Chapter Text
Dash's left arm is in a sling. His hair is mussed, and it's long now. It just brushes his shoulders in its golden waves, sloping at the end of his neck. There's dirt on his temple, a souvenir from earlier that night. It smears across his skin with a messy hand, and Danny has the sudden urge to wipe it away. But he is no longer welcome to that swath of skin. Instead, he clenches his hands at his sides as Dash sits up in his bed.
There are bags like bruises under Dash's eyes and if Danny looked in the mirror he's not sure he would fair any better. An outline of bandages presses against the thin hospital gown fabric, wrapped by practiced hands and snug against his abdomen. Still, Dash moves as if he's a trapped animal, a rabbit's pulse in his throat and a wild abandon in his eyes.
Danny concedes and holds up his hands. "It's just me," he breathes, voice soft and low. He's not even sure if he has the energy to make it anything else.
Dash settles. Barely. "Sorry," he says, eyeing the door until Danny closes it completely. "Hospitals make me jumpy."
"It's okay," Danny shrugs. "I don't like biology labs too much myself." He sits on the chair in the room. It's in the corner between a wall and the window, and when he looks out, he sees the parking lot. Sees cars rolling in and out, people on shift and off, tries to remember the last time he was in a hospital. Phantom healed most of his injuries, cured most of his ailments. Hard to die of the flu when half of you is already in the grave.
There's an awkward silence that surrounds them. It makes Danny shift in his seat, suddenly unsure of himself and what to do. In the many years they'd known each other silence was never their poison. It was always noise of some sort. Screaming, insults hurled at each other, fists finding connection in skin and bone. The sound of soothing words, stray kisses trailing across skin, the rhythm of their synchronized breaths.
But as Danny sits in this room, he realizes they are once again something they haven't been in a long time. They are strangers.
It takes him moments he doesn't have to collect his words, to push them past the lump in his throat. "I wanted to save you." He sounds pitiful even to his own ears, a dog with its head bent and tail between its legs. "I'm sorry, Dash."
All that meets him is silence, long stretches of it only broken by the soft beep of Dash's machines. Danny braves himself a look over to the bed, but Dash is staring at the ceiling, fingers dancing on top of his blanket. Seeing him like this reminds Danny of how human the other man is. How inhuman Danny himself has become. How can he sit through what he did and come out the other side unscathed? Should they not be sharing a room, he and Dash? Should he not be bandaged and broken?
Dash takes a deep breath and the movement snaps Danny out of his reverie. Those brilliant blue eyes find his and hold his gaze without a hint of letting it go. "And who saves you?"
Danny jumps like Dash had hit him. His throat feels inexplicably dry. "W-what?"
"It's what I thought I was doing. Saving you." Dash is silent again, but before Danny can reply he opens his mouth one more time. "Back home, it's all you did. You saved us. Even when we hated you or tried to hunt you down like a witch in Salem. Even when it broke you. But you're not a god, Danny. So who saves you?"
There is no answer. Danny is not meant to be saved. He is half in the grave and half prey. Mortal for ghosts to feast and ghost for mortals to fear. He is a monster in his own right, and still yet, there is a scared little boy who died at the age of fourteen somewhere inside him.
He tries to say something but his mouth gapes open and closed like a fish. He feels just as gutted, like someone has slit a knife down his middle and bared him whole. He curls his hands into fists. A lump forms in his throat and he swallows it down. He has seen a future where he has killed. He has blanks where his hands may have hurt. His fingers are stained with the blood of a mother of five, because no matter what she did to him, he would have done worse had Dash not stopped him.
Danny saves because if he doesn't he may kill. Phantom is not good or bad, he is neutral. He is Danny, one part of their whole. And what does that make him? What does that make him if he is not sure if he will hurt or help?
So, who saves Danny? No one. Danny does not deserve to be saved. That boy, the one from so long ago who wandered so innocently into that cavernous mouth, is dead. There is nothing of his left behind except the pain of his final moments. He doesn't know how to say all this. That saving people keeps him human. That keeping his town, his family, safe from what he knew ghosts wanted because he felt it deep within himself, kept him from going feral. Even if it meant sleepless nights. If it meant losing everything. If it meant years spent with needles and thread and countless pricked fingers as he tried to sew himself back together. Danny is not there to be saved. There is nothing of him left to save in the first place.
He swallows thickly and knows he has been silent for too long. "I don't deserve your forgiveness," he says, voice quiet. He can't make it any louder, trapped somewhere in his throat.
"I didn't say you had it. I'm pissed to hell with you, Fenton."
Danny nods. "I'm sorry." But please, he thinks, let me save you one last time before we say goodbye. He shifts his weight and steels himself to tell Dash. Tell him something he never deserves to hear. "Listen, Dash...I didn't know, but-"
He's interrupted by a loud voice outside the room. Dash instantly tenses, and then the door is opening and then there's a man in the doorway. He's nearly as big as the frame itself, broad shoulders and strong jaw offset by the beer gut he's sporting. The skin on his face is older than it should be, a sign that his liver isn't as strong as it once was, teeth yellow when Danny catches a glimpse of them. Still, he sees traces of the man he bared. It's Dash's breadth, Dash's jaw, Dash's anger.
The room is so quiet Danny's not even sure he's breathing. The tension shatters a split second later when Mr. Baxter steps into the room and closes the door, eyes flicking to Danny before turning to Dash. They watch his son like a hawk, flitting around his injured body as if to catalogue every single thing wrong with him. Dash is suspended, frozen, machines next to him starting to beep quicker with the pace of his heart.
Mr. Baxter puts his back to Danny, a move he's sure is intentional. A physical barrier between him and his son. "Dash," Mr. Baxter says, his voice a deep baritone. There is a rage hidden sloppily beneath the surface.
Dash's jaw unhinges to say, "Sir."
Mr. Baxter turns around then, facing Danny, plastering a cold smile onto his lips. It sends a shiver down Danny's spine. "I'm told my son took quite the spill. Thank you for making sure he's alright, but I'll take it from here." And if it weren't for what Dash had told him, from what he'd seen himself, Danny might've thought the man was charming. But he has seen the damage scoured into Dash's skin, can see the terror so plain in his eyes at the idea of being left alone with someone who was supposed to bring him comfort.
Danny smiles back. He feels it curve over his lips, lets every bit of maliciousness enter his expression. This time, he does not care to hold back from Phantom's flat apathy. Danny is not nearly as big as Mr. Baxter but he fills the room anyway, squaring himself up and leaning into the man's space to grip the end of the hospital bed. He is not scared. He has faced monsters worse than this by looking in a mirror. "I'm afraid I won't be going anywhere, Mr. Baxter."
The mask cracks, and after a second of disbelief, it crumbles altogether. "Now listen to me, boy," he says in a voice Danny assumes is supposed to be intimidating. He's not a small man by any means. Larger than Dash for sure, which is a feat in itself. He supposes the voice would have worked had Danny been normal.
Instead, Danny slips between Dash and his father, breaking the barrier Mr. Baxter tried to set. He hears the frantic beat of Dash's pulse echo in the room and resists the urge to reach for his hand. Even without it, the implication is clear. Danny and Dash are closer than Mr. Baxter initially thought, and he sees the cogs turning in his brain as he figures it out.
This does not settle the mood. If anything, the atmosphere dips into something dangerous, something ready to break free. "I think you need to get your hands off my son," he says, stepping closer. Danny wants to laugh.
"I think you need to leave."
Mr. Baxter visibly reddens at this, anger breaking free and swelling into his blood. "Dash? Is there anything you'd like to add?"
Dash, still a deer caught in headlights, curls his hand around the blanket on his bed. Danny has never seen Dash look like this. Back home, Dash had been scared many times. There were a lot of things to be scared of in Amity Park, a lot of things no one but natives understood. Still, all those times he'd been scared to death, he still moved. He still helped where Danny could not, corralling groups and keeping morale; making plans and getting stragglers to safety. So it strikes him now that Dash is still. Even his throat seems to be frozen, unable to make words until Dash reaches in and pulls them out one by one. "I-I didn't kn-know you were coming."
"Well, I'm here. Tell the kid to fuck off."
"Listen, Mr. Baxter," Danny says, not even a hint of the fear the bigger man so craves in his voice. "I'm not moving from Dash's side, and you can't drag me from it. So I suggest you leave."
Mr. Baxter draws up to his full height and Dash seems to shrink back even more. Danny's heart twists in his chest. He wants to carry him away somewhere safe, hide him until the world can show him no more horrors. Wants, for one moment, to let Dash have the peace he deserves.
"Or what? You're gonna make me, kid? You're a buck fifty soaking wet."
Danny laughs. It's hearty. Oh, it's been a long time since a foe has underestimated him. This takes Mr. Baxter aback for a second, makes him even more angry. But the laughter ends as soon as it began and Danny is no longer in the mood for playing. His intent is seared in his pupils when he makes contact with Dash's father. "This is your last chance," he says, and a growl catches somewhere between his tongue and his teeth. Phantom stretches his fingers around his muscles, a slight reminder that he is there, that they are one, that they are whole once again.
Mr. Baxter moves faster than Danny would have thought. In less than a second he's slammed up against the hospital wall with enough force to make him dizzy yet still soft enough it barely makes a sound. A practiced move, Danny realizes. The man's hand wraps around his throat, spittle falling over his lips as he fails to keep the rage in. Here, like this, he can see traces of who Dash used to be. The need for control, the compulsion to take it wherever possible, the empty victories against the people you win it from. From children, from the sick, from the vulnerable. So insecure it rattles you to the bone.
He looks over at Dash now, who is blinking furiously, like he's in a dream. "I'm sorry," Danny chokes out, keeping Phantom at bay for just a moment.
Mr. Baxter smirks. "That's what I like to hear."
Danny pays him no mind, just keeps looking at those ocean blue eyes he has come to memorize. "I'm sorry," he repeats, hoping it gets through. "For saying you were ever like him. I'm sorry. I'm sorry." He could say it for eternity and it would never be enough, because Dash may have been born from this, but that boy is gone. Danny never realized. Maybe he should have sooner. Should have seen it in Dash as well as he saw it in himself. He is not the only scared little boy who died and rose to dust the ashes off. He is not the only one with a ghost clinging to him.
Mr. Baxter pushes against him harder. "You don't talk to him. Understand me?"
He can feel his face throb. He does not panic. Instead, he releases the rest of his breath, finds the calm in his inability to take another. When he opens his eyes, they glow green. It spooks Mr. Baxter into loosening his grip just slightly. Danny uses that moment to grip the man's wrist, Phantom nearly purring against him as he lets the skin sizzle slightly beneath his palm. Green wraps around Mr. Baxter's wrist, an ectoburn digging into the skin before Danny releases him.
"No, actually," Danny says, imbuing Phantom's strength to push Mr. Baxter back. "I don't understand." He does not hide his monster now. He does not suppress him. He revels in it, and it's like they slot back into place, Phantom and he. A beautiful mix of human fury and ghostly wrath that he does not care to hold back. "I don't understand how you can come here and think I would let you touch him. How you think I would let you anywhere near him."
"What the fuck are you?" Mr. Baxter whispers, fear crossing his eyes before they harden into something unreadable.
"Someone who isn't scared of you," Danny says, letting the ectoplasm crawl up his hands and to his elbows. It's warm against him, a forgotten friend that welcomes him home. He hasn't been this in tune with his powers since leaving Amity Park, and he realizes now how much he's missed their presence, their weight on his ribs. He can feel it pulsating behind them, a steady rhythm with the beat of his heart and a warm buzz in his brain.
Dash's father whips around and punches Danny hard on the face. He feels the blood in his mouth and swallows it. The punch seems to trigger something in Dash, who is now attempting to get up and detangle himself from the wires, but Danny forces him down with a shake of his head. Dash needs rest, he can handle this on his own, and the time for playing is over.
He goes intangible, invisible to the naked eye, and grabs Mr. Baxter the same way he had just been grabbed, fingers curling around his thick throat. He slaps the other hand over the man's mouth and stretches his power so it covers the both of them. Then, Danny flies up, automatically changing on the way. He flies so high the building becomes just a speck and it gets a little harder to breathe. His legs have formed back into that tail, helping keep his balance as he dangles Mr. Baxter in front of him, allowing their bodies to come back into sight.
"Now," Danny hisses, voice close to the older man's ear. "What did you like to hear?"
Mr. Baxter's face is red under Danny's fingers as Danny slowly removes his hand from the man's mouth. "Please don't kill me," he begs out, gripping Danny's arm.
"Why shouldn't I?" Though he knows he wouldn't, the urge to drop him, to make him pay for the things he's done, is so strong it nearly overpowers him.
"Please." And it's a beg so sweet in Danny's ears it almost sounds like music.
"Fine," he responds, starting to float down. "But don't ever come near Dash again." He loosens his grip just slightly, just enough for Mr. Baxter to feel it. "Or me. You understand?"
"Yes. Yes, I understand." And there's something so sweet in how easily he bends to Phantom's wishes.
Danny doesn't say anything as he all but throws Mr. Baxter in the bed of his pickup, just watches as the man scrambles into the driver's seat and attempts to drive off so quickly the tires squeal and burn. After making sure there's no one around, Danny shifts back, feet hitting the ground with a solid thump.
He looks back towards the hospital up to the third floor window where he knows Dash's room is. He should go back and explain. He should go back and grovel for forgiveness and mercy for what he did to Dash, even if he doesn't deserve it.
He makes it back to the waiting room where Sam and Tucker are sitting on the couch. He sits in between them, gathering the courage to go back into Dash's room, afraid the other man will force him to look at too many harsh truths at once. Instead, he feels the heat from his friends, the slight pulse of their veins right under their skin. It soothes him, makes his lids heavy with the exhaustion he has been fighting for the past day or week or year. He needs to go back to Dash's room. He rests his head on Tucker's shoulder. He closes his eyes.