Hey everyone! This is my first fanfic. Sorry if it's kinda short. Please review!
-Flaming Water
Chapter 1- Back
His ghostly wail drained all of his power. Dazed, he fell to his knees and changed back, into a human. A weak, helpless, out of breath human. He struggled to stand. Then he remembered them. He took a few staggering steps, and began to sprint back to where they were. A ring of blindingly white light appeared around his waist. It started to split into two, but fizzled out, as he didn't have the energy to complete that transformation into his ghost half.
"No!" he cried, lunging forward in one final desperate attempt to rescue them. Horrified blue eyes looked up for the last time at his friends, family, and teacher. Their wide, terrified eyes stared down at him. A split second later, they were gone, consumed in the explosion that took their lives as easily as one snuffs a candle.
He was thrown back from the sheer force of it. As before he lost consciousness, one word circled endlessly around his mind.
No.
--
High above Amity Park, a ghost floated.
He pushed his shaggy silver hair from his forehead in an almost automatic gesture. His sharp, unnaturally green eyes scrutinized the town. Here he was, 10 years later, drifting above the place where his life had, effectively, ended his life.
Not literally, of course, at least not half of it. Technically, he was half dead.
Might as well have been wholly dead, he thought, the way my life's gone.
He quickly pulled his mind back to the present. He usually tried not to think about that, as it led to far more painful remembrances.
Why had he come back here? Had his past 10 years' wanderings come full circle? Every molecule of his being was screaming for him to fly away from this place as fast as he could.
Why leave? You should stay a while.
Hmmm.
It wasn't the nightmare he had seen in a slightly different future. Nothing had changed much, actually. There was a small memorial where they had… they had…
Say it.
Where they had…
He gritted his teeth.
…passed. There. Happy now?
No.
That simple statement brought with it a fresh wave of memories, causing him to reel back, as though he had been slapped. T
hey were overwhelming. He fought them away, enough that he could think clearly.
Why not? He could stay. But where? Surely his old place was occupied by someone else now.
He slowly descended invisible and intangible, just in case.
Just in case of what? I guess old habits die hard, he mentally chuckled.
Laughing? Now that's something you haven't done in a while. A long time, a decade in fact.
Shut up, he thought. Wait- shut up, what?
Shut up, what indeed.
He had known that this town would get to him, but he had imagined it in the opposite way.
Drifting down towards FentonWorks, he realized that the large sign proclaiming it to be the abode of the Fentons was still in place, as well as the OpsCenter.
What?
He phased through the roof, landing in the kitchen. Everything looked the same, albeit coated in a thick layer of dust. Not thinking, he walked over to the freezer and opened it. In the freezer were a few freezerburned casseroles next to some ecto-residue samples.
Confused, he leapt up through the ceiling, into his room.
It was just as he had left it, that morning. NASA posters on the walls, model rocket hanging from the ceiling. The stereo next to a few Dumpty Humpty CDs. The bed, unmade.
They left and never came back, as did you. You have to accept this.
No, I don't want to!
He searched frantically in his mind for something else to think about.
The basement!
He quickly went intangible and dove through the floors, all the while thinking,
The ghost portal! What if something got out?
When he phased through the ceiling of the lab, he let out his breath, realizing that he had been holding it. The familiar yellow and black doors of the portal were shut, and firmly bolted. Jazz must have locked it before she left.
Jazz.
Just accept it already. She's gone. They're all gone.
He didn't want to face it.
But you have to.
He flew back up into his room. He walked over to his bedside table and picked up the picture sitting there, taken a decade ago, they were 14.
Him, Sam, Tucker. They had been his best friends.
And he would never see them again. I
t wasn't entirely your fault. They wouldn't want you to go on denying it.
They wouldn't…
When I look in the mirror
a stranger's who I see.
Why would my own reflection
show someone other than me?
Aren't we quite the poet? he thought.
I try.
What am I doing? he asked himself. Talking to the voice in my head? I'm going nuts.
Of course you are.
When I look in the mirror…
A thought struck him. He ran down the hall to the bathroom. There was a full length mirror in there. Jazz used it.
She used to.
He turned the corner, into the bathroom and stopped. He gasped. How long had it been since he had last looked in a mirror?
10 years, same has the time since you last laughed.
A man with unruly silver hair and ectoplasmic green eyes stared at him from the mirror. He was tall and kind of tan. The HAZMAT suit hadn't changed, black with silver boots, gloves, belt, and the DP logo on his chest. Through the suit he could see that he had a lean figure, with corded muscle running up his arms, legs, chest.
Jeez. Has it really been that long?
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
Am I really ready for this?
Yes.
A brightly shining ring appeared around his waist, then split into two spectral rings that traveled in opposite directions, one up towards his head, the other down towards the ground. He felt a tingly feeling as they passed, then dissipated.
He gazed at the self he hadn't been in a decade. Messy raven hair and icy blue eyes. He wore blue jeans, sneakers, and a white t-shirt with a red oval in the middle. His clothes were ripped, torn, and dirty from the explosion.
He stared at himself for a while, then took his time on the walk back from the bathroom. When he reached his room, he suddenly ran to his bed and threw himself onto it. As he drifted off into sleep, he smiled.
Fenton or Phantom, Danny was back.