The lab smelled like home, even if it currently stank of cleaning chemicals. Alarms sounded the second they soared through the portal to the Ghost Zone. Danny's smile was enormous and Kwan knew his face mirrored that expression. They were home.

Kwan had only been inside the Fenton basement once in his life, when he had received the hazmat-suit from Danny the day the adults got kidnapped. All he remembered was that it smelled strongly of chemicals, it was big and filled with a supernatural green glow thanks to the many beakers of ectoplasm littering a few desks.

Now, the basement was even bigger but the lighting was better. The smell had stayed the same, though. Gym equipment was stowed away in a part of the basement and Kwan spotted not one but two entrances to the basement. He dimly recalled Danny telling him that his parents had bought the house next door and moved out, leaving Fentonworks in Danny's hands. They must have used that extra ground to expand the basement, then, but he knew the Fentons. They wouldn't give up their life's work that easily, so the laboratory probably still belonged to them.

Whatever legal tangle that entailed, all it meant was that Sam came storming down the stairs in her pajamas from the entrance leading up to Fentonworks. She aimed a Fenton thermos at them as she took the last few steps.

Danny set them down on the floor and let go of Kwan. Phantom held his hands in front of him in a placating fashion.

"Hey, Sam," he said, still with a smile on his face. "We're back," he continued. Sam still held the Thermos in front of her, her sleep-crusted eyes flitting from Danny to Kwan and back.

"If you're really Danny, what's the password?"

Danny looked confused for a second. He hovered two inches above the ground, the grin fading from his face. "Password? We've never talked about a password... I mean, we have a cool handshake, but that's about... Wait, are you talking about my specific attack?"

Sam didn't say anything. Danny backed up a bit and clenched his fist. When he opened it a small icicle rested in it. Sam's eyes softened the slightest bit. Next, Danny threw it into the air and shattered it with a pulse of his Ghostly Wail, the brief spike of energy setting off another alarm.

When Danny finally settled down and let the two rings pass over his body, Sam lowered the Thermos. She let it clatter to the ground as she rushed towards him. Kwan discretely looked away as husband and wife reunited with each other.

The laboratory somehow suited Danny. Kwan guessed that he spent a lot of time here. Danny's handwriting adorned post-its on various items and a few pictures of him, Sam, Tucker, Danny's family and combinations of all those people were scattered across the desks. A few beakers filled with globs were safely tucked behind a ghost shield. One of them had red eyes and stared straight at Kwan. So that one was evolving, then. Probably why there was a laptop wired up to the ghost shield, showing a read-out Kwan couldn't decipher at this distance.

When Kwan looked back over to Danny and Sam, they were still lip-locked. He coughed into his fist to break them up, they still had business to attend to after all. Sam pulled away first, and Danny reluctantly let go of his wife. Something hit her then, because she gasped.

"Danny! Does he-"

"Yes, he knows I'm Phantom. He took it really well, actually."

Kwan didn't know what to say to that so he pointed at the ghost shield. "Thanks, I guess, but first, we have to put that human-ghost shield around the station."

That remark made Danny spring back into action. He transformed into his more ethereal form and grabbed a carefully labeled device from a shelf. The shelves looked well-organized and orderly, every loose item stuffed into a box and labeled. Here and there were traces of a less-organized person trying to adhere to the same system, but the large effect was one of orderliness.

"Be right back," Danny said. Sam harrumphed and crossed her arms.

"That's what you said last time."

Danny hesitated for a second before he flew into the glowing green portal to the Ghost Zone, leaving his wife without a reply. And Kwan alone with Sam.

The feisty girl he'd known from high school had grown into, well, a feisty woman. Since they had woken her up she lacked the bold make-up she used to wear and maybe still wore, but her hair was still dyed jet-black. She had grown it out a bit, cut into a better fit for her face than a ponytail atop her head. Her pajama spoke of her love for all things dark and gothic (but still practical). It was basically a wide t-shirt with pajama bottoms, but both were blood-red with a black trim. Kwan spotted a small band logo on her shirt, but he couldn't make out what band it was.

With her bare feet and the Fenton thermos holder strapped over her shoulder she looked like a weird combination of pre-coffee person and warrior princess. As she talked to him, she smoothed her hair over so strands of it didn't stick out so much anymore.

"What in the hell happened out there? I suddenly got a call from NASA, telling me that there was a problem with the station. They told me that they had lost contact, but Tucker found out that the whole station had vanished. So, what gives?"

Kwan knew he'd have to tell this story again and again over the next few weeks, months maybe. But he could tell the truth to Phantom's wife.

"Technus attacked, Danny pushed us into the Ghost Zone, we created an engine from parts all over various dimensions and made our way back, taking the station with us."

That pretty much covered it, Kwan thought to himself. Sam looked over to the portal. "So the station is just outside?"

Kwan nodded. "Danny's securing it with a, a human-ghost portal he called it. Oh, and congrats on marrying Phantom, by the way."

Ah, and there was the protective streak Kwan recognized from his high-school days. Sam stood up for whoever she wanted, whether it be herself, her friends, a sack of flour or even a ghost. The woman stared straight into Kwan's eyes, a dangerous expression on her face. She looked like she was ready to use the thermos on him, had it worked on humans. As it was, she took a few steps closer and Kwan realized that Sam hadn't grown much in the years they hadn't seen each other, because he towered over her like he had always done.

"I don't know how or when you found out, but trust me - you don't want to tell anyone else. It's his secret, and his alone, and he's the only one who gets to out him when he thinks the time is right. And right now, he enjoys being an astronaut. So I will come after you if you tell anyone."

Kwan held his hands up in defense, but couldn't help but narrow his eyes at her in return. "Sam, I'm not going to talk. I respect him too much for that, and who would believe me without proof? I'm not the high school jock you remember me as. We've been through a lot, and I thank you to keep that in mind when you threaten me. Hell, I even let him overshadow me, how much more trusting can you get? When Danny thinks the time is right, he will tell the world."

"You're right, I will," Danny's voice drifted over to them from behind. Both of them turned to him and watched as Danny put down the device powering the human-ghost shield. A flickering ray of energy trailed from it, disappearing into the whorls of the portal. "But I'm not ready. Thanks, Kwan."

"Did you have any doubt I was going to tell anyone?" Kwan wanted to know. Danny smiled at him, transforming back into his human form. He pulled a hand through his hair and had trouble getting it out, his hair was all knotted up thanks to all the flying and fighting he had done over the past week. But he kept talking as he untangled his hand.

"Nah, I mean, we did a joined overshadowing. I could pretty much look into your brain."

Kwan chuckled awkwardly at that. He hadn't been able to look into Danny's brain. He let it go for now, focusing on the situation at hand.

"The station is secure?" At Danny's nod Kwan looked over at Sam. "Think you can help us figure out what we're going to tell NASA?"

Danny and Sam both laughed. "We're going to have to come up with a pretty damn good story to tell them, because a cross-Ghost Zone trip probably won't cut it," Danny said. Kwan shrugged.

"We don't have to tell them we visited different dimensions... or our future... or the past..." Kwan continued, and Sam appeared more and more interested the more details they talked about.

"Sounds like you two had a hell of an adventure," Sam said. Danny and Kwan looked at each other.

"Yeah, we did. And truth be told, it was fantastic," Kwan said with a huge grin on his face.

Kwan hummed softly to himself as he eyed the plate of cookies on the table. Danny was in the kitchen of Fentonworks, making tea or coffee, Kwan was not sure.

NASA was ecstatic that the space station had returned, even if it was currently located in another dimension. Kwan heard one tech weep with joy, but he's not sure whether that was because the astronauts had returned, or if he was so happy that the specific laptop he had designed for space (and was in the process of being tested by Kwan) had come back to its inventor. He tried not to dwell on that.

"How's Sam?" Kwan asked, talking a bit louder to be heard in the kitchen from the living room.

"She's fine," Danny said while moving closer with a tray beverages. He appeared in the doorway and set the tray down on the table before plopping down on the couch next to Kwan. "She barely lets me out of the house, to be honest. I pretty much have to beg her to let me go ghost hunting, she's afraid that I'll disappear again. Even if she won't put it like that. It'll wear off soon, Sam's too tough for that."

Kwan chuckled. His own fiancée was clingy as well, to the point where he had to sneak out of the house to meet Danny (leaving a note behind, because he didn't like sleeping on the couch) while she was taking a bath. In his case, he knew it'd be a while before she trusted that he'd come home again.

"I hear you," he said. He took his cup of coffee from the tray and blew on it. Danny did the same and they remained silent for a bit, relaxing in each other's company. Kwan never thought he'd be able to sit in Phantom's home, or even think about the home of a ghost. NASA paid their astronauts well, but Kwan knew that if Danny chose to make ghost hunting his official profession, they could still afford Fentonworks on Sam's salary as an environmental lawyer. Besides, no one in their right mind would want to buy a house with a portal dimension in the basement.

"How's Fred?" Danny asked, a bit in jest. Kwan grinned, peeking over his cup at Danny.

"Still berating me for losing his other laptop," he said. Danny laughed.

"I think it's floating somewhere between Technus' failed two satellites."

NASA was halfway through fixing the international space station. Kwan was here on half-official business, acting as a buffer between Danny and NASA's inquiries.

Kwan had never appreciated Danny's talent to lie more than when they had to explain what had happened to the billions of dollars of development and materials they had dragged with them through a hostile environment. The official version was that nothing had happened, the communication system had simply malfunctioned. The version spun for NASA's ears was that Technus had created a wormhole to steal the satellite, but Danny and Kwan had fought him off with the ectoplasm experiments on board the station. Then, using the weird property of Earth items floating inside the Ghost Zone, had propelled it through the Ghost Zone using nothing but a rudder and the thrusters powered by the ecto-converter. A helpful Danny Phantom had helped them on the last stretch of their journey, guiding them to the portal and then they had secured it with a human-ghost shield.

It turned out that besides Kwan there was one other person who knew that Danny was Phantom: their direct supervisor. She helped them spin the true tale into one that was outlandish enough to be believable, while still giving enough detail that it seemed like the truth.

"She's the one who recruited me," Danny said when Kwan had questioned how the woman knew, immediately after she'd debriefed them. "She approached me while I was Phantom and offered me the job." Danny scratched behind his ear as he spoke. "I'd gotten job offers before, most of them dealing with rather illegal requirements."

"What, fly into a bank safe and steal all the jewelry?" Kwan asked, a bit in jest. But then again, intangibility lent itself well to stealing, he'd experienced it firsthand.

"Among others, yes. Murder, spying, the usual. Human nature, sometimes..." Danny sighed. "I mean, I'm one of the good guys. I don't get why people would think I'd kill someone when I spend so much time defending everything and everyone."

"Yeah," Kwan countered, "but you've got power. People like that. So, what made you decide to tell her?"

Danny shrugged. "Hard to tell. She liked me for who I was, she believed in me while there were still many people with doubts. She helped me study and become a proper astronaut, instead of a ghost astronaut only selected because I couldn't be killed and had oodles of ectoplasm to spare." Danny looked a bit sheepish and Kwan knew that Danny had done something stupid or silly while studying. He remained the geek Kwan knew and could not relate to in high school.

"Technus got me with some kind of disruptor ray based on the Plasmius Maximus that day. Basically, it shorted out my powers for short periods of time... starting three hours from the point where I got zapped. I was nose-deep in the manual for the comms array and all of a sudden I changed back."

"And that's when she offered to train you for real?"

Danny shook his head. "No, that's when she refused to believe me when I said I was the true Danny Phantom and not a shape shifting ghost. I could've used that as an out... but I didn't. I wanted to become a human astronaut, not a ghostly one. So she helped me make that dream real."

Kwan and Danny told her the truth about their journey. She gave them a severe dressing down, but ultimately ended with "good job, now scram while I try to create a report about this without giving away Danny's second half."

They both agreed that she was more than capable of doing that. They talked some more about the new crew that was going to go to the station after them, but finally Kwan headed home to his angry fiancée with the knowledge that even the mighty Phantom had a wife who could make him sleep on the couch.

Kwan watched the monitors with bated breath. 'Someone' in NASA 'just so happened' to run into Danny Phantom and was 'able to convince him' to push the space station through a rip in the Ghost Zone, back into orbit.

It was unnerving to have Fenton standing by his side, intently studying the monitors while the original Phantom worked hard out there, pushing the entire station. Kwan noticed that Fenton acted dazed, so he covered for him as best as he could, answering questions for him, drawing attention away from the way Fenton swayed on his feet.

Danny had said that transporting a station took a tremendous amount of effort and Kwan expected the duplicate to disappear any second now. He and his superior had worked out a plan if that happened, but then the swirling green rip in the space-time continuum disappeared and Fenton began to smile and move a bit. The hard part was over, now Danny had to maneuver it into proper orbit, guided by the calculations of the NASA nerds, as Kwan mentally called them.

It had taken some convincing to get the approval from the office of the administrator to get a ghost to help them. Kwan and his supervisor didn't have to campaign as hard as they had feared - a lot of engineers had helped on the 'turn the entire Earth intangible' project - so they trusted the famous specter. It took another visit to Doctor Wort to finish the calculations where the proper leyline lay to move the space station into space and not accidentally into another dimension. Once they had calculated that using Doctor Wort's equations, all Phantom needed to do was physically push the portal through the rip.

"We should recruit him," one of the engineers lamented. Kwan suppressed a grin at that remark. They had recruited Phantom, and trained him, in secret.

On the monitors Danny stretched luxuriously when he got the green light from the orbit crew that the station was in its proper position. He thanked them for trusting him with the station before he hurled himself towards the Earth. Kwan felt a pang of jealousy that Danny was able to experience re-entry without a metal shell protecting him. It had to be exhilarating to see the continents move closer, to break through the clouds and watch the curvature of the Earth fade into a seemingly horizontal line.

The engineers burst into applause and Kwan and Fenton joined them. They got to go up again soon and finish what they had started.

It was night time inside the ISS for Danny and Kwan. Their bodies snugly fit inside their sleeping strapped to the wall. It felt good to be back inside the International Space Station, finishing up their mission and paving the way for the new astronauts to take over the ecto-converter and the various ectoplasm-based experiments. The first order of business had been installing a ghost shield.

Danny appeared to be fast asleep, but despite his exhaustion Kwan couldn't join him in the dreamscape. Snippets from their adventure inside the Ghost Zone kept popping up, from the look of a girl in future Australia to the feeling of flying. Especially that last one stayed with him for a long time. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad to become a ghost after death if the trade-off was flying. As long as he could stave off the urge to scare people. Which he probably couldn't, since even as a half-ghost Danny succumbed to that craving.

Without even bothering to check if Kwan was awake, Danny suddenly started talking. It wasn't the slurred speech of sleep. Blue eyes looked at him with clarity in them as Danny began to talk.

"It happened when I was fourteen. The accident which turned me into a half-ghost. Me, Sam and Tucker, I'm sure you remember him, we all went downstairs into my parent's lab…"

And slowly, as the Earth revolved underneath them and they were caught in the endless night of space, Danny told Kwan the true story of Danny Phantom. He painted the pictures so vividly Kwan could see them in his mind. The terror of discovery, the exhilaration of flying, the first fight, the hopelessness of defeating Vlad Masters, it all flowed from Danny's mouth into Kwan's eager ears.

And while the Earth kept revolving, the night of space seemed a little less dark. Kwan realized he'd just made a new best friend.

The End

Thank you if you've reviewed, favorited or just read the story (and hopefully enjoyed it if you've read it to the end). Special thanks to MsFrizzle, Lynse and Fluehatraya for helping out with any awkward sentences and leaving such insightful reviews. All of you, keep on rocking and see you in the next fic!