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phantomskeep · 1 year

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Putting the "Fun" Back in "Funeral" Chapter Three

AO3 | Chapter Two --- Chapter Four

Chapter Three: Emotional Constipation Has Never Been Easier

When Danny made his way out of the swirling green abyss many dimensional beings called home, the sun had long since set. As he was hovering over the Ops Center of his childhood home, he sent a quick text to a chat that was fondly named “Ghostly Therapy Plus Some.” It was a work of love that Tucker had made for the original ghost-fighting trio - a private server so encrypted that even the Guys In White couldn’t get in. The chatroom was home to many summons for late-night calls, memes based around the Amity Park rogues, and various debates between the now-adults who occupied it. Danny knew, even at ass-o’clock in the morning, that his friends would respond to any message he would send.

It was with no small amount of guilt that any sort of late-night text left Danny’s side of the chatroom. His friends, Jazz and Danielle included, had completely normal lives outside of Danny’s whacky one. Each one of them had successfully left Amity Park. They were in college, or out exploring the earth with no care in the world. It was Danny who was stuck, who was stagnant in a haunt that no longer felt like his.

However, the Ghost King also knew that if he just disappeared for a few weeks his friends would freak.

So, a quick text was sent. A completely normal “hey guys can u call rq” which elected an immediate response from Tucker. It made sense, as he was off in California double majoring in computer science and computer programming. It wasn’t quite as late for him, especially compared to Jazz and Sam. Both of them were on the east coast with majors in psychology and social justice respectively - they were an hour ahead of Danny, timezone wise. Ellie was… somewhere in the world. Chances are she would either respond within a few minutes or would not respond at all.

While the local ghost hero was waiting for a response, he was lazily heading south from Fentonworks. Easily drifting on his back above the cloud layer currently overhanging Amity, Danny couldn’t help but rest his heavy gaze upon the millions of twinkling stars before him. It was only twenty-four hours ago that he had fought his last ghost as a semi-normal person. His entire world had shifted, changing completely. Danny now had the ultimate power of the Ghost Zone. It was a startling realization that hit him quickly, and he couldn’t help but grieve his childhood. While he hadn’t really had much of one in the first place, Danny still wished things could have been different. That he was in university with his friends, studying astrophysics, trying to be an astronaut.

But no. He had to step into a portal to a different dimension and have it open up on top of him. He had to die before he even started highschool - and he couldn’t even do that correctly.

A loud groan of annoyance left cold lips, gloved hands coming up to grasp at white hair. The ghost boy flipped around to float on his belly, facing the dark clouds rumbling below him. Grasping on the tingling feeling of intangibility, Danny summoned his power to the forefront of his being before letting gravity take hold of his form. He dropped quickly towards the ground, eyes closed. Powerful winds encased Danny in a mockery of a hug, tugging at him like a plea to stay in the air where he was safer. It was from years of practice that the halfa knew when to allow such a pesky notion of gravity peel away from him, his monochrome shape hovering just above the down-trodden apartment complex he called home.

A bright flash lit the sky behind Danny’s still form, the clap of thunder chasing behind not even a second later. Bright green eyes tracked his shadow as the late-spring lightning storm passed through Amity. He hovered there, for a moment. Allowing the wild winds whip around him as the storm’s power picked up, shaking the leaves of blossomed trees. Distantly, Danny registered that rain began drizzling from the cloudbed he was just so far above. It was with a mournful shake that Danny finally moved to enter his barren apartment.

When his boots lightly tapped his threadbare carpet floors, Danny let the rings of his transformation wash over him. Gone was the royal outfit he had still yet to inspect, and in its place was the slightly dirty clothes the young man had pulled from his floor earlier that very day. Black hair flopped to cover his eyes, no longer snow-white and being kept out of view by his powers. It was with a quiet sigh that Danny moved to push the strands back, pulling his beat-up phone out from his pocket.

With practiced movements, Danny allowed himself to fall back onto the worn couch shoved in the middle of his living room. The halfa didn’t move to turn on the lights around him - there would be no point in it, after all. He could see better than an average human. Just another of the many side-effects of half-dying.

A quick entering of his password had Danny’s cracked phone unlocked, icy blue eyes skimming the two messages of confirmation from Sam and Tucker. Quickly tapping out “jazz?” and smacking the send button allowed Danny to let the device fall onto his lap. He threw his arms back dramatically, face tipping back to eye the water damage on his ceiling critically.

He really should put in a maintenance notice.

A buzz from the top of his thigh had Danny grabbing his phone. He unlocked it, read the message sent by his older sister, before heaving his body from the old couch. Wandering into the single bedroom of the apartment, Danny snatched his laptop from where it was charging on his bed. The man booted up the clunky device, quickly joining the video call where Sam was already waiting.

The sound notifying other members of the call pinged twice, and Danny couldn’t help the grin and automatic “Jinx!” said at the exact same time as Tucker. Laughter filled the cyberspace as Sam rolled her eyes at her two boys.

“Hello to you too.” The goth’s sarcastic voice echoed around Danny’s barren bedroom. With a dramatic sound, Danny turned and flopped himself onto his bed, keeping a steady hold of his laptop the entire time.

“Hi, Sam, Tuck,” Danny said, smiling as he burrowed himself into his pillows. “How’s school going for you guys?”

Tucker’s loud groan caused Danny’s smile to widen. “It’s nothing but studying for finals and finishing up projects, man.”

“That’s what you get for being stupid and wanting two degrees.” Sam’s cutting remark was waylaid by her smile.

The young tech genius smirked at his camera, using a hand to move his glasses up on his nose. “I think you mean being smart?”

“Actually-” whatever friendly argument Sam was about to stir up died before it could live when a loud ping alerted the three friends to another person joining their call. A round of greetings passed in response to Jazz’s tired appearance, and Danny couldn’t help but feel guilty for interrupting his big sister’s sleep.

“Hi, everyone.” Jazz’s smooth voice came through the speakers of Danny’s beat-up laptop. “Is everything okay, Danny?”

Said man had to fight to keep the guilt from showing on his face. Not only was he interrupting Jazz’s sleep but he was also worrying her with late night calls. While it was true that the young man hadn’t been the best at keeping up with his friends (and sister), he had been trying to talk to them more in the few weeks leading up to his coronation. Obviously, if Jazz thought he would only call if something was wrong, Danny wasn’t doing the best job at it.

“Yeah, yeah.” He said, nervously rubbing the back of his neck. “Clockwork and I were just talking earlier today and I kind of wanted to get you guys’ opinion?” He paused, but quickly rushed out the last part of his weird explanation. “Well I kind of already agreed to it so I guess this is more of a warning? Kind of?”

Silence filled Danny’s bedroom as his three friends cautiously exchanged pixelated looks. “What do you mean by that?” Sam was the one who spoke, sounding exasperated.

“Yeah, man, can we get some context?” Tucker spoke next, looking worried.

The halfa heaved a large sigh, bracing himself to dodge around the truth as he had learned to do. “So, I was in the Ghost Zone, yeah? And Clockwork and I started talking. He asked me if I could go on a long-term time adventure for him in like a different dimension or something?” He paused, pulling air into his lungs in a habit he never could quite break. “He said that it would only be a few weeks that would pass in this dimension, but a few years in the other.”

Sam immediately started protesting after the words left Danny’s mouth. “No. Absolutely not.”

“I’ve already agreed to it!”

“No! You don’t get to just up and disappear on us for years!”

“It won’t be years, Sam! It’ll just be a few weeks! You guys will all be busy with your finals, anyway!”

“It’ll be years for you, though! You would be like what, twenty-six by the time you came back to us?”

“Maybe, yeah, but it’s not like it’ll matter!”

“Of course it matters, you idiot! You’ll be alone, in a different dimension, growing up without us!”

“It’s not like I can grow up, anyways!” Danny finally shouted, hair being pulled by his shaking hands. He didn’t look up from where he was staring at his laptop’s keyboard. He didn’t want to look at his friends as he finally admitted an ugly truth he had been trying to prepare himself for since gaining the knowledge that he was the future Ghost King.

A stunned silence filled the call, the only sounds Danny could hear was the gentle pitter-patter of rain tapping along his window and the distant sound of rolling thunder.

“Danny,” Jazz’s hesitant voice broke the agony whirling throughout the young man’s head. “What do you mean by that?”

Blue eyes flickered back and forth across his keyboard, taking in the broken “enter” key that he never quite got around to fixing, to the dent the old technology had on its lower left side. Danny remembers when he was told that his forms would stop aging. The raging denial that had filled Clockwork’s tower as he argued against his mentor. How his being had filled with absolute betrayal, all aimed towards his own body.

Clockwork had explained, back when Danny was first told about what being the Ruler of the Realms would entail. How all ghosts eventually stopped aging at the top of their prime, how very few of them had changes happen to their forms after only ten years of being a denizen of the Ghost Zone. He had explained to his ward that because Danny was only half of a ghost and still had a human form, usually this means he could continue to age regardless - though at a slower rate. However, because Danny was meant to take the throne and would therefore have to perform the coronation ritual, he would stop aging as soon as the Realm fully accepted him.

When Danny originally questioned what Clockwork meant, the old ghost had gone on to explain to him that being the King of all Ghosts involved gaining new powers on top of his responsibilities. As soon as Danny gained all his new abilities and learned to control them, his aging would halt.

The near-panic attack that the halfa had after that particular information bomb was something the two had silently agreed to never bring up again.

So, yeah. For the past couple of years, Danny had the time to come to terms with not only being the Ghost King, but he also had to learn to accept that he would never be able to grow old. He would never be able to follow his family and friends into death - a rough lesson he had to learn with Dan - and he would be forever alone in a castle surrounded by the dead. It was something Danny did his best to never truly think about, even though his ghostly mentors did their best to support him through his journey of becoming the King of the Zone.

Danny had never brought it up to his friends before. Ghost Writer, after one particularly bad fight with Valerie, had taught him a lesson he would never forget. The halfa had gone to the ghostly author to rant about how his friends had been pushing him into telling Valerie that Danny Fenton and Danny Phantom were one and the same. Typically, whenever Danny needed someone to vent to he often went to anyone except Ghost Writer, but the then sixteen-year-old had honestly been itching for a fight. Instead of a brawl, though, the gray-skinned being had sat Danny down in one of his library’s squishy armchairs and taught him. The halfa had reluctantly listened as Ghost Writer spoke to him about an old legend of a man who’s cunning was his greatest power. Of how this man, adrift from everything he had ever known, had used the knowledge he had gained fighting enemy after enemy to prove everyone around him wrong and get back to his homeland - to his family. Ghost Writer wove words together in a beautiful way, that night, and for a while Danny really thought he had a shot at telling Valerie why he was being such a bad boyfriend to her.

The two of them were not trying to fight, honestly. But the pressure of having to run off at the drop of a hat to take care of a ghost problem had been quickly becoming too much for both of them. Hence, running into the Ghost Zone to pick a fight with someone who would actually be a challenge. It wasn’t his fault that Ghost Writer suddenly decided that teaching Danny was better than fighting him. And, despite it all, Danny had walked away from his time in the library more sure of himself than he had in a while.

However, when he passed through the portal, he saw a small, helpless blob ghost fighting against the restraints being used to hold them down. Danny was shocked still as his parents shot a bright, electric blue beam straight through the helpless being, leaving behind only a smoking spot on the steel table. His parents had cheered, after that, not noticing their greatest failure hovering in front of their greatest success. The two had excitedly talked about how they were sure that test was the best one they’ve had in weeks, about how excited they were to learn more on how to destroy the pesky unfeeling masses of ectoplasm.

It had made Danny sick to his stomach.

The hope that Ghost Writer had given him that day had rapidly turned into a warning Danny always held closely to his heart. Knowledge is power. Don’t let anyone know you, don’t let anyone see you. Don’t be a fool and give them the power to destroy you.

So Danny hadn’t told Valerie about who he really was. He hadn’t told his best friends about being the future Ghost King. He never dared to tell his parents that their invention had killed him before he even made it to highschool.

Knowledge was power, and power killed.

But here he was, ignoring the story of Odysseus, and telling his friends that he would never get to grow old with them. That he was stuck, forever caught in the body of a young adult until someone challenged him for the throne and did him in.

“I mean…” Danny finally croaked out, curling up a little bit as he carefully balanced his laptop on his knees. “I mean that I’m going to stop aging. Soon. Clockwork said. And I-” He broke off, wishing he could hide his head between his ripped jeans and never have to face his friends as he spilled out such a bitter fact. “I won’t be able to grow up with you guys, anyway.”

“Oh, Danny…” Jazz’s soothing voice wasn’t as comforting as one of her hugs, but her familiar cadence still caused him to shudder out a sob. “Little brother, you know we love you no matter what. If you stayed as a scrawny fourteen year old boy we would still stay by your side. You’re still my brother if you’re old and gray, or if you stay as young as you are now.”

“Yeah,” Tucker’s voice had a shaky confidence to it, sounding forced to even someone as socially inept as Danny. “Y’know you’re stuck with us forever, Danny.”

“But it won’t be for forever,” another sob tore out of Danny’s chest, though there were no tears. “I’m going to be forever. You guys will grow up, you guys will die and I’ll be alone!” He spat the last word out, tearing his hands from where they had been buried in his dark hair. His trembling digits were caught in the eerie green glow of his ecto-blasts, body filled with too many emotions but with no way for them to get out. Sharp eyes turned to the screen where his friends’ faces were warily watching him. Danny caught the reflection of his irises, a radiant neon beacon shining in the darkness of his room. Lightning cracked across the sky, and the sound of it filled up the empty space he had created with his confession.

“I’m going on this mission,” Danny said with a confidence he did not feel. “Clockwork said it would help me. I trust him. He- he wouldn’t tell me something that’s not true.”

“Alright,” Tears were spilling from Jazz’s teal eyes. “Alright, Danny. We trust you, we trust Clockwork.”

“No!” Sam also had tears in her eyes, but she didn’t let them spill. “If this is true, then we need to figure out a way to stop it. There’s got to be a way!”

Tucker’s broken voice cut over the last of the resident goth’s. “Sam, Sam no-”

“We can fix this!”

“There is no fixing it.” Danny distantly noticed his voice was an empty, broken thing. “I’ve asked.”

“We can find a way-”

“Sam, you’re not helping right now,” Tucker cut in. He was scowling, glasses reflecting the light of his laptop. “Like Jazz said, we trust you Danny. If you think this will help, then go for it.”

“We just want you to be safe, to be happy.” Jazz added. Her voice was still shaky, but she was doing her best to be brave in the face of her little brother’s emotions. “If Clockwork says this is something you need to do, then go for it.”

Danny paused, bowing his head. The toxic green glow that had once surrounded him had dimmed, but the pattering of rain only grew louder as the wind picked up. “Clocky said there’s others like me there. That a friend of his would be able to teach me.”

Jazz hummed, the sound barely picked up by her own laptop’s microphone. “That’s good, little brother. Did he say for sure how long you would be gone for?”

“Not really,” Danny said, barely lifting his head. His voice was still devoid of emotion, just a shade of who he was. “He- he said it would be a week or two for you guys. He never really told me how long I would be in the other place.”

A smile that was blinding white despite being forced graced Jazz’s elegant face. “Well, I know for sure Valerie would be more than happy to take care of Amity Park while you’re gone. Thank you for letting us know you’ll be gone!”

Danny was suspicious at Jazz’s sudden acceptance of what he just told her, but brushed off his concerns. At this point, he just wanted to hang up and mope until he felt brave enough to go back into the Ghost Zone. Nor did he want to tell his older sister that calling on his ex-girlfriend was not going to do any good, as he could simply ban travel into Amity Park while the halfa was dealing with this other dimension. That would mean explaining how he could order ghosts around, which was really something he wanted to avoid for the next sixty years.

“Yeah, yeah of course…” Danny said skeptically when Sam and Tucker didn’t say anything. He chanced a glance at his screen, noticing both of them looking down and furiously typing.

“Just- just at least text us before you go.” Emotion coated Jazz’s voice, though Danny wasn’t able to fully pick them apart by the time Jazz kept speaking. “We love you, Danny.”

“Yeah, Danny,” Tucker agreed, his voice still filled with that false confidence. “Maybe see if you can keep us updated every once in a while?”

“I don’t think that would work,” Sam cut through. “So just… keep a journal or something. We all know you have the failing memory of a goldfish.”

Danny couldn’t even muster up the energy to feed into the age-old argument between the two of them. “Y-yeah, okay,” he nodded as he spoke. “I can do that.”

“Good.”

A yawn, obviously fake even to Danny, cracked open Jazz’s jaws. “I need to get back to bed. But, Danny, go get packed and let us know before you go, okay? We’ll keep an eye on Ellie and Amity as much as we can.”

“Sure, Jazz.” Danny agreed, trying to smile at his friends. “I’ll text you guys before I go.”

“You better.” The threat came from Sam, who was no longer angrily typing but was now visibly fuming. “I don’t like this, so you better be safe.”

“Of course, Sam.”

“And get us souvenirs! Take pictures, be a tourist. I expect a lot of stories about everything when you get back.” Tucker cut through the tension created with an easy-going grin.

Danny found it in him to give a small, genuine smile to Tucker. “Yeah, Tuck. I’ll bring you guys back something cool.”

It was then that the four finally said goodbye, and Danny closed his laptop with a definite click. He stared out at his barren room, at the boxes that had never been unpacked.

When Danny originally moved out from his parents’ house, at the ripe age of eighteen, it was with a certain type of excitement. Jazz had helped him house hunt and Vlad - who had long since given up on any attempts at being a major Fruit Loop - was on call to discuss the legal side of things when the siblings got tripped up. He had picked his current apartment because it was on the cheaper side. Because even if Vlad said “no strings attached” with a steady stream of please believe me-this is not a trick-honesty-honesty-hONESTY, Danny couldn’t help but be a bit wary of accepting help.

However, when it came around to actually packing up all his stuff from his childhood home, Danny’s excitement had fled. Packing up his model rockets, he couldn’t help but be surrounded by the memories attached to them. The Saturn V his dad had helped him build when he had come back from his first day of kindergarten crying about his classmates making fun of him from having kooky parents. His dad had helped Danny build it for all of thirty minutes before he was distracted by something down in the lab, and little five-year-old Danny finished it up himself after waiting for his dad to come back. For seven hours, Danny waited for his father to live up to his promise to be back in “just a second”.

His hanging International Space Station had been a gift from his mom, back when he broke his leg fighting off the mutant food in the fridge. Danny had been so scared of the rotted deli ham that had attacked him whenever he was looking for a meal. Jazz had been at a Mathlete meeting or something, so it had been up to Danny to get his own food that day. The sliced ham, old enough to be green without the assistance of ectoplasm, had jumped on him as soon as he opened the fridge. He remembers screaming for his parents to help him, and he tried to climb on top of the kitchen table, away from the mutant meats. They had surrounded him for hours, crying for someone to come save him. When he finally started to gather up the courage to bolt for his room, though, the possessed processed food had finally managed to climb onto his hiding space. Danny had been so scared that he had fallen off the table, twisting his leg in a way that it snapped, the break echoing across the empty house. It was only with the help of adrenaline that he managed to hide himself away in a closet, stuffing random coats under the crack of the door so that the meats couldn’t get to him.

That was how Jazz found him, when she finally made it back from her meeting. She dropped out of Mathletes the next day.

Danny had been seven at the time.

Those memories had haunted him as he packed up the various models he had gotten as birthday presents from his schoolmates, or apology gifts from his parents. It was with a certain sadness that he pulled down the glow in the dark stars lining his walls and ceiling, remembering how Jazz had pestered their parents into helping him put them up.

At the time, it had seemed like every small childhood thing in his room was tainted by the signs of how badly his parents had treated them.

When Danny had finally finished packing up his old room, he couldn’t find the energy to unpack the unlabeled boxes in his new home. So they were stacked hazardously throughout every room. His kitchen, the living room, even his bathroom wasn’t safe.

It was now three years later, and they were still untouched. It had taken his parents six weeks to realize that Danny had moved out. The call he had gotten from them was a furious one - Danny had yelled at them with a type of security he had never felt before. He listed off every reason why he had been so excited to finally move out from under their thumb. Why he was angry at them for not noticing if he just disappeared. How they only ever noticed the bad but never the good. How he couldn’t live in a house where they tortured and experimented on sentient beings.

It was at this point in their argument that his mother hung up. They hadn’t spoken since.

“Get yourself together, Fenton,” Danny mumbled to himself, brushing his laptop off of him. The Ghost King stretched, gazing forlornly at the sealed childhood around him. Shaking himself to get rid of the hazy feeling, the young man started to gather up various important items he might need in a massive blue duffle bag covered in NASA and ghost themed patches.

It was time he packed up, took a nap, and then set off towards Clockwork’s tower, after all.

╭( ๐_๐)╮

Want to keep reading? The rest of the chapter is on ao3 because goDDAMN THIS IS ONE LONG BOI

Taglist (as always, if you want to be added/removed just let me know!): @vixen-uchiha @apointlessbox @mentalcarebear @asphyxia778 @horribly-lost-and-gay @may-rbi @blacksea21090 @kyrianclawraith @fisticuffsatapplebees @stargazing-bookwyrm

#dead on main #DCxDP #DPxDC #dp x dc #dc x dp #Putting the Fun Back in Funeral #the spirit of gotham is a lesbian #pariah dark is a seahorse dad #danny fenton #danny phantom #jason todd #danny fenton needs a hug #danny fenton is a sad little baby man #he's trying to file his taxes #same tho #I just filed mine #and yikes #danny fenton died of taxes not the ghost portal #L bozo

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