Archive of Our Own ^beta

It’s been five minutes of standing outside his sister’s door, and Danny still isn’t ready to knock. Logically, he knows, she’s seen so much since Spectra that she wouldn’t turn her back on him now. He knows that she’s probably got her suspicions about his ghost side, and he’d be completely unsurprised if she’d already completely figured out his weird compulsions and reactions. Even if everything is as complete a surprise to her as the full story behind his hopefully-impossible future self, she’ll still be ready to hug him and talk him through it in the end.

It’s the way she’ll know afterward that bothers him. The way that, even if it’s done with love, she’ll always be accounting for the fact that his thoughts can never be entirely human anymore. He already hates the way she went from waking him up when he oversleeps with a loud knock and a yell to gently coaxing his eyes open with soft shakes and gentle words. He appreciates it, sure. He knows it’s for the best, because the last time she wasn’t careful, he woke up snarling and pulsing with energy and set off every detector in the house.

He’d thought, at the time, she didn’t notice the exact nature of his freakout. But no, of course not- that had been just after she’d learned his secret anyway, after all. She never said a word about it, simply adjusting how she treated him, less like her lazy little brother and more like a landmine she was trying to defuse.

Not that she’d ever put it like that, or that he’d ever say it that way to her face. He’d rather die again than accuse her of handling him like a dangerous creature. Besides, he can’t blame her, can he? He is dangerous, even if he ignores his would’ve-been future self. His claws can rend through a car, his developing fangs are unmistakably a predator’s, his ectoblasts can and have punched deep into the concrete that makes up Casper High. Even in his human shape, he can feel the thunderstorm that roils under his skin.

Jazz has seen all of it, though, and she just gives him some space when he needs it, and coaxes him out of his head when he gets too lost in there, and- hell, he doesn’t deserve her. She doesn’t deserve to deal with learning that despite all of their efforts to keep him grounded in his human side, her little brother is driven by inhuman needs and instincts far deeper than he’s been wiling to admit before.

The only thing that stops him from turning around and hiding in his room is Valerie’s success, and the deal he made with her.

Before he can spiral his way into backing out of that, even if Valerie will probably be pissed about it, he hears Jazz get up from her bed. Even to him, her footsteps are quiet, and he wonders if that’s another side-effect of the charge the portal gives the ectoplasm that’s suffused their entire lives. It’s not like it’s unthinkable that it might have mutagenic effects on humans. After all, Valerie had already been oddly strong and agile in the last few months before Pariah invaded.

That’s to say nothing of their parents’ physical oddities, given how long it’s been since the proto-portal exposed them to charged ecto for the first time. Jack Fenton is six-seven and built sturdier than most small buildings, and Maddie Fenton’s well known for her oddly quick and precise movement. Is it really that unthinkable that Jazz might be changing too? He’s not sure he’s fond of the thought, but- oh, she’s staring at him.

He blinks. When did she open the door? Right, he got lost in his thoughts again. “Uh.”

“You back with me?” Jazz asks, and she gives him a small smile when he nods. “What’s up?”

Right. Breathe, Fenton, you can do this.

“I- I wanted to talk. About, er, some things. If you’re busy it can wait, obviously-” Danny starts, only to be cut off when Jazz grasps his arm gently and tugs him inside.

“I always have time for you.” She shuts the door and guides him to her bed, then sits down backward in her chair and leans across the headrest to stare at him. “Is this about ghost stuff?”

“Yeah, unfortunately.”

Jazz squints at him. “Unfortunately?”

“Sometime it’d be nice to have a normal problem to ask you about, I guess.” Danny shrugs. “But even asking what to do about getting broken up with was because of ghost stuff.”

He tightens his hands in the hem of his shirt at the way her face softens, and shakes his head. He’s not looking for her to feel bad for him- the kid he was before all this collected superhero comics as much as he collected his prized model rockets. He isn’t about to say he wishes he wasn’t so close to the characters he used to pretend to be with a towel clipped to his pajamas’ shoulders, because he really is trying not to lie to Jazz as much as he had to before. “Not- I’m not complaining about the ghost stuff this time. It’s my ghost stuff, not someone else. Stop looking at me like that.”

Jazz makes a show of blinking slowly. “Like what, like I care about you?”

“No, like you feel bad for me.”

“I’m not allowed to think it’s awful that my baby brother hasn’t had a normal teenage boy problem to talk to me about in months because he’s too busy dealing with all of this?”

Danny throws his hands up, eyes flashing green with the motion. “Whatever! Didn’t come in here for it either way!”

Jazz rolls her eyes, crossing her arms on the headrest of her chair. A moment of silence passes between them, and Danny takes it as an invitation to continue. “It’s about, uh. I guess it’s partly about that other me, and partly about, um. About stuff that Val and I both have going on, we think.”

Jazz sits up straight at that, eyes wide. He’s refused to even acknowledge her attempts to talk to him about what happened, and he wouldn’t be surprised to find that she’s aware he hasn’t spoken to Sam and Tucker about it either. To them, as far as he can tell, everything stopped the day he would’ve taken the test.

None of them but Jazz even know that the so-called ‘Dark Phantom’ had made it back to the present. Jazz, though, knows enough that even the mere mention of him has her on guard.

He kind of appreciates it. At least she’ll try to keep herself safe, should the thermos ever fail.

“Okay.” She says, after taking a minute more to steady herself. “I- I want to hear about this, I do. But only if you’re sure, okay?”

“Wow, you’re giving me a choice?” He snarks, but immediately regrets it at the way she frowns. It’s quick, and she hides it well, but- ugh. She’s been better. She hasn’t even pestered him yet to talk about everything with the fight against Pariah, or how he feels about Valerie joining him on the endangered species list. And, much to his private annoyance, it makes that buzzing hum under his skin ever so slightly more like sandpaper to see her feelings hurt for real. So, somewhat begrudgingly, he shakes his head. “No, no, sorry. Um. I’m- I’m as ready as I’m gonna get, I think.”

She nods. No pen, no pad, no distractions. She’s focusing entirely on him, and he tugs at his shirt again to keep his hands busy, aware that she’s waiting for him to start talking.

“Right. I- I think to understand it you have to know the second thing first, actually?” Man, is he already screwing this up? He plows forward regardless, because that’s gotten him through a lot of things in life. “So, you didn’t really get to see it as much, I think- maybe a couple times, but- you know that thing where when one of you gets hurt, I get, uh. Weird.”

Jazz shakes her head. They’ve had this part of the conversation before. Danny had mauled and nearly permanently destroyed a knife-wielding ghost that had intentionally targeted Jazz, the sight of the gash in her side sending him off the deep end. In his somewhat weak defense, the wound was severe enough to justify an actual hospital trip, and it was early enough on that he couldn’t really have been expected to have any idea how to manage his instincts.

She’d seen him do it, though. And so when they found themselves on the same page about Phantom’s identity at long last, it didn’t take long for her to bring it up.

She says the same thing now that she did then, and he can’t decide if he hates or loves her for it. “Anger is a normal response to loved ones being harmed, even if yours comes on stronger than most.”

“I was going to destroy that ghost. I wanted to.”

“That’s more extreme anger, but again-”

“The only thing that stopped me was you and Sam and Tuck.”

Jazz’s eyes widen ever so slightly, and she bites her lip for a moment. She doesn’t look (or feel- for all that he’s been like this for months, he’s just as sensitive to emotion as he was at the start) afraid, which is one relatively irrational fear down, at least. But he doesn’t need his gross emotion-tasting empathy powers to tell she’s worried about where he’s going with this.

“I know we thought I was just acting territorial ‘cause of ghost bullshit, and I am, but that’s- that’s not all of it.” Danny says, looking away from her eyes and placing a hand just below his ribs. “I was angry because I couldn’t keep you safe. And it hurt, somewhere in here. Not just emotionally and all that crap, but for real. It feels like I’m straining every time someone gets hurt around me when I’m fighting. Hell, when Dash got hurt during the Invasion I had to focus on Kwan to stay calm or I was gonna fly off and pick a fight again right then, and I don’t even like Dash.”

“Oh.” Jazz whispers. She still just seems worried. He’s sure the gears are turning in her head already on how to handle this, from a human perspective, but she needs to know the full story first.

“It- this goes further. I feel like I got less sleep on nights I don’t patrol. It feels kinda like I need to know people are safe, to help them, I guess. I can normally handle it but when we left Amity to go meet Vlad I think I about drove Sam and Tucker crazy checking in on them, and I only really believed the cities were okay when they told me Huntress- Val- was out patrolling instead. It goes both ways, even, when those maybe-government assholes first showed up, after Vlad put that bounty on me? I swear I didn’t even mean to but when I saw them harassing Boxy I put myself in the way!”

Danny’s baring his teeth enough to show his fangs now, the memory causing his skin to glow and a growl to rumble from just beneath his chest. His parents might think ghosts worth studying, like zoologists with wild predators, but the dickheads in the white suits seemed to think they were below even that. “Boxy bugs me like crazy! But he’s here enough, so I won’t let him get attacked like that. I won’t let someone hurt my people, human or not.”

Jazz gets up, and Danny startles out of his rambling, eyes flaring bright enough to reflect in her own. If she’s bothered, she doesn’t show it. Instead, she walks across to the bed and picks up her beloved Bearbert, then presses the stuffed bear into Danny’s hands.

Danny’s hands that had started to tear the hem of his shirt. Is he that worked up? He- okay, maybe he is, he realizes. His scars are tingling pins and needles, it’s a small mercy that the ever-present pain in his arm isn’t flaring in response, and he’s leaned forward around the bear just about reflexively. His eyes are casting Jazz in their toxic green glow, even with daylight pouring through her window, and when he really thinks about it he realizes he’s trembling a little.

He squeezes Bearbert tightly and forces himself to breathe, inhaling the lingering scent of laundry detergent and Jazz’s body wash. He focuses on the feeling of her hand against his back, tries not to wonder if he’ll ever get used to how much warmer other people are than him now, and wrestles with the ghostly part of him that wants to more literally drink in her concern and love like water.

He still has to talk to Valerie about that. The. The emotion thing. Shit.

Jazz says something and he only realizes she’s speaking after the fact, blinking back to the moment and running his tongue over his small fangs. He’d nearly had a breakdown about them, but somehow, most people just didn’t seem to notice.

Right, no, Jazz had said something. Focus. “What?”

“I asked if that helped.”

“Oh. Yeah. Sorry, I- I just needed a minute.”

Jazz shrugs. “You don’t have to keep going.”

“Yeah I do.”

His sister says nothing to that. He’s sure that if he looked up at her face, she’d have some kind of complicated expression, given the cocktail of emotions he can’t begin to sift through he’s tasting. She just sighs, though, and after a moment he clears his throat and nods.

“I think mom and dad were more right than we thought.” Danny finally starts again, and the feeling of Jazz’s emotional turmoil fades into pure confusion before he can even get the next thought out. “I think- I think ghosts have- I don’t know what to call it. Fixations. Obsessions. Whatever. Things that kept us from, uh, you know. Things we lived for already in that last moment, just, more important now?”

Jazz pulls him sideways to squeeze him against her. “It would explain some of the behavior we’ve seen.” She admits, quietly. “And you think you and Val have got something like that, too, and that’s why you have such a hard time when someone gets hurt?”

Danny grimaces. “Yeah. And why I can’t watch the news. It- it’s like eating or breathing to part of me. I need to do it sometimes, and I want to do it anyway. And Val was acting and talking the same way already.”

Jazz hums. “You mind if I get my logbook out to write this down? I can stay right here, if you need me to.”

“I don’t need you to hug me, gross.” Danny says, though he can’t put any real energy behind the words.

Jazz rolls her eyes and squeezes him once before she gets up, fetching the most recent addition to the set of green notebooks she’s got hidden in her closet. She sits down in her chair again and starts writing, and Danny closes his eyes, running his thumbs across the soft velvet of his sister’s beloved plush bear. This could be going so much worse, he reminds himself. She isn’t judging him, not openly, and he refuses to actually sample her emotions like some kind of messed up wine tasting. What he is getting, though, is sticky and syrupy and filling in a way he refuses to contemplate further. Love, at its base. Honey-like and dense.

He physically shakes himself away from thinking too deeply about it.

“So,” Jazz says, biting the eraser end of her pencil in thought. She points it at him, and he blinks. “How did my little brother wind up fixated on something like that? Because that’s incredibly self-destructive, and as much as you liked to play superhero when you weren’t an astronaut as a little kid, you weren’t exactly throwing yourself into danger before all this.”

Danny grimaces. “Are you saying it’s weird that I’m trying to be a hero?”

“I’m saying it’s weird that you’ve got a dependency on being helpful and protecting people.” Jazz huffs. “Weird and probably not healthy.”

“For a human. You gonna go tell Sidney his thing about bullies is unhealthy, or ask Boxy to give up the boxes?”

Jazz frowns, chewing on her pencil eraser again while she tries to come up with an answer to that. Danny lets her, pressing his face against the top of Bearbert’s head and sighing heavily.

“Do you know why you’ve got these compulsions?” She finally asks. “Because I know you always liked helping people, and I know you used to want to be like the heroes from your comic books when you were like, eight, but this seems extreme.”

Danny steels himself. He really doesn’t want to admit what ran through his dying mind in the portal that day twice in under 24 hours, but it’s important. It’s as important as the way he would dream of superpowers as a child to protect his family from the monsters that weren’t yet present in their lives. Hell, maybe if he explains things to her she’ll figure out some loophole he and Valerie can use to make their worse impulses easier to manage. If anyone can, it’s his sister.

“When I was in the portal,” He starts, and curls a little into himself at the way her breath hitches. He’s not sure she’ll ever forgive herself for being out of the house that day, but he wishes she would.  None of this is anybody’s fault but his own. “When I was in the portal, I could hear Sam and Tuck screaming, and I thought a ghost was already attacking them. And I just- I couldn’t let them get hurt, couldn’t just give up when the things mom and dad talked about were going to threaten Amity. So. I didn’t.”

Jazz shakes her head, setting her pencil down and rubbing her face. She mutters something like ‘knew that bullshit was bad for him’, then inhales deeply, holds it, and breathes out slowly. He wrestles with himself- yes, she’s more upset now, but she wanted to know and he needed to tell her. Somehow, that doesn’t make the tightness in his ghostly center any less strained.

“Okay.” She finally says, lowering her hands to her notebook and pencil again. “So, it’s not that the desire is new, it’s that it was one of the strongest feelings you had when you were- when-”

“Yeah.” Danny interrupts, and for once, she looks grateful for it. “That.”

Jazz scribbles down a few more thoughts, then pushes away from her desk and leans her head back. He lets her sit and process, finding reassurance in the way the feeling-flavor of love never wavers, and focuses instead on tracing little patterns against Bearbert’s soft surface.

She sits forward again after a couple minutes, watching his fingers move. “It’s an anchor.”

“Huh?”

“Mom and dad’s theory is flawed because they think it’s just animal instinct, mimicry, raw weird obsession, whatever. They don’t have the perspective to get it. It’s an anchor. You were supposed to, to- leave, and something kept you from moving on. An anchor that kept you here.” Jazz shrugs. “I think, anyway.”

“So why do I still need it?” Danny asks, and he wishes he sounded a little less petulant. It’s not that he’d give it up even if he could, but- well. Inevitable echoed in his head a little too loudly until Val pointed out that he now has a safety net, and the desire to be less shackled to his impulses is still there.

Jazz chews on her lip for a moment before continuing. “Using the anchor analogy, you have to keep the metal from rusting somehow, right? Maybe it’s like that, keeping the anchor from weakening. But, hell, Danny, I don’t know. Maybe you don’t need it, it just feels like you do. There’s no good study on any of this because until the portal, ghosts like this were super rare.”

That’s another thing, honestly, and it makes Danny uncomfortable somewhere in the back of his head. The ghosts- and they were ghosts, to be sure- that were recorded prior to the Fentonworks portal opening did fit his parents’ descriptions, uncomfortably so, and while most of the country dismissed them as hoaxes the evidence was enough to let his parents base their theoretical physics PhDs on the idea that they were extradimensional beings instead of the spirits of the dead.

Danny knows better now that he’s uncomfortably close to being one of them, but he grew up hearing scientific-sounding theories about how various myths and legends and boogeymen were actually sightings of these extradimensional predators. He’s well aware that Phantom- and Huntress, and in some ways even Plasmius- resemble the monsters of his childhood far more than they do the well-defined features of the other ghosts, and he wonders if the other sightings weren’t closer to the ‘undefined third thing’ that they represent.

Jazz has her hand on his arm, and he blinks away his runaway thoughts.

“Need a break?” She asks, because of course she does. She’s always been good at realizing the moment his focus starts to slip. It’s just only been in the last year that she’s started to handle it this way, instead of snapping at him to pay attention.

He shakes his head, though. He can handle this, and he wrestles away the urge to snap at her that he’s fine thank you, because some lies are just too obvious. “If I stop it’s gonna be hard to get started again.” He reasons, and she sits back and nods like that makes perfect sense.

Some days, that’d make him feel like she’s trying to play therapist, checking off a box on the list of things that make sense to her about her little brother’s fucked up half-human head. Today, he can’t find the indignation not to be grateful for the understanding.

“If you’re sure.” She says, quietly. “This has already been- been a lot, for both of us.”

“Do you want me to stop?”

“No. But I just want to be sure you don’t push yourself too hard, Danny.” She sighs.

“I’m good.” He adjusts his legs under him. Today’s been a good pain day, and he doesn’t want to ruin it by sitting in a bad position for too long. It’s rarer for it to flare up in the leg the shock exited through, but when it happens he usually has to spend the rest of the day hiding somewhere as Phantom. No sense tempting fate. “Alright, uh, that- you needed to know all that in general, I guess?”

“It explains a lot.” Jazz admits. “There’s a lot of ways to manage compulsions, though, if it’s bothering you that much. And it’ll help your friends and I work together, now that I understand why you act the way you do sometimes.”

“You’re going to tell Sam and Tuck?” Danny asks, eyes wide.

“They don’t already know?” Jazz’s eyes widen in response.

“Of course not! I don’t- why would I want them to know how badly even my brain is fucked up by all this?”

“You know they won’t see it like that! I don’t see it like that!”

“How?” Danny’s voice crackles, and he flickers out of visibility for a moment. Jazz doesn’t startle, because she’s so much better than he deserves as a sister. “How can you- between Valerie and I there’s now two super-powered things that look at the whole twin cities area and go ‘that’s mine, everyone in it is mine, and I’m gonna keep them safe from everything’ like some kind of weird-ass territory thing, and one of them just told you they can’t help it, and you’re saying that isn’t fucked up?”

“What’s fucked up is that my brother acts like he’s a monster for wanting to keep people from getting hurt!” Jazz finally snaps, and it stuns him into stillness and silence. “It’s fucked up that my baby brother died, in pain, and the world decided that wasn’t good enough so now he has to get thrown through walls by actual monsters every single day! It’s fucked up that our parents treat him like some kind of wild animal when wanting to help people is the most human desire out there! It’s fucked up that he believes them about himself at all!”

Danny holds his hands up, trying to figure out how to calm her down, because- because, holy shit, Jazz never loses her cool like this. Never. It’s shocking enough that his own inner monologue has derailed completely from stress over his inhuman psychology to panic over his sister freaking out. He’s being hammered by her regret, her anger, her grief, a staccato beat of emotions that threaten to overwhelm his senses. That spot under his chest lets out a sharp whine, and he doesn’t even think to flinch this time because yeah, actually.

Jazz buries her face in her hands, and Danny slowly gets up, setting Bearbert to the side and approaching her carefully. The last thing he wants to do is startle her or upset her again- fuck knows he’s done enough really upsetting her today to last for several years- but every single part of him is aching to help her, comfort her, something.

He hesitantly places his hands on her shoulders, and her breath hitches, and he thinks he might’ve made a mistake. But before he can pull away, she moves her hands to grip his arms, giving him a small, sad smile. She’s been trying not to cry, if the way her eyes are red is any sign.

“I’m okay, Danny.” She says, though her voice is thick with emotion. “I just- you are so much more than some ‘superpowered thing’, little brother. You get that, right?”

He hesitates before nodding, and she doesn’t let him get away with the uncertainty.

“No, listen.” She says, and with one quick pull he’s eye level with her. Sometimes he forgets that she got the full course of mom’s self-defense training, before the portal project took their parents’ focus away. “You are not a thing or a monster. You’re my little brother who’s not human anymore, but- but that doesn’t change who you are, okay?”

Danny’s caught so off guard that it takes a solid two minutes before he realizes his eyes are glowing again. He- he knew she’d see it this way, but it still feels weird, having her actually say it. He swallows to try to clear the tightness in his throat. “You don’t know the rest yet.”

“Do you really think there’s anything you can tell me that’d change my mind about this?”

“Maybe?” Danny offers, and he withers a little under the disbelieving look she gives him. “It’s bad, Jazz. You’re gonna hate it.”

“You said it had to do with that other Phantom.” Jazz loosens her grip on him, letting go when he pulls back. “You’ve never wanted to talk about him before.”

“Yeah. No. Good reason for that.” Danny sits back down on her bed, sighing. “So, the reason there were two of me? Time travel.”

Jazz’s face does the most fascinating series of confused motions before settling back into a careful neutral. “You know what, you were right about one thing. I already hate this.”

Danny barks a laugh despite himself, then nods. “Yeah. Yeah, it sucks.”

“So that really was you. From, what? Alternate timeline? Evil mirror universe stuff like this is some kind of cartoon?” Jazz asks, and when Danny’s mouth quirks in thought, she groans. “He was, wasn’t he?”

“Not exactly?” Danny grimaces. Is he really having this conversation? “Evil future me. More Gun Batman, less Star Trek.”

“Gun Batman?”

“Yeah, it was like-”

“You know what, nevermind, not important right now.” Jazz says, and Danny crosses his arms. “How did you turn evil? You’re one of the nicest people in the whole city, even if you’re annoying sometimes.”

Danny rolls his eyes. “Rude.”

“Maybe. Stop trying to stall, Danny.”

“You died.” Danny says, and his gaze falls to his socks, the core of him aching at the memory of watching it happen. He’d felt like he was being torn apart, even in that brief period before Clockwork appeared. As much as what his other self did doesn’t make sense, he already knows how desperate he’d be for that pain to stop. “You died, mom and dad died, Sam and Tuck died. Hah, even Lancer died. All at once.”

Jazz inhales sharply, but doesn’t stop him. He can’t bring himself to look at her, his head full of images of red hair and teal fabric stained in blood under a piece of rubble. He’s vaguely aware that his hands are shaking from how tightly they’re gripping her bedsheets. “It was my fault you were all even in the same place. That stupid fucking test, I cheated on it and everyone got together at Nasty Burger. I don’t know, I guess Lancer thought it’d be a good place to talk to mom and dad about the cheating, and they invited everyone else along to celebrate because thought I actually did okay, but.”

Danny grits his teeth for a moment. “Something happened. Something exploded, and the entire place came down and all of you were gone, and I guess- I guess I wound up with Vlad.”

“Vlad?” Jazz breathes, barely above a whisper.

“I don’t know! He- he would’ve been the only one left, and I guess dad wrote him into some documents or something, I don’t know. I wasn’t there. I- I just showed up ten years from now.”

Jazz squeezes him gently. When she speaks, her voice has a false steadiness he’s grown to appreciate over the last several months. It’s somehow reassuring- if she can manage to put up a brave front, then no matter how much of her actual feelings he can sense, he can at least try to do the same. “How?”

“Ghost named Clockwork.” Danny growls the name deep in his throat. Jazz doesn’t let go, but he can feel her reflexively tense a little at the noise. Whatever. That, at least, is meant to be intimidating. “Said they were the master of time. Tried to kill me in their lair-” Jazz’s worry spikes- “-but I got away by running through a portal, and besides, I can count the number of ghosts I’ve met that haven’t tried to kill me on one hand. Not the problem I had with them.”

“That’s not exactly reassuring.”

“Yeah, whatever, point is,” Danny says, ignoring the flush of dry indignation that hits his palate like what he thinks wine probably tastes like, “There was a portal to ten years in the future in their lair. By then, Phantom and I had gotten separated from each other by Vlad. Vlad said it was my idea, that I wanted to get rid of my human emotions, but ghosts are emotion so I don’t think he told me the whole truth. Whatever happened, Phantom merged with Plasmius. That’s who you met.”

Jazz sighs, shaking her head. “And why was he here?”

“He wanted to make sure I didn’t change things, I guess. Take my place, make sure everything went the way it did for him, all of that.” Danny blinks, and his eyes ache a bit. When was the last time he’d remembered to do that, ten minutes ago? More? “Jazz, he- I- killed everyone.”

“What?”

“Everyone. The only place that was left was Amity because of the shield, and because of Val.” Danny can’t find it him to be horrified by the memory of the wasteland anymore, after seeing it in so many of his tamer nightmares. There’s so much worse than the bones of long-gone cities, he knows now.

Jazz would probably hate that. Just another thing not to tell her, he supposes. He wishes he could maintain that numb monotone, but as he continues, his voice cracks and breaks, tears starting to run down his cheeks again. He lifts a hand to that tight, painful spot just under his ribs, grasping against his shirt like he can massage the ache of failure and loss away. “He came back, and he won, Jazz. I beat him, but he won. I wasn’t fast enough. I saw it happen.”

“Oh, God, Danny.” Jazz says, before pulling him into the tightest hug he can ever remember getting from her. He melts against her, breaking into fresh sobs, falling into a feedback loop between his own grief and hers. “God, Danny.”

They cry together, and it feels almost like a release. First Val, now Jazz, and neither of them rejected him upon finding out what kind of monster he’s capable of becoming. He’s here safe in the arms of the sister he watched die, secure in the knowledge that the third known member of his kind will keep him from ever becoming that kind of threat. It doesn’t erase the memory of seeing small remnants of the people he lost buried in ash and rock, but it dulls the edge of it slightly.

When he’s recovered enough to talk again, he swallows thickly and doesn’t lift his head. “That- that Clockwork ghost fixed it, but. Shit. I could- and it’d just- if I fuck up bad enough, if I lose the people I’m trying to protect, I- I don’t know what it must’ve been like, but I can guess.”

Jazz takes a deep breath, then squeezes him against her again. “You weren’t to blame for what happened. That was a freak accident, or something. Sure, I’m glad you didn’t wind up cheating on the test, but all of that suffering was not because of you. You hear me?”

Danny hums noncommittally, but almost chokes on it when her emotions flare and tinge with anger. He- he’s pretty sure it’s not anger at him, but holy shit.

“It was not your fault that something exploded at our local fast food restaurant, Danny Fenton. You should never have had to see that, and you should never have been put in a position like that, and- the things I want to do to this Clockwork if I ever meet them. What an asshole!”

Some detached part of Danny’s mind can’t help but think that it’s kind of hilarious that melting down at her like this is all it took for Jazz to use this many swears around him. “Please don’t pick a fight with a god-ghost-thing because of me. I’m gonna have to talk Val down already.”

Jazz just shakes her head, and he heaves a sigh into her shirt.

“I promise, little brother. I will never let you feel that kind of hopeless and alone, if I can help it. And I will never ever let that be your future. I’m going to tell Sam and Tucker for you, because they’ll help too, just watch them.”

Danny makes another of those pathetic little whines, and Jazz sniffs, shaking her head once more. “Nope. What about Valerie? Did you tell her?”

“Yeah.” Danny leans back a bit, and there’s a tissue in his hand before he can even think to ask for one. He wipes up his face, then incinerates it with the tiniest bit of charged ectoplasm. That gets his sister to give him a shaky grin, and he relaxes a bit more. She’s always encouraging him to feel comfortable using his powers around her, and it’s always been an uphill battle after trying to keep them secret for so long. It’s easy to imagine that she’s going to make a little note in her notebook about this, and yet he can’t even find it himself to be exasperated like he normally would.

Instead, he breathes deep, then nods. “Yeah, I- she and I promised to keep each other from going off the rails. We’re gonna need it. We’re gonna need you guys, and I hate to make you deal with our weird stupid ghost brains like this.”

“Please. You’re my brother. Ghost or no I’m just proud of you for finally using a brain at all.” Jazz says, and her grin grows when he huffs at her. “We won’t leave you alone like that, Danny. I won’t, and I know your friends won’t, and Val won’t. It’s going to be okay.”

“Okay. I- okay. Jazz? I promise, I will never let myself be- be that. I promised you before, but you- it doesn’t matter. I’m promising now, so you can remember it.” Danny says, and Jazz’s expression softens to a fond smile.

“Alright. Okay. That was a lot. Do you want me to order us some food on mom’s card, maybe get out a movie, and we’ll go camp out in the Ops Center until the sun sets? Set up a blanket so you can see the stars before you have to go out?”

“Please.” Danny says, a bit of ghostly static leaking in, and Jazz ruffles his hair (earning a ‘hey!’) before getting up to do just that. He watches her leave, then fishes his phone out of his pocket and stares at it for a long moment.

In the end, he texts Val a simple ‘Yeah. Done w/J’ and then ‘I think youre right’ before Jazz returns with a menu for their favorite chinese place. They pick their orders out and go to wash their faces, puffy-eyed, with tear stains on their cheeks.

As he collects his blankets from his room, for just a moment, he lets himself really believe in what Valerie said. Despite how wrung out and exhausted he feels, they really are going to be okay, maybe even ‘super’ okay, he thinks.

He can’t remember the last time he truly felt that way.

He hopes this is the first time of many to come.