Maddie Fenton was tired. She hadn't been able to fall asleep until three A.M. the last morning and was now up again a measly four hours later, working on a majorly flawed ghost gun that refused to calibrate to harm only ghosts and had given Jack a nasty burn/bullet wound on his left arm that had left him bedridden. That wasn't why she was up early, though.

Maddie had woken up early in order to make sure her son, Danny, was off to school on time. She had been doing that a lot lately, yet he always seemed to be intercepted somewhere between home and school no matter how early he left. Not even that was why she was tired, though, not really. Maddie was tired of the façade of... normalness. She was tired of pretending that her family didn't have problems. Tired of watching ghosts slowly ripping her family apart (it seemed she couldn't see that it was her and her husband's obsession with ghosts that was doing that, and not the ghosts themselves, well unless you count Vlad, but she had even less of an idea about that...). She was tired of the most evil of those ectoplasmic entities that traipsed around their town like he belonged here, Danny Phantom. Yet, these were all minor, because most of all she was tired of the hiding and the lies. The deceit and the distrust. The nervous glances and lack of eye contact. The bad grades and ditching classes. The truth of the matter was that she was tired of her son and his irresponsible immature behavior.

Maddie realized he must have gotten it from his father, but even Jack knew when to stop and be serious. Danny very obviously didn't. The school was constantly calling and sending letters about his failing grades, and he was in serious danger of flunking the tenth grade. For God's sake, he had a one point eight grade point average! A 1.8! He shamelessly falls asleep in class if he bothers to show up at all and always gets home after curfew. No matter what punishment they dished out, he continued to disobey them, and he always was sneaking out even when he was grounded. Despite all this, Maddie had only come to the point of these desperate thoughts and revelations that very morning...


"Daniel James Fenton!" The day had started just like any other, with a call from some enraged authority figure ranting on about Danny's misbehavior. This time it was the hospital. Apparently, the night before, a roughly fourteen to fifteen years old dark haired white male had been found, unconscious, in a pile of debris from a building that collapsed in on itself during a ghost fight... at one in the morning. The child was rushed to emergency care, but even though the paramedic had sworn he had seen part of a bone poking out of the adolescent's arm just above the elbow, and had in fact been treating it on the way to the hospital, there was no proof that the bone had been broken recently. There was a hairline crack apparent in the X-rays, but that was nothing of concern. The more major problem came from the fact the boy was in low hypothermic temperatures. All attempts to heat him up from his frigid temperatures only seemed to make things worse. He had no form of ID on him, not surprising since he was only a kid.

Later that day, the nurses came to check on him, only to find him to be gone, the room trashed, and the security cameras to have fried circuits. Even later, upon watching the rolls of film that caught the boy being wheeled into the room, one of the nurses who happened to be passing by at that very moment (because that's just Danny's luck) would say,

"I know that boy!"

She recognized the ghost hunters' son from a ghost attack at the park. A horrible ghost had appeared out of nowhere firing glowing green blasts. One would have hit her son where he was playing in a sandbox, but something, or rather someone, threw himself in front of him, taking the full impact of the blast. The young man had then gotten up and quickly grabbed her crying boy and ran him into her arms. She couldn't even thank him before he was hit by another green blast and went flying into the bushes. It was only then that Danny Phantom showed up and took care of the ghost.

She would have gone to help the boy, but the fight was short and it was only a moment before a large white and green RV had rolled up and began shooting at the Phantom who quickly disappeared. Out of the RV came two people clad in bright jumpsuits, who the woman, and the rest of the town, knew to be the Fentons. The ghost hunters looked around and seemed to notice a certain two people in the crowd.

"Sam! Tucker!... Where's Danny?" The woman asked the two teenagers, although something in the way she said it suggested that it was more of a demand than a question.

From behind the nurse, there came a resigned call of, "Right here, mom." The boy that had possibly saved her son's life walked up to the hunters, dirty skid marks from being thrown across the ground etched into his shirt.

"Daniel! You know you're grounded! Coming to the park with your friends was incredibly disrespectful!" Mrs. Fenton then pushed the boy into the RV and they were off before the nurse could even think to thank the boy for what he had done. On the other hand, she did wonder how Mrs. Fenton had not seemed to notice the large scrape on the boy's arm from the same origins of the large skid mark on his shirt...

That had been months ago, but something like that was not something a mother was going to forget anytime quickly. So she was able to identify the boy as one Daniel Fenton. To be fair to her, it was an identification Mayor Masters would have just as easily made given the opportunity, seeing as he had put the boy there.

Obviously, Maddie Fenton didn't know any of that. All she knew was that Amity Park Hospital was calling at six in the morning asking, very angrily, where her son had been between one to three AM of the same morning. The hospital said he wouldn't need to come in, there wasn't anything really wrong with him (not if he could do that much damage to a hospital room) besides a large number of odd (but old) wounds covering his chest and back, but the family would be required to pay for all the destroyed equipment. A grand total of more than three thousand dollars! That was what lead to Maddie (Jack had already been injured at this point, and needed his rest) calling down her son on that lovely morning in a fit of anger. Even more angered when the large bags under his eyes, dirty street clothes he wore instead of PJs, and slight limp in his step proved that her son had indeed been anywhere but home. Not to mention, he was not even close to ready for school yet.

"The hospital just called!" she said, barely containing the need to shout. His widening eyes, suddenly wide awake, dispelled any doubt she had had about his innocence (or rather lack thereof). "They want us to pay over three thousand dollars for damages you caused to one of their rooms!" Now she was shouting. He didn't even respond except to stare down at his shoes and take it all.

Yes, Mom, let's not focus on the fact I was in the hospital at one in the morning, completely unresponsive, lets focus on the fact that an apparently injured fifteen-year-old boy with no energy left somehow managed to break thousands of dollars worth of sturdy medical equipment in the space of thirty minutes without a single person hearing him. It's not like a fruitloop attacked me and I had to fight him for miles outside city limits. Danny sighed when he realized that, in reality, the first option was actually much more viable than the second. That was just the rule of his life, he supposed. The truth was too unbelievable to even be considered.

Maddie continued shouting for a while, but she got tired of his lack of response and then angrily shouted, "I don't know how you can be so careless, irresponsible, and downright selfish sometimes Danny!"

His fists clenched in anger, not that she noticed. He hated it, this feeling that came over him every time his teachers and parents called him those things. They knew nothing about being careful, how many beings did they have constantly trying to kill them? They knew nothing about responsibility. How many times had they been forced to drop every lingering bit of their very humanity to protect everything they cared about? Most of all, they knew nothing of selflessness. Danny lost his life in that portal one year ago, and he never got it back. He gave up what was left of his life, he gave up his hopes and dreams, all to protect the people who hated, mocked, and belittled him, but were somehow still considered innocent. How many times had they walked the line between life and death? How many times had they given themselves up just to do the right thing?

"I'm very disappointed in you and what you have been doing lately, Danny. If you don't change, we're going to have to send you away to boot camp or something to take care of this for good," she said calmly, again totally unaware of the devastating effect those very words had on her child as his fists unclenched and he bit his lip to reign in the panic. He could imagine her saying close to those exact words to him in a different situation... 'I'm disgusted by you and what you have become. You've changed too much to be called our son anymore, ghost, leave before we send you to some lab somewhere or take care of you for good'. Lately, Danny wasn't as sure as he used to be that that wouldn't be his parent's reaction to his secret. After all, instead of making things better between his parents and Phantom as he had been hoping to do all those months ago as part of some broken plan, he's only been able to turn them against Danny Fenton as well. What hope does he have of them accepting his ghost form if they only just barely put up with his human form anymore? Nothing was worth it anymore. It was times like these Danny wished he would have just died in that portal...

Maddie, still oblivious to the dark path her son's thoughts were beginning to veer, just continued to look on with disappointment at her seemingly unresponsive child. Really he was anything but as deep pits of despair and self-loathing etched into his mind, her words cutting deeper than she could ever imagine.

"I'm sorry, Mom." He was apologizing for so much more than she would ever know, even if he knew it was pointless. To his surprise, his mother's eyes seemed to soften and then widened in alarm as she remembered some troubling piece of information the doctors had given her. 'We did find a large number of abrasions and burns covering his torso, but they were old wounds, scars from cuts acquired over time, nothing to worry about. Now about that payment...'. What would her son have gotten scars from?

"I'm just glad you're safe, sweetie," Maddie sighed. Danny's eyes brightened in response, it had been a long time since he's gotten a positive reaction out of his parents... "Now, let me see your injuries." She ordered. This time his eyes widened in clutched the red jacket he was wearing tighter and took a step back,

"No, it's okay, I'm fine, Mom, really," he insisted, but if he was honest with himself it was only half hearted. Maybe if she saw, she would finally find out... or even better, she would finally see him for who he really was again...

It was for those reasons Maddie was able to pry the jacket and shirt over the feebly struggling teenager relatively easily. The gasp of alarm that left her lips only further served to add awkwardness to the following silence as Maddie looked over her son's torso.

It was covered in fresh purple bruises and small cuts over older yellowing bruises and healing over injuries. More alarming were the ones that were obviously scars and would probably never go away. On his stomach, there was a large burn, as if someone had recently tried to see how his body would react to holding a small fire to his stomach. There was a similar mark on his left shoulder. Who could do something like that (she was blissfully unaware that the larger burn was actually caused by a lucky hit from one of their Fenton Bazookas when Danny had been forced to jump in front of it to block his parents from an attack going the opposite direction. One hit his back, the other his stomach)? On the left side of his neck, there were two smaller marks as if someone had slammed two burning matches into it (courtesy of the 'Plasmius Maximus'). On his right arm, starting at the shoulder and falling all the way to his elbow, was a longer deeper cut obviously made by a knife purposely slashing through the skin. It was clearly recent, considering it still had bits of blood seeping over the dried clotting blood. The worst was a similar gash that ran the entire diagonal length of his chest from shoulder to hips, it was old and was definitely a scar that would never heal. Maddie had taken more than a sufficient amount of anatomy classes, and she noticed with dread that an inch lower or more to either side and the knife that had caused a cut like that would have hit one of his lungs. Short in short, she was completely horrified.

Danny continued to cringe under his mother's gaze but was secretly happy about her horrified expression. It meant she cared, and she was finally going to ask what had been happening to him, and he would tell her. All she had to do was ask, he silently begged her to just ask. That's not exactly what happened.

"Danny! I don't know what you've gotten yourself into, but you have to stop right now! Look at yourself! Whoever did all this wanted to hurt you!" She shouted. All the hope drained out of Danny at that, and he resisted the urge to say 'I noticed. They tend to announce it'. Instead, Danny turned to go back upstairs and change into normal school clothes. At the last minute, a hand wrapped around the wrist of his left arm. He cringed at the memory of the bone that had been mere hours before poking out of his skin. He very easily recalled the pain of, when no medical staff was looking, he turned the tip of the bone intangible and forced it back into his arm. He fused it with the bone it had separated from using intangibility, but that wasn't real healing and was only to fool the x-rays. The bone hurt with that too familiar pain with every movement of his arm as the two halves grated into each other, his ghost healing currently more than occupied on all other parts of his body.

Needless to say, having someone tugging violently on the makeshift set did nothing to curb the blinding pain that had made him pass out the second time before anyone noticed he even woke up in the first place. He could barely keep from screaming as she tugged him backward, leaving the arm feeling as if it had been dipped in acid. He strategically escaped her hold at the same time she whispered,

"You've gotten yourself into something nasty, Danny, it needs to stop." He couldn't get away fast enough. She had not once asked him what had happened, what was wrong. Did she already see him as a hopeless cause?

As her son disappeared up the stairs, she whispered, knowing as a parent it would be horrible to say it to Danny's face, "Jazz was never such a disappointment." How was she supposed to know the boy in question had super enhanced hearing? How was she to know he could pick up her soft whisper as if she had leaned in and said it directly into his ear? How was she supposed to know that those words were another broken seal on a batch of tumultuous emotions that it took every bit of Danny's energy to tuck away where they couldn't hurt him.


Maddie sighed as she remembered that morning. Now it was around five pm, and Danny, who was obviously grounded, had (surprise surprise) yet to return from school. Maddie didn't know how to feel, annoyed, angry, or extremely worried. She could vividly recall every horrifying scar on her son as he walked away up the stairs.

"What's been happening to you, Danny?" she asked to the empty lab. The question was too late to do any good, if only she had asked it a few hours before...