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Dr. Madeline Fenton and Dr. Jack Fenton both came to Amity Park because of the supernatural allure of the quaint little town. It had a decent amount of ambiance that was perfect for their ideas and studies. There was a perfect place to build a house there, giving the best view of the cornfields. What truly brought them to Amity Park though, was that maybe they’d get a new start to it all.
Jazz doesn’t really like the new house all that much, but Danny is young enough that he doesn’t really care. He likes being able to play in the backyard with his toy rocket; pleased that they have a place to watch the stars on the roof. He likes that there’s a little less pollution in the small town, enough that he can use his big brain to point out all the constellations to Maddie and then talk about what chemicals make them in simplistic terms. All his words have a little lisp from where he knocked his front tooth out while climbing a tree.
Maddie never did find that tooth. It’s probably dust now.
Jack would run around with both his kids on his shoulders, both screeching and laughing and holding onto their dad; that was before Jazz started to try and separate herself from her parents and their “fake science.” She was making her own path in the world, Jack and Maddie knew. They still were sad when she started separating from them, but at least their son still showed interest in family time.
It had all started getting worse when Danny turned 14.
She was worried about him, he was out in the cornfields too often. While she didn’t hold many superstitions, seeing as her world was purely built on facts, she still worried. She worried when she heard him clamoring around downstairs, and she was even more worried when he suddenly stopped making those sounds. Her mother instincts were on high alert whenever she didn’t see him in his bed at 11:30 some nights.
That didn’t mean she opened the door when someone knocked at night, no matter how scared she was for Danny she couldn’t let that make her do rash things like accidentally invite something malicious into their home.
Still, when she saw her baby at the table during breakfast she’d let out a breath of relief.
Something was deeply wrong with her son.
Maddie knew it deep in her soul as she walked into his room one night and saw his eyes open. They were glowing a sort of ghostly green, swirling like the portal to the ghost zone in the lab (the portal to hell, to the afterlife, to the dead her mind screamed at her, she ignored it) his scleras a void black darkness that only accentuated the green. He didn’t seem to see her, as he was staring at the wall. She was probably just out of his periphery. Or maybe he did see her and was keeping incredibly still.
Like a predator.
She closes the door behind her and can’t stop thinking about the green eyes. Can’t stop thinking about the glowing lights of the ghost attacks.
It was like he had taken the eyes from the socket and dipped them into a vial of ectoplasm and popped them back in his head. Like a mix and match doll.
Maddie pretends that she didn’t see it, if only for her own sanity.
(What mother wants to find out her child is not right? Is he a doppelganger or dead? Both options made her want to throw up in her mouth.)
There is something deeply wrong with their son, Jack thinks as he watches his flesh and bone son down a jar of ectoplasm as if it was nothing. It almost reminded Jack of when Vlad and Maddie and him would down shots after a hard day doing research.
Jack almost screams, afraid that this was an attempt at his own life in the worst possible way. Yet the screaming doesn’t happen. He doesn’t begin melting from the inside, he doesn’t wail or cry, nor does he die in a painful screaming mess of dissolving flesh and bone and blood.
No, he brings his knuckle to his mouth and chews on the skin, as if debating something with himself. After a minute it seems that Danny has made his decision.
He takes another vial.
Jack can’t watch.
Maddie keeps herself from thinking about it by making even more inventions, by doing more experiments instead of making fudge with the family. It was the only way she could keep herself from cornering her son and asking what had happened to him. Why is he out of the house after curfew? Why is he coming back with worse and worse grades, getting more tired, permanent bruises under his eyes? What is he doing at night? Why is he getting so skinny?
A creeping sense of dread crawled up her spine like centipedes, what if the boy coming into her house isn’t her son?
(Phantom has the same eyes.)
She cusses, in her inattentiveness, she cut through her lab gloves and sliced open her finger. Beads of red welled up and fell to the table.
“Let’s clean this up,” Maddie muttered to herself, going to grab the first aid kit. She opens the kit and finds what she needs, using the antiseptic to clean her, thankfully small, cut. Bandaging her finger thoroughly, she then turns to the table. “Maybe I should stay out of the lab for a bit.”
She walks up the stairs after depositing her torn gloves and the paper towels she used to wipe up any drops of red on the table in the biohazard bin, the one for regular hazards, and putting away her coat.
It’s dark out. Maddie looks around to see all the blinds shut, as per Jazz’s usual nightly routine. She always closes the windows and latches them shut, double checks the door locks, and then shut the blinds before going up to her room with a glass of water and a granola bar. Such a responsible daughter she has. Maddie must have lost track of time down there, as the clock above the kitchen door says it’s 12:30.
Shaking her head, Maddie goes to the kitchen to fix herself something to eat before she goes and gets comfortable in bed. Jack was probably already asleep, the man’s snores could be heard throughout the house, excluding the lab of course.
Suddenly she notices how… alive the house is. It’s not silent save for the snores, Maddie swears she hears the TV. Turning to the kitchen counter she sees her son, sitting on top of the marble. Usually, she would scold him to keep his butt off of where there’s going to be food, but Maddie is left speechless.
Danny is speaking to a small blob of a ghost, its small wriggling form both oozing from the slits left in his fingers while cupping it gently and holding onto his flesh like glue. It seems entranced by what Danny is saying to it. But Maddie isn’t hearing English.
He speaks in quiet ever so soft tones of the dead, static and rot and crumbling dirt from his lips tumble a language one only learns when they pass away and come back wrong. Maddie can’t deny it anymore when she hears the voice that used to tell her about the stars lets forth guttural growls and hisses and popping like molten caramel and pennies mixed in a miasma of disbelief. She knows with all her heart that her son is dead.
Had this been anything else she could have looked away, went to bed hungry, and pretended it was a nightmare, but this final thing had broken the camel’s back.
“Daniel James Fenton!” She says quietly but filled with a stern kind of steel only a mother could have.
Her son looks up from the blob ghost in his hands and freezes. He almost bares his teeth at her but hides them behind chapped lips. Those were fangs she had seen, sharp too sharp.
“Mom?” He says softly, his voice full of fear. What did he have to fear? He was dead he was- oh.
Maddie staggered forward, the blob ghost flings itself away from its comfy little spot in Danny’s hands and floats away. The mother almost collapses onto her son, holding him close to her chest, and feels tears in her eyes.
“Oh, my baby boy what happened to you?” She whispered into his hair.
Danny’s breath hitches, and she blinks. Ghosts can’t breathe. They can’t even mimic it. She knows that more than she knows anything else. The hand she places on her (dead) son’s back, expecting to find nothing but an empty chest. No, under her hand is a beat. A thud, he’s still got a heart, it’s still working however slow. How?
“You don’t hate me?” He asks softly.
Maddie runs a hand through her son’s hair, “I could never hate you, Danny. You’ll always be my son. No matter what happens. I promise.”
Finally, her son starts to cry like he was little again, like when he scraped his knee playing outside on the concrete, and clutches at her hazmat suit, “I’ve been so - so scared-!”
“I know. I know, come here.” She whispers carefully, taking into account that he was scared of her. Didn’t that sting? “Why don’t we make some hot chocolate and you can tell me about this- about whatever you are now ok? I promise I’ll always love you.”
After learning about what really happened that day in the lab, Maddie promises herself that she will never let that kind of thing happen again. No child should die without anyone to mourn them. She smiles at her son behind the camera as she and Jack give a few tips on how to spot a hostile ghost versus a friendly one.
He smiles with his whole face now, teeth just a hint too sharp and too white, mouth too large for his face, that used to scare her. Everything that used to be strange and upsetting- another thing that alienated Danny from the family, was now just Danny. Their son. He’d always be her son.
All the worrisome things about his condition faded with kindness and time with family. Jack and Maddie took apart their preconceived notions about the paranormal and listened to their son talk animatedly about all the things he knows about ghosts.
Maddie once met one of Danny’s ghost friends, a lovely young man named Sydney.
He had begun to look healthy again, weight being put back on due to his diet changing. Maddie had started including ectoplasm into whatever he ate. The new ghost plants making their home in their flowerbed were perfect to feed her son with.
The bags under his eyes began getting better, he was getting more sleep! Danny was safe at home, felt safe in his home, was happy to know that his town was safe from ghosts and ghosts safe from his parents. Slowly all the D’s that marked his report cards were turning back into solid A’s and B’s.
No one else in Amity Park knows Danny is Phantom, and he wants to keep it that way.
Jazz walked in, holding up some art project she had for her class, “Oh! Are you filming?”
Jack looked over at his daughter and gave a big grin, nodding, “Yep! You should make some yourself, I’m sure the world would love to hear the psychology of ghosts!”
“Or just psychology in general, you’re simply amazing at the subject.” Maddie complemented Jazz, going over to smooth down frizzy hairs the almost-adult got from walking into the lab. She halfheartedly slapped at her mom’s hands, but she seemed happier now that there were no secrets.
“I think your psychobabble’s interesting sometimes. I'm sure Skulker would love to have you analyze his mental state.” Danny says sarcastically, and Jazz sticks her tongue out at him.
Jack slaps Danny’s back good-naturedly, and the boy gives a quiet ‘oof’, “Be nice to your sister Danny-boy!”
Yes, Maddie thinks with a smile watching her children begin to playfully argue while Jack watches with eyes twinkling, something was wrong with her son. She still loved him all the same though.