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His heart thundered loudly in his chest, drowning out everything else. He was shaking all over his body, and even though he could scarcely hear his own voice, he knew he was screaming much louder than he had to—too loud, really. But he had to make sure, couldn’t handle it if they managed not to hear him.
He wasn’t sure what exactly he yelled—told them not to shoot, maybe, begged them to help him or just said his own name. Whatever it was, it worked well enough.
The soldier-agent-officer—whatever they were—at the front of the group lowered their weapon in shock. He could have fallen to his knees and cried right then and there.
They turned to shout something to another person behind them—it was hard to tell with the suits, but they might have been taller, and the emblem on their breast was red instead of the blue most of the others sported. Must be the leader, he thought dazedly.
The taller one turned to look at him as well. They stopped for a second, though whether out of fear, apprehension, or simple deliberation, he couldn’t tell.
He couldn’t blame them, regardless; he knew what he looked like, what they must all be wondering. The sole living thing in this wasteland of a city, a literal ghost town, a disheveled boy with glowing green eyes? He didn’t think he’d trust it, either.
Red—as he was calling them—gestured to the others, and then the entire swarm of them had ceased training their weapons on him. He must have looked pretty pathetic, then, for them to so quickly believe that he wasn’t a threat. He felt pretty pathetic, at least.
The leader walked up, stopping at the steps to his house.
Was he supposed to come down?
They made no further gestures, but reached up to press a button on their helmet where the side of their jaw probably was.
“Who are you?” crackled a masculine-sounding voice.
He couldn’t explain the way his stomach flipped at those words, finally hearing another human voice after so long. He stuttered for a minute before finding it in himself to give a proper answer.
“Danny– my name’s Daniel Fenton. My– I didn’t– I live here,” he wheezed.
Great work, genius, totally not shady at all.
Regardless, the officer seemed unperturbed.
“How old are you, Danny?” they asked. And God, he knew it was on purpose, part of whatever training they had gotten over the years, but did it feel good to hear someone say his name after so long.
Speaking of, he… didn’t actually know how many years it had been. He had an idea, of course, but the seasons were wild ever since the evacuation, and the difference between day and night had gotten hazier and hazier until it was just too hard to tell. He’d lost track of the days a few months in.
“What… What’s the date?”
He saw a few of the officers glance at each other, but the one in front of him didn’t react.
“Williams?” they questioned, tossing it over their shoulder to the one who had first noticed him, with the blue emblem.
A feminine voice sounded from them, “It’s the twenty-sixth of November, sir.”
“...And the year?” he asked, embarrassed.
Unphased, the taller one simply said, “It’s 2007.”
Danny paused to think for a moment, doing the math in his head.
“Then I’m… seventeen. Eighteen, in March,” and wasn’t that a weird thought. He’d known it was coming up, but to suddenly be aware he only had so many months left of childhood… he pushed the idea away. Later, he could have his crisis later.
“Do you know where your family is, Danny?”
An odd question, definitely. He was half tempted to just gesture to the ever-smoking ruins around him, but that would probably have sent the wrong message. He was trying not to get shot.
“No. They left, I think. I hope.”
A pause, and another shared glance between the officers, though this time Red had joined in. Williams shifted, probably glancing over at him. It was hard to tell.
The silence stretched on, but Danny was too tired to be any more uncomfortable than he already was. Whatever happened would happen. At least it couldn’t be any worse than his everyday routine for the past few years.
Finally, Red’s posture shifted as he seemed to decide something.
“I think you should come with us,” he said, tone still as tactful as before, but leaving no room for argument.
It was all Danny could do not to say ‘please.’
The ride out of Amity was more emotional than he was expecting.
With nothing worth taking with him and no real time to grab it anyway, Danny left behind the only home he’d ever known and everything that was left in it. He hadn’t thought it’d be as hard as it was, when it was really long gone already. Everything that had made it worth calling ‘home’ had packed up and run years ago.
As he stared out through the window of a government vehicle that was strangely reminiscent of his parents’ old ‘GAV,’ as they called it (or maybe he was just nostalgic), he thought about Sam and Tucker for the first time in too long.
He wondered where they’d gone, if they’d kept in touch. He hoped so.
Sam’s parents had probably taken her to somewhere nice, high-end and free of crazy ghost hunting families. The Foleys had probably packed up and gone to Minnesota, where Mrs. Foley’s family was from. Or maybe they stayed closer, maybe hopped over to Chicago with Mr. Foley’s side. Either way, he doubted their families had cared all that much about keeping them together.
Maybe they still played Doomed together, called each other all the time to complain about their new schools and plan meet-ups that may or may not have been possible. Maybe they even visited each other sometimes.
Did they still help each other with homework, even if the material was probably completely different? They were both smart enough that they could probably figure it out. Did they manage to make new friends? Were they happy where they were, now?
Do they ever think about me?
He tried desperately to blink the tears away at that single thought. This was why he tried not to think about it. He missed them so bad, tried so hard to hold onto the hope that one day he’d see them again. But in all likelihood, they couldn’t possibly have tried to have that same hope. He knew that, to the rest of the world, he was as good as dead.
He squeezed his eyes shut and leaned his head against the cool window, fighting down hiccups. He didn’t want to start crying in front of all these strangers, especially not so noticeably. If any of them did notice, they didn’t comment.
He couldn’t bring himself to open his eyes as they crossed the threshold, though he did peek at the barrier as they drove off. A blend of metal fencing and his parents’ ghost shield tech that had miraculously managed to work despite being invented before the proof of their existence, it looked much the same from the outside as it did from the inside—a souped-up electric fence with a glowing green dome, ensuring nothing could get in or out.
Not that there’s been anything trying much for years, now.
He wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting when he looked. Somehow, he still felt disappointed. Unable to bear it any longer, Danny closed his eyes. If nothing else, he could at least rest assured that for once, he was safe.
The hospital was a blur, a mess of light and sound he awoke to suddenly and without warning.
Everything was going too fast for him to catch up. He’d been sitting, then standing, then shoved down into a wheelchair and rolled into a room. There was a floor of questions that he struggled to answer and tests he was only half sure he even agreed to.
In the end, he stopped trying to keep track of everything as it happened. It was easier to just space out and let it all wash over him. At least then he wouldn’t have to watch the doctors freak out when they tried to take his vitals. One of them was speaking tensely to the head officer who’d brought him here, he thought.
His helmet was off now. He looked pretty much like he’d imagined he would; buzz cut hair, sharp eyes, a stoic expression on his mature but relatively young face—he might’ve been in his 30s, but somehow Danny doubted he was the best to ask at this stage. It wasn’t as though he would have had much practice guesssing lately.
The man glanced over to him, making brief eye contact. Danny vaguely felt himself wave a little, though he was sure it looked sluggish. The man gave a nod of acknowledgement before once again giving the doctor his full attention.
That was just as well, as another doctor chose that moment to come up and ask Danny who they should call.
“I don’t know,” he mumbled, staring down at the hospital bed.
“You don’t know?” she asked, frowning. “Your parents? Guardians? Any extended family?”
He blinked, fighting to keep up with even that small bit of information. He felt a little lightheaded. That was probably bad.
“Um,” he said. “Uh.”
“Jesus, Kathy, don’t overwhelm him,” someone said a little ways away, but probably closer than they seemed if how distant Kathy’s quiet apology sounded was any indicator.
“You said your name was Daniel Fenton, right?” the other doctor asked, Kathy seemingly having been ushered away.
“Yeah,” he confirmed, relieved. Yes or no questions were easier, something he barely had to think about.
“Okay,” they said. “If we look up your emergency contacts, should they be up to date?”
He frowned, thinking about that one.
“Will they still show up if I’m legally dead?” he asked.
They paused.
“...Are you?”
“Maybe?”
They blinked, thinking it over.
“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it,” they decided. “Does that mean yes, assuming you’re not?”
“Probably,” he answered. “But I don’t know if they’re still in-state. They might not even come.”
“Why do you think they wouldn’t?” the doctor asked, tone shifting.
“How would you react if someone told you that your should-be-dead son just suddenly re-surfaced from a ghost-ridden wasteland that normal people can’t enter without special equipment so they don’t suffocate?”
Probably not smart to suggest that to the people he was depending on to not question that, but whatever. They’d find out that he wasn’t exactly a normal person anymore sooner or later.
“Touche,” the doctor simply said.
He was notified the next day that they had indeed managed to get in contact with his parents. They weren’t sure when exactly they would arrive, but they were in fact still in-state.
He tried to tell himself not to get his hopes up. He was right; the story he had, however true it was, would probably inspire at least a little suspicion. He couldn’t expect them to be ready to just accept him with open arms and take him back home instantly, no questions asked.
He couldn’t quite help himself from hoping for it anyway.
A few hours later, familiar voices flowed from the other side of the door and Danny could have cried if he hadn’t been so desperate to look his best for them.
This was really real. He was going to see his family again. He was going home, wherever that was now.
He rasped out a “come in” as a sturdy knock rapped against the door. Deep breaths, he reminded himself as he sat up against the wall.
But even as much as he had tried to mentally prepare himself, he couldn’t help the way his breath caught when his mom stepped through the door, his dad close behind. They looked so tired, but hopeful, too.
He could only pray that he lived up to that hope.
Everything he had planned to say, all the apologies, the explanations, anything of any sort of intelligence flew right out the window as he met her eyes.
“Mom,” he croaked, helpless to the way his eyes threatened to overflow. He felt like a kid again for the first time in years, desperate to jump up from the bed and run into her arms and never leave. Were it not for his injuries and the bone deep exhaustion that had been plaguing him since leaving Amity, he would have done just that. As it were, all he could do was stare and keep himself from reaching desperately for her like a toddler, if only to spare himself the embarrassment.
He just couldn’t believe it. It was real. His mom was here, and everything would be–
“You’re not my son,” she snarled, eyes bright with anger.
Everything stopped.
“Mom?” he asked, voice small. He glanced over to his dad, hoping for him to talk some sense into her. He knew this was weird, unbelievable, even, but they had to know it was him. They had to.
Mom always thought logically, even to a fault. His dad was far from stupid (despite how often he messed up), but she was definitely the brains of the operation they had going. But that just meant that his dad was able to look at things in a way that she sometimes kept herself from doing; he thought with his heart more often than her, so surely, surely he’d see him, even beneath the years that separated him from the fourteen-year-old kid he’d been the last time he’d seen them; the eye bags, the new scars, the… well, everything.
He’d see him, and he’d calm his mom down and get her to see sense. And then he’d crush him in one of his (in)famous bear hugs, and his mom would chide him for jostling his injuries before joining in herself. And then they would take him home and everything would be okay again and he could tell them everything that had happened while they’d been apart and they’d hold him like he’d been aching for every single day for years and he could finally let go and not have to be strong all the time just to survive anymore and–
To his horror, his father’s expression was a perfect match of his mother’s rage, his hand straying towards his hip. A glance showed that there rested one of the guns Danny himself had had to use many times these last few years. He hadn’t known they’d taken any with them, hadn’t known there’d been the time for it.
But not for their own son.
It was a thought he’d had many times, in his worst moments. It was only a little harder to ignore, this time, but he managed.
“Mom, Dad, it’s me,” he pleaded, but they didn’t waver.
“Shut up,” his mom barked, drawing her own weapon and pointing it straight at him.
His mom was pointing a gun at him.
“Now, hold on,” the doctor urged, stepping between them. If Danny didn’t know those things were harmless to humans (which included him, most of the time; he’d checked), it’d seem like a pretty downplayed reaction to him. It still kind of did.
“No,” she growled. “That thing is dangerous, and it is not my child.”
His head spun. This wasn’t how this was supposed to go, not at all. He felt so very far away from the present moment, his mind refusing to process it; yet, at the same time, he felt horribly incapable of being anywhere but right there, frozen as he stared down the barrel of his mother’s gun.
“Mom, please,” he begged, voice cracking as he started to cry.
“I said shut up!” she yelled. “I don’t know what you take me for, but I won’t be fooled that easily. My Danny’s eyes are blue!”
And he tried, he really did, but he just couldn’t help it.
He started sobbing.
He felt like he was submerged underwater, drowning in the ocean, stranded where no one could help him all over again. He thought he wouldn’t have to be alone anymore. This was all wrong. It wasn’t supposed to go like this. It was supposed to be over.
Why wasn’t it over?
“Dad,” he tried, desperately. Maybe if he said it enough times, maybe if it was pathetic enough, the bleeding heart his dad usually was would have mercy on him, even if he couldn’t recognize him.
He couldn’t exactly see what happened next, but he could hear the doctor’s angry words as she escorted them out and the way she deliberately didn’t slam the door on their way out.
He felt like he couldn’t breathe. His parents didn’t want him, thought he was some kind of monster.
And the worst part was, he wasn’t so sure that they were wrong. In fact, he'd been banking on them being the ones to tell him otherwise.
At the very least, he wasn’t the same Danny that had been left behind in the evacuation what felt like so long ago now. Even if they did recognize him as their son, would they even be able to love who he was now?
He coughed, choking on his own cries. He didn’t notice the door gently creak back open as he rubbed his knuckles against his chest, wheezing.
The bed dipped under the weight of another person (though only slightly, as the stiff hospital mattress was largely unyielding) as they settled next to him.
They didn’t touch him, but they were saying something. While Danny couldn’t make the words out, their tone was soothing enough that he found himself trying to listen anyway.
Before he knew it, his breathing was back to a steadier pace, though his chest still felt tight. As he unfurled from the ball he had unwittingly curled up into, he realized that it was Nurse Avery sitting next to him, recounting the things she’d done that day. She wasn’t looking directly at him, which he appreciated. She didn’t stop talking, still using that gentle tone until he let out a sigh, to which she allowed her voice to taper off.
“Feeling better?” she prompted softly.
He let out some vague noise that he hoped sufficed as an affirmative, not feeling up to talking just yet. He turned to offer her a grateful smile to try and make sure the message got through.
She smiled back at him, any pity or sadness she may have held well-hidden.
He rubbed the tear tracks from his face, suddenly feeling unbelievably drowsy. Silently, the nurse handed him a tissue, which he managed to mutter a quiet thanks for.
There was a brief silence as she let him compose himself, though he thankfully didn’t feel tense as it continued. She finally spoke up again as he tossed the tissue into the trash, keeping her voice just as low as before.
“How about you try and get some rest? You’ve had a long day, and you still have a lot of healing to do.”
He didn’t bother trying to protest for any of the million reasons he could have—it wasn’t even eight yet, he’d only been awake for a few hours so far anyway—and instead nodded absentmindedly, rubbing his eyes. He felt like he’d been sleeping far too much since he’d gotten out, but then again, he’d barely been sleeping at all for a long while, and always with one eye open.
His mind still wasn’t convinced that he was truly safe just yet, and maybe this latest incident had made that part of him feel justified, but it certainly felt much safer to crash for upwards of ten hours at a time and at much more regular times than usual than it had before.
The nurse quietly wished him goodnight and he was pretty sure he responded in kind, barely hearing the door click shut before he was out like a light.
“Danny?” one of the nurses popped in. She wasn’t one of his regulars, but he recognized her somewhat.
He hummed inquiringly as he slipped some spare paper into the book he was reading. If there was anything good that had come out of being trapped on his own with no way to contact the outside world for years, it was that he had managed to get back into reading. It wasn’t like there was exactly much else to do in the little downtime he had, and a mix of his parents’ abandoned reports and the library’s sections on folklore and medical knowledge had proven to be essential to his survival.
“Someone’s here to see you,” she said, seeming almost giddy.
He froze for a moment, fearing his parents had come back to make good on their clear intentions from last time. But no, all the staff were definitely notified of the incident the same day, they’d have to get past security if they wanted to get to him.
How sad was it that, now that ghosts weren’t trying to kill him on the daily, the biggest threat to his safety was his own parents?
“...Should I let her in?” the nurse asked, unsure.
Flushing, he realized he’d probably spaced out in his musing. He’d done that a lot, back in Amity, but then there’d been no one around to bring him back to reality. Consequently, he’d hardly even realized he was doing it until recently, popping in and out of his own body to find that sometimes upwards of an hour had passed in between. He tried not to think about how much time he must have lost like that when there was no one there to ground him.
“Oh, uh, yeah,” he stammered, wondering who would even–
Wait, her?
His mind raced as the nurse turned away, saying something about getting ‘her,’ but he wasn’t really listening.
There was no way. She was probably halfway across the country, maybe even overseas at some fancy place like Oxford or Cambridge. How would she have even heard the news? Moreover, why would she come if she had?
But… just maybe…?
And then suddenly she was standing there in the doorway, eyes wide and wet as she looked down on him with bright, sterile hospital lights coming in behind her in rays.
“Danny,” she whispered, like his name alone was the last prayer she could think to say.
“Danny,” she repeated, voice steeped in sorrow and a strange kind of joy, her face breaking into the biggest grin he’d ever seen her give; a little sad, maybe a bit manic, even, it was easily the loveliest thing he’d ever seen in all his life.
Before he could even blink, she was rushing forward, and then there were arms around him, sturdy and tight like she never wanted to let go, like she feared he’d slip away if she loosened her grip even slightly. He felt like he just might have.
To his dismay, after just a few moments, she tried to pull away, frantically apologizing and saying something about how he was injured, she should have been more careful of his wounds, she was so sorry-
He pulled her back before she could get far at all, burying his face into her shoulder. Unable to keep his breaths from shuddering, he was grateful that this time he could at least keep from crying.
“Jazz,” he finally replied, muffled as he refused to unfurl from the embrace at all. She relaxed easily despite her worries, hugging him back with no further argument.
He melted as one of her hands drifted to his hair, slowly petting the wild locks down.
“I missed you,” she whispered, voice cracking.
He burrowed just that little bit closer to her, if that were possible.
“I missed you, too,” he mumbled. “Every single day.”
There were so many things he wanted to say, things he’d been waiting to say for years.
I’m sorry.
What have you been up to?
Did you get into Harvard or Princeton like you planned?
Where are we?
I never meant to leave.
Do you still want me?
Are you happy?
I love you.
I love you.
I love you.
He couldn’t say anything.
It was an eternity before he could bear to let go, slowly moving back to look her in the eyes. Bright blue, just like his used to be. They didn’t match anymore.
Her face was wet, but her smile was bright and held only joy. Gently, she took his face in her hands, tilting it every which way to look at him from each angle. Nerves churned in his gut as she looked directly into his eyes, now so strange. He couldn’t look at her anymore, couldn’t see her face when she realized what had become of her brother.
“Oh, Danny…”
Her thumbs stroked their way across his cheeks almost absentmindedly. He wished she would just say what she was thinking already, what he knew to be true.
He startled as she leaned forward, feeling the soft press of her lips against the top of his head. His breath caught, and he finally looked back up at her.
“I heard about what happened,” she spoke softly. “With Mom and Dad.”
He bit his lip, feeling himself grow tense.
“Oh…”
She tucked his hair behind his ear as she settled in close at his side, and he felt his face grow hot with embarrassment. He’d gotten better at cutting it himself since the beginning, but it was never exactly a priority. Long hair wasn’t practical, especially in his situation, but he was fine just tying it back and leaving it at that until it started getting in his face or was long enough to get caught in things. Sometimes, it was too much of a bother to try and make it look nice; why would he care when there was no one else around to see it anyway?
That was all to say, he was sure it looked horrible. At least it wasn’t freshly cut—it always looked a little better after growing it out a bit, no matter how bad of a job he’d done when trimming it.
“I don’t know what exactly they said to you, but no matter what it was, I don’t agree with it and I never will.” Saying this, she pulled him into her arms again, though more loosely this time.
“You’re my little brother, and I love you, always.”
He bit back a surely pathetic sound as his eyes started to water again.
“Don’t… don’t blame them. It’s not their faults. I know… I know what I look like. And, I mean, it’s-”
“I don’t care,” she interrupted, steady and firm but keeping the rage she clearly felt under tight control. “Whatever they thought, whatever it looked like to them, they still pulled their weapons on their own child—on my little brother. There’s… a lot I’ve tried to forgive them for over the years, but this, this I refuse to look past.”
He wasn’t sure what that really meant, but he guessed he probably didn’t want to know.
“Okay,” he replied simply. He didn’t really want to talk about it.
Apparently sensing this, Jazz glanced around the room before her eyes landed on the book he’d been reading.
“The Last Unicorn?” she asked, wry but nonjudgemental.
He shrugged.
“I got a taste for fantasy these last few years. It felt relevant.”
She hummed, though she didn’t ask what he meant by that. No one ever did. A part of him wished someone would already. At the same time, he knew he wasn’t ready for that, wasn’t ready to try and untangle his memories of everything before last week, wasn’t ready to try and explain what it was like, try and parse whatever it was he was feeling (or to sidestep the strange grief he felt, leaving it behind).
Maybe it was because he’d always thought that, if he ever did make it out alive, things would just go back to normal. Everyone would come back, Casper and all the other schools would reopen, everything would just go right back to the way it was, like nothing had even happened.
Of course there’d be cleanup, of course there’d be rebuilding and readjusting, but at the end of it all, it could just be something he and his friends laughed about as a strange experience, but one they had moved on from just fine.
Now in what would be his senior year, Danny had long stopped truly believing in the idea. But, then again, he’d stopped really believing it would ever end at all. He’d figured it was harmless to indulge in the fantasy of it, to make plans that would never come to fruition if it helped him to get through just one more day.
Back before everything had gone to shit, he’d thought high school was going to be just another hurdle to overcome, a slogging home stretch made bearable by his friends that he would soon be glad was behind him.
He’d have taken all the bullying, all the worst teachers and the hardest classes over having those years stolen from him the way they were. He’d imagined it, a few times—what he’d do if he really did get to go back, if everything did just go back to normal.
Casper had had some pretty interesting shop classes to offer, and he’d hoped to take a few—would he have been any good at it? Would he have hated those, too? Dances—would he have even gone? Found a date, or gone with his friends as a group? And all those big tests, the CAT—would he have done well, or completely bombed them? Would he have studied up, maybe come close to Jazz’s score?
What would he have gotten for his first job? A summer gig at the Nasty Burger? Something more involved? Or would he have waited until after he graduated? What about college—where would he have gone? In the perfect world he always imagined, his dreams of space were never quite so dead as he was sure they were in reality. It had always been, in his mind, a question of ‘when’ and ‘how,’ not ‘if.’
Either way, he’d certainly gotten his answer.
He wondered, dimly, what would happen to him now. His parents didn’t want him, so where would he go? No school could really do him much good at this stage, so what would he do?
Why was he even-
“-? Danny?” Jazz was calling his name, shaking him. Oh. He spaced out again.
“Sorry,” he apologized, feeling awkward, like he was still half out of his body. He tripped over his tongue as he tried to explain, like it was swollen and too big for his mouth. “Spaced out. It happens.”
“‘Spaced out?’” She asked tentatively, looking worried. “Does this… happen a lot?”
He hummed. “Kind of. Didn’t notice it before, so I don’t really know,”
He could tell she wanted to ask a million questions, do an entire interview and build a whole psychological profile on him, do anything and everything she thought would help that he’d never wanted less. Instead, she took a breath.
“You should probably talk to your doctor about that,” she only said, letting it go.
“Yeah, I know,” he said, trying not to show how off-kilter her lack of meddling was making him. Her therapy talk and ‘psychobabble’ (as he’d called it) that always went straight over his head always felt annoying to him in the past, but he could only feel fond now. He had even missed this, who would’ve guessed?
Things were quiet after that. They had a lot to talk about. Too much, really. But for the moment, he was content to sit with his sister.
When she scooted into the bed next to him, letting him rest his head on her shoulder, it didn't take long for him to start to drift off. He found it, suddenly worried that he would wake up to find that she wasn't there.
A hand in his hair and her gentle voice humming a familiar tune made it difficult. Soon enough, he stopped bothering to fight it. For the first time in years, then, he fell asleep with ease, not because he was bone tired enough to just about pass out the second he was at rest. No, tonight, he only knew that he was safe. He would always be safe with her.