Chapter Text
“So, how’s deathday number three treating you?”
Maddie froze.
There were two main schools of thought on how ghosts formed. One, the most popular, was that ghosts were the souls of departed humans, people who were struggling to complete unfinished business. Spiritual nonsense - no recorded haunting had ever credited a ghost with more than a passing attempt at a consciousness.
Maddie, who had never believed in souls, subscribed to the more likely theory that they were the imprinted memories of the dead, twisted into malevolence by rage and envy. All that was left of their consciousness was what they’d felt in the moment of their death - of course they were evil.
But the concept of deathdays was featured primarily in the theory of departed souls, and Maddie was, to say the least, startled to hear a ghost reference it so casually.
Phantom groaned. “I hate this, I hate you, I don’t know why I decided to hang out with you today.”
“Yep, that’s a deathday,” a third ghost said.
Maddie crept closer, just enough to get a look at the ghosts in question. They’d found a secluded part of the wooded park, but their glow gave them away - though Maddie had admittedly only been passing this way because she’d picked them up one her scanner. She muted it. It was rare to catch ghosts talking about death, and she wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity. Instead, she slipped a small notebook and pencil out of her deep pockets and started to transcribe what she’d heard so far, skipping lines to leave room for later notes.
Through the trees, Maddie could see Phantom sprawled out across the ground, with two other ghosts seated nearby. Both of them were sitting up, and she could see the male ghost watching Phantom with a look of pity. For some reason, Phantom was pretending to baby its left arm.
She recognized the other two ghosts, she realized. She didn’t know their names, but it was the motorcycle ghost and its partner. She suspected they’d died together, perhaps on or around the motorbike, since they were never seen apart. The third one, the moving shadow, was probably there too, tucked out of sight. What scheme had brought them to Amity Park? An urge to feed? A burst of spite? Were they collaborating with Phantom on some new plot?
“The first couple are the hardest,” the feminine ghost continued, reaching down to pat Phantom’s (right) shoulder. “It’ll start getting easier after your fifth. Not that that’s much comfort now.”
It didn’t look like they were mid-scheme. If they’d been human, Maddie would have taken it for a social visit. But Phantom didn’t socialize, not with humans and especially not with ghosts. It didn’t have anything to gain from socialization. No ghost did.
“Nope,” Phantom grunted. It shuddered, seizing on the ground, its limbs jerking and shaking. Maddie tensed, eyes going wide, but after a moment Phantom settled, making low, weak noises of complaint. The same sort of sounds Danny made when he was sick and miserable. “Ancients. I keep convincing myself that it’s not as bad as I remember it being, but...”
It took Maddie a moment to catch her breath and stop looking for what had attacked Phantom. None of the ghosts moved to retaliate, and Phantom didn’t even pretend to nurse a real injury aside from its arm. As far as Maddie could tell, nothing had happened, except maybe a hallucination.
Deathday. Was Phantom replaying its death?
Maddie wrote down the odd occurrence, noted her theory, and kept watching.
“Pro tip, that is never true,” the biker ghost snorted. “It’s always worse.”
“Shut up, Johnny,” its partner chided. “How ya feeling, kid?”
Its voice softened toward the end, and Maddie’s brow furrowed. It was interesting that the ghosts play-acted emotion even to each other, without knowledge of any humans around them. It implied that the act was habitual, rather than targeted. That would be consistent with older reports of ghostly activity in places like London or Scotland. Ghosts trapped in place, doing the same thing over and over, unaware of the living world and going through the motions to nothing and no one.
Of course, there was also the explanation that they did know she was there, and were pretending not to for some reason. Trying to trick her. She wouldn’t put it past any of them. She checked the prototype cloaking device on her wrist. It seemed to be active. She noted both theories anyway.
“Like I stuck a fork in a socket and then started shredding my muscles with it like pulled pork,” Phantom complained. “It’s so achy. And I haven’t stopped shaking since I woke up this morning.”
Despite herself, Maddie glanced at Phantom’s jumpsuit. Most people theorized that Phantom had died in a lab accident, given its attire and its obvious resemblance to Jack and Maddie’s well-known PPE. Electrocution would fit the bill.
“Man, electrocution’s a bad way to go, huh?” Johnny said, unknowingly echoing Maddie’s thoughts. Maddie felt her own heart twinge for the boy Phantom used to be, cheeks still round with baby fat.
“Ayyyup,” Phantom grumbled, rubbing the back of its neck with a grimace before bringing its hand back down to cradle its arm. “That’s what everyone says.” It paused. “How did you…?”
“…Motorcycle accident,” Johnny admitted, gesturing to itself and the other. “Both of us. Never ride without a helmet, kid.” Phantom craned its neck up, and Johnny raised an eyebrow. “What, you wanna…? It’s not the worst, as deathdays go, but it’s not good either. Shredded skin, torn flesh, broken skull. I don’t even have a skull most of the time.” Quieter, “It took hours to die, was the thing. No one around for miles.”
How much of its death did the ghost of Johnny remember? Everything from the crash onward? Only minutes? Most of the day? Maddie couldn’t wait to go over this with Jack; this would be a keystone in many research papers to come. She glanced at the time and noted it. 1:17 PM, August 2nd, 2007.
“I’m sorry,” Phantom said, soft and oddly sincere. Maddie disliked the range of emotion that ghosts could fit into their voices; it was unnerving. “Mine was painful, but at least it was quick.”
“Always see the bright side, don’t you, Phantom?” Johnny’s smile was strained, but retained the roguish edge Maddie associated with him. It. “This why you wanted to do this with me ‘n Kitty, ‘stead of your human friends?”
“I mean… yeah,” Phantom said, shrugging. It shuddered again, head twitching a few times and its shoulders jerking in convulsions, hands clenching and unclenching. It slumped down again, panting, and it took a few moments before it continued. “I spent last year with my human friends, but it was kind of… weird. They were uncomfortable, I was uncomfortable, and I spent a lot of time telling them it wasn’t their fault.”
“Yikes.”
“Yeah.”
Human friends. Well, the teens at Casper High had always been far too sympathetic to Phantom, so it wasn’t as much of a surprise as it should have been. Maddie would suggest another assembly soon. Those kids had to understand that ghosts were incapable of real emotion - that they were made of nothing but pain and resentment. They had no idea what could trigger Phantom to violence. She chose not to write that down.
“I heard that you fought Ember on your first deathday,” Kitty said, breaking into Maddie’s thoughts. “Scared the shit outta her too.”
Phantom snorted softly, twisting to pillow its head on its right arm. “Yeah, I remember that. I had no idea what was going on, why I was hurting so bad, why I kept thinking about my death in such graphic detail. I thought I was just normal-brooding about it. I didn’t realize it was a ghost thing.”
Maddie made a note of that too, fascinated. So the anniversary of a ghost’s death induced higher-than-normal agitation and recollection. Did that make them weaker or stronger? Phantom’s exhausted sprawl seemed to imply the former, but Maddie knew better than to underestimate an agitated ghost. Injured animals could be the most vicious.
“You pounced on her like a rabid wolf. She legit thought you were gonna rip her throat out with your teeth.”
“I was in so much pain, dude.” Phantom sighed, an oddly familiar sound. “The electrocution was bad, but having a dimensional portal open inside of you? It’s indescribable.”
Maddie’s heart stopped, and she made a connection that she hadn’t before. How could she not? How often did dimensional portals open?
Three years ago today, they’d turned on their portal, and Danny had gotten a bad shock from it. Bad enough to require days of hospitalization. Bad enough that the doctors were sure that the rubber haz-mat was the only reason he survived, and even then it was a miracle. If Danny had lied about where he was when the portal turned on…
But Danny was alive. She’d seen him just that morning, half-asleep at the table. Her mind searched frantically for another explanation, something that made sense. Was Phantom lying? But for what purpose? Did he know she was there, did he know about Danny’s accident somehow-
Or.
With that amount of ectoplasm, Maddie wouldn’t put anything out of the question. It was the absolute extreme, the sort of circumstances where normal rules broke down under the pressure. Her mind went to Shrödinger’s cat, quantum physics, the reality of paradoxical conditions. Could Danny, inside their dimensional portal, have been caught in such a paradox?
Could Danny have died, leaving behind an imprint of himself, and still stumbled out of that portal alive?
All at once, with rapidly accelerating panic, she started to put the pieces together. Phantom’s haz-mat suit, fit to its body and in the Fenton family style. The equipment it used. Its age, the shape of its face, the style of its hair. Its frequent visits to Casper High and various popular hangouts. Its fixation on the Fenton family and all the times it had started to call them something other than their names.
Phantom was the ghost of Danny Fenton. Hell, it had called itself Danny Phantom - making a pun of his new name was absolutely something that Danny would do. It was- it was so very Danny.
Maddie was a scientist, and she prided herself on her objectivity. She prided herself on her ability to see past Phantom’s physical appearance and remember the fact that it was just an imprint, a half-conscious echo of some unfortunate boy’s last moments. But she was also a mother that loved her children, and she didn’t know if she could still raise a gun to Phantom, pick up a scalpel, knowing that Phantom very well could have been all that was left of her youngest, if circumstances had been different.
She felt a sudden urge to track Danny down and make sure he was okay. Grades be damned, curfew be damned, at least he was alive. At least she still had him. He hadn’t died in the portal.
“Hngh!”
Phantom slumped against the ground again, gasping and panting, jerking with aftershocks. A few faint moans of pain left it, and it curled up in place, trembling, and hugged itself, clutching its left arm to its chest.
“What was that about it at least being quick?” Johnny asked dryly.
“Shut up, Johnny,” Phantom groaned, mushing its face against its shoulder. “God, it hurts.”
It was easy, now, to make out Danny’s voice behind the echo.
Had Danny felt this pain? He must have. Maddie remembered what he’d looked like afterward, pale and shaking, too quiet, too dazed. It had taken him two days to come home from the hospital, and it was another week before he seemed even close to himself again. And he had never been quite the same.
Kitty scooted closer and reached down to run its fingers through Phantom’s hair, as if to comfort it. “We know, Danny,” it said, startling Maddie despite the softness with which the imprint spoke. “Don’t focus on it too much. Trust me, it doesn’t help. Is it true that you have a secondary obsession? Space, right?”
Space? Phantom was obsessed with space? Since when? The extra tie to her son felt like a punch in the gut, and she almost forgot to write it down. She didn’t dare write the theory about Danny yet; she needed to talk to Jack first.
Phantom let out a ragged laugh. “Yeah. I haven’t had time to explore it as a ghost, you bruisers keep me too busy, but meteor showers and eclipses are incredible like this. One of these days I’ll catch a rocket launch and lose my entire mind.”
“You could probably fly to space if you tried,” Kitty said. Phantom grinned. Its face was still paler than usual, and it made no attempt to sit up, but its eyes still sparkled. Exactly like Danny’s, God help her.
“I have,” it said. Maddie’s eyebrows flew up. “It’s incredible. But I don’t do it much. Have to look after Amity, you know?”
“You don’t have to,” Johnny said with a grin. “We’d be fine without you for a couple days. Right, Kitty?”
Phantom punched it in the thigh. “Shut up, Johnny.” But it was smiling too.
Maddie had the irrational urge to break cover and shove the other two ghosts away from the ghost of her child, before they could turn on him - it - while it was vulnerable. She suppressed it. The ectoplasmic imprint of her son was still just an imprint, just the memory of a boy. Its nature was still built on the pain and fear that Danny had felt as he died, and nothing else. Its obsession with space was a hollow perversion of her son’s passion.
She copied the dialogue down mechanically.
All the same, Maddie promised herself that she and Jack would rework their behavioral theory when they got home. She still didn’t believe in souls, she didn’t think anything could make her change her mind about that, but this degree of play-acting indicated that ghosts were more complex than they’d originally hypothesized. Like they were playing pretend together instead of alone. Would they also cooperate if the fantasy were to be disrupted? …Would they keep playing until something did?
Even their theory of pain needed touching up. While she doubted that Phantom was in any real pain, it clearly believed that it was, and so did the other two. For ghosts, imprints of emotion that they were, the memory was enough. The echo of real pain, resonating through the years.
Phantom cried out again, jerking and shuddering through another seizure. It ended in a wheezy gasp, and by the time it finished, Maddie could see tears glinting off the ghost’s cheeks. The ghost of her baby, so visible now past green eyes and misty hair.
“God, Ancients, why,” Phantom croaked. He- it- didn’t resist when Kitty shifted, pulling its head into her- its- lap, and even pressed into it as if grateful for the show of comfort. Its head and arms twitched erratically, and its whole body trembled.
“Hey, that’s my girl you’re snuggling up to,” Johnny protested halfheartedly.
“Oh, hush, Johnny,” Kitty sighed, stroking Phantom’s hair again. “He’s just a baby ghost, you know?”
“…long am I a baby ghost?” Phantom mumbled, without pulling away from Kitty. Kitty hummed.
“I dunno. You’ve always been weird.” Pause. “Until you stop looking so newly dead, I guess. You’ve even got your skin color still.” It poked Phantom’s cheek, and Phantom swatted at its hand halfheartedly. “Anyone can take one look at you and tell that you’re not even ten years dead.”
“I like lookin’ like this,” Phantom whined, slumping to pout. “Like me.”
“Exactly,” Kitty agreed. “You’re not used to being dead yet. A baby ghost.”
Maddie wished desperately that she had a recording device on her. She would’ve run for one, if she wasn’t worried about alerting the three ghosts. The notebook would do, but a recording might have allowed her to catch more details. She’d always been more interested in the physical science of ghosts than their behavior, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t captivated by this unexpected windfall of data.
Just data. It was all just data, she reminded herself. She could sort through the implications later. Maybe follow up some of the things she’d heard.
“How long have you two…?” Phantom turned its head to squint up at Kitty.
“Coming up on thirty years now,” Kitty answered with a wan smile. “Might even invite you for the occasion.”
“If you want me there, I’ll be there,” Phantom promised earnestly. Kitty stroked its hair.
“I know you will. You’re a good kid.”
There was a brief lull in the conversation. Phantom breathed heavily and shivered against Kitty, and a few smaller shocks made it jerk and seize again without further comment beyond weak moans of protest.
It sounded just like Danny when he was sick. How had she ever missed it?
“You really should be doing this in the Ghost Zone,” Kitty murmured, sounding almost fretful. “It doesn’t hurt as much there. I know you’re attached to the living world, Phantom, but this is ghost business through and through. Humans don’t have a place in it.”
-Outside ectoplasm absorbing backlash from recorded memories? Reduced impact?
“I’ll… think about it,” Phantom agreed without looking up. “But I don’t have a lair there or anything. I’d have to stay with someone else and I don’t wanna bother ‘em.”
Maddie ruthlessly squashed down a swell of worry and made a note instead. Why wouldn’t Phantom have a place in the Zone? Was it because it spent so much time in Amity? Or was it because it was a ‘baby ghost?’
Kitty huffed. “That explains it. You’re too goody-two-shoes for your own good.”
Phantom laughed, tired and shaky. It turned into a cry halfway through, and it twitched and gasped through another wave of remembered pain, clutching at Kitty. Johnny leaned over to press its body down, preventing the worst of the thrashing, and eventually Phantom settled, chest heaving. Silence rang in its wake, the outburst making the rest of the world seem quieter by comparison.
“…You ever feel a dimension crash down on your head?” Phantom asked after a while, voice raspy. Both the other ghosts murmured noncommittally. “’S like liquid nitrogen in your soul. The shock ripped me to shreds and the Ghost Zone froze me back together. Like a stalemate. Felt like hours.”
Maddie tasted bile. She didn’t stop writing.
“I always figured you died screaming,” Johnny said. Its hand rested on Phantom’s side, a gesture meant to reassure. “You got so strong so fast, there was no way you didn’t. Shit deal for a kid like you.”
Jack and Maddie had talked about the same thing, the same theory at one point. Violent deaths made stronger imprints, and so did large quantities of ectoplasm. If Danny had died in the portal - God, it would have been all but pumped through him. It? Him? …Both?
No wonder Phantom was so anomalous. A death like that, the instant formation of a ghost, was unprecedented. Among other things, it was probably why it looked so human.
“Upsides, I guess,” Phantom mumbled.
“You should talk to Ember next year,” Johnny continued, looking atypically serious. “She went pretty painful too. And she has a soft spot for ya, even if she won’t admit it.”
“You think so?” Phantom peeked up at Johnny.
“Know so,” it said with a grin. “Trust me. She’ll come if you ask.”
“She got someone?”
Kitty shook its head. “Ember doesn’t take company on her deathday. She just rages and breaks things.” Phantom tilted its head, considering, and Kitty snorted. “Yeah, that’s just like you. But trust me. She wouldn’t appreciate it. We all have our ways of dealing.”
“Mm.” Phantom slumped back down, seemingly losing interest.
“…You’d probably form a lair if you stopped lingering with those parents of yours,” Johnny said. Maddie startled. “Why do you hang out in that death trap, Phantom?”
Phantom lived… in their house? Where? How? They had anti-ghost defenses everywhere. Surely they would have noticed. This couldn’t be true. (She wanted to boil with anger at the thought, but the anger wouldn’t come.)
“They’re my parents, Johnny,” Phantom said, with a somewhat helpless undertone in its voice. Because it was a ghost, the ghost of a child. Of course it didn’t know what to do but to stay with its parents. Was it… afraid to leave? Clinging to them out of habit and confusion?
“You’re strong, skilled, and smart,” Johnny said bluntly. “You’ve got a good reputation and a lot of connections. You could make it in the Ghost Zone. You don’t have to stay with them.”
Phantom shrugged halfheartedly. “Maybe. But this is the only home I’ve ever had.”
“That doesn’t make it a good place to linger, kid,” Johnny said. “Hell, good parents don’t say the shit to you that yours do. I hear them too, you know. They call you evil and manipulative and dangerous, blame you for everything that’s wrong in the world, call you a liar every time you so much as smile- I’ve heard them tell you to stop pretending to be in pain. It’s fucked up. You don’t say those things about your kid.”
“They don’t know it’s me,” Phantom muttered, hugging itself loosely. Maddie, distracted from the bizarre phenomenon that was having her parenting skills criticized by an ectoplasmic manifestation of post-human consciousness, focused on his forlorn expression and flinched.
(It was right there this whole time.)
“But you do,” Kitty said gently. Phantom didn’t reply.