Chapter Text
"It is okay, you did not offend," Dora was saying from close by. "It is just strange to hear someone talking about meeting Clockwork so casually."
Danny turned to face her, puzzled about what she could be talking about, before he remembered that they had been in the middle of a conversation before Clockwork interrupted them—inserted himself like a parenthesis. "Ah," he said awkwardly. "That's good?"
Tucker, standing next to Danny, blinked at him before narrowing his eyes with suspicion. "What happened to your hood?" Then his eyes widened in sudden realization. "Oh. Was it him?"
This, in turn, made Dora's eyes widen in a combination of awe and fear. "You talked to Clockwork now? Here?"
"Yes."
She blinked in stunned silence.
Tucker gave Danny a look that managed to be both exasperated and curious at the same time. "What did he have to say?"
"Apparently I can… open my own portals?"
"…what?!" Tucker screamed before he seemed to realize how loud he was being and lowered his voice before hissing out, "Since when?"
"I don't know? Since today?" Danny shrugged uneasily, "I didn't know about it, but apparently I managed to open one up to get here with Lancer?"
Tucker dragged a hand down his face. "Okay, okay, okay. That's… a lot."
Danny gave a wry laugh. "Yeah. You tell me."
Dora, who seemed to have managed to mostly recover from her shock, gave Danny an accusing look. "I thought you said you could only feel the flow? Not that you could manipulate the veil?"
"I thought so too," Danny shrugged. "And besides, I didn't know that that was what I was doing."
Manipulating the veil. He rolled the words around in his mind.
"What does it feel like?" Tucker asked with eager curiosity shining in his eyes.
Danny turned to him and shook his head to focus back in on the conversation. "What?"
"Opening a portal?"
"Oh." Danny pursed his lips in thought, trying to find the words to convey the impossible feeling. "It felt a bit like… opening a dam? Or the first breath you take after holding it for a long time? No, more like when you pop your ears." Then he thought for a while longer, lips pursing in thought before muttering, "Or maybe like poking your fingers through wet tissue paper?"
"I'm sorry I asked." Tucker grimaced at the description. "Forget it, but now what? You can just… take us home?"
"I hope so? I'm not really… sure how it works. But I can try."
"Very reassuring, bud!" Tucker laughed and Danny couldn't help but smile back, his gratefulness at having his friend by his side again coming back full force.
Sadly, that was as much respite as they were going to get from the others as the A-listers, Lancer, and Ms. Kumari had apparently all tired of gawking down at the giant ghost below them and were now approaching them instead.
Kwan's opening, tactful, question was, "What the fuck happened to your ears, man?"
Danny heaved a sigh. "Nothing."
"But they …?"
"Look like this," Danny cut him off, "and they have. For quite some time now.
"Oh." He blinked. "...Alright."
"Ha!" Dash barked out, sinister glee lighting up his face. "I always knew you were a freak!"
"Maybe I am. So what?"
That seemed to stump him and Dash sputtered out, "Wha—whatever. Weirdo."
Tucker frowned at the A-listers and then turned back to Danny with a raised eyebrow as he signed, "You sure about this?"
Danny nodded.
Tucker shrugged and sent him a look that said it's your funeral before asking, out loud, "So… How do you do this?"
"I'm not sure. Hang on a sec." Danny closed his eyes and did his best to focus.
He tried to remember how it had felt with the building pressure, in following the stream and guiding it until it all released. If he could just—
"...What is he doing?" Dash asked bluntly after a few quiet seconds.
"Trying to get us home." Tucker said matter-of-factly.
Paulina scoffed before asking, voice heavy with sarcasm and doubt, "And how is he supposed to do that?"
Danny held up a hand in a gesture for them to wait, a futile plea for some quiet.
"Fuck you!" Dash immediately spat out, and he really should have predicted that. "We won't let you—"
Danny expected to feel a hand gripping the front of his shirt, but instead he heard the stern voice of Lancer call out, "Mr. Baxter! That's quite enough. We can wait a few minutes for whatever they are trying to do, especially if it might help us get home. Have some patience for Antony and Cleopatra's sake!"
Danny sent his teacher a silent thank you and did his best to tune all of them out so that he could focus.
Dora had said that he could manipulate the veil, the membrane between the Ghost Zone and the Human Realm. But how was he supposed to…?
Maybe this was what Clockwork had meant. The Human Realm and the Ghost Zone were two sides of the same coin, but there was still something in the middle; the metal holding both together.
And Danny is both human and ghost, both from the human realm and the ghost zone. He is two sides of the same coin. He can flip between them with his ghost form and human form. He's already straddling the edge.
As he let himself sink into the feeling of currents and flow, he became vaguely aware of… something beneath the stream. The seabed itself. The pressure difference, held back by a thin… something.
The seabed, the coin, the veil.
He bet he could poke his fingers through it.
"Is it working?" Tucker hissed next to his air.
Danny frowned as he tried to push Tucker away without opening his eyes, but as his hands only met air, settled for shushing him instead, "Shhh!"
But the reminder that he had humans around him, humans that depended on him, did make him aware that he had to be really careful where he opened the portal to. Maybe… maybe he could guide it to open where he wanted it?
He felt for something familiar and after a few more seconds he came upon something in the stream that felt distinctly like… Home. The feeling being carried on the stream like a distant scent. He just had to find its source.
"What. We're just supposed to stand here while that weirdo sleeps or meditates or whatever it is he's doing?" Star said in a whiny voice into the relative silence.
"Just wait a moment," Tucker pleaded before he whispered to Danny, "Are you done soon?"
"Just give me one sec…"
Danny focused on the feeling of home as he let it wash over him and through him, leading his senses, and then, suddenly, it snapped into focus; a grain of sand on the riverbed. He immediately showed his hand into the stream as he grasped for it.
Just like last time it was a building pressure, pressing in on him from all sides and threatening to crush him, almost too overwhelming to stand and then, without warning, it released.
Danny opened his eyes as his ears popped and came face to face with a portal.
Tucker stared at the portal with wide eyes before turning them towards Danny. "How in the hell…? You really did it!" Then he shook himself and turned to face their classmates with a theatrical gasp. "Oh, nooo, a portal? Where did that come from?"
Danny slapped him on the arm and Tucker broke down into giggles.
The silence around them was broken as Dora leaned in closer to inspect the portal "This is fascinating. We can talk about how this works later. If you are amenable?"
Danny nodded but before he could answer, Ms. Kumari carefully asked with her eyes fixed on the glowing green tear in reality in front of them, "This was you?"
Dash laughed loudly. "There's no way Fentwimp did something like that."
"It would have been nice to know earlier," Lancer said in a lightly admonishing tone of voice, negated by his wide eyes and awed expression.
"I didn't know I could," Danny said defensively.
"That's really weird," Star said with an intense look fixed on Danny. The scrutiny ought to have made him feel worse, trapped and exposed, but it… didn't.
"Yeah," Paulina agreed.
Danny shrugged. "I don't particularly care what you think." And as he said it he could feel his shoulders straightening out, feel a smile creep onto his face, because he really didn't.
He could see them bristling at his words but thankfully Kwan, always reliably tone-deaf, took that moment to exclaim, "Is the portal leading back home? Let's go!"
A few tense seconds passed before Star tossed her hair over her shoulder with an eye roll. "I agree. I'm so ready to ditch this place."
Danny's smile grew wider. Maybe Sam's theory that there were so many strange things going on in Amity that no one would really care or notice him had been correct.
"Wait," Danny held out his hand to stop them going through. "I'll check it first."
No matter how much they annoyed him and how relieved he would be to get them out of his hair, he would never forgive himself if the portal he had managed to conjure up led them somewhere bad. He just had to make sure it was safe first.
So Danny poked his head through the second portal of the day and let out a breath of relief when he saw his own living room on the other side. He had actually managed it. He pulled his head back out with a big smile. "It's safe."
"Why should we trust you?" Dash bit out, clearly angry at Danny for somehow helping them out.
"You're welcome to stay here," Danny said with a raised eyebrow and a gesture towards the kraken.
To his satisfaction, that earned him a very red face and an almost inaudible squeak from the bully. But looking down at the ghosts had reminded him of something and he turned back to Dora as he asked, "Can we just leave the ectopuses here?"
"We will keep an eye on them," Dora said with a calm smile. "They will most likely not be any danger now that they are reunited, but they will work as an excellent deterrent for anyone thinking about attacking us." She gave him a sharp grin that would have looked more at home on her dragon form.
Danny laughed, before he continued with a heartfelt, "Thank you. For all your help. "
She inclined her head as her grin softened into a smile. "You and your friends are always welcome here."
"I won't wait so long to come and visit again."
"I look forward to it," Dora said with a nod before retreating to her guards, not wasting any time before handing out orders and instructions and getting everyone moving again.
Lancer came up to stand beside him, glancing down at him from the corner of his eye and saying, "And I'm looking forward to that talk. But now we have to go, I need to make sure you all get home to your parents."
Danny tensed up, eyes locked on his teacher, but as he braced himself for the usual wave of fear and dread to wash over him, he felt only relief.
There was little doubt in his mind that Lancer knew. Lancer knew and he still treated him like one of his students—still treated him like Danny.
It was easier than he expected to nod and breathe out, "Okay."
Lancer simply nodded and gestured towards the portal and Danny grabbed a hold of Tucker's sleeve and stumbled towards it.
None of the A-listers spared Danny another glance as they made for the portal. He didn't know if he should feel offended or relieved.
He sent the ectopuses and the kraken one last look and stepped through after them, side by side with Tucker.
They all tumbled through the portal and right into Danny's living room.
"Hello!" Danny called into the house. He could hear something being dropped down in the lab, accompanied by a shout of surprise. "We're back!"
"Danny? You coming?" Jazz asked as she looked over her shoulder from where she stood in the doorway leading into the kitchen. Maddie and Jack had left right before her, deciding that he must be starving—which was correct—and immediately bustled off to make them all dinner.
They had just managed to get everyone else to go home. Tucker basically ran out of the house saying how worried his parents must have been, Ms. Kumari hot on his heels saying something about her sons. The A-listers had all looked at their living room with contempt and simply walked out without even saying thank you.
Lancer, on the other hand, had stayed behind and didn't even relax when Maddie, Jack, and Jazz burst into the room to sweep Danny into a hug. No, instead of relaxing, he had only tensed up more.
Danny had been confused, until he suddenly realized what was going on; Lancer didn't know that his family knew and he didn't want to leave Danny alone with them.
The realization made him laugh—as well as flooded him with a warm and gooey fondness as he squeezed his head out from between his mother's tight grip and his father's crushing arms to smile at his teacher. "It's okay, Mr. Lancer."
Lancer looked like he wanted to argue but Danny shook his head, still smiling, "It's okay. I'll talk to you later."
"Alright," he reluctantly gave in, giving them all a nod as he stepped towards the door. "Take care." And with one last look over his shoulder he left.
That just left Danny and his sister in the living room and his parents in the kitchen making something that hissed and gurgled. His parents. While Danny looked like something halfway between a ghost and a human.
His smile slowly died down as he stood rooted to the spot where he had been put down after the crushing family hug.
Where was all his earlier self-confidence now?
"Danny?" Jazz asked again, a small frown of concern taking up residence on her face as she turned back to face him.
"I—" he started but didn't know how to continue. "I—I just—"
Jazz approached him slowly and raised a hand towards his arm, giving him time to back away or tell her to stop, but when he didn't she carefully placed it on his forearm and said softly, "Hey, you're okay."
"Am I though? Look at me!"
"What do you mean?"
"I look like… like a monster!" He gestured to his face. To his ears and teeth. "I can't let mom and dad see me like this."
"Hey!" she exclaimed, squeezing his arm slightly, "Don't say that. That's my brother you're talking about."
Danny huffed out a slightly strangled-sounding laugh.
She continued in a softer tone of voice, "Besides, you look fine. A bit tired and a bit beat up, but fine."
"I don't!" He shook his head almost violently. "Not really. Or not anymore. I don't know. I don't like it. Or, I do, which is worse. It's just… changing."
She was quiet for a few seconds and Danny had no doubts that she was thinking the whole situation through and trying to come up with an explanation; a solution. After a while she carefully asked, "Maybe it has something to do with you not having to hide anymore?"
"But I am still hiding!" he denied, before adding on, "Kind of, at least."
"Not from the ones closest to you, though," she pointed out, before sending his ears a pointed glance, "And not to the same degree. Which was a bit of a surprise, but I am proud of, by the way." She gave him a genuine smile before her expression changed into something more thoughtful. "Ghosts can change their appearance to some degree, right?"
"Yeah?"
"Maybe that's what's happening? You're relaxing and therefore not trying to look so much like a human anymore. So now you look more like how you're supposed to?"
"I—" Danny cut himself off. Shook his head, furrowed his brows. He didn't like the changes, but he couldn't deny that they also somehow felt right; felt like a relief. As if he was taking a breath for the first time in too long, as if pressure he hadn't even been aware of was now releasing, that his body was showing more of what he felt like on the inside; not entirely human, and not entirely ghost. A mix. That didn't make it easier to accept, though. "I don't—"
"Kids? You okay?" Jack called from the kitchen. But instead of assuming and leaving it at that one token action, both he and Maddie actually came into the living room to check on them. Danny didn't appreciate this character development at the moment and instinctively covered his ears with his hands.
They approached him and Jazz with concerned expressions, eyes jumping from one to the other before landing on Danny with matching frowns. Maddie stopped right in front of him and asked softly, "Hey, what's wrong?"
Jazz placed a hand on Danny's shoulder, but when it became apparent that he wasn't about to answer, she heaved a sigh and said, "Danny here thinks you won't like his new ears. And teeth."
At that moment Danny could have cursed his sister and her honesty; why did she need to go tell them about his fears just like that? He sent her a glare, but Jazz simply squeezed his shoulder and kept her eyes fixed on Maddie.
Maddie frowned and a brief look of confusion crossed her face before she seemed to realize what Jazz had meant. No surprise, just realization. Danny looked to the floor as shame flooded through him. Of course they had noticed.
"You know we still love you right?" Maddie asked softly, and there was a lot of regret and grief in her voice, but no fear. No hate. Danny didn't really know what to make of it.
"But I…" Danny looked up at her, begged her to understand, "I might start looking like a ghost."
She smiled and didn't even hesitate as she reached out to ruffle his hair, hand gliding down the side of his face to cradle his cheek. "Well, you're still our Danny. We know that now. You're still you, whatever you look like."
"And I think you look cool!" Jack added with a big smile and a hand thumping Danny's back.
"Thanks dad…" Danny gave a slightly wet laugh before shaking his head and straightening up. "Let's just focus on getting the portal up and running. Please."
"But first we eat!" Jack said and Jazz grabbed his arm and dragged him towards the kitchen. Danny stumbled after her and he didn't even notice as his hands fell away from where they had been covering his ears.
Apparently Sam, Maddie, and Jack had almost tried opening the portal again to try and find Danny and the others, but had hesitated because they were "scared of making things worse again."
Danny had simply nodded tiredly and thanked his lucky star that they hadn't. "That's good, I think it would have. Made things worse, that is." He had continued with, "We can't open it again and not expect it to cascade even worse than before. It really did a number on the veil the first time."
"Then what should we do? We still need to stop all the natural portals somehow," Jack had said with clear frustration.
He was right, but the veil was worn thin and wouldn't hold if they punched through it again with something that didn't take the flow and direction of the ectoplasm into the equation. It would be like bursting open a failing dam instead of safely relieving the pressure.
And that was the bigger issue; the dam itself. If they wanted to be able to open up their portal again, to be able to stop all the natural portals, then they would have to find out how to stabilize and strengthen the veil. Like patching worn fabric.
Danny had sucked in a breath and said, "I think—I think we need to strengthen the veil, and we need to change how we approach our own portal. We might be able to use it to redirect the ectoplasm to stop the natural ones, but we need to open it in a safer and more controlled way."
"But…. How?" Maddie had asked in exasperation, "It took years, decades, for us to come up with this. We can't just start over. We don't have the time."
The only portals he had seen that didn't seem to have any negative effect on the veil were… his own.
"I can—I can open the portal myself. I think."
"What?" Maddie and Jack had said as one.
"Yeah, apparently it's something I can do now? So I can take care of that part."
And he had expected arguments and disagreement and questions, but instead he had gotten gushing enthusiasm and trust. Danny hadn't been able to stop smiling the whole day.
And so it was decided; they would work on improving the portal, make sure they avoided the mistakes they had made the last time, and then they would open it again and hopefully make everything right again.
The days blended together as they worked on the new portal. They had decided on a design inspired by an airlock; two doors that never open at the same time, which would be able to contain the released ectoplasm to make sure it didn't flood the town. It would also have the added benefit of making sure no ghost could just waltz through it whenever they wanted. The contained ectoplasm could then be funneled back into the Zone, or more accurately; the veil, strengthening it and repairing some of the damage that had been done to it.
And then, faster than he had believed possible, they were finished and they found themselves standing in front of the portal; the whole Fenton family as well as Sam and Tucker. The portal had the same base shape, but that was where the similarities ended. It had a double set of doors, a new filtering apparatus, more alarms and security measures. All in all it only bore a passing resemblance to the original machine.
Maddie sighed as she looked at what had become of their life's work. "We really can't go back to how it was, can we?"
"No. No, we can't," Danny agreed. In more ways than just the portal, he wanted to say but stopped himself. Then he remembered his talk with Clockwork and forced himself to say, "And I don't think I want things to go back to how things were… I'm sorry."
Maddie looked surprised for half a second before she shook her head with a small smile, "No, you're right. Of course."
"We wouldn't want that either, Dann-o!" Jack cut in with slightly too much enthusiasm as he threw an arm across Danny's shoulders, making him stumble, and Danny looked up to see his dad smiling down at him. "The important part is that it works!"
Maddie looked at them with a fond smile of her own. "It might not be the same, but it's improved."
The portal, Danny himself, his relationship with his parents, his relationship with the people in the town.
Danny smiled back. "Yeah, I guess it is."
It would be different than before, but hopefully more sustainable.
"Hopefully it works," Sam cut into the conversation with a small frown.
"Only one way to find out," Danny said as he carefully shrugged Jack's arm off and stepped up to the portal.
"Are you sure you can do this?" Tucker asked with his eyes glued on the readings flashing past on the control panel.
"Well, I've opened this once before, haven't I?" Danny said with a wry smile.
"Don't joke about that!" Sam elbowed him.
"Are you sure you want to do this?" Jazz asked softly. "You don't have to."
"Yes. It's fine. Thanks for worrying."
"We're counting on you!" Jack called out.
And those words were all he had ever needed.
Danny beamed as he closed his eyes. He had done this before. It would be easy.
And at first it was.
He found the stream without trouble and just like last time he reached for it as the pressure increased and increased and increased. But beneath the familiarity of it all, there was something that was off. This wasn't simply poking his hand through the veil, this was… This was… Different.
In front of him was the machine that had changed his whole life when a portal opened up inside of it, the machine that had killed him. And standing in the same place, in front of the same machine, as he tried to open the portal that had taken everything from him—given him everything—was hard.
The pressure skittered over his skin in a morbid reminder of electricity, the pressure heavy enough to snatch the air from his lungs, and he could feel his concentration slipping. The realm that his parents had hated, had feared, and that he had fought so hard against all washed over him, enveloped him, as the stream threatened to carry him away in the raging current.
Then he felt a hand land on his shoulder, another sneaking into his own, a third on his back, and a fourth gripping his arm.
He wasn't alone.
Danny zeroed in on the grounding pressure and did his best to focus on redirecting the flow away from all the natural portals and towards this one instead, like rerouting a stream. He thrust his hand into the stream and it wasn't just his hand, but all of theirs at once.
His ears popped and he didn't even notice it over the rushing sound of blood in his ears.
What he did notice was that there were suddenly several pairs of arms around him, encircling him and keeping him grounded and safe as he shook his way back to shore.
After a while he could make out words whispered in his ears.
"It's okay."
"You're okay."
"You did it."
"We're so proud of you."
Danny managed to pry his eyes open, taking in the sight of his friends and family all surrounding him, all of them bathed in the green light of the portal once again taking up residence in the lab. He gave them all a wobbly smile. "Well, this is a much better awakening than last time this happened."
They all smiled back, ruffled his hair, punched his shoulder, gripped his arms, hugged him tighter, as they admonished him and praised him and stayed close.
He didn't know how he could have ever conflated this with the first time the portal had opened. This time, everyone was here and there was nothing to hide.