paradisalost | not the same ghost I was before (SUPER-backdated)

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not the same ghost I was before (SUPER-backdated)

Who: Ray Stantz & Danny Phantom
What: A really really overdue record of a revelation...
When: After the battle with Arthas in the Dead Zone
Where: Peace Patrol basement and parts elsewhere, eventually, perhaps?
Rating: PG at best for Ray's gosh-darn language

It had been unlike any other Big Event that Ray had ever been involved in ... usually, with the Big Bads, you brought the packs, you pointed the neutrona wand at the damn things, and you blasted and crossed your fingers and hoped for the best until you either wrangled whatever it was into the trap or sent it back where it came from.

There'd never been actual fighting, before. Never any bloodshed, or swords, or ... well, most of what he'd just witnessed out on the fields near the Dead Zone. As he pushed the last trap into the containment unit, he thought about everything he'd seen - and everything he was infinitely glad he hadn't had to directly be part of. He'd been content to hang at the border with his little team and do his minute yet necessary part - just him, and Courage, and Danny helping run the traps and take the souls away from Frostmourne.

Him, and Courage, and ...

Ray squinted as he pulled the empty trap back out. Danny. So that was two Dannys he knew ... and one was a ghost, very decidedly ... and the other one was just a kid ... whose parents worked with ...

"Wait a second."

The 'buster dragged a hand over his face, unsure if it was just fatigue messing with him, or if he was really thinking straight. The two looked really similar, now that he thought about it ... and sounded similar ... twins? But why would anyone name both their sons Danny? Thunking down in the chair at his workbench, Ray pulled his journal over and flipped it open, finding the place a few days before when Danny Phantom had volunteered to help with the traps ... then, a few days before that, when he'd met Danny in the hallway ...

"Same handwriting," Ray muttered to himself, raising his eyebrows. "But ... how's that possible? You can't be alive and a ghost at th--- oh, crap. Oh, CRAP, somethin' happened to him, and I didn't even think to ask --!" Quickly, he scribbled in a filter to his friend, and spoke into the journal.

"Hey, Danny, is -- can I talk to you for a minute? I know you're probably takin' five, but ... yeah, I ... I gotta make sure you're okay."

Nice job, Raymond. Something happens to your FRIEND and you don't even go "holy crap, what happened", you just hand him a ghost trap and go "so this is how it works, try not to get sucked into it"? NICE. Mom and Dad are probably rolling in their graves. With a sigh, he sank back in his chair and waited to hear back from the kid...

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Danny had mostly forgotten about the whole fight almost as soon as it was finished. Another day, another fight against some creep with delusions of grandeur. That had been what, the fourth time?

No, instead today he had decided to relax. And by relax he meant lock himself in his room and work on a new spaceship model. After all, it wasn't like he had anything he needed to worry about. Right?

Danny blinks when he sees Ray's message show up, and hastily closes the glue bottle before answering.

"I have some time. What is it?"

"Did you --" Oh, great. He had no idea, exactly, how to ask what was running through his head. "Are you ... on a loss, or something? By any chance, I mean? Or did something happen a few days ago?"

Danny had no idea what he was getting at. "No? I don't think so? I mean, everything's been pretty quiet."

"It's just -- well. You changed a lot since the last time I saw you. Unless it's the lack of sleep an' I been seein' things, but ... I'm pretty sure I wasn't..."

It WAS the same Danny, right? He rubbed at his eyes again, trying to put the memories side by side. They looked similar enough - but were they the SAME? That was the tricky part. Not to mention that he really had been working himself on minimal sleep to make sure that this Frostmourne business got settled properly ... and it could definitely be affecting his memory.

"Listen, I - I know I sound like I'm losin' my mind, but can I meet you in the kitchen or somethin'? Just to ... I dunno, see you. I swear, I'm not being a creeper."

Danny stares at the journal, confused. What was going on?

"I guess? How about the roof? I've been setting some stuff up there to do some stargazing tonight."

The roof. Why did things always have to happen on the roof? ... Well, at least this time there was an elevator he could take up to the last floor. "Okay, I'll meet you there in a little bit ... like, say ... I dunno, ten minutes?"

Danny always felt safer in high locations. Always had, even before he had learned to fly. "Okay? See you there." He stands up and hastily shoves the thermos into his backpack as he leaves the room.

Ray, for his part, didn't even consider bringing his equipment - PKE meter or otherwise. He was acting out of concern for a friend, and friends didn't usually need his gadgets, just him. He even left his journal on the workbench, heading straight from the basement up to the lobby and over to the elevator.

On the way up, it occurred to him that he could've at least tugged off his coveralls - so he unzipped them and shrugged out of the upper half, tying the arms around his waist. Sure, the t-shirt underneath wasn't the cleanest it'd ever been, but. It was at least a little more comfortable, and he didn't completely feel like he was going straight from a battlefield to check up on a friend. Once the elevator shuffled him off on the top floor, Ray mounted the stairs to the roof, running it all over in his head. If it barely even made sense to him, how the heck was he going to bridge it to Danny? The kid hadn't even sounded like anything was wrong, after all.

Maybe he'd made a -- no. He was almost a hundred percent sure there was no mistake, and something funky was going on here. Almost. Maybe as much as 96%. Egon had always been the statistical one ... but no matter what the numbers added up to, he'd have to find some way to get his point across. Breathing in slowly, he pulled open the roof access door and stepped out into the open air.

Danny had never gotten out of the habit of carrying the Fenton thermos with him everywhere. Too often, he'd been attacked with no warning. At home, at school, at restaurants... Always having it with him was only common sense.

But none of that mattered now. He quickly turns intangible and invisible and flies up to the roof.

When Ray arrives, several minutes later, he'll find a very human Danny leaning up against the railing and staring up at the sky.

Well, that was decidedly odd. Danny looked absolutely fine, now, nothing ghostly or not-quite-alive about him. No supernatural qualities whatsoever. But ... the handwriting ...! Ray's jaw dropped, slightly, since he'd expected to see Danny the Ghost standing there ...

... and then he remembered that gaping wasn't exactly the best greeting ever.

"Uh, hey."

Danny turns and raises an eyebrow at the expression on Ray's face.

"Something wrong?"

"You looked. ...... a heckuva lot different, last time I saw you." Ray blinks a little. That's an understatement, but it's the most coherent thing he's got, right now.

"Um, what?" Danny really wasn't sure what Ray was trying to say.

"Okay, there's not really any other way to put it." Ray took a deep breath, steeling himself, then spat it out. "When you helped me out with Arthas - that was you, yeah? - you weren't a regular, live human bein'. You were a ghost. And I am about 98% sure I'm not losing my mind."

Danny simply freezes. That statement right there? Versions of it regularly featured in his nightmares. Right before he got dragged off by his parents or the government ghost-hunting goons for lots and lots of painful experimentation. He hastily blurts out a defense, only half paying attention to what he was saying a he desperately tried to think of a way out of this.

"What are you talking about? Me? Fight? I was hiding in the castle the whole time. And I'm human. Humans can't be ghosts! I'm breathing and everything."

Now, that was the blustering remark of a guilty party. Ray knew - he'd watched Venkman make enough of them. He eyed Danny shrewdly, though not unkindly.

"Hey, it's okay. S'why I wanted to talk to you in private. If somethin's goin' on, I'm not gonna tell anybody. I just wanna help. That ... residual PKE energy you picked up from your folks' stuff ... it's affectin' you, isn't it...?"

"Nothing's going on!" Danny blurts out defensively. He shifts his weight backwards, getting ready to run if this went bad. He didn't know where he could even go, here. But anywhere was better than being dissected. "And I'm fine. All that ever does is set off equipment at weird times."

The ghostbuster held up his hands, his expression a cross between hurt and worried. "Danny ... you can tell me. I don't know what it's gonna take t' convince you, but ... I'm not like the ghost hunters from your dimension. M'not gonna try to tell you what you can or can't do, or think you're inferior ... you're you, and you're my friend, and I ..."

He bit his lip, wishing he knew what to say to convince him that he meant him no harm. "I don't wanna accidentally do something or make something that'd hurt you. I'd feel awful. And the more I understand, the easier it'll be to keep that from happenin'..."

Danny slumps his shoulders as he realizes that Ray wasn't going to drop this. He fights his instinct to run. Disappearing here just meant that he would spend the rest of his life here running and hiding. He had to try talking.

Which might be the craziest thing he'd ever though of doing. INCLUDING that time he'd left to fight the ghost king by himself. What was he thinking? Ghost-hunters never listened to reason. They just accused him of lying and trying to manipulate them.

Ray seemed nice and reasonable. But Danny knew better than to trust in that.

"Sorry, I can't believe that. Just drop it, okay? Forget you ever noticed anything weird. It's better for everyone."

For his part, Ray couldn't understand why Danny was so hell-bent on avoiding him and making him out to be some kind of ghost Hitler or something. He'd been nothing but considerate of him, hadn't he? They'd had a couple of really good conversations about the differences between their worlds ... how his friends were different from the ghost hunters in Danny's dimension - and how barbaric Ray, himself, thought they were. He couldn't really think of any way to convince him any more than that, short of hooking himself up to some kind of lie detector ... and he didn't want Danny to feel like he had to avoid him, either. He liked the kid, he wanted to get to know him more - and help him out if it turned out he needed it. He wanted him to feel like he had a safe place he could go, if necessary ... but more than that, he wanted Danny to know he had a friend he could trust. In a place where you were all alone, in a few senses, that sort of thing was good to have - and invaluable.

He heaved a sigh, staring out at the horizon. "Danny, I ... I just ... I can't, okay? I'm gonna worry about you, regardless of whether you wanna tell me what's going on or not. Because you're my friend."

Ray frowned, rubbing at the back of his neck as he tried to think of something that'd help things click. "I mean ... think about it, yeah? If I really was out to screw you over, I'd say 'sure, I can forget it' and come back later and use this against you somehow, yeah? I mean - I've known my share of slimeballs, and that's how they tend to work."

He turned and fixed his young friend with the most earnest face he had - which was so honest that it probably made George Washington look like Richard Nixon. "What do I hafta do to prove that I'd never do that?"

Danny sighs and rubs one hand roughly over his face. "It isn't you, okay? I mean, it mostly isn't you. I've never told anyone about what happened. And of the people who figured out for themselves? All the adults who ever figured it out have tried to use me. Control me, somehow." He grimaces, remembering what Vlad tried to do to Dani. Just because she hadn't melted like the other clones.

"Every hunter I've ever met would just love to experiment on me. And the only thing stopping them is the fact that they can't catch me. And they don't know my real secret. I've even heard my parents arguing about whether they should try to tear me apart molecule by molecule or experiment on me first." He shrugs uncomfortably. "They don't know it's me they're talking about of course. But they've shot at me before."

"I guess what I'm trying to say is that I don't trust easy. It keeps me alive. Half alive, anyway."

Ray listens to it all patiently, his face furrowed in concern and sympathy... though his eyes widen when Danny mentions his own parents. "Have you tried telling them? Your parents, I mean? I'm sure that'd stop 'em shooting at you, right?"

Right? He's got to be right. He doesn't want to think about what kind of people would dissect their own son.

Danny hesitates and shrugs uncomfortably. "I'd like to believe they'd accept me. But I don't know for sure. I mean, they hate ectoplasmic entities. Maybe they'd decide I was some spirit possessing myself that needed to b destroyed. Maybe they'd decide it was for my own good to try to cure me." He glances away. "Which is a really incredibly bad idea. I can't be cured. This is permanent."

Ray's face is a picture of absolutely genuine shock and sorrow, the moment he hears that. He's got an almost irrepressible urge to hug Danny, but given the current situation, he's pretty sure that wouldn't go so well.

"Oh, Danny, I ... I'm so sorry. That -- that's terrible. How did -- well, I guess what's more important first is what happened?"

"Nothing I can do about it here." He glances away awkwardly, a little uncomfortable with the sympathy. And even more uncomfortable with actually putting his story into words. He'd never tried to explain this to anyone before. Sam and Tuck had been there. Jazz figured it out for herself.

"Accident. It's kind of a long story." He hesitates, trying to figure out the best way to put it. "I guess you could say I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. And by wrong place I mean inside an experimental interdimensional portal as it was boring a hole into the dimension where spirits live." He pauses again uncomfortably. "And I didn't exactly walk back out of it a hundred percent alive. But I didn't die either."

Edited 2011-10-26 21:44 (UTC)

Ray's got enough experience with interdimensional portals to know exactly how dangerous they are, so his face is serious as the grave as he listens to Danny. It would certainly explain what had happened to him - how he could exist in two states of being alternately, and he's almost kicking himself for not having figured it out on his own. But every dimension has its own rules, and he already knew Danny's world was markedly different from his in a number of ways, before this - so he doesn't quite beat himself up over it. Instead, he just nods, solemnly, as he pieces things together.

"So you gained the state of one dimension on top of your current one, and somehow whatever the experiment entailed allows you to switch between dimensional states without actually leaving the dimension you're in? Am I getting that right?"

"Not exactly." Danny shifts his weight nervously. "I mean, yeah, I can shift back and forth. But I'm always a little of both. You saw how I set off your detection stuff, right? That happens all the time. And that's not the only thing."

He frowns Ray. "But you're taking this pretty well. I mean, even my sister spazzed when she found out."

"Well ..." Ray shrugs, apologetically. "This stuff's my life. I've been workin' with dimensional crossrips, spooks, spectres, spirits, demons, possessions, an' paranormal phenomena for over ten years now, f'you count college an' my doctorate on top've the time we've been in business. There's a lot I haven't seen, still, but ... I keep an open mind, no matter what I run into. Y'never know what you can learn from somethin' new." A pause, then he hastily adds, "Without hurtin' it, I mean. That's ... that's not how we work, back home. It's all about non-invasive study, watchin' and askin' questions and learnin' that way."

"So do my parents. The degrees in paranormal science and the years of experience, I mean. Doesn't stop them from thinking that ...things like me are all emotionless monsters that need to be destroyed. Doesn't stop Vlad from being a fruitloop." Danny glances away bitterly. "I'm a freak. I already know it, okay? You don't have to be nice about it."

"Hey, I'm not --" Ray winces, reaching out a hand on instinct, but drawing it back as soon as he realizes that even a friendly gesture like trying to touch his shoulder might make Danny bolt, at this point.

"I don't think you're a freak. And the fact that this upsets you ... that alone proves you're not an emotionless monster, wouldn'cha say? It doesn't matter to me what you are - ghost, human, both - you're still my friend, okay? And ... I'm not gonna let you wall me out like this. Not when there's a chance I might be able to help you. Even if it's only by bein' around when you need me."

He holds out one hand, hopefully. Maybe a handshake will do, rather than the hug he really wants to give him.

"I don't need help." Danny doesn't make a move to take Ray's hand, but the lines of tension in his face and posture begin to relax a little. "There isn't anything anyone could do, anyway." Anyway, not anything without a pricetag that was just too high. If there was one thing he had learned from the past year, it was that any offer of help always came with conditions.

"Why do you care, anyway?"

"'Cuz you're a nice kid, Danny. You don't deserve to go through all that crap." His tone of voice makes it a little clear that he thinks that should be pretty obvious to anyone who's a Decent Person.

"Why shouldn't I care? I'm not heartless or anything. Sheez, you'd have to be ..."

"I'd have to be what?"

"No, no, you as in the rhetorical sense've the word. I was gonna say people in general would --" He coughed, stopping himself. As horrible as they were, he was pretty sure Danny didn't want to hear someone call his parents heartless.

"I told you already. In my world it's completely legal to send any ...spirits off for lots and lots of painful experiments."

It was a rare thing for Ray Stantz to lose his temper, but honestly, he wasn't sure what it was going to take for Danny to believe him, at this rate - if anything at all.

"Listen. Just because it IS legal doesn't mean it SHOULD be. Or that it's normal. I can't stand the thought of people doin' stuff like that to begin with, let alone to a kid like you who hasn't even DONE anything to anyone. I dunno what it's gonna take to convince you that I'm not some money-grubbing, slick-minded sicko out to tear you to pieces, but whatever it is, I sure as heck wish you'd tell me, so I could do it. I'm tryin' to be your friend, and the thought that it's so bad where you've come from that you won't even let me try is ... is ..."

He made a face, turning away for a moment.

"You're a good kid, Danny, but your world is really pissin' me off."

"It isn't that bad," Danny manages, a little taken aback by Ray's anger.

"Isn't it?" He frowns, the anger melting back into his standard forlorn expression. "Did you ever stop and think that maybe it's only 'not that bad' because you were forced t' get used to it? ... You've got the chance to have it pretty good, here, Danno. I ... I guess I just don't get why you aren't taking it."

"I didn't get used to it. That's just how it is. And I was handling it." He makes a face. "Pretty good? Is that what you call it? How could I, when there's no one back home protecting my city?"

Ray thinks about that for a second, looking for something he can use as a talking point - and then it hits him. "Wait ... no one's told you? Time stops at your dimension of origin while you're here."

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not the same ghost I was before (SUPER-backdated)

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oh god it's a trollface icon

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