Sky Full of Stars

Fans of FiveRivers might notice that I was inspired by her work. I can't quite tell myself, but I might have mimicked her style.

Reviews are appreciated (this is the first Danny Phantom story I've published).

Danny hovered high in the air. High enough that it almost felt like he was surrounded on all sides by the sky. All it took was a few minutes, a few miles, and he was far enough from the city to see the night sky in all of its glory.

It was a sky full of stars. Just utterly full of them. It was spectacular, amazing, ebullient.

He could remember when he first saw the sky like that. It was shortly after he had really gotten into astronomy around the age of seven. His parents were excited he was so passionate about something. They brought him onto one of their stakeouts. While they watched for La Llorona, Danny watched the sky.

Watching the stars now, he could remember that night very well. He could remember his obsession with everything space related.

It was a bit funny to think about now that he had a true Obsession.

The stars and their secrets were far below his highest priorities now. He had a town to protect, family and friends to spend time with, a Ghost Zone to explore. But it said something that he still made time to come out here from time to time. Even on hard nights, especially on hard nights, he still came to stare. He knew it wasn't an obsession anymore, it wasn't even much more than a very distant dream. There was no way he could work up his grades to be an astronaut, and he doubted he could stay away from Amity Park for long anyway. He had a calling now, and it wasn't the stars.

The stars were still so important to him though. He didn't even need to ask Jazz why.

When Danny had first started fighting ghosts, his Obsession had kind of caught him off guard. He had never been very obsessed with anything before the Accident except the stars. And, in all honesty, he hadn't been very dedicated to space aside from looking at it. Even before the Accident, his grades would have been lucky to get him as a janitor at NASA. That was when he realized the true difference between what he was and what he had been, who he was and who he had been.

Danny really was a hero, someone who wanted to help everyone he could. He sometimes wanted to help people he couldn't, but he always tried. It was all a big bundle of need, love, worry, fear, and will. It was a fire that fueled him.

It had always fueled him, but never quite so literally.

But his love of space was nothing like that. It was calmer, more wondrous. It was a soup of dreams, desire, and hope. It was ineradicable, permanent, always there because the stars would always be there. (They didn't need to be saved or helped. They wouldn't betray him or hurt him.) But above all it was hope. It wasn't a fire. It was the wood and breath that kept the fire burning.

It was a symbol of his humanity.

Danny cherished the stars. They reminded him of who had been when he was fully human. They reminded him that he was hardly any different now as a half ghost. They reminded him that there was always hope. Wanting to help was hard sometimes. There were so many dangerous things in the world, dangerous people, dangerous ghosts. The stars helped him to stop and think, to realize that not everything ended in hurt and disaster. Without them, Danny sometimes wondered if he would have been even more tense and anxious than he already was. He wondered if he would have done something too drastic to keep everyone safe, particularly on those long nights when it felt like the world was against him. (He wondered if Dan had stopped looking at the stars in order to do all the awful things he had done. He wondered if Dan sometimes imagined stars in the pitch black of the Fenton thermos, hidden away in the depths of Clockwork's lair . . .)

Because now he knew where he was going, and the stars lit up the path, making it brighter than it might have been.