It was mad for her to believe Danny would be back when she got home. If only he had been, she thought, stumbling into his empty bedroom. Perhaps that would make it easier to believe…

To believe what, exactly? That her son wasn't….

She collapsed onto his bed, which was made. He had probably made it that morning before he left. He never made his bed, she thought numbly, staring at her hands. Ever since he was young he would challenge her with "Why would I make the bed if I'm just gonna sleep in it again that night?" Back when he was a normal teenager. Back when he didn't lie. Back when he didn't miss class and stay out all night. She had seen all these changes in her son, praying it was a rebellious stage – but how far did these changes extend? That he was…

He was a ghost?

Her throat became dry. How could he… he wasn't dead, surely…? There was no way that she, a scientist and ghost expert, could explain this.

Phantom had appeared the same time as the Fenton portal opened, so she had assumed he had come through with all the other ghosts he combatted. This was three years ago. Three years ago, Danny's grades had begun to slip and he had begun to receive detentions. He had never gotten detention for anything he did on purpose in elementary or middle school, how could she just let his behavior continue like that? How could she have been so blind?

But blind to what? "Blind to what?" she asked herself hoarsely. What was… what was Danny?

No. Not Danny.

She clenched her fists so hard they turned cold. It wasn't Danny. It was Phantom. He had been tricking her somehow, that had to be it. It was a trick and she fell for it! She had been so put-off when she thought she saw her son that she hadn't reacted quickly enough to capture him and he'd flown off. How could she be so stupid! She'd worried her maternal instincts would get in the way that night, and certainly not this way, but she had allowed herself to slip and now she had nothing to show for the night. Nothing from Danny, nothing from Phantom.

"You said I could have tonight," he'd muttered, looking hurt.

She shook her head and massaged her temples with cool gloved fingers. It was part of the farce. Phantom must have been nearby when she was talking to Danny. He had managed to get around ghost shields in the past somehow, so it wasn't too far off to say he could've been in their house.

But his eyes. And his body. His hair. His mannerisms. She could see Phantom rubbing the back of his neck as easily as she could see Danny doing the same, saying, "Sorry, I lost track of time."

Another trick. Perhaps as time went on he had molded himself after Danny. Maybe this was his plan all along – to play off their human emotions by disguising himself to look like their son. God knew it had worked on her tonight. He was probably speeding along back to where ever it was he stayed in his spare time, laughing about how he'd pulled such a fast one on Maddie Fenton. She gritted her teeth and got up off of Danny's bed. If he knew so much about Danny, then it meant Phantom was around him more than she'd thought.

Danny.

Phantom be damned, her main priority was Danny. He was still gone. She checked the glowing red numbers of his alarm clock and saw it was only 10:21. She considered calling Jack after all just to say hello, but he would be home tomorrow night and she could share everything with him then. As she walked out of Danny's room her heart felt too heavy for her to speak if she had called him. Jack would wait until later. She had to worry about Danny now.

No door slammed that night as she lay awake in bed, and she knew she had been awake for hours. Everything was buzzing around in her head, congesting her brain and drilling a migraine into her temples. Danny. Phantom. The two may or may not have been connected but even this bizarre relation aside she had issues with both of them. Danny most of all. Her beloved little boy whom she'd raised since infancy and seen grow into a troubled young man, was in more trouble than she had dreamed. Perhaps it was because of Jazz setting such a high standard – if Jazz could turn out to be such an upstanding citizen and student, surely Danny would eventually swing back around and follow suit after this brief rocky period. He had been like her as a young child but Danny was a more even mix of his parents whereas Jazz was nearly a carbon copy of her mother. With Jazz it had been so easy to relate, but with Danny's teenage years it was always a bit of a struggle to connect. There was a whole other side of him that came from his father that she could never relate to, not in the way Danny wanted her to. She had done what she thought was her best to understand him, though, and when he started spouting these lies about his behavior she assumed it was a delaying mechanism of sorts and that he would eventually snap out of it and things would return to normal.

That wasn't right, though. It's not that she didn't feel she had to intervene, it was that she'd been afraid to, as if putting more stress on him would cause him to crack completely like a piece of chinaware, and so delved into ghost hunting to distract herself. She had tried to focus only of the positives as many online forums had suggested; when he managed a good grade on a test, the few times a month he came back before curfew (which were most often the nights where he vanished after "going to bed"), and especially the nights where he was actually home, the dinners they'd shared as a family and the nights spent gathered around the television. Lulling herself into a false sense of security was all it was. She was nitpicking what she wanted to see and selfishly pushing away the rest, opting instead to spend time in the lab working on inventions.

Around three in the morning she heard a sound from out in the kitchen. Maddie had bolted upright off her pillow but stopped herself from leaving her room.

"You said I could have tonight." Yes. In her bleary mind she could hear Danny saying this with his green eyes wounded and glowing. No, Phantom had said that and she'd promised that ghost nothing! But her son had indeed asked for the night and if a few more sleepless hours was all it took for her to finally learn the truth, she would brave them. She settled back down against a bed that had never felt so large and uninviting.

Her eyes could not have been closed for more than ten minutes before Maddie awoke to the sunlight beaming in through her window. She checked the clock and sure enough it was bordering on eight in the morning. She had slept five hours but she felt like it really had just been those ten minutes.

Rising wearily from her bed Maddie opted not to wear the hazmat suit she normally wore. There was no scientist that day, just a mother. She was contritely aware of how strange her khaki pants and polo shirt felt - just how much time did she spend in the lab or out on the field? She could wager it was far more than the time she spent with Danny, and that was half of the problem.

No, today was not about her. It wasn't even about Phantom, unless Danny made it. It was about Danny. She would sit and patiently listen to what he had to say, and then she would talk about what she could do to help him fix it.

She stepped into a pair of slippers and exited the master bedroom. The kitchen was empty, nothing left out on the table. It was earlier for a Sunday, especially for Danny, but she had half-expected him to be awake for such an occasion as today. She made her way up the stairs, her heart thrumming against her ribs. When she grabbed the handle of his bedroom door she was anticipating it just swing open, revealing an empty room yet again.

However, the knob didn't turn. It was locked.

"Danny?" she called softly.

There was noise from behind the door and her galloping heart steadied a bit. He was home. Even though he had said he'd be home that morning part of her feared he would never come back. "One second," came the muffled reply. A drawer opened but did not close. More scuffling. Then, a click as the lock was undone on the doorknob. Danny didn't say anything for a while so Maddie tested the knob. The door opened.

Either he had remade the bed that morning or he hadn't slept in it that night. Danny himself was perched on the swivel chair by his desk, one hand slung over his knees, the other kneading his chest. The posture reminded her of Phantom as he hovered in the tree last night but she quickly quashed the memory. No Phantom today, remember? she berated internally.

Maddie lighted on the edge of the bed, trying not to sit too rigidly and appear too distant. This was already uncomfortable enough for Danny, whatever it was he had to say.

He sat curled up on the chair almost too small for him and she recognized it as a defensive position. He was still afraid. But afraid of what? Surely he knew she'd never hurt him, no matter what the problem was.

"We're not doing this again, are we?" he asked with a weak attempt at a smile.

A few tense moments of silent contemplation had passed on her part before she realized he was waiting for her to start. "I'm… I'm just here to listen," she muttered. "Whatever it is that's been going on… you can just tell me."

His eyebrows furrowed a little, one hand still massaging his chest as if it ached. "But… I… last night-"

Danny shifted a little in his seat and winced, the hand he'd had to his chest now clutching the material. Maddie could see the little blossoms of red on the white shirt. When she had seen him upon entering the room she had assumed it was just his white shirt with the red circle but now she realized Danny had outgrown that shirt nearly two years ago. This shirt was white with two little spots of blood on the chest.

"Danny you're bleeding!" she said urgently, starting to get up.

Her son put a hand up to halt her and she froze, knees bent awkwardly as she stopped mid-rise. She sat back down as Danny finished adjusting his posture, curling one leg under him and wrapping his free arm around his propped leg. He continued to rub at his sternum where the blood stains rested.

"Yeah," he replied casually, but his smile was incredibly somber, "those spikes weren't very gentle." Spikes? She continued to stare at the blood stains. They weren't growing so he must not have been bleeding still. "Sa- uh, I took care of it, though. It's wrapped up. I guess I…" he trailed off, his weak smile faltering.

"I don't understand," she tried to say, but even she couldn't hear her own voice. He had two wounds in his chest where Phantom had pulled the Taser probes out. Yes, the probes for the Fenton Taser were larger than those on a normal Taser because ectoplasm was incredibly hard to hold onto. "I… I shot Phantom."

"You certainly did," he replied, his rueful grin returning. His blue eyes did not betray any emotion, however, none of the fear she had seen yesterday, none of anything. In fact, he looked… less tired. "But the injuries don't go away when I change back, as you've already seen."

"Change?"

Suddenly the room, which was dark because of the drawn curtains, illuminated with a flash of ethereal white light. She had become all-too-familiar with it last night so when it died down she had bolted to her feet in preparation.

Sure enough, Phantom was now curled up in the chair Danny had been in, kneading his chest in the same manner.

He lifted the now-gloved hand away from his chest. "See? It doesn't hurt so much anymore."

"I knew it was all a trick," she hissed, backing away from Phantom. The ghost's face fell in a good imitation of shock. "I don't know how you're doing it, but if you hurt Danny one more time-"

"Mom."

The threat died on her lips and her heart, fluttering at maddening speed, seemed to stop altogether. It was Danny's voice, no doubt about it, unearthly echo or not. He continued the motion he had started before, pulling the glove off his raised hand. With a little spurt of green light there was suddenly a small cut on Phantom's wrist, green ectoplasm seeping sluggishly out. Then another, larger, white flash and Danny was back. The green oozing out of the cut was replaced with the normal red of human blood, and it began to flow faster.

"The ectoplasm you found on my jacket. And – oh, crud," he said with a nervous laugh, pressing his hand to his wrist as the blood continued to flow. "Could you take the false back outta the drawer there and hand me some gauze?"

Maddie sat frozen for a moment staring at her son, whose smile began to falter. At last she rose as if on autopilot and took the few steps over to his dresser, a dresser she'd returned laundry to countless times. Sure enough the back of the drawer came out and she saw an arsenal of medical supplies that fiercely rivaled the Fenton first aid kit and perhaps some walk-in clinics.

"I got some more gauze of my own last night," he said conversationally as she pulled the roll out of the drawer. He was applying pressure to the cut – no, the burn – on his wrist to quell the bleeding. "If I hadn't run out yesterday, I probably wouldn't have to show you all this. Three years and I get tripped up by not buying gauze. It's stupid, huh?"

He noticed her standing numbly before him and held his hand out for the gauze.

Maddie flinched back from his touch.

She hadn't meant to; it was all so sudden and she still had no idea what was going on, or if this thing sitting in Danny's room was even Danny…

But then she saw the crestfallen look steal over his face. He worked the muscle of his jaw just like Phantom – it was him biting the inside of his lip, she realized – and returned his uninjured hand to the wound.

Maddie dropped to her knees before him again and pulled a strip of gauze from the roll, winding it around her son's wrist. After it was tied he drew his hand back and tucked it between his chest and his leg, pulling his other leg out from under him and curling up again. She sat back down on the bed.

"What does this all mean?" she asked hoarsely. "Is Phantom… overshadowing you? This defies all symptoms I've-"

"Phantom's not real, mom," he replied, tilting his head and looking down. "There is no 'Phantom', there's just me."

She blinked heavily. "But you're not dead," she intoned, her pitch wavering a little on the last word.

His gaze flickered to hers briefly. "Not entirely."

"How is this even possible?" she asked, leaning towards him.

"Remember when the Fenton portal started working?" Danny returned. Of course Maddie did, though, it was one of the biggest achievements in her career – as Jack so eloquently put it, 'busting a hole into another dimension'. All her life's work had proven useful on that very day.

But she had no idea how it had started working.

She thought back to one of the times she and Jack had captured Phantom. She had asked, among many other things, if he could remember how he died. He'd said after some hesitation, 'Electrocution.' "Oh God, Danny, the portal-"

"Zapped me real good," he finished with a smile. How was he still smiling? How could he be okay with all of this? But then again, this had been going on for three years. She had let this go on for three years. "I was just taking a look inside of it. You know dad put the button on the inside, right?"

Maddie's mouth dropped open. Electrocution, he'd said. Danny had died. Danny had died.

"So you really are a ghost?" she breathed, pressing her hand to her mouth.

He shook his head immediately. "Not entirely. The other ghosts like to call me 'halfa'. Half a ghost, half a human. I've still got a body, which most ghosts don't last I checked."

"But you… turn into a ghost? Daniel, this isn't making any sense." Part of her was still struggling not believe any of this. It really didn't… it wasn't…

"I know. I'm not a scientist so I can't quite tell you how it works." He shrugged.

"Why didn't you tell me about this years ago?" she yelled incredulously. He flinched back and stared at her with wide eyes. "Danny, I could have helped you! What if this… what if all this is killing you?"

"It already did that half-way," he responded lightly. "But I'm fine."

"You're not fine, Danny, you're… half dead!" At this she stood up, her body shaking. "Let me help you, please!"

As she tried to take a step forward Danny's figure tensed and the wide blue eyes turned green and glowed. She stumbled to a halt.

"Help me? By ripping me apart molecule by molecule?" he shot back. "Mom, you're really wondering why I never told you? You even said it yourself, you thought it was a trick. That vacation we took three years ago, when I saw that ghost no one else could, you guys strapped me to a flight simulator and tried to 'spin the crazy outta me'. What did I expect would come from revealing I was half-ghost?"

And he was right. Even now, Maddie wanted nothing more than to run a few tests, and good intentions or not, she could see how dehumanizing it would make him feel. Had she captured him that night she probably would have dissec- run tests, even after he'd changed, thinking exactly what he said – that it was a trick. Maddie heaved in a strained breath. "I'm sorry, Danny," she replied quietly. "This is… a lot to take in. I just want to figure this out… to help you…"

"Then stop and listen to me. That's what you said you would do, right?" His eyes had gone back to blue for which she was grateful. She obediently sat back down on the bed.

The theories were uselessly knocking around in her head. She wanted nothing more than to help but in her mind, this involved tests. Was it for his good or the good of her curiosity, though?

"I had my reasons for not telling you," he began softly. "I wanted to tell you, it would've made a lot of things easier. But… I knew you would want to fix me." He gave her a pointed look. "I've tried myself, too. It…" he broke off and dropped his gaze from hers. "It never worked out. 'Phantom' is a part of who I am and I can't get rid of that. Ever since the accident, I've been able to do things only ghosts can do. Fly, for one. Intangibility, invisibility, the whole nine yards. You've fought against 'Phantom' so you know what I'm capable of." The corner of his mouth twitched up for a moment. "I used to wonder why someone like me had gotten stuck with all this power. I was just a dorky little kid in ninth grade who couldn't stand up to a quarterback, let alone all these ghosts. Then I realized it wasn't about that. It didn't matter who I was because the point was, I had these powers, and I had to use them to protect everybody. That's what the hero does, right?"

He looked over at her with a genuine smile.

"I'm the good guy," Phantom had always told them as they had shot at him. "I'm just trying to help." She had never believed him because of what she had thought –no, known – about ghosts, how they had no humanity left in them and were only filled with malice and destruction. But her son was no ghost. He was Danny.

"I've almost killed you," she started, but Danny interjected with a frown.

"No, Mom, I would never let you. I knew what I was doing. If I was ever really in danger, I would've told you who I was."

"But the things I've said to you, threatened you with-" she tried to say but again, Danny cut her off.

"You threatened Phantom. You thought he was a ghost, so I don't hold it against you. Mom, I forgive you." He took a slow breath, one steadying hand against his chest. "Can you forgive me?"

"Forgive you?" she repeated with a relieved smile, dabbing preemptively at her eyes. "Sweetheart, I never blamed you! I gave you no reason to trust me with this secret. If I'd just spent a little less time with my head in the lab, if I'd just paid better attention…"

"I don't want anyone blaming anyone here, this is all out of our control." Still, he was smiling as wide as she'd ever seen him before.

"So all this… all these cuts, all this skipping class, you've been fighting ghosts," she ventured. He nodded. "I understand you wanted to help but why did you try to shoulder all this responsibility? You were just a kid. You had other responsibilities like schoolwork."

"Who else was going to?" he countered.

"Your father and I?" Maddie supplied. "That huntress girl? The Guys i-"

"Everyone you mentioned thinks all ghosts are evil," Danny cut in. "I've had the chance to be around ghosts in a way no one else has. I've gotten to know how they work and act and feel. Some ghosts aren't evil, mom. I'm not." He tensed up a bit after saying this.

"You're human, honey," she insisted. "You're not… all ghost. Ghosts-"

"Mom, didn't you hear what I said?" Maddie wanted to continue anyways but she remembered this was not about her. For God's sakes she found out her son was… a half-ghost and she was still going on about ghosts being evil? So she remained quiet. Danny looked at her warily before continuing. "When do you ever actually talk to ghosts? When have you encountered a ghost without holding an ectogun to it right off the bat?" He gave her a brief moment to reflect and no, she couldn't think of any instances. "I just want you to trust me from now on. About staying safe, about school, about ghosts. About me."

"After everything you've told me you just want me to let it be?" she asked incredulously. "Isn't there any way I can help you?"

"Everything's been fine so far-" Danny started, but Maddie cut him off firmly.

"Things have not! Your grades, for one. All the disciplinary actions, Danny, and you look so tired all the time. Do you hunt ghosts at night instead of sleep?" Danny offered a sheepish smile in return. "You're trying to balance all this but you're still… it's hurting you."

"I just want everyone to be safe," he replied. "I can take the grades. I still graduated, after all. I can take not-sleeping, I've gotten used to it. The only thing I can't take is…" he broke off and his eyes fell to the floor for a moment. "I can't stand the idea of anyone getting hurt. I've seen a lot of it. More than I want to. And even if I never sleep again, or if I don't go to college, or anything, at least everyone's still alive."

Still alive? At his age, Danny should be worrying about getting into colleges, not the well-being of his friends and family. What kind of life was he really leading?

"Danny…" she tried to say, but could find nothing to say at all. He was dead-set on this, she could see it in his eyes. Three years of this Hell had changed him more than she could have imagined. His teachers had all said he lacked focus but they were wrong – he was just focused on something else, much bigger. "I do trust you," she said at last. "I'm sorry for everything."

The smile spread across his face slowly and he laughed, most likely out of relief. "I told you, you didn't do anything wrong!" He threw his arms around her and hugged her tightly, enough that she had to pull him away to breathe. Despite everything she found herself smiling as well.

"No, I did. Apparently I should've shot you three years ago just so you knew I was here for you," she said with a nervous laugh, resting her hands on his shoulders. "I'm here for you from now on. You and 'Phantom'. Just… no more secrets, please? You can trust me with anything, I hope you know."

"I know," he replied. "I ought to tell dad too, right?"

"It's only fair. I'll talk to him first but when he comes around we are discussing everything for the past three years, do you understand?" She tried her best to sound firm but the pure unbridled relief on his face made her smile, if not a little guiltily. Part of his stress had been keeping his secret from her and to see just how much happier he was now….

"I understand," he said, still beaming. "I love you, mom."

At last the tears that had been threatening fell from her eyes. She pulled Danny close again and didn't let go. "I love you too, Danny."

AN: And that's it for "Green Jacket, Red Sleeves"! I am sorry if I have disappointed anyone with any part of this story; I am not a writer and I only do it when I really want to, as was the case for this story. Happy Dannyversary and thank you all for reading and reviewing!

Until next time,

Luna.