Ravens Claws

1

…and death made angels of us all, gave us wings were we had shoulders smooth as ravens claws…

It could have been better. Actually, it could have been a lot better. If it had been better, Danny wouldn't be floating twenty feet above the ground, blood dripping from a gash above his right eye and blurring his sight red. If it had been better, Danny wouldn't have been clutching his side against the stitch in it as his chest heaved, his breath burning in his lungs as he tried to catch it, tried to will the fatigue and fear away.

If it had been better.

Instead, it was going very badly, because the blood in his eyes wasn't the only blood he was bleeding, and he knew that something was seriously wrong if his blood was more red then green even while he was in his ghost form. Even worse was the fact that Danny knew winning wasn't going to happen. Not easily, and perhaps not at all.

It was a new ghost, one that he'd never seen before, or even heard of. After all, who would even want to claim the ignoble 'Achmed the Snake' when he wasn't even a bit snakely in the least? Strange, very talented with the pain giving, but not serpentine at all. Instead this ghost darted around like a damned mosquito refusing to be swat, swathed in veils and the like so that no skin showed, only glowing and glittering red eyes.

He was thin, whipcord thin and strong, with strange delicate strong hands that could send slicing energy inches into flesh. It was what had Danny bleeding, that particular attack, and the reason why his world was colored through blood shaded glasses. Worse than that was the fact that he seemed to know exactly what Danny was going to do before Danny had even figured it out for himself. The other reason the battle was going so badly.

Danny blinked and tried rubbing the blood from his face, ignoring the bright red stain on his glove as it blended with other stains, red, black and sooty. Achmed the damned Snake had disappeared again, he realized with a weary glance around. He'd done that periodically, phasing in and out of visibility. Danny assumed it was so that he could have a few minutes to regroup, charge up his energy so that he could continue beating the hell out of the younger ghost.

It was a tactic that Danny couldn't afford to use; the moment he disappeared from view the rest of the town was left open to attack. No, he had no choice but to keep the rampaging spirit's attentions, no matter what the cost. If only he hadn't left home without a thermos that morning. It was a rueful thing to think, he knew, and was why Sam and Tucker were hopefully on their way back from his house with one.

Habitually one of the three had a thermos on or nearby their person, but for some reason it hadn't been the case that day. It was because of the heavy workload. It had to be. All three were wearing under the strain of it. With exams less than a month away, Team Phantom was preparing for them and anticipating the transition of junior class member to senior class member. Well, one was preparing, the other two were rushing around like chickens with their heads cut off and alternately studying and praying that they didn't fail.

"Where are you guys?" Danny whispered to himself as he shot another glance around, this one much closer to frantic as the tail end of his question turned into a muffled curse as he ducked forward, the ground looming dangerously near as he tried to avoid the slicing energy that flew past where he had just been.

The next attack didn't miss, and Danny bit back a scream as energy slashed across the top of his left forearm making everything below it suddenly limp and numb. A better alternative to the searing pain that Danny knew should have been there; logic only dictated when something was cut to the bone that it should hurt. But it didn't, and Danny spared no attention to wonder that his arm was sliced in half with blood flowing freely as he ducked and dodged again.

The dodge took him into the ground and he grunted with the impact, vision going hazy and gray for a moment before he pulled himself to his knees with a grown. Danny winced as he felt the abrasions along the side of his face making themselves known with the angry sting that only layers of removed skin can do, and pushed back up from the ground with an unsteady leap into the air.

"Danny!" The yell came from behind him and Danny turned in midair, automatically ducking the ghost of Achmed the Snake as he swept past, and then reflexively catching the thermos that Tucker was throwing up at him, shoving it under the arm that didn't want to work properly from the elbow down and uncapping it with a smooth and practiced ease with his undamaged hand.

There, Danny thought as the blue vortex caught the tail end of the ghost's body and began tugging it inexorably closer. And then it happened.

He didn't miss the whiplash motion of Achmed the Snake's arm, the way his thin knife like hand cut through the air and created a blurred attack of condensed energy. And Danny didn't miss what it was aimed at. No, not what. Who. The ghost had aimed at Sam and Tucker, knowing that it wasn't Danny who had beaten him, but the friends that had been two steps behind him the entire time.

The flash of a dark grin caught Danny's eye before he dropped the thermos to the ground, not even noticing when it finished drinking the ghost in and shut itself off with a faint whir and click. No, Danny was already flying for his friends, one arm stretched out to try and shove them out of the way, grab them, save them, the other tucked up to his chest uselessly as he ignored the lack of sensation and tried to be more aerodynamic.

But Danny knew that he wasn't going to make it. He could tell, he could see. He was only barely in front of the curving blade of ectoenergy, and there wasn't enough room for him to beat it out enough to even push Sam and Tucker out of the way. No. The blood in his eyes, the pain in his side, the aching numbness where he knew he should be in agony from the wounded arm…

None of it compared to the way his heart felt as he realized he was about to lose his two best friends, one of them whom he happened to love more than his own life.

It's strange, the things a person will realize when they're face with mortality, whether it's their own or someone else's. Some people will have the infamous flashing of their life before their eyes, others will picture the things that could have been, would have been, should have been. And now never will. But for Danny it was the crystal clarity that he couldn't allow his friends to die, the sudden knowledge that the world would be meaningless without both of them in it, and most especially her.

Clueless certainly had new meaning to him, and Danny forced his eyes to Sam's wide violet ones as he realized that there was only one real solution to the problem. And apparently, so did she.

Without a second thought, a hesitation in the least, Danny threw his body sideways in the air just in front of the massive attack that would have sliced clean through his friends within moments if he hadn't. It hurt. It hurt, and the pain was a thousand times worse than anything he'd ever felt before except for the day he'd lost half of his life when he'd stepped into his parent's ghost portal and turned it on.

So this is what it feels like to die.

Slowly the pain began to recede. The light followed, and the echoing sounds of sobbing disappeared too. And just before everything melted from gray to black, Danny made his peace with the world.

---

"It's been two days," Sam said listlessly from where she sat on her bed. Tucker was idly spinning on her desk chair, pushing off and lifting his feet up to let fly until the inertia died and he was still again. "If he were okay he would have contacted us by now."

Tucker stilled his newest spin with a loud dragging of his feet against the floor. "I think we both know that he's not okay."

"He's not dead," she whispered sharply, eyes burning. "We'd know if he was dead," this fainter than before as the tears began to flow. The bed tilted suddenly and she found two warm arms wrapped around her; Tucker pulling her close and letting her bury her face against his shoulder as she cried.

"It's alright, Sam," he said evenly, loud enough for her to hear but not much louder than that. "You're right. We'd know."

But Tucker knew that they didn't know. He had suspicions, but no concrete evidence. There'd just been too much blood after Danny had disappeared in the flash of blindingly white light. Too much blood, and he'd seen the desperate fear on his best friend's face as he'd looked to Sam and Tucker, both. He'd seen the resignation as brilliant green eyes shifted from both to just one, and had known the second that Danny had looked at Sam, only Sam, that Danny had made the decision to sacrifice himself to save her.

To save them both, he knew, but more Sam than Tucker. It was something he could live with; he knew what it was like to love someone and not be able to tell them. Of course, for Tucker it was fear from the wrath of his best friend, rather than rejection.

He figured that would come quickly enough if ever he lost the fear of Danny murdering him slowly and painfully and leaving his body somewhere public in a humiliating position.

"Jazz knows something's up," Sam whispered as she pulled away, wiping at her face and cheeks with a hand. Tucker shrugged. "We need to tell her, don't we?"

Again Tucker shrugged, the wheels in his head turning. "No. Not yet. The weekend is in two days. We'll go see Clockwork Friday night and get some answers, okay?"

"That's still two nights away, Tuck," Sam said, though her eyes were noticeably brighter as she realized that answers could be found, that she—they—wouldn't hang in a limbo of uncertainty forever. But her face fell suddenly enough that Tucker stiffened with fear. "We don't know how to get to Clockwork's castle."

At that, Tucker could only smile. "Don't worry, Sam. I can get us there."

Sam nodded, letting his conviction wash over her. "Okay. I trust you, Tucker." And for all of it, Tucker could only hope that her trust wasn't misplaced.

---

The only thing that Danny noticed when he woke up was that it was too bright. Really too bright, and he shut his eyes again quickly as he rubbed at them, feeling like there was something wrong with them and at the same time finding nothing. They were just too sensitive. It was still too bright when Danny tried opening his eyes again, cracking them ever so slightly until he could look around without them watering.

It was white. Blindingly white, as far as he could see, and he had to squash the urge to touch the ground beneath his feet to feel if it were snow or ice. He already knew it wasn't. He'd seen snow and ice too many times before to mistake this, whatever it was, for that. It lacked the sheen, the glittering cold of it. Hell, he'd made snow and ice often enough since uncovering the source of his ghost sense at the beginning of sophomore year.

More than a year ago, thought absently as he brushed his hair out of his eyes and looked around again.

That was when he noticed that he'd used his left arm to brush the hair away. His left arm, the arm that should have been gashed, bleeding, numb, or rather in agony. He stared at it. It was perfect, whole, untouched. Like Achmed the Snake had never harmed him. With startled eyes Danny tugged up his shirt to see if the bloody abrasions he expected along his side were there.

Finding nothing he ran careful, frightened fingers across his forehead and right eyebrow. Nothing. Nothing was there. No cut, no blood, hell, his fingernails looked like someone had tugged them off, scrubbed him down with some bleach, and then snapped them back into place as a matter of course.

Danny was still staring transfixed at the clean skin of his arm, feeling the smooth and unblemished slope over his eye, when he heard the footsteps behind him. He jerked around, too unnerved to even consider going ghost as he instinctively let his ghost powers pool into the fingertips of his right hand. And then watched as they flickered and fizzled out at a casual wave of from the hand of the newcomer.

"Who are you?" Danny asked, taking a step back. Another step, and he was demanding, "Where the hell am I?"

"Yes, well," the new figure said as it seemed to solidify into form. A man, then, with longish hair that seemed to waver between true brown and a messy mix of brown and blond. His eyes were green, a steady clear color that seemed to go on forever, and he was dressed in khaki colored pants and a plain white tee-shirt. And he was barefoot.

Danny blinked at that, taking his tongue firmly between his teeth before he could start bursting out the dozens of questions he had, like where his wounds were, and why wasn't he in his ghost form, and how on earth was any place this unendingly white?

"Daniel Fenton," the man said. "Right on time." He jerked his hand up to forestall the thought in Danny's mind, saying, "I know, don't call you Daniel. Danny it is, and this," he gestured expansively around, "is not hell."

Danny had about two seconds to wonder how the man knew his name, and how he had known that Danny was going to instruct him never to call him Daniel. And why he'd said this wasn't hell. Then the strange man was saying, "I'm Aziraphale, Danny, and welcome home," as a set of great feathered wings unfurled behind him, moving gently as the man—Aziraphale—took a step toward Danny.

Danny didn't need another two seconds before his eyes were rolling up inside his head, and he passed out cold at the Gates of Heaven.