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The young ghost hero shot through the sky with breakneck speed, weaving through the streets with long-practiced ease. He found the familiar alley close to his house and touched down roughly. He looked towards the town’s clocktower and he groaned. Five after ten…which meant five minutes after curfew. He immediately lost all sense of urgency as he rested against the brick wall. Five minutes versus ten minutes didn’t make much of a difference to his parents – late was late after all – which meant he no longer had a reason to rush through the door on the off-chance he would make it home in time.
Well, since he had the time now, he decided to give himself a once over to ensure he looked presentable for the lecture that was no doubt about to come. The cut on his torso was thankfully starting to clot, but the deep gash on his arm still bled freely. He double-checked that the coast was clear before he transformed back into the form of a normal, inconspicuous teenager. Well, not so inconspicuous now, as the blood from both injuries seeped into his white shirt. So much for hoping the loose-fitting tee would hide the incriminating evidence.
He sighed as he wracked his brain for a solution when suddenly one struck him like lightning. He snapped his fingers before he turned invisible and raced into his house. He phased through the door and ran up to his bedroom, and on his way up he definitely noticed his parents on the couch staring fixedly at the door. Oh yeah, he was in for a lecture when he walked in that door…
He dashed into his bedroom and quickly and quietly wrapped his arm up in a makeshift bandage before throwing on a dark zip-up hoodie from a concert he and Sam went to last year. It wasn’t perfect, and more observant parents would question him wearing a hoodie on a warm spring night, but it would last long enough to withstand the lecture.
Well, time to face the music and just get this over with. With a labored sigh he flew back down to the alley and slowly walked to the front door. Man, he was so sick of this whole song-and-dance: fight ghosts all night, land in the alley, make sure he was presentable, give half-baked excuses to his parents about missing curfew, listen to the ensuing lecture, go to bed, and then repeat it all over again the next night. It was exhausting and occupied more of his time than he could spare.
He turned the doorknob and walked inside. He had enough sense to wear a sheepish look on his face as he regarded his parents who stood from their previous positions on the couch.
“Daniel Fenton, do you know what time it is?” his mother asked harshly.
“…Not before ten?” he answered with a wince.
“No. It’s not,” Maddie said shortly. “Do you have any answer for why you were so late?”
Danny could hear the same weariness in her voice that he himself felt, and while some nights he felt like bantering and going toe-to-toe with them…tonight he just wanted it over with. “None that you’ll like, so why don’t you just lecture me, punish me, and let me go to bed?” Danny suggested tiredly, hoping it would just end the argument right there. Unfortunately it seemed to just incite his mother further.
“So you’re not even going to try anymore?” she asked dangerously as she placed her hands on her hips. He could see his father shaking his head beside her. “Danny what’s going on with you? Why can’t you just tell us the truth? It’s a lie every other night and now you’re not even going to try to explain?”
Danny sighed heavily. “Well how about this, I’ll try another lie again tomorrow, but I’m just really tired today and I just want to go to bed,” he pleaded.
“No, Danny, that’s not what we’re asking for you you know it. If you’re really that tired of feeding us lies and excuses then just tell us the truth and we wouldn’t have to do this anymore!” she practically begged. “You think you’re the only one that’s tired? We’re tired of this too! We don’t like having to do this either. We’d much rather spend our nights asking you about your life or girlfriends or things that normal parents are supposed to be talking about, but instead we have to go through this every night!”
“Actually I’m pretty sure it’s a rite of passage for teenagers to break curfew, so this kinda is what normal parents are supposed to do,” Danny tried to leverage, but it only made his mother’s jaw clench even harder. Well that wasn’t the desired effect. He closed his eyes to rally his strength for a moment before looking at his parents with weary eyes. “Look, if I could tell you, don’t you think I would? I know that would make all this stop, but I just can’t.”
Maddie threw her hands up in the air paced around the room, breathing deep to try to calm herself down as Jack leveled a surprisingly serious gaze at his son. “Why not Danny? If you’re getting into trouble or there’s gangs or drugs or a girlfriend or boyfriend or anything like that we can help you,” he tried to emphasize. “We won’t even get that mad at you; we just want to know so we can stop worrying!”
“Can’t you just take my word for it that I’m not in trouble? I’ve told you time and time again that I’m not doing drugs and I’m not in a gang or doing anything dangerous, so you don’t need to worry!” Granted he was doing something dangerous, but it wasn’t the kind of dangerous stuff they no doubt had in mind. “I mean look at me, I’m healthy, so I can’t be getting into anything bad, right?”
Maddie stopped pacing to glare at her son. “Yes Danny, let’s look at you,” his mother mentioned slowly, and Danny winced as he realized he’d walked into a trap. “Your grades are slipping, you’re never home, and you shirk all your chores. You can’t seem to tell the truth about anything anymore and seem capable of lying to us without feeling guilty, which means you obviously don’t have any respect for us.”
Danny tried to interrupt after that, but his mother continued to plow through his growing list of faults. “You don’t seem to care about anything anymore other than whatever you rush off to do at night. You’re twitchy and jumpy and always seem to be on alert. And what’s worse is on top of all that you don’t even talk to us anymore! We come in the room and you rush right out! These lectures are the most time we get to spend talking to you all day, and they mainly consist of us yelling at you!
“So yes, let’s take a look at you Danny,” she challenged. “Let’s take a good long look and then tell me again that there’s nothing wrong, because you are not the same Danny you were before the accident.”
Danny remained silent, not really knowing how to refute her, or even if he should, because she was absolutely right about all of it. He wasn’t the same as he was before the accident, and he never would be either, not that his parents would understand the reasons why. Was there any point in giving them false hope that he could go back to that innocent and naive Danny that they hoped to see when they looked at him? He wasn’t even sure he could pretend to be that Danny anymore, after everything he’d seen and done.
“Well?” Maddie pushed, her voice sharp and impatient, like a predator about ready to pounce on its prey. “Do you have anything to say?”
Instead of being intimidated like he used to be when he was a child, he summed up all the defiance he could muster tonight to look his mom squarely in the eyes. “You’re right; I’m not the same Danny I was before the accident. It made me realize things about my life, and no, I’m not going to share what those are. Now, can I go to bed?”
Maddie looked taken aback by Danny’s brazen attitude. Sure his responses differed from night to night, but tonight there was just something different in his attitude. He’d been stubbornly defiant before, but tonight…it was almost like his defiance stemmed from some sort of apathetic break inside himself. He didn’t care to argue anymore…and so he wasn’t going to argue, and that was final.
Maddie spent so much time puzzling her son’s attitude that Danny just took her silence as permission and thudded up the stairs, leaving his still silent parents behind. As soon as he made it upstairs, he slammed the door and leaned against the back of it, breathing out a sigh he didn’t know he had been holding. He didn’t know where that came from…but he knew he’d be paying for it later. He was absolutely grounded and would probably get his game stations taken away, probably until he talked to them, but that was standard punishment anymore and he was used to it. But most importantly, it was over with for now, and that’s what mattered.
He threw himself on the bed in exhaustion. He felt terrible after what happened downstairs. He knew the lectures and the arguments came from a place of caring and love. They were concerned about him and were trying to help him, but they just couldn’t. After all, they would never understand…and there was no way he could make them.
He saw their relationship slipping, just like his mom saw it. He’d seen her flipping through albums of his childhood or caressing pictures of his youth, wondering and lamenting why their relationship wasn’t the same as it had been when those pictures were taken. They didn’t go on day trips anymore – how was he supposed to explain leaving for a ghost attack and coming back injured? They didn’t talk anymore – he couldn’t tell her half of what was going on in his life to begin with, and everything that came out of his mouth was a lie. They weren’t physically affectionate anymore – what if she pressed on an injury and he couldn’t explain why he had it?
Their interactions were limited to lies and excuses on his end, and discipline and rants on theirs.
It would be so much easier if only they knew—
He sat up in his bed. His lips parted and his tense eyebrows relaxed in sudden realization. If only they knew. Gone would be the lies, gone would be excuses, and gone would be this constant fear of exposure. Gone would be this act and gone would be this need to hide his double life.
He realized suddenly he was walking down the stairs. That was weird – he didn’t even remember standing up, let alone leaving his room. And yet his feet continued to carry him forward, as if they had come to some kind of conclusion while his tired brain tried desperately to catch up.
But if his parents knew, then gone would be all of his problems and the added stress they caused. But weren’t there reasons why he put all those stresses on himself in the first place? Weren’t there reasons why he kept up the lies for so long and stuck to his guns so strongly and never told them? Ah right, the fear. The fear that revealing himself as a half-ghost and as Phantom would fracture the household. The fear of being experimented on by his own parents in the name of science.
But deep down, he knew they wouldn’t knowingly experiment on him. Somehow he always knew that. They loved him, and they would be able to see past Phantom and see Danny instead. He stood a much better chance of being experimented on by keeping his secret and being caught by his parents than by letting them know. The more realistic fear was that being a ghost would fracture his relationship with his parents and make things awkward between them...except that was already the path they were heading down anyways. He could already feel them growing further and further apart and everyone in the house could feel it. Either path could potentially fracture their relationship. Granted telling them would be a quicker path to that inevitable end but…he just found that he was too tired to care anymore.
He was in the kitchen. When did he even reach the bottom of the stairs? Where were his feet taking him?
He was tired. He was tired of all of it. Whatever reasons he had to keep this secret, and he knew they were good because he wouldn’t have done it otherwise…right now they just didn’t seem to matter anymore. A wash of apathy came over him, brought on by the overwhelming desire to just end this charade, for better or for worse. He just wanted to make tonight the last night of their song and dance routine. Maybe he’d care afterwards, and he could panic to his friends and sister and worry about cleaning up this mess, but right now…he just couldn’t bring himself to care.
He was too exhausted and too wearied by this false double-life, and he didn’t want to deal with it anymore.
He was in the basement and his feet finally stopped walking. His parents were right in front of him, fussing over some invention. He didn’t even remember consciously making the decision to come down here.
“Mom, Dad,” he announced solemnly, and his parents startled because they hadn’t heard him approach. “You wanted the truth?” Was he really doing this? He didn’t remember coming to an actual consensus on whether he was telling them or not, but apparently his body or his heart or whatever was controlling his actions had come to some kind of decision and led him down here.
They turned to look at him, the basement silent as if it knew what was happening. Even the constant hum of the Ghost Portal seemed to deaden. He waited for their eye contact, to make sure they were actually looking. Before he could talk himself out of it, he triggered his transformation, and the deafening whoosh of the rings of light echoed through the basement, followed by his determined exhale and his parents’ shocked gasps.
“We’ve got a lot to talk about.”