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Insomnia (Lucidity)

Summary:

Three days since Halloween, and Danny's STILL dealing with a mess of ghosts, so many so that he hasn't been able to get a wink of shut-eye the whole time! With the side effects of sleep deprivation starting to turn reality on it's head, Danny should really get some rest before it becomes impossible to distinguish what's real from what's fake.

Notes:

The art that inspired this work was created by the wonderful pricklenettle, and you can find her tumblr HERE

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“Shakespere’s greatest works include household names like Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, and most importantly for the rest of your semester-” Danny watches idly from the very comfortable position of, well he’s got his head completely laid down on the cool linoleum of his desk, as Mr. Lancer paces across the length of the classroom, a small bound book in his hand. 

“A Midsummer’s Night Dream.” He holds up the book to the rest of the class, multi-colored sticky notes threatening to expel from the sides as he does so, and levels the group of uninspired teenagers with a stern look.

“As I have mentioned earlier in the year to you all, Shakespeare’s module is my favorite to teach, and while I understand your classwork has started to increase as much as the weather’s gone down, I ask that everyone here takes the time to…” With a sigh, Danny lets his head fall further forward, giving up on paying attention to the lecture in favor of letting his eyes droop close.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, really it’s a sparknotes staple, so there’s no harm in letting whatever Lancer’s saying go through one ear and out the other, and he’s hardly the only one.

The rest of the room is being less than attentive from the mutterings coming from around him, even Sam and Tucker are whispering back and forth to each other about something.

Not that he knows what exactly, Danny’s been moved to the other side of the room from where he would normally sit with them next to the window. It’s the unfortunate consequence of earlier in the week, really he couldn’t even remember what Lancer found so offensive about the notes they had been passing at this point, he could barely remember who threw him through the bleachers yesterday.

Just a little shut eye, no harm in it, after all the last three days have been non stop running ragged after the events of Halloween. Speaking of, while it wasn’t nearly as hectic as the year prior, the night consisted of little but bouncing between throwing ghosts back to the ghost zone and covering up the fact he was throwing ghosts back into the ghost zone. 

Danny doesn’t think his eyes even fully close before he’s suddenly being violently reintroduced to reality via his chair being jerked out from under him.

“Wow Fen-Tina! I didn’t realize you were into method acting!” Speaking of jerks. Danny spins his head around to level a glare at Dash, who of course has to be the one sitting behind him now.

The quarterback’s pulled his own desk directly behind Danny’s desk, mostly as a way to torment him both in proximity and for ease of access to torment him even more. Today he’s actually pulled said desk back a little further so he could drag Danny’s chair farther.

“Oh fuck off Dash-” Danny bites out the words a little louder than wanted, something he’ll blame on the mounting headache that comes from interacting with Dash, and cringes as from the front Mr. Lancer’s voice calls out.

“Gentlemen, if we're so excited about the material I’ll be glad to start you both off by reading out loud our play of choice!” Dash snorts behind him and Danny has to physically hold himself back from just slamming his head into the desk to call it a day.

Then again, it’s almost more likely for him to crack the surface in two than to actually succeed in knocking himself out.

“... Mr Fenton?” Shit, Mr. Lancer’s looking at him very expectantly at the moment, and he suddenly feels that he might have missed something.

“Uh- what?” The class snickers around him, and Danny fights the blush from rising in his cheeks. Lancer gives him a heavy sigh for his troubles.

“The reading, Mr Fenton, you will start as Theseus.” 

“But I don’t-” looking back down at his previously empty desk, Danny feels a lump drop to his stomach at the sight of a packet sitting before him. When did that happen? 

That lump grows heavier as he picks up the pile of papers themself, now glancing between printed out black and white and Mr. Lancer, impatience growing more and more evident as the mutters and giggles of the classroom go up in volume with every second gone without Danny just reading the damn packet-

But how the hell was he supposed to?

He flips back and forth between the front pages and the rest of the packet, the words before him shift and disappear before his eyes and Danny has no choice but to mutter out before a classroom that’s gone silent.

“I- uh, I think there’s been some kind of mistake?” Everyone’s staring at him, why did everyone have to be staring at him? It’s not his fault that the printers clearly broke, the ink’s running aggressively down the front of the pages, he’s not even sure it’s printed out in English, how is he supposed to read this?

“Now, fair Hippolyta, our nuptial hour, Draws on apace; four happy days bring in, Another moon: but, O, methinks, how slow, This old moon wanes-” Mr Lancer is in front of him now, packet in hand and reading off with a bored expression. 

Danny is suddenly very unsure of how he got the packet in the first place, or how Lancer managed to position himself directly next to his desk without him noticing, wasn’t he just at the front?

Packet placed down in front of him again, the lines Lancer had just read out now appear plain as day on the printer paper.

“But-” Danny cuts himself off, the room is filled with the sounds of muttering, of teenagers giggling back and forth to each other and with the dozens of dozens of sets of eyes seeming to watch his every move Danny slinks further down into his desk.

This day is hell, easily, how has he managed to make it this far? Danny keeps his head down facing his desk, only sparing himself to lightly look over to see if he’s been spared any sympathy from either of his friends on the other side of the room.

Sam and Tucker are leaning into each other, Tucker turned around in his chair so that the back of it presses into his chest, and leg twisted in an awkward direction, while Sam has leaned so far forward that her bangs are nearly knocking into his hat, both of them taking turns pointing at something on the table. A tablet? Or just a piece of paper? Either way the focus the two have on it makes worry spark as Danny tries to remember what could be so important, were they all talking about something during lunch? Why can’t he remember? 

Danny closes his eyes again with a sigh, palms pressed hard against his lids as dots started spouting in his vision from the pressure.

Maybe he could just talk to them after class on the way home.

The next breath he takes in his lungs is harsh, prompted by surprise as the dots in his eyes are suddenly taken over by a bright, blinding, green.

Over hill, over dale,

Thorough bush, thorough brier,

Over park, over pale,

Thorough flood, thorough fire-

“You know, they say hallucinations start popping up around the 48 hour mark of no sleep Danny.” Sam says and Danny opens his eyes, almost immediately falling face first into the ground.

Danny has to catch himself, although just barely, feet leaving the ground by a few inches before he manages to catch his balance again and continue walking along the sidewalk, bordered by Sam and Tucker.

“Woah, you good man?” Tucker asks off his right, hand hovering just over the strap to his backpack.

“Uh, yeah- yeah just lost my balance there, what Sam?” Sam tsks at the apparent fact that he was ignoring her, but in Danny’s defense he was just in class two seconds ago-

Danny stops walking.

“I said, I’ve read somewhere that hallucinations start popping up at the 48 hour mark, and you’ve gone 73, according to Tuckers math, so give or take.” Sam repeats herself, big heavy black boots pounding along the pavement while Danny suddenly has to take in his surroundings. 

Red and orange leaves skitter across the road, brought back to life by the passing wind of cars, the air bites as his nose and tips of his ears in a way that isn’t too comfortable, but seeing both Tucker and Sam stopped in front of him, turned to look back at where he’s still stuck standing, Danny notices they’re all suddenly bundled up in heavy coats, the both of them wearing big scarves and gloves that Danny can’t help but feel he should recognize. 

Danny looks back and forth between the two, mouth drawn in a line as they seem to wait for him to say something.

“When did we get done with class?” Danny says, almost stumbling over the words, the previous moments of the walk feeling like a jumbled blur in his memory.  It’s obviously the wrong thing to say because immediately Sam throws her mittened gloves up in the air.

“This is what I was talking about!” 

“Yeah that is pretty bad, guess it’s a good thing we talked to Val after all.” Tucker shrugs noncommittally, a weary glance passed between Danny and back to Sam.

“Don’t worry too much about it man, we’re almost to your place anyways.” Tucker continues, nodding back to the sidewalk again, like walking again would suddenly cause Danny to forget that he doesn’t have any idea what he’s talking about.

“Wait-Wait, guys? Talk to Valerie about what?” He has to take a few quick steps to catch up with Sam and Tucker as they’ve started going back to walking down the sidewalk. Sam hums thoughtfully at the question, concern flashing over her before she just rolls her eyes.

“You were there for it Danny, Valerie agreed to take the late shift tonight so you don’t have to?” Eyebrows raised at late shift , Danny thinks he remembers that? 

“Oh, right… We all met up for lunch, right?” Danny says it without any conviction, the memory isn’t clear but, well, saying it out loud, it sounds correct, right? Tucker, Sam, Valerie and him all at lunch hanging out and planning cleanup post-Halloween.

“Yeah, you looked like you were about to face plant into your mashed potatoes the whole time, it’s no wonder she took pity on you.” Tucker laughs and Danny cracks a smile at that. 

“Well, yeah, we’ve all been running ragged after-” The words are suddenly caught on his tongue, both metaphorically and literally as he accidentally bites down hard on it. Danny hisses out a wince, feeling dumb as both Sam and Tucker swivel around to see what happened.

“You good? Well, OK, you’re obviously not good but-” Tucker gets cut off as Danny sticks his tongue out at him, partly just to shut him up.

“I’m fine , the day’s just been weird, and class sucked and I’m just really tired.” Danny said, sighing as he closed his eyes, leaning back on the step.

His eyes flew open again.

“Well, yeah no shit Sherlock, I don’t even think you’ve gone past 4 o’clock without having to deal with some kind of ghost problem since Halloween.” Sam says, she’s sitting next to him now on the front step of Fentonworks, typing something into her PDA with vigor. 

The concrete steps are cold and Danny’s starting to get worried.

“Uh, guys, weren’t we just down the street?” He asks, but every word out of mouth feels like pulling teeth. They must have just kept walking, why is he questioning something so basic?

“What do you mean Danny? We walked here, you said you didn’t want to go in yet in case your parents were in the kitchen, so now we’re sitting here so we don’t have to be the ones to clean ecto-hotdogs off the tabletop again.” Tucker says with a bit of a huffing laugh, and now that he mentions it, that much seems obvious! Danny nods along as he speaks, the memory starting to clear up some in his brain. Ancients, if he was really doing this bad, maybe he should get some shut eye.

“Shit, right. Sorry, I guess I spaced?” Danny says, stretching out a bit as he suddenly tunes in the racket happening from the other side of the door.

It’s his parents' patented (literally) laser fire coming from their usual kitchen equipment. All three teens automatically wince at a very wet sounding thwap that hits the door just above them. Danny pulls his light jacket a little closer around him at the sound of his father’s little yell of victory just before he opens the door.

“No ghostly deli meat will keep Jack Fenton from his Fenton Grill!” His dad yells out, launching what looked to be the container for what once was the final resting place of a pack of bacon, before looking down at the kids on the step.

“Alright kids, we’ve cleared the bad food out of the fridge, you’re cleared for entry!” Danny’s dad stands with the door opened to the rest of the house, dressed in both his signature hazmat, as well as, embarrassingly enough, a green-stained kiss the cook apron.

The trio of cringing teens mutter their thanks and make a b-line to Danny room up the stairs, pointedly ignoring the carnage that no doubt made up most of the kitchen.

What does pull Danny out of just going straight to his room, despite the fact Sam and Tucker have both already beat him there, is Jazz’s door.

More pointedly, the hazard tape that’s been wrapped around the door.

“What the…” He mutters, reaching out to the handle.

It’s cold, and wiggling it back and forth reveals that it’s locked. Not super uncommon for a teenage girl to want her privacy, but even after rapping his knuckles against the door a couple of times and some more jangling of the knob, the other room remains dead silent.

“Jazz?”

“Danny!” Tucker’s suddenly behind him, hand on his shoulder and turning him away from Jazz’s room back down the hall.

“Uh, Tucker? Have you seen Jazz?” Danny asks, glancing back between Tucker and now to the door that’s getting further and further away as he’s steered to his room. It’s weird, it’s almost like with each footfall the door waivers with heat, but trying to focus his eyes on it makes his whole vision go blurry and his eyes droop with exhaustion.

“Nah, I haven’t seen this one yet, it’s the one Sam keeps talking about with the mummy?” Tucker responds, rather nonsensically.

“What?”

“The movie!” Tucker responded back, exasperated, but Danny really doesn’t understand why, he just wanted to know what happened to Jazz’s room. Danny didn’t even know they were going to watch a movie, what about patrol tonight, What about Jazz?  

Any further questions go unsaid, as within the next blink, Danny finds himself sitting on the ground, a pile of blankets and pillows propped up against the side of his bed and a projector set up on the mattress. 

His room is dark, the shades to the window’s been cracked open but no light comes from outside, and the only thing keeping the darkness at bay is currently the glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling and the projector, really blinding compared to the rest of the room, as it projects a square of twisting images and colors, all blending together and smearing with the movement of whatever the recording is. 

Danny starts trying very hard to keep from Freaking Out.

His jaw is locked shut as he glances between Sam and Tucker and the projection, looking for any kind of confirmation that he’s not the only one confused by what’s going on.

He’s not met with any kind of confidence.

“See! Look you can tell by the way he’s walking!” 

“And! Tucker this was filmed in like, 1966, I’m sorry their special effects aren’t up to your standards!” They talk back and forth from either side of him, forcing Danny to whip his head back and forth to track the conversation, it’s also causing his head to spin.

“Uh, guys? What are you talking about?” He says, and Sam sighs in response, reaching behind his head to press a button on the projector. Out of the corner of his eye, Danny can tell the screen has stilled. 

Sam huffs as she gets up, blankets and pillows falling off of the intricately created pile they’ve made so she can march up to the wall.

“Here, see? Tucker’s complaining it's too obvious, but you wouldn’t even notice if I didn’t point it out right?” Suddenly, as her hand waves over the screen, the picture pops into focus.

It’s blurry, sure, but in the way that old movies tend to be, the color is similarly dodgy, like it was originally filmed in black and white, and then the brighter parts were highlighted in the shade they were supposed to be in, which in this frame wasn’t much as it pictures what Danny assumes is the Mummy crawling out of a stone cave. Well, more like a Styrofoam cave but he can get the gist.

What he doesn’t get is what the big deal is and why they were wasting time with this when something is clearly wrong.

Right? 

Sam and Tucker are looking at him expectantly but he doesn’t know what they want him to say, he’s not even sure he knows what’s going on with the movie, or how late it was, he doesn’t even remember them all talking about spending the night-

“You ok man?” He’s fine. He’s just tired. The only thing wrong is him .

“Maybe we should all just go to bed, Danny’s not looking great.” The projector’s clicked back on again and the light and colors are blinding, they seemed like they’re trying to escape the prison that is the bounds of the projector itself, it’s making Danny nauseous and he can’t even ask to turn it off again, there has to be- there must be something wrong with him.

“Just take a breath, close your eyes. We’ll get you some of that tea yeah?” Danny’s eyes shutter shut without his permission, but it’s a fleeting relief. Dimly, behind his eyelids, the colors still swirl, muted, compared to the projector, but they feel burned into his head like an old TV left on too long.

Danny desperately wants to just pass out then and there but that blurring movement makes him too nauseous to even try.

He opens his eyes, words resting on the tip of his tongue to tell his friends for just water, he’s sick and maybe they should just go home, Jazz is the only one who can make tea in a way he liked-

The room is dark.

Similar enough to how it was when his eyes were still closed, really.

He’s also sitting up in his bed now, and Danny’s really not sure how that happened, looking around at the shadows that make up his room, he can make out the lumped forms of Sam and Tucker, notably unconscious on the pile of blankets and pillows.

That pit of nausea hasn’t left, but maybe he just fell asleep?

Danny ignores the fact he still feels that same bone-deep exhaustion. 

He shifts in bed to throw his feet over the side, nearly knocking off some stuff that's been piled on his bed, a couple of spiral-bound notebooks fall with muted thud s but he’s able to grab his cassette player before it brains tucker in what would have been a very rude awakening.

Danny sets it back down, and creeps out of bed, socked feet nearly touching the ground before he remembers he can ya’know, fly , and if he doesn’t want to wake anyone up, that’s definitely the way to go instead of trying to play a fucked-up game of the floor is lava.

From behind him, the blinds for Danny’s window shifts with the breeze, casting moonlight into the room again, highlighting now the various cups that are spread around his room, along with some empty plates, and a half-empty bottle of melatonin gummies?

Danny frowns, reaching to pick up a teacup sitting on his end table, it’s one of at least three or four, and looking inside he can see something dark that’s probably the tea from earlier, and switching it around in the dim light, he’s not sure which one it was that they grabbed. The teacup itself is also cold to the touch, he doesn’t need to test the liquid inside to guess that it’s similarly chilly, and glancing around at the other mugs piled on the table, they’re all in similar positions, half empty glasses of dark tea.

Danny could even see that they brought up the whole kettle to his room, illuminated by the light from the window. He sets it back down, the small clink from the china making him cringe and he sighs.

The air leaves a layer of frost coating his mouth as he does so.

When the air in front of him is fogged up Danny gets a jolt of adrenaline in his system.

I can’t go one night? One night where my only issue is insomnia?

Danny wipes the frost still on his lips away with the back of his hand, casting a considering eye back to where his friends sleep on the ground.

I might as well just deal with it myself, who knows, maybe it’ll wear me out enough to actually get some sleep.

Danny floats over to his window, phasing through it.

Danny’s sitting on the roof.

There’s a series of ghosts, just blobs really, floating high in the air, lazily tracing a path along the night sky. Danny has a tight grip on his pajama pants - when did he change?- as he watches them. Every few moments or so the green blobs phase out of existence when they line up with the stars in the sky, and if Danny thinks really hard about it, he can almost imagine the constellations that they are making up as they leave glowing green smears in the darkness.

He’s not sure how long he watches them, painting the sky - has he ever seen them do that before?- but he’s pulled from the view at the sound of a motor.

Well, not really a motor, it’s the weird, hyper fancy thing attached to Valerie’s hoverboard.

“Damn, you do look bad Fenton.” Her voice comes out kind of tin-y and robotic through the speaker hooked up to her helmet. Luckily for him though, he doesn’t have to put up with it, or the impending headache it causes for long because Valerie lightly hops off the hoverboard and settles down next to Danny, pulling the helmet off at the same time.

There’s not enough light to really make out her features, but there’s enough for Danny to see that her eyebrows are scrunched together in a way that’s got him feeling guilty for being on the roof. 

“You’re supposed to use a night off to, ya’know, have a night off ? What are you doing up here?” Good question. Really it’s the question of the hour, what is he doing up here? How did he even get up here?

“Let me guess, couldn’t sleep?” oh yeah.

“Am I that obvious?” Danny wishes it was that obvious, but now that Val is saying it, it makes a lot more sense.

He couldn’t sleep because of the ghost activity and now he’s on the roof because he still doesn’t have enough energy to actually fight any ghosts.

That makes sense right?

“Well, if it makes you feel any better, it’s been pretty quiet tonight.” She nods up at the sky, and Danny looks up to see the blobs from earlier are now tracing out lazy circles in the sky, “Just a bunch of these guys, and they’ve just been disappearing whenever I get close enough to ‘em.”

“No Boxy tonight?”

“Agh!” Val groans and raps her knuckles three times against the side of her helmet. “Don’t jinx me! That jerk’s been a pain in the ass all week!” Danny snorts at that.

They fall into silence for a bit after that, Danny still watching the sky smear with colors of black and blue and white and green, while he assumes Valerie’s been keeping an eye on him.

It’s only after she hasn’t stopped looking at him -he can’t make out the details of her face, he’s not even sure he could tell if she was actually looking at him- for a bit longer than what was strictly normal that he can psych himself up enough to ask.

“Has- Sorry, uh, has today been weird to you?” Black, blue, white, green.

“How do you mean?” Valerie is Red Huntress, she’s got a blaster strapped to her hip, and she’s a better shot than his parents.

“I just- I mean, maybe I’m just tired but it feels like this day just keeps, I don’t know…” Sam and Tucker said they all talked to Valerie at lunch -since when do they all sit together at lunch?-

“Keeps what? Danny?” They’re sitting on the roof of his place, Danny’s just Danny right now, but Val’s in her Red Huntress outfit.

“I-I guess like, stopping and starting?” Danny hardly gets the words out before the nausea he felt earlier rears its ugly head.

With it, a very unpleasant thought.

“You seemed kind of spacey man, maybe-”

“Why are you here?” Danny suddenly has to spin around to look at Valerie full-on.

She’s more shadow than person, but Danny can imagine the look she’s giving him, head tilted inquiringly to the side in confusion.

“What do you mean? I came by because I figured you couldn’t take a night off-” 

“No-No, me. ” Danny has to scramble to his feet as the whole conversation catches up with him.

“Yeah? You? Who else goes out fighting ghosts on school nights?” No-No-No, Danny’s shaking his head, stepping back.

“Valerie, since when do you know I’m Phantom?” The roof is cold, and Val stops where she was about to follow him as he backs away from her.

She pauses, only silhouetted by the lights below.

It’s silent, Danny can’t make out anything but black in the sky behind her.

His heart beats hard against his rib cage.

Then Valerie laughs, it’s a light, breathy thing than anything actually funny. Her posture relaxes some, and she tucks her helmet under her arm, and despite the lighten body language, that same nausea still hasn’t gone away for Danny, hands gripping tightly to the bottom of his worn sleep shirt.

“I think you should get some sleep , Phantom.” don’t don’t don’t-!

Against his wishes, Danny’s eyes drag down with the weight of lead on them.

When he forces them open again he’s back in his room.

-something is wrong something is wrong something is wrong- 

Danny flips on the light for his lamp, uncaring if it woke up Sam and Tucker, they should be up anyway, something is wrong .

Light floods the room, revealing the floor, well, not empty. There’s the regular books and odd blanket and clothing article, but it’s noticeably missing Sam and Tucker, along with their pile of pillows and blankets.

Instead, all of the surfaces have been filled with many, many, mugs.

Mugs, and teacups, and water bottles and glasses all filled with that same tea from earlier.

Danny hoped it was tea.

Surely, there’s a tea out there that’s a deep, deep, red color?

Forget about nausea, Danny might have a panic attack at this point, his friends have disappeared, there’s cups everywhere and ancients know he does not want to be the one to clean that up, and-

“Oh, great. ” The light begins to dim and flicker, and Danny’s launching himself out of bed, letting out a curse as he trips and slips on a textbook, and rushes the door.

Yanking the door hard enough to rattle the frame, Danny reaches the hall, lights similarly fading in and out, and tries to make his way down to the stairs.

The hall has turned against him though, one hand reaching out to trace along the wall, only to still find himself on uneven terrain as the floor seems to sharply tilt with every step. The difficulty that comes from just walking down a hall and some stairs has been made tenfold with the blurry reality he’s been faced with, and part of him wonders if it would be better to just go ghost and try and navigate this without the issues that come with being alive , but he wouldn’t dare so close to his parents room.

“Oh, sheesh, not again.” Jazz!

Danny instinctively presses his eyes closed to try and center himself again.

Jazz is in the kitchen!

Danny’s sitting at the kitchen table. 

It’s free of any debris from the earlier incident with the deli meat, and Jazz is at the sink, running the water.

“J-Jazz?” Danny breathes out, everyone else has been so weird today (except maybe his parents) but for the first time since night fell, Danny feels like he can actually see her.

“Yeah, one sec- Just touched the wrong part of the kettle.” Jazz turns around, she’s got her hair pulled back in a low ponytail, and she’s at least also in her pajamas, so Danny feels a bit less left out for that.

“Are you ok?” He needs to be asking her about what’s going on, where Sam and Tucker went, anything , but the normal conversation comes out way faster and easier than anything else.

“Yup, all good! Here-” She pulls her hand out of the sink and grabs a teacup off the counter, placing it down on the table in front of it.

“But, uh Jazz, do you know?-”

“Nightmare?” She cuts him off and Danny frowns.

“What? No, Jazz I can’t sleep, I haven’t been sleeping, listen. Weird stuff keeps happening, haven’t you noticed?” Danny pleads with her as Jazz just takes a sip from her own cup - there was only one a moment ago- and sighs after a moment.

“Have some tea, Danny, it always helps with my nightmares.” 

“Jazz! Please just listen to me! I’m not having nightmares, I don’t need your- what is this? ” Danny has to immediately put down the cup where he had gotten it from the table, looking at it in shock.

Swirling in greens and greens and greens, ectoplasm sloshes gently against the porcelain of the cup as he puts it down, the light radiating from it casting a green glow onto his skin.

“Have some tea, Danny, it always helps with my nightmares.”

“N-No, Jazz why did you?-”

The lights go out.

Danny can’t make anything out in the darkness, the light from the teacup is gone, replaced only by the light now coming from behind him.

“...Jazz, did you leave the lab door open?” Danny asks, but the logical part of his brain, the part that could figure out what was happening if he could just focus for a second, could tell that she wasn’t there anymore, in the same way that Sam and Tucker and Valerie had disappeared.

His feet walk without permission to the light of the door.

The lab is lit up stark white, they use the same kind of fluorescents in here that they do in like, dental offices and corporate buildings, and it makes the shadows sharper.

It’s cleaner than he’s seen it in a while, and that in of itself is a feat, but the real thing that’s got Danny’s attention is the gaping hole in the wall.

Notably, the portal wall.

The portal to the ghost zone is turned off.

Danny wants to go back upstairs, but every effort that he puts into turning around is instead being used to march him closer and closer to the gaping mouth of the thing.

It’s dark inside, there’s no lights inside, a design flaw his parents talked about in the past, it also made it hard to navigate if you haven’t gotten the lights all set up inside when you were originally building it. Really, the whole thing’s a stupid trip hazard.

Danny knows this, knows there’s no lights set up inside at the moment.

Which is what is making the faint green glow at the end of the tunnel incredibly unnerving.

“No, no, no, no nonono- we are not going in there.” Danny says it under his breath, even as each little step is taking him ever closer.

Please, please I don’t want to- ” He whispers, breathing short as panic is mounting and his eyes start to droop again, he knows what happens if he closes his eyes.

But it doesn’t matter how much he begs or pleas, how much he wishes that he could be back upstairs.

Danny finds himself opening his eyes again.

He’s in the back of the portal.

In front of him sits the culprit, that same glowing teacup. Robotically, he leans forward and picks it up off the ground. A bit of it sloshes out of its container and spills on the ground, illuminated on the steel ground like drops of blood.

Maybe? 

No, Danny’s not that lucky.

Danny can hear the tell-tale sound of the portal turning on, the rumble of power coursing through the system, connections clicking and ticking together, wires sparking under the pressure of it all. 

Danny drops the teacup, it shatters against the floor but he’s too busy booking it to the end.

He knows how this ends, and he’s still tricked himself into fighting it either way.

Never let anyone tell you dying is a pleasant experience. 

For Danny, being in the portal was like if his bones got electrocuted from the inside out, it’s so much hurt that your brain turns off every other thing about currently existing. 

Waking up dead, on the other hand, was like being immediately dunked into an ice bath to put out the fire.

But he’s already done this all before, and opening his eyes now, he could tell. Through the hurt and pain and buzzing Danny opens his eyes to see stars.

“Didn’t hurt as much this time.” He gasps out through a stiff smile, and the stars shift.

Aren’t you one for extremes, ghost boy? ” Danny does his best to glare at Nocturn, who’s face comes to appear in his vision.

“I’m- I’m so gonna kick your ass when I wake up man.” Nocturn’s head spins in a way that indicates it’s not really attached to his body.

Who’s to say you aren’t going to sleep now? ” Danny groans, his visions going black, but he can still make out as the ghost’s face contorts into a scowl.

Danny closes his eyes.

 

“Danny? Danny!”