and trudged off to class. The routine felt deceptively normal, even though they knew nothing would be the same.

Just like the rest of the student body, Sam’s thoughts throughout class focused on Danny. Not intentionally, but they just kept drifting to him. He sat in class with them, towards the back like normal. She purposefully refused to look at him, but she could swear that sometimes she felt his gaze on the back of her head. At one point she entertained the thought that he might be trying to get her attention, but that was silly. He didn’t want their attention and nothing he’d done in the past two years had changed that, and it certainly wouldn’t change now.

As soon as the bell rang for class Danny practically shot up out of the room. She couldn’t really blame him. People in class knew him well enough that they tried to talk to him. Ask him questions. Pester him with comments. Paulina tried to flirt with him, and Sam didn’t know why that bothered her as much as it did. She rarely heard him talk, so either he answered in a quiet voice or he avoided their questions. Well, he was good at avoiding, so that made sense. And as soon as he got the chance, he avoided them all again by fleeing the classroom. She didn’t know what salvation he expected to find in the hallways because it didn’t seem any better outside of the classroom, but the strange bubble must have seemed preferable to the questions.

She met up with Tucker next to their locker to switch out their books when the mass of students flooded past them again. This time they knew what to expect and waited it out as Danny walked past them again. Sam found it odd to see him in this hallway again because she knew that his locker was much closer to their next class and he didn’t actually need to go this way. Maybe he just enjoyed the walk?

“I kinda wish he’d talk to us,” Tucker lamented as their local celebrity disappeared around the corner.

“I don’t,” Sam snapped, and she slammed her locker door for emphasis.

“Really? Do you really mean that? Or are you saying it as a way to act out?” Tucker pressed with a knowing look that Sam did not appreciate. She’d been friends with him for too long.

“Shut up. I mean it.”

“But don’t you have questions?”

“Of course I have questions,” she countered. What kind of question was that? “I have so many questions. But I’ve had questions for two years and he hasn’t bothered to answer any of them, so why would he start now?”

“Well, I was kinda hoping that this,” Tucker gestured to the hallway like it was all the explanation he needed, “was the reason for a lot of it. And with that out of the way, I dunno, maybe he’d be more willing to answer them?”

“That sounds like wishful thinking,” Sam dismissed.

“Well…yeah…maybe it is. But I can still hope,” he shrugged.

Sam didn’t quite have it in her heart to tear down his hope even further, even though she knew it would crush him later when he realized it was forlorn. She liked to think of herself as a realist, and everything Danny had done since high school showed her that nothing would really change. The news coverage of his transformation and maybe an expose news article in the future would be the only answers they’d get about what happened to their friend, and she knew better than to hope for something more.

Danny had shown them time and again he was unreliable: that when they needed him, he wasn’t there. When he promised to do something, he didn’t deliver. And he had no excuses or explanations ready, just a hollow apology that meant less and less every time he used it until he just stopped apologizing altogether. She could see now that some of that was probably because he was fighting ghosts, and she could be gracious enough to allow that as a good excuse, but he should have told them. He should have trusted them. He didn’t, and he let their friendship degrade to the point where even the shell of their former friendship crumbled into dust. She knew better than to expect anything to change or for some friendship to rise from the ashes, because those ashes had been swept away by the wind long ago. Hadn’t they?

She growled and walked off towards class without even announcing it to Tucker. He seemed to get the hint and rushed after her, but both of them remained quiet.

“Do you think he’s trying to talk to us?” Tucker asked as they scoped out an empty table for lunch.

“Again Tucker, that’s wishful thinking,” Sam sighed.

“But he seems to keep popping up around us,” he pointed out. “Usually we barely even see a glimpse of him.”

She had to admit that she’d had the same thought. She’d seen Danny’s face more today than she had the last full week of school. He kept walking by their lockers even if he didn’t need to and she kept feeling his eyes on her. He also sat closer to them during one of their classes, but she also had a feeling that was out of necessity to avoid the prying eyes and attentions of the class. Was he trying to see how they were reacting? Trying to gauge how they were handling the news by stalking them? Well if that was the case, then she was happy to see that her poker face of generalized displeasure seemed to be doing its job because it looked like he was still looking for an answer. A small part of her felt satisfied and preened at his uncertainty - about time for him to be left in the dark about something for a change.

“It’s coincidence,” she dismissed. “He’s trying to avoid everyone else, and since everyone else avoids us, it’s putting him into our path.”

Tucker shook his head. “No, I don’t think that’s it.”

Sam plopped her lunchbox onto their usual table and sat down. She actually felt excited about her lunch today; ever since the asteroid her parents made a concerted effort to embrace her as a person more and started buying more vegan-friendly food. She appreciated the gesture, even if it took literally the end of the world for them to finally see eye-to-eye.

Tucker sat down across from her absent-midedly, and she followed his distracted gaze to see Danny enter the cafeteria. Immediately all the other eyes of the room fell on him and a strange hush settled across the large room. That was a bold move, entering such a crowded space. Danny must have also realized the error of his ways because he stood awkwardly in the doorway, unsure of whether he should press on or run. She noticed a lunchbox in his hands, so the need to buy food clearly didn’t drive him to enter the cafeteria, so she had to wonder what insanity drew him in here.

She would have found some secluded spot and ate lunch there. She knew he preferred a spot on the edge of the campus under a large tree because she’d seen him eat there far away from them time after time. She and Tucker tried to approach him there once, early on in their crumbling friendship when she thought they still had a chance to patch things up. He practically ran away from them when they approached. He yelled at them to take a hint and to stop bothering him. She never tried to seek him out at lunch again. It really had been the beginning of the end.

His indecision on what to do seemed to be his downfall. After a morning of keeping a safe buffer around him, the student body grew more brazen. Emboldened by the fact that Danny really hadn’t done anything ghostly or aggressive the entire day, they risked getting closer. And closer still. They closed the gap around him slowly. The volume of chatter in the room grew into a crescendo of questions and calls and shouts aimed at the ghostly celebrity.

Danny must not have realized what was happening until it was too late. They lurched forward as one unit until they were on top of him. Surrounding him. Touching him. Pulling him towards their table or their conversation. He held his hands up in defense, pleading with them to let him go, but none of them listened. He wasn’t a person anymore. He was a celebrity - an object that existed at the beck and whim of the population to fulfill their needs and desires.

Sam watched as Danny’s individual rights as a person disappeared under the horde of students. Anger boiled under her skin. No one deserved to be treated that way, but Danny least of all. Sure they had their beef. Sure he treated them horribly. But he was a hero. He had saved them and the school and hell even the world and he deserved better than this.

She stood up and pushed her way aggressively through the crowd. She had no problems throwing the full weight of her combat boots onto the feet of people who refused to step out of her way. She fought through the masses as she screamed at them to leave him alone. She shoved people out of the way, kicked at their shins, and stomped on their feet until she reached the center. Surprisingly, Tucker followed after her. She couldn’t imagine how claustrophobic he must feel willingly plunging himself into this mob of students, but he pushed his way in nonetheless.

As soon as they reached Danny they formed a circle around him. She reached her arms back around to grab Tucker’s hands as they formed almost a protective cage around him. They couldn’t give him much of a buffer and she felt people press on her arms, but she tried.

“Get away!” she yelled as she lightly kicked someone who got a little too close for her comfort. “You can’t just mob people! He has a right to his own personal space!”

The crowd didn’t seem to have any care for her protests and only pushed in harder. The sound of their cheers and questions almost deafened her and it swallowed up her verbal protests. This really wasn’t getting them anywhere.

“Danny, just get out of here!” Sam ordered as she craned her neck to catch a glimpse of him behind her. “Do something ghostly and get out of here! We’ll hold them off!”

She stood firm as she waited for Danny to save himself, but she didn’t notice any change. What was taking him so long? Why was he hesitating? Everyone already knew so there was no point in continuing to hide it.

Finally she heard the students around her gasp and they stopped pushing against her. Danny must have finally used one of his powers to escape. About time. She didn’t know how much longer she could hold them off. But what the hell was he waiting fo–

A tingle followed by an unnatural chill raced through her body starting from her arm. Her stomach dropped as she fell, and she yelped until the ground swallowed the sound. She only saw soil around her, but she couldn’t really feel it. If she focused on it she maybe felt like a gust of wind passed through her when she fell, but it felt so faint and non-specific that she had to wonder if her brain just thought she felt the breath of wind because she knew she should feel something when passing through solid matter.

Something tugged on her arm as she traveled quickly through soil and rocks and tree roots. That tugging sensation pulled upwards and she emerged from the ground and into the air. She felt weightless hovering above the ground for just a moment before Danny’s hand let go of its tight grip on her arm and she dropped down onto the padded grass.

She clasped a hand to her chest and clenched onto the now solid material of her black shirt. Her wide eyes looked around and noticed the school in the distance - the building they had just been in before she traveled through the ground. She also noticed a large tree beside them - the same one that Danny always took refuge under. The same one where he told them to leave him alone. And yet this time he brought them here instead of chasing them away.

She finally noticed Tucker sitting in the grass next to her, so he must have brought him here too. She also caught his wide-eyed stare as he looked at his new surroundings with shock and maybe a little awe, but mostly shock. He clearly needed a moment to gain his bearings, and honestly she still did too, because they had just traveled through the ground. Not over it or above it, but through it. Something that should have been impossible for anyone except…well a ghost.

Danny must have picked up on their shocked expressions - in fact he seemed incredibly attuned to their reactions - and he immediately backed up a few steps and blushed. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry,” he quickly apologized. His wide, panicked eyes looked desperately between the two of them as he tried to gauge their reactions further. “I probably should have asked and not just assumed I could–” He ran a hand nervously through his hair and ducked his head. “I just didn’t want to leave you there.”

“It’s okay man,” Tucker finally said as he fisted his hands in the grass below them. “It was getting a little cramped in there, so it’s good to have an out.”

She should have felt grateful he thought about saving them because otherwise she and Tucker would have been left in the middle of a dissatisfied crowd with only them to blame for Danny’s disappearance. And she was, but his stupid antics put them in that situation in the first place!

She stood up to glare at him properly and he recoiled slightly. That recoil gave her pause for just a moment. He fought monstrous ghosts. She’d seen pictures of some of them and they were horrifying or incredibly powerful. Phantom always stood firm against those ghosts. So why did he back away from her of all entities? She pushed on and gave him a light shove. “What the hell were you thinking?” He shrunk further against her onslaught. “Going into the cafeteria? That was stupid!”

Danny blinked slowly. If he had been building himself up for a response, he clearly did not expect that one. “What?”

“You’re getting swarmed everywhere you go, so you decide to go to the most populated room in the entire school? What kind of idiot does that?!”

“Oh. Um…” He grabbed at his arm and ran his hand along the hem of his shirt. “Well I…I was looking for you guys,” he admitted quietly.

Sam dropped all her bluster as she regarded him with confusion. “You were looking for us?” He hadn’t actively sought them out since high school started, but now, today of all days, he finally decided he wanted to talk to them?

“Yeah I…I kept trying to talk to you. Don’t know if you noticed. It just never felt like the right time. Too many people or not enough time or you guys just looked mad. And you have every right to be mad!” he added quickly as if trying to preemptively stop an argument. “But then Jazz told me there would never be a right time and it was always gonna be awkward and boy was she right about that, so I just decided to go for it. Didn’t really think that one through though.”

“I don’t understand,” she admitted bluntly. “You wanted to talk to us? After everything now you want to talk to us? Did you want to make sure we saw the news? Because don’t worry, we definitely did.” That came out harsher than she intended, and even Tucker gave her a warning glare.

“No! Nothing like that! I just–” He let out a huge breath as his shoulders dropped in defeat. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I didn’t say anything. I’m sorry I pulled away. I didn’t really know what to do. All of a sudden all this…stuff started happening and I didn’t know what to do. I thought about telling you, all the time, but I didn’t know how to explain it. And then I worried maybe you’d freak out or think I was some kind of freak or something and I just got scared. And then it just kept snowballing and I felt you getting more and more annoyed with me so I just pulled away.”

“You should have said something,” Sam snapped as she crossed her arms over her chest. Yes it felt good to have an answer. Yes it felt good to have a reason, but she realized that none of that actually mattered when faced with the fact that her friend knowingly hurt them because he didn’t trust them.

Danny winced, but he took the blows without argument. “I know.”

“You lied to us! You abandoned us! And with zero reasons!” she yelled as she lashed out against him with two years worth of pain and suffering that she’d kept bottled up inside. “You were afraid of us abandoning you? Well you abandoned us! You told us to never bother you again! How do you think that felt, huh Danny? Because it sucked! It hurt! And we had no idea why!” Danny winced at her onslaught, but she didn’t intend to stop. “And I think it’s rich that you could do it to us because you were too scared that we would do it to you.”

“Sam, come on,” Tucker spoke up as he tried to play the role of the peaceful negotiator. “Some of that isn’t fair.”

“No, it’s okay,” Danny said as he looked sadly between his friends. “What she’s saying is fair. I deserve it.”

Something about being given permission to rage angered her even more. “Damn right you deserve it! Friends don’t keep secrets Danny! And they especially don’t keep big secrets like this! You should have trusted us!”

“I know,” he sighed.

“I mean do you think so little of us that we would have disowned you or treated you any different because of this?”

“No! Of course not! I just…I didn’t want to take the risk. I thought I’d lose you,” he admitted quietly as he looked down at the ground.

“Yeah, well you lost us anyways,” Sam snarled. He looked up at her and she could see the hurt etched across his face and the rejection glimmer in his eyes. She’d gone a little too far there, and she recognized that, but he had! He kept this secret from them so he wouldn’t lose their friendship, and then he sat by and let it happen anyways! The only difference was he got to control when that happened. He got to do the breaking up instead of the one being broken up with.

“Ouch Sam,” Tucker remarked from the side.

She rounded on Tucker this time. “Oh no, you don’t get to act like you’re the level-headed one. You’re just as mad at him as I am! I know you are!” How many times had they sat and ranted in her room? How many times had Tucker been the first one to curse Danny under his breath because he ditched them again? How many times had Tucker gone on text rants about losing his best friend and Sam could only listen and try to help him vent as much as he could? No, he didn’t get to act all angelic about this when she knew that fury and that hurt burned in him too.

Tucker didn’t back down against her ire and stood his ground. “Yeah, I am. What you did sucked bro,” he seconded as he turned to face his friend. Danny dropped his gaze back down to the ground. “But is this really the time? All day I was hoping maybe now we could talk. And hey look, we are. I don’t really want to spend all that time yelling at each other. That’s not gonna get us anywhere.”

Sam’s anger deflated because Tucker made a valid point. Did raging at Danny make her feel better? Absolutely. Did seeing that hurt on his face fuel some horrible vindication in herself? Unfortunately it did. But none of that would actually fix anything. None of that would give her or Tucker the answers they wanted and maybe even needed. And if Danny wasn’t going to argue and engage in a good knock-down argument where they both screamed at each other until neither of them had anything left, then she’d have to calm herself down to engage in a civil talk.

“No, it’s okay,” Danny allowed. “I deserve the insults and the yelling. I was a jerk. I abandoned you, I shut you out, I lied to you, and I didn’t trust you. That’s not what a friend does, and I know it. That’s why I stopped trying to be one.”

“We could have helped you, Danny,” Tucker said sadly. “With all of this. You had to be going through a lot. We could have helped.”

“...I know,” he sighed as his shoulders sagged. “I wanted to say something. I kept hoping maybe you’d just figure it out. Not like this obviously. This is literally the worst. But by the time I felt like maybe it could be okay, we already weren’t talking and it just felt like it was too late.”

“Is it?” Sam asked with a much calmer voice.

Danny looked up with a raised eyebrow. “Is it what?”

“Is it too late?”

Danny shrugged as he scuffed his heel along the grass. “I guess that’s up to the two of you. I just…I really miss my friends.”

His voice broke a little on the word friends, and despite how angry Sam felt at him for the past two years of treating them like gum under his shoe (a nuisance he couldn’t get rid of fast enough until it finally dried up enough to scrape off and discard), her heart broke a little for him. She truly thought about his situation for a moment. How scared he must have been to tell them. How physically different he had become and the fear that would impact the way he related to everyone else. How alienating and isolating it had to be now that he was somehow a ghost and a person at the same time. Her stomach twisted and she felt so sad for her friend in that moment and the emotional turmoil he had to be experiencing.

Yes he should have trusted them, but maybe she and Tucker didn’t do enough to show that he could trust them. Maybe they didn’t make the friendship seem safe enough that he could tell them anything? She hoped she did, but if she didn’t, then that was on her just as much as it was on Tucker. And despite offering to talk and promising to understand numerous times over text, if he didn’t actually trust that to be the case, then she could understand his hesitation. This was a big secret because it basically changed Danny into an entirely different person, and she had to accept that he wasn’t obligated to share it with them until he was ready.

Sam wrapped her arms around her torso and gave him a small smile. “We miss you too.” Her voice cracked a little too with emotion, but in this moment she didn’t actually care. This was a good emotion, and she didn’t have to hide it behind some tough exterior, not right now.

“Yeah man, it hasn’t been the same without you,” Tucker echoed.

Danny smiled weakly as he wrapped his arms around himself in a self-hug. He gestured to the shade under the nearby tree. “Look can we…I know I have a lot to make up for, but can we talk? Like really talk?”

“I think we’ve all been needing to talk for awhile,” Sam agreed. And she’d do her best to stay calm and not let her own emotions cloud what needed to be said. She’d try to remember that she may not be blameless for the deterioration of their friendship, and she needed to be okay with that. And at the end of it, she probably had to be ready to forgive. She didn’t know if she had been quite ready to forgive him when she started the day, but she had a feeling she’d be a little more open to it now.

“And then dude, I have so many questions.” Tucker’s excited voice broke the somber mood for just a moment. “Because this whole ghost superhero thing is awesome and I want to know everything!”

Danny chuckled a bit and ducked his head as a blush spread across his cheeks. “Really? It’s not like weird or freaky or anything?”

“No man, it’s so cool,” Tucker affirmed as he pulled him into a one-armed hug from the side. “And I’m dying to know more.” He paused for a moment with a wince. “Okay, poor choice of words there.”

“Or the best choice of words,” Danny offered with a laugh.

“Yeah yeah, not all of us are insane and love puns,” Sam sighed as she shook her head, but she also smiled because it just felt so easy. Sliding back into the puns and the light teasing and the fun. It felt so natural and right and even though she knew so much bitterness existed between them, it brought a lightness to her heart to have that again.

“Or are you just not used to them after I ghosted you for so long?” Danny asked with an exaggerated wink on the emphasized word.

Sam forced her lips into a scowl as she tried so hard not to laugh. She hated Danny’s puns, always had, but that one was legitimately clever. As Tucker cackled from the side, she couldn’t stop the corners of her lips from curling into a smile.

“Are we here to talk or make stupid puns?” she finally asked when she knew she could keep a straight face.

“I mean, I can be here for both,” Danny suggested with a smirk. There, right there she saw Phantom. That confident, fun smirk. She didn’t know how she didn’t see it before. Well, probably because she hadn’t seen that smirk from Danny in over two years. She pushed that bitter thought out of her mind because that didn’t help their new mutual goal of clearing the air. She gave Danny an exasperated look and didn’t even acknowledge his statement before she sat down pointedly under the tree. The other two joined her on the pleasantly cool grass.

“Oh man, we left our lunch on the table,” Tucker groaned, but his stomach groaned even louder.

Normally she’d give Tucker a hard time for always thinking with his stomach, but her own hungry belly thought back to her abandoned black bean hummus wrap with resigned disappointment. She had been looking forward to that, but she didn’t think any of them should go back into the cafeteria right now.

Danny shifted nervously in the grass, a marked contrast to his previous joking nature. “...I can go get them,” he said, barely louder than a mumble.

Sam raised an eyebrow. “Danny, you’re literally the last person who should go back into that school right now.”

He sighed. “No I mean…I can sneak in and get them.”

Right. Ghost powers. Somehow she kept forgetting. That realization had been on her mind so much since she saw the news report. It consumed her thoughts all morning and really, that realization was the only reason they could talk right now. How she hadn’t put the pieces together astonished her.

Tucker also finally realized what he meant and his eyes grew wide. “Oh my god yes! Oh this is so brilliant. Yes yes, go get it!” he encouraged as he practically vibrated with excitement.

Danny hesitated for a moment as he bit his lip. He looked so nervous, and Sam’s heart went out to him that he was so scared to show this part of himself to his friends. Finally he nodded and stood with some renewed internal resolution. He took a deep breath as two rings of light appeared around his waist.

She saw the opposite transformation on the news footage. She’d replayed it over in her head multiple times since she saw it because her mind struggled so hard to accept it. But seeing it on a screen and seeing it in person were two very different things. One moment her friend stood there, and then the next there was Phantom. But this time when she looked at the face of their ghostly protector, she could see Danny in there now. That strange glow that emanated from his skin hid those familiar features before, but she could see them now that she knew to look for them. A strange energy lingered in the air after the transformation, one she could swear she remembered feeling around Danny before. It left the hair on her arms standing for just a moment, but it wasn’t unpleasant. She could get used to it.

She was proud to say she only jumped slightly, but she made it a point to put on a reassuring smile as his glowing eyes searched their faces desperately for a reaction. Tucker looked about ready to vibrate out of his skin with excitement. “So cool,” he breathed out in awe, and Danny blushed.

She remained calm and just gave him a supportive nod. He smiled weakly back. “I’ll uh, be right back.” He disappeared from sight, causing Sam to jump again. A breeze blew past them, and she had a feeling that meant Danny had flown off.

“That was a test right?” Tucker asked after a moment when he was sure Danny was gone.

“Oh yeah, it was definitely a test,” Sam confirmed. He was making them prove they could handle this. Those fears of rejection still clearly gnawed at him, and before he threw himself completely into talking everything out and building a new foundation for friendship going forward, he needed to ensure this pillar was strong. Well she could do that. She didn’t care about him being a ghost or part ghost or whatever he was. She didn’t care about the powers or the ghost fighting. She only ever cared that he abandoned them. So if he needed proof that she was a solid pillar he could lean on, she could give him that.

“Do you think we passed?” he pondered with a slight frown.

“Yeah, I think we did,” she said as she tucked her knees to her chest. “But we’ll know for sure if he comes back.”

It didn’t take him long. Danny made it to the cafeteria and back with impressive haste. Maybe he wanted to get back before they had the chance to leave, or maybe he wanted to maximize the amount of time they had to talk before lunch ended. Maybe he was just hungry. Sam really couldn’t say why, but she was grateful they didn’t have to put the talk off for too much longer. She spent a good amount of time blowing up at him (she refused to say she wasted that time because she really felt like she needed that), but she also needed the time to really talk with him.

He appeared suddenly beside them, still floating in the air. Even though she knew he would be arriving at some point, his sudden appearance still caused her to jump. Tucker not only jumped but let out a slight yelp and placed a hand on his heart. “Danny! God you can’t–we are not making this a trend. My out-of-shape heart cannot take that. We need to figure out like a warning or something.”

Danny laughed as he sat cross-legged in the air. That flash of light transformed him back into himself - or rather the other form of himself - and he plopped down onto the grass beside them. He passed out their lunchboxes while a slight smile played across his lips. He seemed more comfortable with them, more like his older self. If he hadn’t just turned visible, floated in the air, and summoned a ring of light around his waist, Sam would have thought it was two years ago by how easy it felt to sit together as a trio again. They must have passed the test.

With a deep breath Danny looked at both of his friends. “Alright, let’s talk.”

It wouldn’t be perfect. It wouldn’t be easy. A lot of bad blood still existed between them, and one conversation wouldn’t wash away all of it. But it was a start. Maybe they could get back to where they were before, or maybe that friendship could blossom into something even better now that they had a shared understanding between each other - that remained to be seen. But knowing that they had a chance to talk, really talk, and air out their grievances and misunderstandings filled Sam with a warmth she hadn’t felt in years. Maybe she could finally have her friend back. And for the first time since the threat of that deadly asteroid shook the very foundation of the world, Sam actually had a feeling things would be okay. Life would move on, life would get better, and she would get better with her friend back at her side. Because sitting in the shade of the same tree in a circle with her two best friends made everything feel right in the world once again.

Note: Thanks for reading everyone! I had a lot of fun with this one. It's my first foray into a Nobody Knows AU and I really enjoyed it! Also there's no way you could dangle a prompt that's a post-reveal and allows me to show the student body's reaction to Danny post-reveal without me latching onto it.

#danny phantom #fanfiction #danny phantom fanfiction #sam manson POV #Nobody Knows AU #but now Everyone Knows AU #Phantom Planet Compliant #but not really #friendship #friendships are hard #but you can work through it with effort #post identity reveal #phic phight 2024 #phic phight #phic phight 24 #team ghost

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illycanary · 2 months

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Katara's Story Is A Tragedy and It's Not An Accident

I was a teenaged girl when Avatar: The Last Airbender aired on Nickelodeon—the group that the show’s creators unintentionally hit while they were aiming for the younger, maler demographic. Nevermind that we’re the reason the show’s popularity caught fire and has endured for two decades; we weren’t the audience Mike and Bryan wanted. And by golly, were they going to make sure we knew it. They’ve been making sure we know it with every snide comment and addendum they’ve made to the story for the last twenty years.

For many of us girls who were raised in the nineties and aughts, Katara was a breath of fresh air—a rare opportunity in a media market saturated with boys having grand adventures to see a young woman having her own adventure and expressing the same fears and frustrations we were often made to feel.

We were told that we could be anything we wanted to be. That we were strong and smart and brimming with potential. That we were just as capable as the boys. That we were our brothers’ equals. But we were also told to wash dishes and fold laundry and tidy around the house while our brothers played outside. We were ignored when our male classmates picked teams for kickball and told to go play with the girls on the swings—the same girls we were taught to deride if we wanted to be taken seriously. We were lectured for the same immaturity that was expected of boys our age and older, and we were told to do better while also being told, “Boys will be boys.” Despite all the platitudes about equality and power, we saw our mothers straining under the weight of carrying both full-time careers and unequally divided family responsibilities. We sensed that we were being groomed for the same future.

And we saw ourselves in Katara.

Katara begins as a parentified teenaged girl: forced to take on responsibility for the daily care of people around her—including male figures who are capable of looking after themselves but are allowed to be immature enough to foist such labor onto her. She does thankless work for people who take her contributions for granted. She’s belittled by people who love her, but don’t understand her. She’s isolated from the world and denied opportunities to improve her talents. She's told what emotions she's allowed to feel and when to feel them. In essence, she was living our real-world fear: being trapped in someone else’s narrow, stultifying definition of femininity and motherhood.

Then we watched Katara go through an incredible journey of self-determination and empowerment. Katara goes from being a powerless, fearful victim to being a protector, healer, advocate, and liberator to others who can’t do those things for themselves (a much truer and more fulfilling definition of nurturing and motherhood). It’s necessary in Katara’s growth cycle that she does this for others first because that is the realm she knows. She is given increasingly significant opportunities to speak up and fight on behalf of others, and that allows her to build those advocacy muscles gradually. But she still holds back her own emotional pain because everyone that she attempts to express such things to proves they either don't want to deal with it or they only want to manipulate her feelings for their own purposes.

Katara continues to do much of the work we think of as traditionally maternal on behalf of her friends and family over the course of the story, but we do see that scale gradually shift. Sokka takes on more responsibility for managing the group’s supplies, and everyone helps around camp, but Katara continues to be the manager of everyone else’s emotions while simultaneously punching down her own. The scales finally seem to tip when Zuko joins the group. With Zuko, we see someone working alongside Katara doing the same tasks she is doing around camp for the first time. Zuko is also the only person who never expects anything of her and whose emotions she never has to manage because he’s actually more emotionally stable and mature than she is by that point. And then, Katara’s arc culminates in her finally getting the chance to fully seize her power, rewrite the story of the traumatic event that cast her into the role of parentified child, be her own protector, and freely express everything she’s kept locked away for the sake of letting everyone else feel comfortable around her. Then she fights alongside an equal partner she knows she can trust and depend on through the story's climax. And for the first time since her mother’s death, the girl who gives and gives and gives while getting nothing back watches someone sacrifice everything for her. But this time, she’s able to change the ending because her power is fully realized. The cycle was officially broken.

Katara’s character arc was catharsis at every step. If Katara could break the mold and recreate the ideas of womanhood and motherhood in her own image, so could we. We could be powerful. We could care for ourselves AND others when they need us—instead of caring for everyone all the time at our own expense. We could have balanced partnerships with give and take going both ways (“Tui and La, push and pull”), rather than the, “I give, they take,” model we were conditioned to expect. We could fight for and determine our own destiny—after all, wasn’t destiny a core theme of the story?

Yes. Destiny was the theme. But the lesson was that Katara didn’t get to determine hers.

After Katara achieves her victory and completes her arc, the narrative steps in and smacks her back down to where she started. For reasons that are never explained or justified, Katara rewards the hero by giving into his romantic advances even though he has invalidated her emotions, violated her boundaries, lashed out at her for slights against him she never committed, idealized a false idol of her then browbeat her when she deviated from his narrative, and forced her to carry his emotions and put herself in danger when he willingly fails to control himself—even though he never apologizes, never learns his lesson, and never shows any inclination to do better.

And do better he does not.

The more we dared to voice our own opinions on a character that was clearly meant to represent us, the more Mike and Bryan punished Katara for it.

Throughout the comics, Katara makes herself smaller and smaller and forfeits all rights to personal actualization and satisfaction in her relationship. She punches her feelings down when her partner neglects her and cries alone as he shows more affection and concern for literally every other girl’s feelings than hers. She becomes cowed by his outbursts and threats of violence. Instead of rising with the moon or resting in the warmth of the sun, she learns to stay in his shadow. She gives up her silly childish dreams of rebuilding her own dying culture’s traditions and advocating for other oppressed groups so that she can fulfill his wishes to rebuild his culture instead—by being his babymaker. Katara gave up everything she cared about and everything she fought to become for the whims of a man-child who never saw her as a person, only a possession.

Then, in her old age, we get to watch the fallout of his neglect—both toward her and her children who did not meet his expectations. By that point, the girl who would never turn her back on anyone who needed her was too far gone to even advocate for her own children in her own home. And even after he’s gone, Katara never dares to define herself again. She remains, for the next twenty-plus years of her life, nothing more than her husband's grieving widow. She was never recognized for her accomplishments, the battles she won, or the people she liberated. Even her own children and grandchildren have all but forgotten her. She ends her story exactly where it began: trapped in someone else’s narrow, stultifying definition of femininity and motherhood.

The story’s theme was destiny, remember? But this story’s target audience was little boys. Zuko gets to determine his own destiny as long as he works hard and earns it. Aang gets his destiny no matter what he does or doesn’t do to earn it. And Katara cannot change the destiny she was assigned by gender at birth, no matter how hard she fights for it or how many times over she earns it.

Katara is Winston Smith, and the year is 1984. It doesn’t matter how hard you fight or what you accomplish, little girl. Big Brother is too big, too strong, and too powerful. You will never escape. You will never be free. Your victories are meaningless. So stay in your place, do what you’re told, and cry quietly so your tears don’t bother people who matter.

I will never get over it. Because I am Katara. And so are my friends, sisters, daughters, and nieces. But I am not content to live in Bryke's world.

I will never turn my back on people who need me. Including me.

#ATLA #Avatar the Last Airbender #Katara #Anti Bryke #Zutara #but not really #just pro-Katara #Anti Kataang

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