Archive of Our Own ^beta

I

If there’s one thing Danny knows, he knows that Timmy Turner’s often ignorant.

He’s not ignorant in the way that Spongebob Squarepants is, where he truly has no idea what’s even happening; or the way that Jimmy Neutron is, where he chooses to be blindsighted when he’s unmistankingly wrong about something. Danny’s other friends are ignorant in the way that’s described by the dictionary. Benight, unaware. Daft.

Timmy Turner is ignorant in the way that he chooses to be.

Timmy Turner knows that Spongebob’s secret formula is—well—a secret , but he chooses to experiment with different recipes anyways. Timmy Turner knows that Jimmy Neutron does not want anybody in his lab, but he chooses to enter anyways. Timmy Turner knows that he is one of the strongest people on their makeshift team, but he chooses to act otherwise.

Timmy Turner knows something life-threatening, but he chooses to keep it to himself.

Danny prides himself on knowing his friends. He prides himself on knowing everything from their favorite color to what their worst fear is, and he knows that Timmy’s stories don’t add up. 

Timmy’s constantly changing himself, switching between a personality that is too perfect ( his favorite color is pink, like his hat. He’s not afraid of anything ) to a personality that seeps into his skin and embodies Timmy ( his favorite ice cream flavor is superman. He’s a dog person) . Danny doesn’t know why Timmy has two wildly different personalities, and he’s not sure why nobody else has seemed to notice.

And yet.

And yet he savors the tibbits of information that Timmy gives him like a hanged man in need of oxygen. He wraps his hands around the words that Timmy offers and holds it close to his chest, protecting it from the outside world. Danny stores the facts in the inner ridges of his brain and replays them when he lies awake at night.

Timmy’s the youngest member on their team—barely only sixteen—and he’s able to strike up a conversation with anyone. He trades bad dad jokes with Spongebob and he asks Jimmy about the protocols in his lab. He’s always sitting at the dining table in one of their houses, ready to be a lab rat or jellyfishing partner.

But very rarely does Danny ever see anyone go up to him and strike up a conversation. Never do they speak about something that happens in Dimmsdale, or one of Timmy’s hobbies. Nobody waits at the dining table to join Timmy when he does—well. Whatever Timmy does.

Is it bad that Danny doesn’t know what Timmy’s favorite thing to do is?

It is rare that Timmy offers up information. It is even rarer that he calls emergency meetings beforehand.

He’s standing in the middle of the living room, looking down at his thumbs with an anguished expression on his face. Danny is sitting next to Spongebob on the cheap couch that they found at the end of a curb when they first bought the house in Amity Park. Jimmy—who had been called in from his lab—is leaning over the back of the couch.

“Everything okay, Turner?” Danny finally breaks the silence, causing Timmy to look up at him. Timmy’s quick to nod his head in assurance, and Danny raises an eyebrow in response.

“Yeah, everything’s peachy!” Timmy responds, pulling on his thumb sharply.

Danny doesn’t believe him, but he’s not one to press.

Jimmy, fortunately, is: “So why did you call this meeting?”

“I—well—I have something I need to tell everyone,” Timmy responds, glancing at all of them. He quickly looks away as soon as he does so, his gaze falling on a misshapen pot. “It’s kind-of really important.”

“We already know you’re gay,” Jimmy jokes, and Danny grins at the comment. Timmy lets out a trace of a laugh, but he seems too distracted to be fully amused by Jimmy’s attempt at comedy. This is concerning within itself, because Timmy kills for good jokes. Especially when they come from Jimmy.

“Yeah, that’s not it,” Timmy says. He inhales deeply, and his shoulders shake as he exhales. “It’s bigger.”

His voice cracks on the last word, and his knee is bouncing up and down with a ferociously that goes unsaid. If it wasn’t for the wide smile plastered on his face, Danny would assume that Timmy’s about to break down crying.

Although, he’s never seen Timmy cry before. Perhaps he smiles before he cries, like a dying martyr.

“So, my holograms,” Timmy starts, and Danny glances at his other friends. He wasn’t expecting the conversation to go in this direction. “They’re not actually holograms.”

“So they’re programs,” Jimmy says, scoffing slightly as he pushes away from the couch. “ That ’s the important information you wanted to share with us?”

Timmy manages to coil in on himself even more, tilting his head to the side slightly as he drags his nails against the backside of his hand. Danny watches as his fingers trail towards his index finger, pulling until the sound of his finger cracking echoes throughout the living room. “That’s not it either.”

“You can tell us, Timmy!” Spongebob smiles from the other side of the couch. He’s reassuring in the way that the rest of the team isn’t: all easy smiles and lingering touch. “We won’t make fun of you.”

Timmy laughs, rubbing his elbow nervously. “I’m not actually worried about you making fun of me.”

“Then what’s wrong?” Jimmy says, and Danny can hear him raising an eyebrow. “You look anxious, so whatever you’re trying to say is definitely not a good thing.”

“Yeah,” Timmy agrees. “It’s—well—it can be pretty life-changing if it doesn’t go exactly as planned.”

Jimmy glances at him, completely blunt. “They’re holograms Timmy. Even if they’re not exactly classified as holograms or whatever, we can build new ones if you need us to.”

To be honest, Danny’s not entirely sure he could build a new one. He assumes that Jimmy built Timmy’s old holograms, but now that he thinks about it, he’s not entirely sure where Timmy’s holograms came from.

Which can’t be right—Danny’s known Timmy for four years , and he doesn’t even know where he’s gotten his so-called powers? He knows everybody else's backstories.

Timmy inhales. Exhales. “Cosmo and Wanda are actually my fairy Godparents.”

Danny opens his mouth to respond, but no words come out of his mouth.

Now that he thinks about it, he realizes that there was never any concrete evidence to support the theory that Timmy’s Godparents— fairies ?—were holograms. Danny believed Jimmy when he said they were, because Jimmy was always right. But now that he turns off the lights and just looks , he realizes that he never once thought about Timmy’s holograms as anything else.

He looks at Timmy ( he doesn’t think. He doesn’t speak. He just looks ) . Timmy’s standing in front of the rest of them with wide eyes, looking at anything but his friends. His arms are wrapped around himself as he takes a step back and forth, like he’s about to fall over. Timmy’s head turns, inspecting every crook and corner as if he’s expecting something to jump out at him.

Danny doesn’t know what he’s doing until he’s done it.

Within a blink of an eye, he’s suddenly in the middle of the room. Something is shaking against his chest, and he holds it close to him, running a hand against the fabric of a t-shirt that’s been thrown in the washing machine a few hundred times.

It takes him a moment to realize that he’s hugging Timmy. 

It takes him an even longer moment to realize that this is the first time he’s ever hugged Timmy.

“Hey,” Danny says, pulling away slightly. Timmy’s still not crying, but his eyes are wide and he’s grinning. He doesn’t look at Danny directly—instead, he glances at his hands in pure awe , turning them over hesitantly. “Thanks for telling us.”

Timmy nods, before glancing around. “Wanda?” He says with a shaky breath, almost like he’s not allowed to say it anymore. “Cosmo?”

His holograms— fairies —appear almost instantly. It takes them a second to register the situation they teleported into, until they both throw themselves at Timmy with an eagerness that Danny laughs at. He doesn’t know why this is so important to the three of them, but he knows that he’ll be here when Timmy’s willing to tell him.

He glances at Spongebob, who must have joined their hug at some point, because he’s sitting right next to Danny with a proud smile. He’s still looking at Timmy, who has a hand over his mouth as Wanda hugs him and Cosmo lectures him about something completely irrelevant.

Jimmy’s still standing behind the couch, jaw slightly open in shock. He wasn’t as fast as Danny and Spongebob were, but he’s looking at Timmy in a way that says he would have hugged him if he was a little faster. He meets Danny’s eyes with a shrug of his shoulders, having the nerve to look a little sheepish as he rubs the back of his neck.

“I didn’t think fairies existed,” Jimmy offers as an explanation. Danny hums in acknowledgement, and Timmy sits up from where he’s lying down on the ground. He’s absolutely gleeful, which is such a shift from his last mood that Danny feels like he’s experiencing a sort of emotional whiplash.

“They exist as Godparents in my dimension,” Timmy explains, ignoring the coos of his Fairy Godparents. “If somebody under the age of eighteen is being abused or neglected by their parents, then Fairy World sends them their own fairies—You guys have been to Fairy World before.”

Danny immediately recoils at the new information. “What?”

Timmy scoffs, rolling his eyes with too much confidence for somebody who had been moments away from crying earlier. “Remember when we first met, and you and Spongebob came to Dimmsdale? We had to fight Crocker in Fairy World, because he was collecting the power of the fairies for the syndicate.”

“Timmy, that’s not—” Danny glances at his friends. They all meet his gaze with the same worried expression. When Danny looks at Timmy again, the boy meets his eyes with a wide grin—still giddy over whatever happened during his reveal. 

For a moment, Danny’s heart aches . Timmy doesn’t know he’s messed up; he doesn’t know he’s said things he can’t take back. “—Actually, yeah. Thanks for the reminder.”

Timmy glances at him. He seems hesitant to believe Danny’s response. He knows that Danny knows something. He knows that Danny is not telling him the whole story. Danny can see it in the way that Timmy looks at him.

And yet.

And yet Timmy decides to believe him; Timmy chooses to grin at him, as if that’s the end of the conversation.

Timmy’s quick to pull himself off of the ground, sitting down next to Spongebob on the couch as they talk about what his fairies can do. For a moment, everything is normal—Spongebob wishes for dolphin fins, and Timmy laughs as Spongebob flaps them together. Jimmy steals a handful of Skittles from the bowl on the sidetable, throwing a few at Timmy before heading back to his lab.

Danny sits on the ground, in the middle of it all.

Timmy may choose to be ignorant, but Danny was starting to see through the cracks of his disguise. Timmy had put on this mask of a person, stretching out the edges until they completely covered his face. Now, Timmy’s mask is too thin, and it starts to crack in the middle.

Danny sits on the ground, waiting for the day when it breaks.

II.

Danny’s favorite fable goes as listed:

A little boy was determined to prove that an elderly women within the town did not know everything. He had spent his weekend with a net, trying his hardest to catch a mockingbird. As soon as he did, he held the mockingbird within his cupped hands, taunting the elderly women as he hid the bird from all eyes.

The elderly women approached him with a smile. The boy, exhaustingly young, had cried for her to guess what he was holding in his hands. He wanted to prove her wrong, and she would never be able to guess that he had caught a bird .

The women could hear the flap of the bird’s wings—could see the net in the distance, and the traces of mud and grass stains on the boy's jeans—and guessed correctly. He was, in fact, holding a bird in his hands.

The boy glared at her, deviously coming up with another plan. He would ask the woman whether or not the bird was alive or dead. If the woman replied “alive,”, he would crush it with his hands and prove her wrong. If she answered “dead,”, he would unhand the bird and let it fly away. Either way, he would be victorious.

The woman told him that the answer was in his hands. (“The answer, my young friend, is in your hands. It has always been in your hands” ) and the boy would suddenly feel . He would feel the bird moving within his fingers. He would hear the bird pleading for its freedom. He would remember the look of fear in its eyes when he caught it in the net.

And suddenly, it was up to him. Did he favor the satisfaction that came with outsmarting the old woman as he crushed the bird, lying as he said he found it dead, or did he favor the satisfaction that came with letting the bird live.

It is a fable of hubris.

Danny thinks that the lesson is still relevant today.

He is holding on to Timmy Turner’s body, watching as his spine moves in large waves. They had been fighting the syndicate today, in a scheme that the enemies must have been composing for the better half of a few months.

It was hard on all of them.

Jimmy had lost most of his devices—broken or discarded along the battle field, never to be used again—resorting to the ray gun that Wanda provided. He was bleeding from a minor head wound, and he was limping in a way that suggested he twisted his ankle. Alas, Jimmy was never one to back down from a fight. Not when the rest of the world was at stake.

Spongebob is standing to his right, blowing bubbles that are weaker than Danny has ever seen them. They surround the enemies nonetheless, and it provides a feeble distraction as the enemies are weakened in their attempts to break the soapy outside.

Danny had been fighting the syndicate with the help of Timmy. Timmy’s weapon was weaker without the presence of Wanda, but Cosmo seemed enthusiastic enough to provide the required power for their attacks. Danny was pretty sure that he was going to have a sprained ankle when he resorted back to his human form, but for now, he was the only one of the four who could move with no restraints.

And then Timmy’s weapon was knocked out of his hands, and everything went to shit.

Professor Calamitous had managed to knock Cosmo out of Timmy’s hands, causing the fairy to scatter across the ground. Timmy made a noise of surprise, turning around to run after Cosmo, and Calamitous grabbed him by the back of his t-shirt, aiming a right hook at his shoulder.

There’s the crack of something dislocating, and the anguished cry of Timmy Turner as he tumbles towards the ground.

Calamitous is a dirty man, unafraid to play dirty tricks. As soon as Timmy hits the ground, Calamitous’ foot connects to his body, kicking as hard as he can.

And Danny sees red .

Calamitous is able to get a few kicks in before Danny runs into him, throwing his entire body weight at the professor. As soon as he’s knocked over, Danny rushes towards Timmy’s side. Timmy’s looking at him with wide eyes, and Danny can’t help himself from placing his head in his lap.

His eyes dart towards where his arm is unmoving—unlike the rest of his shaking body. He’s muttering something at Danny, and Danny can barely make out ‘Vlad’ before his body is ducking downwards on instinct.

He’s glad that he does, because he can hear the sound of wind in his ear as Vlad misses his head by a few centimeters.

Timmy lets out another anguished cry, causing Danny to look downwards. His eyes are rolled back, and his mouth is opened in a moan. He’s shaking now, and Danny realizes that he’s having a seizure .

Timmy Turner’s body moves in waves, and Danny watches in horror as his spine twists and shifts itself into positions that he couldn’t even begin to imagine. There’s the sound of something screaming Timmy’s name, and it takes him a moment to realize that it was him .

“Timmy,” he manages, but he’s unsure of what to do. He’s still holding on to Timmy’s head, dragging his fingers through his hair as he looks upwards. He glances down just as quickly, unable to keep his eyes off of Timmy.

“Jimmy!” He shouts, still looking at Timmy’s rapidly blinking eyes. In a moment of weakness, he brushes Timmy’s hair out of his eyes; it’s what his mother would have done. “Jimmy, Timmy’s having a seizure!”

He does not care about the syndicate behind him, who’s undoubtedly planning their next attack, and he does not care for their army of robots in front of him. All that matters is Timmy. All that matters if making it out alive .

He’s only sixteen.

Danny’s brain, unhelpfully, reminds him that he was twelve when they first met.

Jimmy’s feet come into view, and then all of a sudden, hands are removing Danny’s grip from Timmy’s head.

He doesn’t have time to think—all he can do is let out an uncharacteristically loud noise from the back of his throat, clutching Timmy’s head closer to his chest as he leans over him, protecting his friend— his brother —with his life. He does not register Jimmy’s pleading words, and he does not register Spongebob’s hand on his back.

And within a minute, Timmy’s body stops .

Danny flinches away immediately, pulling away from Timmy’s head. He knows that Jimmy’s checking his pulse, but Danny’s fingers still find their way to the underside of Timmy’s jaw. His fingers find the beat of a pulse, and he almost cries in relief.

Then, Timmy’s body coils in on itself.

Danny pulls away immediately, watching as the boy’s knees are brought to his chest. His eyes are still rolled to the back of his head.

Then, Timmy’s body starts to emit a strong, unmistakable force .

It’s powerful in the way that Danny and Jimmy immediately grab onto his wrist. It’s powerful in the way that everybody else—Spongebob included—is blown to the corners of the arena. It’s powerful in the way that it keeps coming from his body, and it keeps effusing until there are cracks in the wall and Timmy’s wailing from pain .

There’s nothing but pain in his eyes. Sickeningly sweet pain.

“You need to let go,” Timmy cries, very slowly wrapping his arms around himself. He eyes Danny and Jimmy hesitantly, before his gaze falls on Cosmo and Wanda by his feat. “You need to grab Spongebob and get out of here .”

“What are you talking about?” Jimmy asks, but Danny can barely hear him over the noise of rushing wind in his ear. Timmy is starting to emit heat as well, and Danny can barely hold onto him as his hands burn . “What about you?”

“I’m dangerous !” Timmy cries, his voice cracking. He screams almost immediately afterward, his back arching in pain as he emits another wave of force. “I can’t control it.”

Danny is hit with a memory. He is fourteen, and he is wandering into a laboratory with a smile on his face. He is hit with the power of a machine that makes him cry as something happens to his body. He is all of a sudden here and not here. Alive and not alive. He is no longer a kid, but he is not necessarily something else.

And he cannot control this feeling. This urge to die.

Danny adjusts his grip on Timmy. He ignores the force that tries its hardest to blow him away. He ignores the heat that burns his hands. “We’re not leaving without you.”

Because that’s what it is, isn’t it? Danny doesn’t know what’s happening, but it’s all about Timmy’s control: It’s about his control over that mask, which hides this power that Danny didn’t even know about. It’s about this control over Timmy’s urges, which tell him that he is not normal; that he will be never be anything like his peers. It’s about this control.

This sense of control that Danny had to learn.

This sense of control that nobody else should have to learn by themselves. 

Especially not Timmy Turner, who lives only for his friends.

And so when Danny says he’s not leaving without Timmy, he tells nothing but the truth.

“I think if this happens, I might be able to destroy the syndicate’s machine,” Timmy says, but he can’t get through the sentence without grunting and screaming, and Danny just knows . He knows that leaving Timmy here means certain death. “I could save the world. Forever”

He looks at Danny, and there is something pleading in his look.

Just like Danny, he cannot control that urge to die.

(“The answer, my young friend, is in your hands. It has always been in your hands” )

They can save the bird. They can bring Timmy back to the house that they share together . They can heal each other's injuries and lick their wounds as they watch movies on the couch. They can save the bird, but live with the knowledge that they’ll have to wake up tomorrow and fight the syndicate again.

They can squeeze their hands together. They can grab Spongebob and leave . They can ask questions and ponder and investigate with the knowledge that they’ll never get to know what happened to Timmy. They can kill the bird, but live with the knowledge that they’ll never have to fight the syndicate again—that they’ll free their universes from these horrors forever.

And yet.

And yet Danny looks at Timmy and no longer sees a little kid: he sees a friend. He sees a rule-breaker; a trouble-maker. He sees a brother .

He sees himself.

“You’re insane if you think we’re leaving you behind,” Danny says. He’s not sure how they’re going to stop Timmy Turner’s body from radiating energy, but he’s sure that Jimmy already has a plan formulating in that brain of his. “We’re family and shit, remember?”

Timmy’s used to the pain by now—it’s evident in his expression, where he’s looking at everything and nothing all at the same time. Still, he must hear Danny, because he exhales slightly. “You said shit.”

“There’s the Timmy I know,” Danny says, squeezing Timmy’s wrist again.

“Timmy,” Jimmy calls, causing Danny’s attention to turn towards him. Timmy responds with a barely sentient hum, turning his head slightly. “I think I might know how to stop this, but it’s going to hurt a lot. I want to get your permission to do it, okay?”

“Huh?” Timmy manages, but he hisses in pain from the simple noise.

“Do I have your permission to stop this?” Jimmy repeats, squeezing Timmy’s arm tighter. “We’re going to get you home, Turner. Don’t give up on us now.”

“Yeah,” Timmy says, but it sounds more like a barely lucid hum of his lips. He looks back at the ceiling, his muscles clenching slightly. He lets out another airy scream as his body arches, but as soon as the brief wave of pain ends his expression fades into one of complete control. “Stop it, Neutron.”

Jimmy takes one hand off of Timmy’s arm, feeling the nape of Timmy’s neck. Timmy hums in amusement as Jimmy feels his neck, and Danny assumes that he’s trying his best to laugh. 

Then, all of a sudden, Timmy’s eyelids close and his entire body falls still.

Danny’s hands immediately travel further down Timmy’s wrist, feeling at his pulse point. He lets out a breath of relief when he feels the light thump of Timmy’s pulse against his finger ( his heartbeat is faster than anyone Danny has ever felt ), pulling away just as quickly.

Jimmy looks at him, turning back to Timmy just as quickly. A small smile graces his lips. “The carotid sinus’ are two pressure points that, when pinched, can knock anybody out.”

His hand traces the front of Timmy’s t-shirt, lingering along the sleeping teenager’s form before it finally returns to his wrist, where he flits his fingers against Timmy’s pulse with a purse of his lips. “I had a feeling Timmy’s power was pulling from his lifesource, and I figured that knocking him out would stop it.”

“Any estimation as to where he obtained the power?” Danny asks, not taking his eyes off Timmy. “Or what it even is?”

“Seemed like something to do with his fairies,” Jimmy responds. He allows himself a moment to linger, to mourn for Timmy’s situation, before he’s on his feet again. Danny doesn’t follow him—instead, he listens to the movement of Jimmy’s feet.

Jimmy grunts from somewhere in the distance, and Danny can hear Spongebob groan slightly. It doesn’t take a genius to know what Jimmy’s doing, and Danny finds himself holsting Timmy into an easier position to carry, holding him to his chest as he meets Jimmy in the middle of the arena.

For a split second, he’s reminded of the first time he hugged Timmy.

Danny staggers through the rest of the day in a haze. He’s in their shared residence in Amity Park within the blink of an eye, helping Jimmy as the younger bandages the wounds on Spongebob and Timmy. They don’t talk about what happened, and Wanda and Cosmo don’t appear beyond keychains on Timmy’s backpack, so they can’t really ask about what happened either.

They don’t talk about what happened when Timmy wakes up, a wide grin on his face as he chooses to act ignorant about what happened with the syndicate. They don’t know what happened when Timmy cocks his head to the side and asks them what they’re talking about.

They don’t know what happened a day; a week; a fortnight later, when Timmy’s mask continues to stretch across his face, blending his features into something that Danny does not even recognize.

And yet.

And yet Danny had let the bird free. He had uncupped his hands and simply looks as Timmy dances to an unfamiliar pop song in the kitchen, eventually roping a disinterested Jimmy into it. He watches as Timmy lives , even if it’s behind a facade.

And Danny feels pretty damn proud of himself, despite the knowledge that the syndicate is still lurking.

Because he uncupped the bird; because now he gets to wake up in the morning and see his friends making breakfast.

Safe. Unharmed. Imperfectly perfect.

III.

Occasionally, Danny will look at the ceiling and think about how Timmy’s being abused at home.

Sometimes he’ll stare at his alarm clock, which will read a time that Danny can barely comprehend in the early mornings, and he’ll think about how he can sugarcoat it. He doesn’t necessarily know that Timmy’s being abused at home, granted, but he doesn’t know what else it could possibly be.

And there’s no way to sugarcoat it, to be honest. Even when he argues with himself that it could just be neglect—it’s never just anything. Not if it’s bad enough that he needs Godparents. Not if it’s bad enough that he needs fairies to grant him happiness.

Danny takes the information that Timmy has provided him about his parents and he holds it close to his chest, sheltering it with his hands. He opens the door to his guest bedroom and buys Timmy his favorite snacks when he goes to the store. He opens the doors to his house, welcoming Timmy inside. He doesn’t press for more information: he hopes that Timmy will tell him when he’s ready. 

Sometimes, Danny will stare at the wall and wonder if Timmy Turner is sleeping on the other side of it.

Timmy Turner is often precarious with his whereabouts. Danny doesn’t know if he spends the night until he wakes up in the morning and sees Timmy on the couch, doing the Wordle on his phone. Other times, he’ll leave before Danny can even wake up.

Danny doesn’t know when the guest bedroom became Timmy’s bedroom, but it hits him when he walks through the door one day and sees the polaroid pictures on the wall and the charger in the outlet and the sweaters that have loitered the floor.

Strangely, he finds that he doesn’t have a problem with it.

They don’t mention it ( just like how they don’t mention the fairy thing; or the abuse thing; or the power thing ), but it’s still something that Danny thinks about with a smile. He looks at the wall and he thinks about how proud he is of Timmy for escaping his parent’s grasp. He looks at the wall and thinks about how proud he is of himself for doing something about Timmy’s household.

So when Jimmy tells him that he needs to go to Dimmsdale to retrieve a device he left there, Danny’s not surprised to hear that Timmy doesn’t want to go.

Spongebob and Jimmy are encouraging him, telling him that it can be a night out—they can stop at Timmy’s favorite restaurant, meet Timmy’s favorite friends, and go to all of Timmy’s favorite places ( Danny can’t help himself from thinking about how he does not know any of those things. What is Timmy’s favorite restaurant? He’s got to have a best friend ).

Timmy eventually caves, because he only lives to make his friends happy. Danny can see it in the way that he smiles when Jimmy and Spongebob aren’t looking.

Danny wonders whether or not they’d see the fear in the wrinkles of his face if they ever took a minute to just stop and look . To turn off the lights and sit on the grass and look at the night sky.

Spongebob drags Timmy through the streets of Dimmsdale with an unmatched excitement, practically shaking as he stops to look at every window display. Timmy’s glancing cautiously at his surroundings, and his shoulders are tense in concern. He meets Danny’s gaze, and he seems to notice that Danny’s watching him with a suspicious glint of his eyes, because his shoulders fall with a sheepish smile.

“You should invite one of your friends to dinner!” Spongebob chimes in happily, as Timmy pulls them into a restaurant. He claims that it’s his favorite—but it’s also, coincidentally, the first one they stumbled upon. “Oh my Neptune! That would be so cool, I could meet a real Dimmsdale-ian!”

“Spongebob, I’m a real Dimmsdale-ian,” Timmy responds, frowning slightly at the sponge. Cosmo and Wanda are taking the shape of bracelets on his right arm. Spongebob is wearing an astronaut helmet, which protects his features from any unsuspecting human. “You’ve already met me.”

“I could meet another one!”

“Well, it sucks to be you then,” Timmy says, childishly poking his tongue out of his mouth. “All of my friends are busy.”

Jimmy arches an eyebrow from across the table, looking over his menu at the both of them. “With what?”

“What do you mean?” Timmy asks, but his voice cracks in all the right places that Danny knows he’s been caught. His eyes dart between Jimmy and Danny too quickly, and he doesn’t even wait for Jimmy to repeat himself before he’s answering the original question. “There’s a carnival in town, and they all went there.”

“A carnival?” Spongebob asks, not noticing the way that Danny and Jimmy share a look. “We’ve got to go to the carnival. Come on everyone, eat as quickly as you possibly can, I want to go on a ferris wheel.”

Timmy snorts, but Danny’s looking and he can see the way that Timmy’s eyes widen a little bit too much. “Spongebob, you had to buy tickets days in advance.”

“Well did you buy any?” Spongebob asks, a large smile on his face.

Timmy considers this, before he ducks his head down with a sigh. “I thought I was going to be in Amity Park with you guys, so I didn’t really think to buy any tickets—” he glances at Spongebob, offering him a small smile “—that’s my bad.”

“But if all of your friends are going then why didn’t you go?” Jimmy asks. Danny watches as Timmy scoffs slightly, before his glare softens into something else. “We’d understand if you wanted to take one day off. You rarely spend any time in Dimmsdale anymore.”

“What is this?” Timmy asks, and he’s hugging his arms to his chest. He looks at Danny, and his gaze flashes with something akin to fear before they fade back to his egotistical mask. “An intervention? Are you kicking me out of your guest bedroom, Danny?”

Danny furrows his brows. “No, of course not.”

“Look,” Timmy starts again, barely giving himself a chance to breathe. Nobody else is allowed to speak, and he looks at Jimmy and Danny as if they might try and argue with him—as if they might try and question him further. “Let’s just eat, okay? Then we can break in to the carnival and Spongebob can ride the fucking ferris wheel and everyone can be fucking happy. Okay?”

“Timmy, you don’t need to get mad,” Jimmy says, glancing at Danny and Spongebob. Spongebob has noticed that something’s off with Timmy as of now, and he’s regarding the boy to his left with an inquisitive look.

“I’m not mad!”

“Calm down, Timmy,” Spongebob says, placing a hand on the boy’s lower arm. “We’re just excited to see Dimmsdale, okay? You didn’t do anything wrong.”

Timmy scoffs, and he looks like he’s either about to laugh or break down crying. Maybe both. “Let’s just eat.”

Timmy’s tone leaves little room for an argument, and he leans over his plate like he’s avoiding the topic. At this point, Danny doesn’t even remember what he bought—a salad, or grilled cheese, or something cheap like that—but he still digs into it to avoid the awkward conversation.

He knows that Jimmy’s glancing at the top of Timmy’s head in concern, holding his fork against the rim of his plate as he regards the situation. Often, the boy genius acts like he has to be the smartest. He has to know what’s going on at any given time, and he has to be able to fix it. Timmy raises a new variable; a new problem.

Danny’s not sure even Jimmy can fix it.

Spongebob is trying to make conversation from the other side of the table, and Timmy will respond with noncommittal hums. He’s talking about everything from the weather to how the cheeseburgers in this restaurant tasted like the food they served at Plankton’s restaurant ( now that Danny thinks about it, his salad tastes like shit as well ). Danny tries to respond, but the conversation lacks its usual breeze. It’s too exact. Forced.

And because Timmy’s determined to prove that there’s nothing wrong with him, he leads them to the carnival. The rest of the group lurks a few feet behind him, sharing concerned looks as Timmy brings his wrist to his face to talk to his fairies. Occasionally, he’ll look over his shoulder. Sometimes he’s looking at them. Sometimes he’s looking even further into the distance; at something that even they don’t know about.

They reach the carnival abruptly. There are no warnings—no faraway sounds of music or laughter—there’s just this . The wired gate and the people and the colorful lights. For a moment, Danny wonders if there was even a carnival there to begin with.

“C’mon, we’ll climb the gate,” Timmy says, gesturing for them to follow him. They do, because it was never a question of how much they trust Timmy.

It’s fairly easy getting over the gate. Most of them have experience with trespassing at least once, and Timmy offers Spongebob a piggy-back-ride when he starts to climb up. They land on the other end of the gate with a thump , and Timmy leads them into the crowd of carnies and passerby.

Once there, they melt into a landscape. Here, within the crowd of shouting kids and people in makeup and adults, they blend into this sense of normality. Nobody gives Spongebob, with his astronaut helmet, a double take. Nobody notices the way Danny glows whenever somebody walks too close, or the way that Jimmy’s looking at everything like it’s a puzzle. Nobody notices them .

Perhaps there’s a sort of gratitude in that. That just for once, they can be normal as well.

And yet.

And yet it’s ruined when Spongebob latches himself on to Timmy’s hand and tugs slightly. When he points to something in the distance and regards Timmy with a prideful smile. It’s ruined when Danny makes eye contact with two boys who Danny knows , because he’s seen them in Timmy’s phone and in the polaroid pictures he stuffs into the bottom of his wardrobe.

“See, I told you your friends would be glad to see us!” Spongebob exclaims. Danny looks at them again, really looks , and notices that Timmy’s friends don’t really seem to be feeling—well— anything regarding them. In fact, they’re looking at Timmy with an expression of indifference.

Timmy doesn’t respond to Spongebob’s comment. He’s standing completely still, looking at his friends. He doesn’t run towards them. He doesn’t offer a wave of his hand or a helpless grin or let Spongebob drag him over. He’s just still .

And then he runs.

It happens too quickly for any of them to react.

One moment Spongebob is impatiently tugging on Timmy’s hand, a smile on the sponge’s face as he tries to help Timmy. Then, in the next moment, Timmy is gone. Danny can see him weaving through the crowd of people as he makes his way away from his friends; away from them .

“I’ll go get him,” Jimmy says, reacting before anybody else can. He’s not nearly as fast as Timmy, but he still runs through the crowd like a little kindergartener playing tag.

Danny and Spongebob stand there for a moment. Two.

“I wasn’t trying to scare him,” Spongebob says, and Danny looks at him. “I just thought— I don’t know —he had been so sad recently. I thought seeing his friends would do him some good.”

Then, sheepishly, he adds: “Plus, I really wanted to meet them. I didn’t lie about that.”

“I know, Spongebob,” Danny says, offering Spongebob his hand. Spongebob takes it, and Danny grins at him. He doesn’t know what’s happening to Timmy, but he does know that Spongebob does not need another problem to worry about. He won’t be a burden to his friend. “Don’t worry about it. Do you still want to meet Timmy’s friend?”

“Do you think Timmy would get mad?” Spongebob asks, tilting his head to the side. It looks a little comedic, considering he’s wearing a giant astronaut helmet, but Danny just smiles.

Danny looks off into the distance again, trying to see any traces of Jimmy or Timmy. Then, when he comes up empty, he glances at the two kids near a food truck. “I don’t think so. Maybe he’ll get a little jealous that we met him before he could properly introduce us, but he doesn’t really get mad.”

You thought he didn’t get scared either . Danny’s mind supplies unhelpfully as he leads Spongebob to where the two boys are standing by the food truck. Or sad .

The two boys near the food truck are older than the ones in Timmy’s pictures. They’re taller than they used to be, with long limbs and faces that no longer carry traces of baby fat. The blonde one has a mullet now, with the remembrances of hair on his chin. The other one is around the same height, with a pair of round glasses and a college sweater. Danny’s never heard of the college before, but by the way he puffs out his chest, he can only assume it’s prestigious.

It’s an odd pairing, but then again, everything about Timmy is a little odd.

“Hi!” Spongebob says, causing both of them to look down. With this height, Spongebob can easily be mistaken as a child. “I’m Spongebob. I’m one of Timmy’s friends.”

The two share a look, subtly glancing at Spongebob and Danny before looking back at each other. The blond one—Chester, if Danny remembers correctly—nods slowly. He regards Spongebob with a smile, tweaking the tone of his voice to something along the lines of baby talk. “Who’s Timmy?”

“What?” Danny asks, before he can stop himself.

The blond continues, unchanged from Danny’s interruption. “Does he go to preschool with you?”

Danny can’t stop himself from letting out a sound of amusement, looking between Timmy’s friends and the space between them. His immediate thought is that Chester is not telling the truth—but then it shifts into something else. Something that lodges itself within Danny’s ribs and informs him that he does not know what happens in Timmy’s dimension. That he does not know Timmy at all.

“No, I’m friends with your friend, Timmy,”  Spongebob says, with just as much enthusiasm as before. He’s a little more hesitant, though, and the gleaming black side of his astronaut helmet is tilted to look at Danny before he turns back to Timmy’s friend. “I’m like a cousin twice-removed, but a friend twice-removed.”

The other man speaks up, placing a hand on Chester’s shoulder as he offers Spongebob a sheepish smile. “I’m sorry, kid, but we don’t know a Timmy.”

Oh . Danny thinks, because there’s nothing else he could possibly say to make this whole thing better.

“We must have the wrong person,” Danny says, trying his best to act naive as he rubs the back of his neck. He offers the two of them a disarming smile, melting into the role of Spongebob’s older brother. He tugs on Spongebob’s hand, sending him a look that says ‘let’s go find Timmy’. “C’mon Spongebob, let’s go see what mom and pops are doing.”

Spongebob doesn’t say anything in response, but he doesn’t fight Danny’s grasp as the taller boy drags them through the crowd of people. Once they’re far enough away from Chester and the other boy— AJ. Chester and AJ—Danny leads him behind a group of food trucks, where he helps Spongebob remove his astronaut helmet.

Behind the food trucks, it is idly quiet. Danny sends a quick text to Jimmy, who has gone uncharacteristically air silent. Danny turns off his phone just as quickly, sliding it into his pocket with a sigh. His hands find the ridge of Spongebob’s helmet, tugging at the bottom.

“What’s wrong with Timmy, Danny?” Spongebob asks, not meeting Danny’s eyes as Danny places the helmet on the ground.

Danny manages a laugh, but even he knows that it sounds sad. Pitiful. “That’s kind of a loaded question.”

Spongebob wrinkles up his nose, frowning deeply. He continues to stare at the ground, and Danny places a hand on his head. Eventually, Spongebob looks up at him with those wide, blue eyes. “You humans are so confusing. In Bikini Bottom, everyone just says what they’re feeling.”

“Bikini Bottom does seem like heaven compared to our dimensions, huh?” Danny hums in agreement. They’re avoiding the topic, but it’s just so much easier to talk about the wacky quirks of Bikini Bottom instead of Timmy Turner. Instead of their friend . Their friend with problems that they don’t even know about.

Spongebob opens his mouth to say something, but he closes it just as quickly. After a moment ( two ), he opens it again. 

“Timmy knows we love him, right?”

Danny scoffs, opening his mouth to respond. His lips flit over the words so easily, and all it takes is a second to sound out the syllables in of course he does . 

And yet.

And yet his mouth never seems to make the noise. And yet he chokes on the sounds as they escape his throat. And yet, it’s irrelevant to the fact that Danny loves Timmy—that he’s protecting his younger brother with his hands, holding him close—because he doesn’t think he’s ever told Timmy that he cares about him. That he wants to see him grow old. That he wants to teach him how to drive a car and he wants to see him graduate college.

Danny doesn’t think Timmy knows that they love him.

“Spongebob,” Danny says, because that’s all he can manage. His mouth still moves over the words of course he does , like he’s a parrot, only limited to saying one thing. “I don’t know. I want to say he does.”

“Why don’t we talk about it, Danny?”

“Excuse me?” Danny asks, glancing at his yellow friend.

Spongebob shrugs, but Danny knows what he means. Why don’t they talk about Timmy more? Why don’t they talk about how scared he was when he told them he had fairies? Why don’t they talk about his burst of power, and how scary that was? Why don’t they talk about his residence in Danny’s house? Why don’t they talk about him?

They talk about Jimmy plenty: Jimmy will send them messages with his new scientific discoveries and the livestream to how he won the key to the city. Timmy will ask Jimmy about Goddard and Jimmy will talk about how his prototype finally worked while jumping up and down. They’ll talk about Jimmy when he breaks down, and how he just can’t compute feelings the way everybody else does, because they don’t make sense to him.

They talk about Spongebob. Spongebob, who shows the rest of the group pictures of his pet snail. They’ll talk about Spongebob’s latest expedition to retrieve the Krabby Patty formula from Plankton. Timmy will ask about his childhood over a game of Guess Who and Danny will talk with him about recipes in the kitchen. They’ll talk about Spongebob when he gets overstimulated, and how crying does not always mean that he’s sad. Sometimes, Spongebob spends too much time outside of his normal biome, and he cries simply because he longs for the feeling of water in his gills.

And they talk about Danny.

They talk about Danny, who will call them idiots for leaving their trash on his couch but would kill for them. Jimmy will talk about how he’s created a new invention to help catch spirits, and Spongebob will talk about Danny’s favorite television show with him. Timmy will ask him about the ghost zone and what being a half-ghost is like. They’ll talk about how Danny’s fingernails drag across his skin because sometimes he doesn’t know if he’s real and it helps when he feels the feeling of pain. They’ll talk about how Danny is both afraid of dying and not afraid at the exact same time. They’ll talk about how he’s so, so tired.

But they don’t talk about Timmy.

They talk about how Timmy wants to play Super Mario Kart later, and how Timmy wants to stop for ice cream in Spongebob’s dimension. They talk about how Timmy left his socks in Jimmy’s lab and how he didn’t talk to any of them when he placed a fish bowl on the kitchen counter—but they don’t talk about Timmy. They don’t talk about Timmy’s day, or what he does at Dimmsdale when he goes. They don’t talk about how he flinches whenever somebody sneaks up on him, or how he instantly apologizes whenever he’s done anything wrong.

They just don’t talk about Timmy.

Danny and Spongebob stand behind the food trucks in silence, thinking about how they don’t know Timmy.

Distantly, Danny realizes that it smells like rain. Thunder booms overhead

Offhandedly, ( because he doesn’t want to talk about Timmy. Doesn’t want to admit that there’s something wrong) he laughs at the idea that somebody decided that today was a good day to host a carnival. Almost like there was no thought put into scheduling around the weather.

Almost like there was no thought put into it at all.

And, well. Timmy does have magical fairies, doesn’t he?

He opens his mouth to voice his concerns, ( but his lips can’t seem to form the words, because saying the words out loud is giving them power. Voicing his concerns means that he is concerned. It means something is wrong ) but is cut off by Timmy and Jimmy.

Immediately, he notices that something is off.

Timmy is smiling, covering his hair with his hands as Cosmo and Wanda float idly behind him with umbrellas they’ve made out of their wands. This isn’t too abnormal by itself. In fact, if Danny hadn’t just had a conversation with the friends that apparently don’t remember Timmy, he wouldn’t be concerned.

Jimmy’s soaking wet, ( if it was any other time, Danny would make fun of how sullied his hair was ) but there’s a glint in his eyes that wasn’t there before. A glint in his eyes that suggests he’s figured one more puzzle out. That the world makes a little more sense.

It occurs to Danny that Jimmy knows . He knows why Timmy was shaking, and why he’s been emitting power. He knows why Timmy’s conjuring an entire carnaval for the sake of Spongebob, and why his friends don’t even remember him.

Jimmy sends him a look over his shoulder, and something in it tells Danny not to pry. That Jimmy can handle it. That it’s none of Danny’s concern.

So Danny trusts him. He trusts Jimmy with all of his might , because he so desperately wants Timmy to be okay.

IV.

Timmy Turner has spent five minutes looking at the magnet in the fridge.

He’s managed to make it look inconspicuous, sure. His phone is in his hands as he sits at the kitchen counter, scrolling through his Snapchat feed. His head is resting in the palm of his hand, and if it wasn’t for the fact that his thumb has been hovering over a snap from Jimmy for the past four minutes, Danny wouldn’t even think twice about it.

But Timmy’s thumb has been hovering over a snap from Jimmy for four minutes, and his head is tilted in a way that means he’s looking at the fridge.

Danny’s house is fairly new—he had only turned eighteen recently, after all—so there weren’t that many things on his fridge. There was a piece of paper from one of their Pictionary games that Timmy attached to the wall after the boy-genius drew a lopsided, ugly picture of a parrot. There was a drawing of the four of them in a little girl’s scripture, after they saved her from an accident.

And, very recently, there’s the post-it note leftover from this morning, when Timmy quickly wrote Danny a note before he left to go get milk from the corner store.

It’s nothing special. Maybe six words at most. In fact, Danny can probably remember what it says even though he’s sitting in the living room, typing away on his computer.

“Going to get milk ,” It read, in Timmy’s barely legible, shitty handwriting. “ ♡ Timmy. ”

Danny didn’t think it was that big of a deal. He was feeling sentimental, and he had made a comment about running to get milk yesterday night. It was such a little thing, but it meant a lot to him, so he decided that he was going to put it on the fridge. He didn’t even think twice about it, really.

But now Timmy’s staring at it like he’s trying to convince himself it doesn’t exist. Like if he blinks enough times he’ll finally wake up and escape from whatever hallucination he’s living in. Timmy’s staring at it like he’s never seen his damn name on the fridge before, and Danny’s actually second-guessing himself.

He didn’t cross a line when he put it in the fridge, did he? He thought it was completely normal—granted, maybe it wasn’t completely normal to put your friend’s half-assed notes on the fridge, but it wasn’t like it was abnormal or anything.

“Take a picture,” Danny finds himself saying, because he just wants Timmy to stop staring. “It’ll last longer.”

Timmy jumps—he jumps . Dropping his phone almost instantly as his shoulders hug his neck—before he turns to look at Danny, offering him a very modest middle finger over his shoulder. Danny snorts at his response, pleased to see that he’s returned to his phone.

And yet.

And yet Timmy’s ankles are wrapped around the bars on the bar stool, and he’s gripping his phone as if it might escape his grasp. His hand is pressed against his chest, and his fairies have stopped from where they were playing in the mixer to stare at him.

“Timmy, I’m just kidding,” Danny adds, sitting up. He gives Timmy’s body a once-over, checking for any injuries. It’s only been a few days since they went to Dimmsdale, and ever since they returned from the carnaval, Timmy has always been on edge. “Feel free to take that off the fridge if you want, I won’t mind.”

“It’s not that,” Timmy reassures, but he says it in a way that makes it seem like it is like that.

Danny regards him, slowly looking him up and down. He’s not quite sure what he should say in response to that, so he opens his lips a bit, tongue flicking against the back of his teeth as he tries to find the words to describe what he’s feeling. To tell Timmy that he’s here to help .

“You sure?” He eventually manages, but it’s not what he intended to say, and it’s so far away from what he should be telling Timmy that he doesn’t know how to twist the words into something that makes sense in his muddled mind.

Timmy puts his phone on the counter, glancing at Danny. For once, Danny has the most peculiar feeling that Timmy’s examining him: searching for something .

Eventually, Timmy turns back to his phone. “Yeah. Don’t worry about it.”

So Danny doesn’t.

“ What’s happening to me ?”

There’s a quiver to Timmy’s voice that makes it almost unrecognizable.

Hidden by the barrier that the closed wooden door imposes, Danny halts to a stop outside of the guest bedroom. He had gotten up in the middle of the night, craving something to eat, and was heading back up to his bedroom when he heard talking in the guest bedroom.

He’s surprised to hear Timmy inside for all of the wrong reasons.

Of course, he didn’t know Timmy was supposed to be at his house this evening, but Timmy often spends the night sporadically. Most often then not, he doesn’t tell Danny—like if he tells Danny that he wants to stay over, Danny will realize that the guest bedroom is no longer for ‘guests’; that its door is embedded in a name that only he will recognize—like he’s afraid that Danny will kick him out.

And, well. Perhaps he was once in a house that did kick him out when he lurked in a room too often.

Danny wouldn’t be surprised.

He is surprised that Timmy is awake at this time. He’s awake when the sun is barely awake, and the birds do not croak outside of his opened window. He already goes to bed after Danny and wakes up before him, and apparently he spends his nights hiding behind closed doors.

There's silence. Maybe Timmy has fallen asleep.

“ Nothing that isn’t my fault .”

Wanda’s voice rings through the cracks in the door. The door that Danny’s friends painted together when he first bought the house—there’s a drawing of a dick from where Timmy got the brush, to where Sam attacked the upper corners ( she had been using her height to her advantage, reaching the places that they couldn’t. Going further than any of them ) with blue finger prints.

“ Don’t say that ,” Timmy says almost instantly, and his voice is still weak; breathless. “ I chose for this to happen. ”

“ You were a child.”

Danny hesitates outside the door. Isn’t Timmy still a child?

“ Doesn’t matter ,” Timmy responds, and there’s the rustling of something moving on the other end of the door. “ I saved the world. ”

“ For what?”

Danny’s hand finds the cool metal of the doorknob, where his fingers wrap around the handle. He doesn’t pull or twist. Instead, he merely hesitates, standing in the middle of the hallway like a coat rack. Merely a subject to everybody else's speculation.

Timmy snorts, but it’s a sound that Danny has never heard before. As if somebody took all of the pain and want and fear and shoved it into a voice modulator. As if somebody wanted to put all of their emotions into one end of a paper tower roll and tilt it to the side and grab it and show it off as something completely different: as something new . Something better.

“ I saved the world. I saved people.”

He doesn’t sound very sure of himself.

“ You saved the world for people who don’t know you exist. You saved the world because it was expected of you; because it was your job. ”

“ Yeah, I guess,” Timmy responds enthusiastically. He hesitates for a beat. Two. Danny can imagine him flitting his tongue over the back of his two front teeth, carefully choosing his next words. It’s ironic, really. Timmy’s never careful. Not unless it’s with what he says. “ Why does it have to hurt, though? I don’t want this. I never wanted this.”

Danny pulls away from the doorknob with a shaky gasp. He places his hand against his cheek, feeling the warmth of his head. His fingers shake against his temple, hitting it in uncontrollable, gentle taps. He doesn’t know why he’s shaking.

He walks back to his room, trying his best to manage one foot in front of the other . This is none of his business.

But as he lies in his bed, not even bothering to get underneath the comforter, he has the oddest feeling that he should have intervened.

“Surprise!” Spongebob exclaims, wrapping his arms around Timmy’s waist.

They had stopped by the supermarket, running to pick up groceries. Danny’s holding a bag in his left hand, grinning at Spongebob as he hoists a jug of milk onto the kitchen counter. The front door is still open, but Danny couldn’t bother shutting it. Not when Spongebob was so excited to show off his new mask.

It was always a hassle finding human costumes for Spongebob, which were both lightweight and easy to remove if a villain attacked. Luckily, childish masks seemed to cover his features well—and, well, the mask they found at the supermarket was just as good as any. Taking the form of a goldfish, Spongebob became immediately attached to what he claimed to be his ‘overland biological brother’, and Danny was peer pressured into buying it.

It looks authentic, though. As if Spongebob was an actual adolescent like the rest of them. Perhaps it was a little too authentic, with its rounded cheeks and black eyes. Perhaps Danny should have warned the others before Spongebob wore it around the house, and perhaps Danny should have thought ahead.

As soon as the word leaves Spongebob’s mouth and his hands wrap around Timmy’s waist, the boy in question flinches. Hard .

Timmy’s form collapses, like a puppet with its string cut. His head ducks towards the ground, as if he’s trying to get out of Danny’s field of vision as quickly as possible. For a brief moment, he runs against Spongebob’s grip, but either Spongebob’s grip tightens or he’s not as strong as he seems, because Spongebob’s hands around his midriff are relentless.

His body stills with a full body roll, and Danny watches as his head collapses against his knees. He looks a little bit like a cat, with his limbs dangling from where Spongebob holds him. He doesn’t say anything, but Danny has enough common sense to know that he’s given up. Capitulated to an unknown force.

It is silent for a minute. Two.

“Timmy, are you okay?” Spongebob shrieks, and his hands leave Timmy’s waist in a minute of panic. Timmy drops to the ground with a thud , his hands and legs unmoving. “I didn’t mean to scare you!”

Timmy turns on his side, tucking his knees close to his chest as he surrounds his stomach with his arms. Danny watches as he hugs his form tight—eyes flashing everywhere, taking in his surroundings like a man who had just been granted access to Heaven for a second.

Danny’s mind is slower than his mouth, catching even him by surprise as he kneels in front of Timmy’s face. “I think he’s scared of that mask—take it off.”

Spongebob must have come to that conclusion before him, though, because Danny turns to the left and is instantly met with the sheepish face of his sponge-like friend. He’s holding the goldfish mask behind his frame, standing on his tippy-toes as he peers over Danny’s shoulder.

Danny turns back to Timmy, and his hands fly to the shoulder and arm tilted towards him, shaking it slightly. Timmy’s eyes are clammed shut, and his entire body is tense—like he’s expecting to be hit or something.

Like he’s expecting to be hit .

“We put the mask away, Timmy,” Danny says, but he’s not shaking his friend anymore. Instead, his head finds Timmy’s back, and he’s rubbing meaningless circles as an effort to calm him down. “It’s okay. You’re okay .”

Timmy stops shaking, but he inhales in a way that suggests his lungs are clogged up. The boy is drowning, his body seems to deflate with every struggled attempt to breathe.

He manages one word. “Vicky.”

Danny is a peaceful soul, who believes that fighting fire with fire is a causation of nothing but pain; but even now he sees nothing but red. Even now, all he wants to do is to run out the front door and hurt . He does not know a Vicky ( and based on Timmy’s reaction, he would never choose to know one ) but as of now, he wants nothing but to maim .

But that is not the reaction Timmy needs.

Danny Fenton, whos hands have been genetically modified to kill , rakes his fingers through Timmy’s hair and scratches at his scalp. Danny grabs tight onto whatever he can find of Timmy and holds it tight, promising to whatever celestial might that he will care for this boy.

“Vicky’s not here, Timmy,” Danny says, and Spongebob lets out a pitiful noise. “You’re safe.”

Timmy does not respond, but his shoulders seem to be rising with every breath he takes, which Danny always considers to be a good sign. His eyes find Danny’s for the briefest of moments, and Danny manages a smile. He believes in Timmy—he believes that all he has to do is support and care and Timmy will eventually tell him what’s wrong.

“Is he okay, Danny?” Spongebob asks in a hushed whisper, and Danny leans his head towards the side. They are talking about Timmy like he is not there ( like he’s never been there). Like he is not in the room with them. “Should I stand here? I don’t want to overwhelm him, but I also want to make sure he’s okay.”

“I don’t really know what Timmy wants at the moment,” Danny says hesitantly, pulling his hand away. “ but Danny’s not completely sure he is here. Mentally, at least. “Maybe you should text Jimmy?—Although, I doubt he’d be that helpful.”

Spongebob laughs at this, but it lacks the usual excitement his voice carries. “Yeah. Emotions really aren’t his thing.”

“Maybe we should give him space,” Danny continues, sitting against the kitchen cabinet doors. He truly doesn’t know what to do, because Timmy’s behavior isn’t normal and he’s so, so scared. “I don’t—I don’t know, Spongebob—I don’t want to leave him.”

“Then we won’t leave him, Danny,” Spongebob says, as if it’s as simple as that.

They both hesitate for a minute. Then, Spongebob stands up, brushing dust off of the legs of his shorts as he lets out a small sigh. His gaze lingers on Timmy, and there’s something so melancholy about it that it’s almost humorous. Spongebob never looks upset. “I think he’d be happy if I made some Krabby Patties for him. Plus, I don’t think I can just sit here and watch him.”

Danny understands—the need to do something. The discomfort that comes with sitting still. “Make one for Jimmy as well. I think he said he was going to stop by for dinner tonight, so we can tell him about Timmy’s behavior then.”

Spongebob hums, but he doesn’t argue. Danny’s gaze lingers on the way that he opens the refrigerator door and pulls out a package of frozen meat, before his view returns to Timmy, who had fallen asleep sometime during their hesitance.

Danny understands—the emotional toll of his fear would have exhausted any of them.

His hand finds its way back to Timmy’s back though, and he continues to rub circles there. It’s a thankless duty, but Danny finds the repetiveness to be comforting . There is knowledge that he is doing something that is actively improving Timmy’s life.

And yet.

And yet Danny had seen the way Timmy’s eyes flashed with pure fear when Spongebob wore the orange goldfish mask. And yet Danny has known that something is wrong with Timmy’s behavior, but he had never dared to press. And yet Danny knows he is being a bad friend; a bad teammate.

He swears that he’ll do better. He has to . He’s all that Timmy has.

If the goldfish mask finds its way to their trash can, that’s nobody's business but his own.

V.

“Danny!” Timmy calls from where he sits at the little breakfast nook-turned dining table. His legs are swinging, and he’s sitting with Jimmy, who’s reattaching wires with safety goggles attached to his face. “Just the man I wanted to see.”

Danny hesitates in the doorway to the kitchen, uncertain if he wants to continue. He had been on a call with Sam and Tucker, who were out of state for college. They had been playing Minecraft over Discord, while Danny hefted through his own pile of schoolwork.

Their conversation drifted from one thing to another—ranging from the crush that Sam had on the philosophy major that goes to her university to how Danny’s multidimensional friends are doing. Danny confided in them about Timmy’s odd behavior, and they responded with worried comments. They remembered Timmy from the few adventures they had together, and they certainly got along better with the completely average kid than the sponge-hybrid and boy genius.

“Should I be suspicious?” Danny asks, his gaze falling on Jimmy. Jimmy doesn’t look away from his work, but he offers Danny a nonchalant shrug of his shoulders.

“Don’t worry it’s nothing bad,” Timmy says, gesturing towards the seat closest to Danny. Immediately, Danny assumes it’s something bad. “Spotify recommended a song to me recently, and I wanted to share the lyrics with you. I was telling Jimmy about it, but he doesn’t usually pay attention to me when he’s working.”

“I enjoy your company, but I can’t concentrate on more than one thing at once,” Jimmy offers, glancing at Timmy. Timmy meets his gaze, childishly sticking his tongue out. Jimmy rolls his eyes before returning to his robot. 

“What is it?” Danny asks, hovering over the table.

“It’s an oldie,” Timmy responds. “It’s called Danny Boy—which, you know, is funny . Because your name is Danny.”

“Doesn’t it have a deep meaning or something?” Jimmy asks, from where he’s carefully reinstalling a mainframe. So much for not paying attention . Danny thinks to himself.

“It’s supposed to have one,” Timmy asks, scrolling through what Danny assumes to be the lyrics. His expression shifts, and he briefly flashes his phone screen at Danny before turning it around. He reads one of the generated replies out loud. “The song Danny Boy is from the perspective of a set of parents who are being forced to send their son to war.”

Timmy, everly relentless, arches an eyebrow at Danny. “Who are you sending off to war, Danny? Or are you the boy being sent off to war?”

“I’m obviously the boy, dickhead,” Danny says, picking up a banana from the fruit bowl that sits in the middle of the table. He peels it in a single swoop of his hands, before throwing the leftover peel at Timmy. “How do you think I got my powers?”

Timmy frowns at this, picking up the banana peel. After a moment of careful consideration, he places it on Jimmy’s head. Jimmy glares at him, causing Timmy to laugh. “I’m going to send you the lyrics. Maybe you can write your college essay about how the song changed your world view. I bet a college would love it.”

Danny stares at him, absolutely bewildered; this is such a sharp contrast to the man that he’s been seeing the past few weeks. It reminds him that even when Timmy is absolutely terrified , or when he’s emitting a power and avoids his dimension like the plague, Timmy has a mask constantly stretched across his face.

“I’ve already been accepted to a college,” Danny responds, taking a bite out of his banana. For a moment, he forgot he was even holding it. “I already wrote my essay.”

Timmy is undeterred. He turns to the man sitting next to him, poking him in the upper arm. “Jimmy, maybe you could write your college—”

“Hard pass,” Jimmy responds, in a way that makes Danny think he didn’t really consider it in the first place.

“One day, one of my ideas is going to make so much money,” Timmy says through a groan, dramatically throwing his head against the back of his chair. “Wanda and Cosmo are going to wish up an entire business plan. I’ll be like Jeff Bezos—only better , because I’ll donate to the poor. And I’ll have hair.”

“That’s a low bar.” Danny says, at the same time Jimmy says: “I wouldn’t jinx it.”

“You guys are all so mean to me,” Timmy says, swinging his legs over the edge of the chair. He stands up in a singular motion, with an expression on his face that tells Danny he’s pretending to act upset because he wants to start drama—he’s not actually upset. “I’m telling Spongebob.”

“He has a 9-5 job,” Jimmy calls after Timmy, who offers the middle finger over his shoulder as he leaves the room. “Unlike some people in this room.”

Danny watches as Timmy leaves, before taking another bite of his banana. “You do realize that you don’t have a job either?”

Jimmy waves his hand, like it doesn’t matter. Danny snorts at this, before eventually returning to his bedroom to continue his call with Sam and Tucker.

Danny has been running his tongue over his molars, practicing a speech that keeps changing. He’s added and deleted words from sentences, trying to figure out where it all belongs like a particularly challenging puzzle. He stands in front of the mirror, acting out where to add sighs and where to pause, but nothing seems to make any sense.

How does he tell Timmy Turner that he knows something’s wrong?

He wants to add a bunch of fancy vocabulary words—wants to tell Timmy that his behavior’s gone astray, and that Danny’s vexed about his attitude over the last couple of weeks—but he doesn’t think Timmy would understand. Timmy Turner’s so good at avoiding the topic that he doesn’t think the teenager would understand anything besides you’re hurting yourself .

Danny has a feeling that he could tell Timmy that all he wants to do is help and Timmy would still cock his head to the side, choosing to be naive. Perhaps he doesn’t want to consider the possibility that something's wrong with him. Perhaps he’s already made a habit of putting on this deformed mask everyday. Perhaps he truly doesn’t know that people can help him; that people want to help.

I’m worried about you , Danny mouths to the bathroom mirror. His eyebrows slant towards the bridge of his nose too much, and he looks too angry. He scrunches his nose, repeating the words with special attention to the way that his brow wrinkles. He is not scolding Timmy. You’ve been different .

He doesn’t know what to follow up with—there’s just so much of it. Does he talk about how his parents abused him, or how he’s scared of the most customary things? Does Danny walk into his guest bedroom and make a subtle comment about how it’s turned into Timmy’s bedroom? Does Danny fall to his knees and weep about how he’s not sure how he can save Timmy if Timmy doesn’t tell him anything? ( and he has to save everyone; it’s not a question )

“ Timmy, why were you so worried about the formality of your fairies? ” he mouths into the mirror, repeating the motion of his tongue flicking against his tongue.

He could ask Timmy this—he could start the conversation at the very beginning, when Timmy Turner briefly untied the mask from around his head, broadcasting his clear emotions for the rest of the group. He could start from the beginning of the end, where Timmy Turner thought that something was going to happen when he exposed the identity of his Godparents. Where, inexplicably , Timmy Turner was scared of something for the first time in his goddamn life.

“ Do you have powers ?” he asks his reflection next, gripping onto the edge of the bathroom counter. “ You don’t have to learn about them alone, you know. There are people here who’ve gone through the same things you have .”

He could tell Timmy about himself—tell him about how his hands are meant for destruction and how he never once looked at Timmy like that. How he knows what Timmy’s going through. How he saw Timmy in a stage of destruction and never once thought he deserved any less than what’s been given to him. Danny could tell Timmy that there’s nothing wrong about having dangerous abilities. That he was brave for trying to control them all by himself, but that he would be even braver to confide them with his friends.

“ You’re origin does not define you ,” he could remind Timmy, but even as the whispers pass his lips he knows that it’s a lie. He thinks of his parents; the ghost hunters. Danny thinks of how he became a ghost, of how he wants to blame his parents. “ You don’t have to go to Dimmsdale .”

But you need to tell us why your friends don’t remember you. You need to tell us why you don’t have a favorite restaurant, and why you lie about carnivals and going out. You need to tell us more about your past, and give us the context that we’ll hold dear to our hearts if you simply talk about it. You need to give us the dots, because it’s impossible to connect the lines without them. You need to ask for help, Timmy. I’m begging you .

And then there’s everything else, which runs out of Danny’s mouth like he is a sinner in a confession booth. He needs to be free of dirt, appraised to the best of Timmy’s standards. “ Why is it such a novel thing to see your name on the fridge?”

“What is happening to you?” comes next, as Danny remembers the conversation he heard while lurking outside Timmy’s bedrooms door. “ Why do you feel all of this pain and confusion and never talk about it? Why are your Godparents your best disclosers?”

And as soon as the questions start, they never stop. “ Why were you scared of Spongebob, and why do you flinch at the sight of orange? Why do you never talk about yourself—are you really so afraid of being forgotten, that you’re willing to never be remembered in the first place?

Why am I not allowed to help you? Danny asks himself, but it quickly changes as the whispered words leave his mouth. 

“ I want to help you.”

He stands there, knowing that the words ring true.

The boy in question knocks on the door. It’s embarrassing how fast Danny compares it to a call of aid; Danny can’t help himself from hearing the sound of Timmy on the other end of the door and simply know that something is happening to him. That Timmy is sending him a sign.

“Are you okay, Danny?” Timmy asks. His voice is muffled by the door. Danny throws his hands underneath the stream of water, cleaning his face. It’s cold, but when he looks up at the mirror, he sees the way his cheeks pink with the chill. “I heard crying.”

Ah. Perhaps he was doing a little bit of that. “‘M fine, Turner,” Danny responds, turning off the faucet and shaking the water off of his hands. “I was fixing one of the pipes. It was—like—leaking and stuff.”

Shit . Danny cringes at the excuse. They always get Jimmy to fix their pipes. Plus, plumbing doesn’t sound anything like crying. Shit.

It’s obvious by Timmy’s tone that he doesn’t believe him. “Pipework?”

“I want to learn?”

The silence speaks volume.

“Sure,” Timmy responds apprehensively. “Well, when you’re done jerking off or whatever, just come down for dinner. Spongebob made pancakes.”

“I’m not— what? ” Danny starts, glancing at the door. God, he can’t believe he ever felt an ounce of sympathy for Timmy. What a little shit.

Timmy laughs at his own joke, like he’s the funniest man alive. A small part of Danny’s brain says that he is, in a way. It’s what gives him the remarkable little brother charm. The other part of Danny’s brain reminds him of the way Timmy finds sex jokes amusing: “Have fun. I’ll be downstairs.”

Danny rolls his eyes, his gaze falling on his reflection.

This can wait , he decides, even though a little part of his mind tells him that it can’t . That he’s pressed for time and he can feel it ticking away, like sand in an hourglass.

But he goes downstairs anyway.

“Timmy, I have something I want to say to you,” Danny says, pushing open the door to the guest bedroom with a sigh. It’s a few hours past dinner, and him and his friends have all difused into their separate dimensions—except for Timmy Turner, who’s taking up residency in Danny Fenton’s guest bedroom once again. “And just— well —I want you to hear me out.”

His gaze trails on the floor, and he knows he’s a coward, because he doesn’t dare look in Timmy’s eyes; doesn’t want to see the fear that lingers in them from his impromptu therapy session. “I know that something’s upsetting you, and I want you to know that you can talk to me about it. I don’t know why your friends suddenly have amnesia, or why you’re so scared about telling us too much about yourself, but just know that—”

And yet.

And yet Danny looks up.

Timmy Turner is sitting on the end of his bed, slick with sweat.

His arms are raised in ninety-degree angles. One hand is running through his bangs, pushing them back against his scalp. The other hand is resting in his mouth, with his fingers holding his jaw wide open. His head is tilted onto it’s side, touching his shoulder.

And pouring from the front of his face is a relentless amount of red blood .

It covers the tip of his nose and the corners of his mouth, falling underneath his chin and gushing onto his chest. He is not wearing a t-shirt, and the blood shows up red and deadly and beautiful against his pale skin and hollowed bones.

He does not look phased by Danny’s appearance. His tongue ( bloody red. Barely recognizable as a human muscle ) flicks over his knuckles. His head tilts to the other side, and Danny can hear the familiar sound of his bones cracking out of their sockets.

The hand in his hair slowly drags down his forehead, showing off his malleable skin as he pushes and pulls. His fingers don’t relent when they drop from his brow to his eye, and Danny watches in horror as they push into the blue iris’ of his friend. The hand drops to his jawbone, grabbing at the skin there.

The other hand slowly comes out of his mouth, until his pinky is the only thing holding his mouth open. It pulls to the side, revealing blood-stained teeth that are turned upwards in a smile. 

“ Go ,” Timmy says in a voice that is both scary and incredibly scared at the exact same time. It sounds otherworldly—like the angels that only exist outside of the idealized form they’re pictured as in church windows and Christmas displays. “ Leave me alone .”

And Danny’s friend is bleeding and he is doing things with his face that Danny has never seen before, and Danny doesn’t know what to do , and he is so incredibly scared for his friend; for his brother ; that the only thing he can manage to do is follow the orders that are barked at him.

The door shuts immediately after he leaves, and Danny’s mind catches up with him. He flips back around, his hand testing the doorknob.

It does not work .

He knocks against the front of the door, pounding his closed fists on the painted wood that he and his friends made together . Timmy either does not care or does not listen, because the door never moves from where it’s locked shut.

Danny cannot handle this— this unknown fear of not knowing what Timmy’s doing on the other end of the door . Last he checked, his friend was bleeding and was possessed by a sinner whos heart did not know the gratitude of friends; of a team .

For all he knows, Timmy is dying on the other end of the door.

And now.

And now Danny’s heart is beating inside its chest, and his mind is racing to conclusions that seem so distant that he can’t even begin to voice them outloud. All he can say is Timmy’s name, and all he can hear is the thumping of his pulse.

All of the pins on the map point in this direction. All of the dots that go without the lines that Timmy has ever so carelessly forgotten to place. Timmy is dying, because he truly believes that leaving this planet like a martyr is better than giving his friends one more thing to worry about.

Once again, Danny is reminded by how similar he and Timmy were.

Are.

He bangs on the door again, desperately pushing his feet against the carpet to try and gain some momentum—anything to keep himself from leaving Timmy to his own devices. But Timmy’s power holds relentless against the door. He then tries to transform into his less physical form—but even that can’t travel through whatever border Timmy installed.

He falls to his feet in distress, continuing to bang his fists against the door.

Shit .

I

“Danny?” Danny hears, and his eyes open hesitantly. There’s a bright light from somewhere above, and it takes him a moment to realize that it’s the sun . Two figures are standing near him, hovering near each other. There’s an uncomfortable crook in his neck, and he stretches on instinct. “What are you doing—” the voice trails off, before he must decide that there’s something better to ask, because he quickly shakes off the question “—I don’t want to know. Listen, where’s Turner?”

“What?” Danny asks, blinking once. Twice.

His vision returns to him, and he sees Jimmy and Spongebob in the hallway. Both of them are sporting the same nervous expression, and they seem to be anxious. Danny doesn’t know why, though.

Until his memories from last night float back into his mind. 

He whips around, banging a closed fist on the door of the guest bedroom. He must have fallen asleep sometime last night, after the adrenaline of the situation had stopped and the hopelessness settled into his weary bones.

The question that Jimmy previously asked registers, and he turns around with wide eyes. “Why? What do you need him for?”

Jimmy and Spongebob share a look, and Danny instantly knows it’s bad. Jimmy has the nerve to rub the back of his neck, managing to look sheepish as he turns away from Danny. He won’t meet Danny’s eyes. 

Danny looks at Jimmy ( really looks. He turns off the lights and he stares into the infinite expanse of the universe. He does not think and he does not decide; he just looks) . “Where’s Turner, Neutron?”

“We don’t actually know,” Spongebob chimes in, because he doesn’t understand the full gravity of this situation. “That’s why we’re asking you!”

“I woke up this morning to an alarm going off,” Jimmy explains, taking off his glasses with a sigh. Danny watches as he pinches the bridge of his nose, pressing his lips together. “It measures unregulated force or power, and it only alerts me when there’s an especially alarming power—something over twelve thousand joules, usually.”

Danny watches as he puts his glasses back on. It’s too early for scientific equations. “What?”

“Something super powerful!” Spongebob adds helpfully.

“Right. Something super powerful,” Jimmy says, glancing between Spongebob and Danny. Eventually, he must decide to roll with Spongebob’s additional comment, because he turns towards Danny again, offering him his free regards. “Something super powerful in Dimmsdale . And the signal I’m getting is close to that time we let the fairies within Fairy World run wild.”

“So it’s something from Fairy World?” Danny responds, subconsciously dragging his fingers along the ridges in Timmy’s door. There is something here that Danny is not seeing—a puzzle piece that is there , he just doesn’t know how to look for it. “Timmy should be in his room.”

Jimmy arches an eyebrow, offering Danny a calculating glance. “Is that why you’re sleeping outside his door?”

“He locked me out.”

“What?” Spongebob shrieks. Danny understands his surprise. It’s so unlike Timmy to lock others out ( physically, at least ). His door is always open, contradicting the closed door to Jimmy’s lab. Danny glances at the closed door again, mulling over his words.

“I was going to question him about his behavior the past two weeks,” Danny starts, not meeting anybody’s eyes. Spongebob hums in sympathy, and he can see Jimmy tilt his head to the side in his peripheral. “And his door was open, so I entered.”

His hands find the roots of his hair, fingernails scratching at his scalp. He then moves them downwards, rubbing against his temples ( like Timmy had done the night before. Except his fingers were coated in blood and he looked almost possessed ). “I don’t know what happened. He looked inthralled.”

“How so?” Jimmy asks, because he does not know what Danny saw. He does not know the horror of walking into Timmy’s bedroom and seeing his best friend bleed like a backyard hose. He does not know what he’s asking of Danny when he tells him to recite.

“He had his hands on his face like this—” Danny’s hands mimic the position he found Timmy in last night. “—and blood was seeping from his nose. His head was also at an angle,” Danny explains, even though he doesn’t want to. He just wants to help Timmy. He wants Jimmy and Spongebob to see Timmy’s conditions and offer a solution.

“He sounds like he just had a nasty run-in with the Flying Dutchman,” Spongebob frowns, chewing on his fingernails. Danny only barely remembers the Flying Dutchman from their first adventure together, but he nods in understanding.

Something seems to click in Jimmy’s brain, because his breath hitches. “We’ve got to get to Dimmsdale.”

“What about Timmy?” Spongebob asks as Jimmy struggles to pull a portable dimensional-traveling portal creator out of his pocket. “Won’t he want to come to Dimmsdale with us?”

Jimmy meets Spongebob’s eyes, opening the portal in the middle of Danny’s house ( fuck you too, Jimmy ). “Spongebob, I have a feeling Timmy’s already in Dimmsdale. We need to hurry if we want to save him.”

The first thing Danny notices when they land in Dimmsdale are the screams .

There are people that run by their mismatched group of three, gripping onto their hands and pleading for help before running off. Mothers are running against the crowd, calling the names of weeping children. For a minute, there is nothing but chaos. There is nothing but the stench of blood in the air, and the ringing in Danny’s ears as a middle-aged man grabs onto him and asks if he’s there to help.

Jimmy’s the first to look away from the crowd—to brave the sight of whatever the civilians are running from—and Danny knows when his eyes meet their villain by the way that Jimmy Neutron’s jaw drops in shock.

Jimmy Neutron, the boy who’s built it all ( who’s seen it all ), is shocked by something.

“Holy shit,” are the only words he can manage, and Danny has a fleeting moment where all he wants to do is run away. If he never sees the villain behind him, he’ll never have to face it. He can return to Amity Park and pretend like he is not a bad person. He can pretend like he never wandered into his parent's lab—he can pretend he’s normal .

But he’s not.

So he turns around, one foot after another. Reluctantly, his eyes trail up the road, darting between distressed civilians. He doesn’t see anything on the street, so his eyes continue to waver, until they eventually notice the figure in the distance.

His eyes widen, and he finds himself echoing Jimmy with a strangled laugh. “Holy shit.”

It’s the largest villain Danny has ever seen—towering beyond the skyscrapers, with the top of their head barely brushing against the threatening dark gray clouds in the sky. They are not human—but they are not anything else recognizable. Just a blob of what seems to be pink, taking on a glowing Jell-O form.

There’s the shape of arms—boneless things, that move with a lack of purpose—and their chest, which is humped downwards. They sit in the middle of the city, and they do not seem to be bothered by their growing audience of helicopters. In fact, when the circle on top of its shoulders that barely even represents a head turns to glance at the moving vehicles around it, it doesn’t even seem to see them.

But then its body stills, and Danny realizes that the inside of its face is moving . Extending outwards until it practically births a new layer of skin. The shell of its old one falls off of its head, sliding down its arms in a way that audibly hisses—even from this distance.

The shell reveals beady eyes. Pointed and sharp. One eye sits near where the correct anatomical positioning would be—the only difference is the white of the sclera is barely visible amongst the three different-sized irises.

The other eye sits lower on the face, slapped almost carelessly over the jawbone. This one is normal in almost all aspects, other than its positioning.

Then the creature blinks, and it is not timed to be at the same moment. The eye with three irises blinks, revealing a lizard-like eyelid before covering it with a more human one. The other eyelid only has one eyelid, but it blinks vertically. Like a messed-up Picasso painting.

“Come on,” Jimmy says, cocking his gun. Spongebob nods, hitting his gloves together with a mischievous smirk. Danny doesn’t turn into a ghost—he can’t move. Something’s urging him to stop, urging him to look .

So he does.

The monster in front of him is unrecognizable ( that’s because of his power. That’s because there is some invisible force wiping his memory at the sight of him) . The monster in front of him is so, so scared. Their eyes are twisted with fear ( and they are emitting a power. Their body glows in waves, with each blast causing the screams to grow and the ground to shake) . The monster in front of him is unrecognizable to the citizens of Dimmsdale, something that they have never seen before (something that festered in the town like a pest. Something that nobody remembers ). The monster in front of him flinches whenever the crowd grows, or whenever something is thrown at the passive beast. The monster in front of him lets out a noise that sounds like a wail, like it’s pleading for somebody to stop. For somebody to look . Understand.

Danny understood.

He understood what it was like to want to die. Unable to control a power that you don’t even know.

Danny understands, and he sees .

“Wait!” He shouts, placing a hand in front of Jimmy. Jimmy gives him a curious look, because he’s always ten steps ahead. Because he always knows what to do with the information that has been given to them ( nobody gave him this information. Nobody gave him Timmy Turner—completely unfiltered; real ).

The monster does not look away from them—from Danny . Despite the fact that they are at least a handful of miles away from the center of the city. Despite the fact that helicopters brush against its jellied sculp. Despite the fact that civilians are realizing that the beast is completely passive, and are throwing stones at it in rebellion.

The monster does not look away from them. It simply looks at them.

There is this moment, and there is the ones before.

Items are laid out in front of Danny, and he has to choose his weapon.

The first item on the table is a mask, cracked and peeling at the edges. When he turns it around in his hands, Danny recognizes the face that smiles back at him. He understands the way that the eyes are turned up in glee, and the way that the face wrinkles with an easy-going expression. The metaphor is clear. The mask simply smiles at him.

He takes a step backward, and the mask turns into a bird.

It is alive, but when Danny reaches his hands outwards, it flies towards his open palms and nestles itself towards his skin. Danny can hear its pulse against his thumb, but the bird does not fly away, even though it is an option. For a brief moment, Danny possesses the ability to end the bird's life—to walk to the elderly woman in town and show her the dead bird and live happily amongst her dismay. He wraps his hands around the bird's body, just to imitate the feeling.

He feels sick with himself, and opens his hands almost immediately.

The bird glances at him, considering its new found freedom with wide eyes. Then, in a swoop of wind, it takes a leap off of Danny’s hands, flying through the air.

And then the bird turns into a sweater.

The sweater falls to the ground, and Danny bends over to pick it up. His hands brush over the soft fabric, and he turns it around in his hands until he can find the front. There, he reads the name of what appears to be a college on the front. He doesn’t immediately recognize it, tracing the letters with his finger, until it eventually clicks. A college to a universe that Danny does not live in, a universe that does not exist beyond the photos on a phone. The friends that claim to survive, but do not remember the way that Timmy laughs; the way that he talks. It is a sweater to a college to a universe that is not Timmy’s.

Danny doesn’t think it ever really was Timmy’s.

A sweater turns into something smaller. Something so small, that Danny didn’t even second guess it. 

“Going to get milk , ♡ Timmy. ”

The note is barely anything to fathom over. To Danny, it is a remembrance of his first-grade finger-painting portraits. It is a shitty drawing that only gets slapped onto the fridge because that is the highest honor a parent can give their kid. The note is a shitty sentence that gets slapped onto the fridge because Danny wants to get a midnight snack and go to bed knowing Timmy loves him, Goddamnit. He wants to know that they’re friends.

It occurs to Danny, briefly, that maybe nobody ever slapped Timmy’s macaroni art on the fridge. That nobody ever cared.

With that thought, the note turns into a CD.

The cover of the CD is simple enough: ‘ Danny Boy and other Irish Favorites. ’

He opens the CD, pulling out the disc inside. It shows him his reflection, twisted into a rainbow by the rays of mismatched lights. He runs his finger along the rim, allowing himself to think about the implications of this song (“The song is from the perspective of a set of parents who are being forced to send their son to war.” ). Danny thinks, briefly, that Timmy is his younger brother. That he understands him in a way that nobody else can. 

( “Who are you sending off to war?” )

And Danny knows, before he can even really think about the sentence, that he is mourning the loss of a little kid.

Danny is back in the presence, and nothing has changed. The ground is still shaking, and parents are still screaming. Spongebob is offering him a concerned look, and Jimmy’s reaching out for him in concern. He doesn’t think about it; he can’t . All he manages is a simple plea.

“Save the citizens. This is my fight.”

The monster lets out a moan of pain, and all Danny can think about is how that is Timmy Turner

And he is running away before he can hear his friend's response.

The monster— Timmy —is taller than he was a few blocks ago.

Timmy Turner no longer looks at where Spongebob and Jimmy are supposed to be helping the growing crowd of civilians. Instead, his disformed eyes are settled downwards, glancing at Danny in an expression that somehow shows confusion and pain and need all at once.

“Where are your fairies, Turner?” Danny calls up at him, and Timmy roars in response. This causes the floor to shake, and there is something about this sound that differs from the whimpered sounds of pain he was releasing a few minutes ago. This is anger .

“Calm down,” Danny shouts again, and is a little surprised to see that it actually works . “It was just a question.”

One of the nearby citizens throws something at Timmy’s form, and the boy immediately flinches in response. He lets out another pained moan, and another burst of energy is released from him, causing the nearby civilians to fall backward. Danny, in his non-physical form, stays upright.

“Wanda, Cosmo,” Danny calls into the air, because he doesn’t know why it wouldn’t work, and it’s the best chance he has to finding out what’s happening to Timmy. The fairies are practically his parents at this point—his best confiders.

Cosmo is the only one that poofs into existence next to him, but Danny can’t even find it in himself to care. Not when the green-haired fairy crosses his hands in annoyance, glaring at Danny at the disturbance. “I was doing something, you know!”

“What’s going on?” Danny asks Cosmo, his eyes never once leaving Timmy.

Cosmo glances to the side, looking at the towering form of his Godchild. “That’s a great question!”

Danny eyes him, furrowing his brows. “You don’t know ?”

“Well, hey, you don’t need to put it like that!” Cosmo says, throwing his arms in the air. Danny rolls his eyes. Timmy releases another burst of energy, and Danny’s arms find their way to the front of his face, where he guards himself from any unwanted debris. “Wanda thinks she has an idea, but I’ve had plenty of ideas too, and none of them have been correct.”

Danny snorts at this, moving his arms away. Timmy has not looked away from him, and he’s so scared for his friend. “Can you go and ask her? I can’t hurt him—it’s out of the question.”

Cosmo sighs, crossing his arms over his chest in distaste. “What am I? A taxi service?” Then, he disappears before Danny can respond.

Danny’s gaze lingers on Timmy, who blinks again. All he wants to do is offer his support. To tell Timmy that he’s here for him; that he knows what it’s like to be something that is scary and to not know how to control it. He wants to hold Timmy—to hug him tight and tell him that he will never be alone. That he understands .

Cosmo appears again, and Danny only slightly jumps.

“Wanda thinks that he’s facing the consequences from—well, actually, I don’t think I’m allowed to tell you,” Cosmo says, and Danny wants to punch him.

“Cosmo, Timmy could be dying ,” Danny bites at him, unable to keep the sting out of his voice. Cosmo looks at him, before glancing at his Godchild. Then, he looks at Danny again, but his expression is tinged with something unrecognizable on his face. Fear .

“If I tell you, you might forget him,” Cosmo says, and Danny’s face scrunches up in confusion. “He doesn’t want to tell you, and I don’t think I can disregard his wish just because he might be dying—” Cosmo seems to hear himself, and his face furrows with disgust before he continues “—okay, but if you forget him, I’m going to go get Jimmy and Spongebob and we’re going to find a different way to do this.”

“Cosmo, I swear on my life that I will not forget Timmy Turner,” Danny says, and there is something raw in his voice. Something true.

“Timmy’s a fairy!” Cosmo responds, all in one breath.

And Danny hesitates.

He can feel this foreign tugging against his brain, and his whole body shivers at the feeling. His mind is begging for him to do something. To stop what he is doing and just— exist . Cosmo’s a prankster. Cosmo’s not telling the truth. In fact, Danny doesn’t even know a Cosmo.

His heart thumps in his throat, and it beats against his chest. It begs him to hear him out. To not listen to this foreign, strange feeling. His heart wants him to love and to be loved. His heart wants him to know that this is not the truth, that his brain is telling him a lie. His heart tells him of unfamiliar things—of fairies and the color pink. Of buckteeth and childish conversations. His heart tells him of little brothers.

And, well, Danny’s always been stubborn.

He blinks, and the moment ends, and he does not listen to his brain; he does not forget Timmy Turner.

“A fairy?” He repeats, because even though he knows it to be true, it still sounds weird coming out of his own mouth. “How?”

“He wished for it, and there was some loophole in Da Rules that made it so he couldn’t take it back,” Cosmo responds, but he’s grinning at Danny like Danny just saved his life. “We can’t kill a living thing or something, and Fairy powers are strong. The only human thing about him is his body—which his new powers killed and replaced his organs. So like, he’s only living because of this wish pretty much.”

“What the fuck?”

“Yeah, it’s kind of brutal, but those are them apples, you know?” Cosmo says with a shrug, and Danny can’t believe how nonchalant he’s acting.

“Why did he wish for them?” Danny asks, glancing back at the Timmy in front of him. His eyes are still trained on Danny, and his arms are swatting at his face, waving away a suspiciously pink blob. Wanda .

Cosmo rubs his arm, having the nerve to look sheepish. “It was a few years ago. You guys had just lost a big mission or something, and me and Wanda got kidnapped. He was upset that without us he was pretty much worthless, and he was fretting about what was going to happen to your friendship when he turned eigh—er. When he got older. So he wished for better powers.”

“What?” Danny repeats, because it’s the only word he seems to be able to manage.

Cosmo shrugs again. “In hindsight, it was kind of dumb.”

“I don’t—” Danny says, because he doesn’t understand. It doesn’t make sense. Timmy was— is —one of the strongest members on their team. He’s a good friend, and Danny considers him to be his little brother. Why would he ever think otherwise?

Danny doesn’t think he can handle the answer, so he says something else instead. “—Is that why he’s been off for the past few weeks?—” Cosmo offers a impish nod, and Danny glances at Timmy “—Why are we only just noticing?”

“Well, he used to spend more time in Dimmsdale, you know?” Cosmo says, and it’s a metaphorical question, but Danny nods along nonetheless. “But Da Rules state that whenever somebody finds out about fairies, they forget about anything magical related and the fairies are taken away.”

The pieces are put together fairly easily, and Danny’s afraid of the answer; afraid of how easily it comes to him. “That’s why nobody in Dimmsdale recognizes Timmy: That’s why he was so afraid of saying you guys were fairies. He was afraid we weren’t going to remember him.”

Cosmo nods. “Timmy kept his identity secret—I think he even forgot that he was a fairy for a little bit—but then these baddies came, and he had to expose his identity in order to save Dimmsdale. Everyone forgot about him, so that kind of sucked. Classic Timmy, though, you know?”

No, Danny wants to respond, and the words sound so nice on his lips, that it’s easy to fall into the facade that he said them. Easy to put on a mask and pretend like he knows Timmy; that he knows the person that sleeps in his guest bedroom.

“How do I fix it?” Danny asks instead, because it’s his job. He needs to fix it. Needs to free the bird or some shit. He just needs to make it better .

Cosmo shrugs.

Oh. Okay.

Danny turns back to Timmy, looking at the pink figure in front of him. Timmy is still looking at him, but his eyes are turned downwards in despair; in a desperate plea to be saved. Timmy looks at Danny like he is in charge of his fate, and in a way, Danny has a feeling that he is.

Timmy’s just a kid.

Without hesitation, Danny offers his hand forward. He turns back into a human; physical, corporal. 

Real. 

He thinks about Timmy, who lives in Danny’s house because he has nowhere to go back to. He thinks about Timmy, who has fairy Godparents because his real ones never bothered to ask him how his day at school was. He thinks about Timmy, who is his brother—never a monster.

( “Hey,” Danny says, pulling away slightly. Timmy’s still not crying, but his eyes are wide and he’s grinning. He doesn’t look at Danny directly—instead, he glances at his hands in pure awe, turning them over hesitantly. “Thanks for telling us.” )

Timmy hesitantly moves his hand downwards, reaching for Danny’s extended hand through periods of sharp pain.

( “You’re insane if you think we’re leaving you behind,” Danny says. He’s not sure how they’re going to stop Timmy Turner’s body from radiating energy, but he’s sure that Jimmy already has a plan formulating in that brain of his. “We’re family and shit, remember?” )

Their hands touch. Timmy’s hand is larger than Danny’s ever will be, and there are no distinct features on it. Instead, Danny can look through the jelly-like texture of Timmy’s hand and see his reflection.

For a brief moment, his reflection is of a fourteen-year-old boy, stuck in a lab suit. His body is changing with every atom, and he has not seen things. He has not looked at the world and seen a responsibility.

( “We put the mask away, Timmy,” Danny says, he’s rubbing meaningless circles as an effort to calm him down. “It’s okay. You’re okay.” )

“Hey,” Danny says, and his voice does not come out loud. He does not shout at Timmy—does not berate or taunt him. Instead, he merely looks at him. Their gazes connect, and Danny channels all of his understanding and compassion and sympathy into one look.

Danny glances at him. “You’re okay, Timmy. It’s all going to be okay.”

The monster makes another pained noise. There is no Jimmy here to press his fingers against the back of Timmy’s neck in an effort to calm him down. There is only Danny and love .

“I am here for you,” Danny reminds him. “I’m not leaving you. Not even if you destroy all of Dimmsdale.”

The white glow from inside of the monster calms, and Danny stares at him. He chooses one eye to look at—the one at the bottom of his chin, where he recognizes the iris that stares back at him. He tries not to look at the helicopters in the air, or the way that the transparent parts of Timmy’s body swirls in dismay, like a sea during the storm.

“This shitty town never even deserved you.”

Timmy lets out a sound that sounds like a bird’s caw, and Danny realizes that he can hear him.

(He’s actually going to win a fight with the power of friendship. Huh.)

“Did you know that I didn’t know how to control my powers when I first got them, Timmy?” Danny says, because if he keeps talking, then some of his words will have to have an effect on the kid. Right? “I understand what’s happening to you; what’s going through your mind.”

Timmy whimpers.

Danny runs his hand against Timmy’s, looking at him. The words come naturally, because they’re everything that Danny has thought about telling Timmy, but never had the courage to do so.

“You know that you’re loved, right?”

And Timmy whimpers, blinking his eyes in a contorted, offbeat rhythm. Danny smiles, trying to keep the pity out of his expression.

“Your friends love you, Timmy Turner,” Danny reminds, and his other hand finds Timmy’s. He rubs both of them against the surface, trying to ignore the awful texture. “Fairy or no fairy. Godparents or no Godparents—we love you because you’re caring and kind. We love you because you’re our friend .”

And then Timmy lets out a ground-shaking moan, that echoes through Danny’s ribs and causes him to shiver. He can feel goosebumps on his legs. He can feel the hair on the back of his neck stand up straight. He can feel nothing but the liberation of pure power , uncontrollably bright.

His eyes don’t leave Timmy’s.

Timmy’s pink skin starts to melt off of his body, releasing smoke and a loud hissing noise. Danny watches as it slides down his arms in layers, landing on the ground around him with a thump . It smells like burning flesh, and Danny wants to retch.

Timmy’s hand starts to grow smaller as the skin melts off of it, and his skin sheds—making way for more defined features. Danny grabs onto anything he can find—the remnants of white, that was once pink when it coated his skin. The nubs of a thumb. The feeling of a bone—because he’s not going to let go of Timmy’s hand when he’s this close .

Timmy’s final form is released through heart-wrenching, painful screams. He is bloodied and bruised and missing patches of skin, but Danny grabs onto his hand like it’s something familiar.

Timmy does not hesitate, falling onto his knees. Danny makes a quick move to wrap his hands around him, holding him to his chest. His clothes are ripped and bloodied and Danny doubts he could still read the graphic logo on them, but they feel soft when Danny hugs him.

He smells of blood ( copper ), and Danny laughs at the knowledge that Timmy smells of anything besides a corpse. That he’s able to hold a sobbing Timmy in his hands, knowing that he is not dead . That Danny was able to save him.

“Danny,” Timmy manages, but his voice cracks. Danny can feel liquid through his suit, and he knows that Timmy is crying like a little kid. Danny can’t find it within himself to care. Not when he runs his hand through Timmy’s hair, shushing him gently. Not when his other hand is wrapped around his back, pulling him close.

“Timmy,” Danny responds. He is soft with his voice, and this moment is so lovely . It’s easy to forget about the horrors they have both seen. It is easy to forget that Timmy is only sixteen. “You’re okay.”

“I’m okay,” Timmy responds, and his voice hitches on the last part.

Danny pulls away only after Timmy does, his hands falling on the boys shoulders as he looks at him. He’s not in good shape, but neither is anybody else. Not when they’ve been child soldiers their entire life. Not when there’s this pressure on them to save the world.

And yet.

And yet, Danny can’t find it in himself to actually care about the aftermath. He does not talk with the mayor of Dimmsdale. He does not entertain the interviewers, who are quick to rush to Timmy and Danny about whether or not they’re the new superheroes in town. He does not answer the questions that Jimmy asks him when they reunite, and he does not let Jimmy get a good look at Timmy.

Timmy can answer their questions when he’s ready.

“C’mon,” Danny says, tugging on an exhausted Timmy’s hand. Jimmy’s already opening a portal, not being subtle as he looks over his shoulder at Timmy. Spongebob brings up the rear, and Danny can feel his worried gaze on their backs.

He can answer their questions when he’s ready.

He can tell them about obtaining his powers—about wishing that they would have just killed them, and how they were so scary when he first obtained them. How he didn’t know how to control them, and how he never really wanted to learn. How he looks at his friends like their a family, and how he loves each of them. Even when Spongebob makes him watch shows meant for kids, and even when Jimmy talks about things that are way over his head.

Danny pulls Timmy forward, offering him a smile. He can explain how his friends are like his brothers: especially Timmy Turner, who’s never known what a family could be like.

“Let’s go home.”