About a month ago, juicyreptile made some posts about the Halfa Trio AU and between all of the various enthusiastic responses to those posts, we ended up getting like three or four separate ideas out of it (including a fic from Cordria! Link on my profile! Go read it! Ahhhhhhh!)

This, as you can guess, is a bad end version of the halfa trio au for Angst Day.

Similar trigger warnings to Rain of Tears and stop the world I wanna get off. I mean, you should be clicking on this for the angst and tragedy if you're here at all, haha, but if you don't do well with crying/mourning/not dealing with stuff, I'd tread carefully. Because I'm pretty sure I did this well.

Title from Laora.

thus they fly

October 1, 2015

(Danny Phantom Day of Angst)

"Danny? Danny, sweetie?"

Danny blinks, slowly, and the world starts to appear around him again, focusing into too many details, too many surfaces.

A face, too close, and he veers back, trying to escape back into himself but it's too late for that. He's out, now, and whoever this is has seen it, won't let him disappear again without demanding something more than he can give, more than he can take.

The tears are already building behind his eyes, just waiting for an excuse to start flowing. Danny swallows heavily and pretends that he's not an inch away from breaking. He lowers his eyes and tries to reel himself back in as much as possible so he can keep himself together.

It takes him a long moment to recognize that it's his mom, and he tries not to flinch at the realization. She'd been coddling him all weekend, ever since-

And the sweetness kills him, the concern more smothering than his dad's bumbling attempts to cheer him up with fudge until he finally left the room, looking just as lost as Danny felt. At least he'd left. At least Jazz had left, after sitting next to him, wrapping her arms around him and pulling him in close to kiss the top of his head. He'd cried silent hot tears, willing himself to stay perfectly still until she left and let him break down in the sanctuary of his empty room. But she'd finally learned to leave him alone.

His mom just keeps coming back, though, keeps opening the door. Breaking into his room and disrupting his tightly held control and he just wants her to stop. He just wants her to stop but she's here again, she's kneeling in front of him and-

Oh God she's reaching out a hand and he's too slow to realize it until it's already on his shoulder and he shivers, something spasming deep inside him.

He wants it off, he needs it off, but she keeps it there, warm and oppressive and it rubs across his shoulder and he's nearly ready to break before she's even opened her mouth.

He can't do this.

He needs-

"Danny," she says, so softly like it'll make it easier for him to understand, easier to hear, like it won't still rip him into a thousand pieces.

He knows what's coming and he'd give anything he has left in his life to keep it away, to keep it away forever, to make everything disappear around him, or better yet, to fade away himself.

He closes his eyes, but that's as far away as he can get with the hand on his shoulder, with his mom leaning in.

She makes the air around them warm and he can hear her breathing, feel her breathing. It grates harshly against every fiber in his entire body, rubbing it raw with every in and out. He wonders for an insane moment if he could make her stop and then recoils in horror at the thought. As if enough people in his life haven't stopped breathing forever...

Danny grits his teeth and squeezes his eyes shut tight. Tries to control his own breathing. Tries to ignore it, tries to ignore everything.

But his mom is talking again, and it's too loud, too close, and he can't shut it out. The words force their way into his brain, into his very being, streaking through him in waves of searing heat, burning him up from the inside.

"Danny, honey, please look at me," she pleads and it's tearing him apart because he can't, he can't look up, he can't look at her even though it's all she's asking for.

It's not all she wants, though, he knows that she'll press him for more as soon as he's done that first task but how can he give more when he can't even manage this?

He wants to assuage her fears, wants nothing more than to give her enough to make her go away. But his throat has closed up and he can't manage to say anything.

Now she's moving closer, humming under her breath, her hand moving up the back of his neck. He has to fight against his rising shoulders pushing it away, because he knows she'll hate that, be hurt by it, but his neck is prickling and he can't stop his body from tensing at the gesture.

"Oh sweetie," she says, and she's disappointed, so very disappointed, and he knows that she has ever right to be, after what he's done, but-

His eyes are hot now, are stinging, but he can't rub them. He can't move because if he does, his mom will think that he's asking for a hug, will choke him until he breaks into a thousand pieces, wrap him in her arms until he's smothered and gone.

So he waits, as tense as he'll allow himself, hoping that if he's unresponsive enough, maybe she'll go away, maybe she'll come back another time, or not at all. That would be better, for her to stay away and let him come out on his own time. Not that he'll ever come out, but if they could just stay away, just stay away and let him deal-

Deal with this…

Deal with his two best friends being dead. Dead and gone and gone forever because they're not ghosts, they haven't come back and he knows because he checked, he checked first thing after-

He can see them, still see them, lying huddled together on the floor, a blackened skeletal hand and-

His vision goes fuzzy and he doesn't know why until there's a hand on his face wiping the tears away.

Danny recoils, drawing back into himself, huddling closer into a ball. His face is buried deep beneath his hands, in the quiet darkness in front of his knees. He knows this will only make her more concerned but he prays for a miracle anyway, and hopes that she will understand, that she will let him have this, will let him turn away, will leave him alone for a moment longer. An hour, a day, a century.

"Danny, we have to ask…" and he shakes his head, he doesn't want to hear it, he can't- can't she see that he can't?

She'll press him for answers he can't give, for him to talk about things he'll never be able to put out of his mind but never ever be able to voice.

His best friends-

The only ones who- the only ones who supported him- the only ones who knew-

"Do you know why they would have been downstairs?"

He curls in on himself further, into the smallest space he can occupy and it hurts and it hurts and his legs are shaking and his fingertips are numb but it's still not enough because he's still here.

The air has taken on that iron bloody tang, that rancid smell of burning hair and burning rubber that filled the basement and his nose and throat and he can feel the bile start to rise.

His stomach convulses once and he presses down, tamps down on it because he can't, he can't break open now, not while someone else is watching.

If he does that, he'll never be able to put himself back together, never-

They were laying on the floor of the portal, dark metal walls twisting up around them in a series of sparking wires. His glasses frames twisted and broken beside him, the studs from her leather bands rolling free across the floor…

He can't. He can't he can't he can't he can't.

He's starting to hyperventilate now, can feel the shuddering sobs rattle inside him with every breath and he needs to stop it, needs-

Danny holds his breath, rocking back and forth, shaking his head because he can't-

His mom reaches over for him now, wanting to envelop him in her arms as she soothes his cares away but this isn't going away, it can't, it won't ever stop being burned into his mind. He jerks up and shakes her off before curling back in on himself.

"Danny…"

"Go 'way," he croaks. Doesn't know if she could even hear him, but she backs down and he almost sobs in relief when she takes her hands off of him.

He can feel her hesitating, wants to scream at her to leave, will her to understand how much he needs her gone, needs that door closed, needs to be alone.

"Are you sure, sweetie?"

"Go 'way," he whispers again. "Go away go away go awaygoawaygoaway," he repeats in a frantic litany that breaks once it's loud enough to hear.

She sighs, clearly not wanting to go, but finally she tells him, "I'll be right downstairs if you need me, okay?"

"Go away," he pleads one more time, shoulders shaking, but not moving from his shelter.

She finally gets up at that and, after long unbearable moments, walks out of his room and closes the door behind her.

As soon as it's safe, Danny falls onto his bed, his entire body limp and drained of energy. He's weak, shaking, stomach clenched, and throat so tight that he can't even cry.

Does he know what they were doing in the lab?

His dusky blue suit burnt to a crisp, the knockoff phantom design almost completely obliterated, her green suit melted into the floor around her hair-

Notes and schematics on the table in Tucker's handwriting, Sam's book bag filled with treatises on the supernatural carefully highlighted and annotated.

Ideas for how to recreate his accident.

He remembers now with shame and horror and shocking clarity how much he had vented to them, texting Tucker in the small hours of the morning to complain about how another ghost stole his last few precious hours of sleep. Laying his head on Sam's shoulder, groaning because he'd earned another detention for not turning in schoolwork that Skulker had shot to pieces when he'd actually managed to complete it.

Yelling his frustrations about just how many ghosts kept coming out of the portal, admitting with shining eyes and shaking hands how lost and alone and confused and overwhelmed he was all the time. trying to explain through halting tears how it felt to be a freak.

He'd been weak and had leaned on them too much, depended on them far too much.

And they-

They'd decided to give up everything, their sleep, their sanity, the normalcy of their lives to understand him, to help them more than they could as mere humans wielding Fenton tech from the ground.

They'd thought they'd known the risks, and were willing to become freaks themselves for his sake.

But they- they didn't-

Danny pulls his heavy covers over him, burying himself so deep that maybe he won't have to come out again.

He doesn't know, has no clue why the portal wouldn't have worked the second time. He would have trusted Tucker's calculations with his life.

Sam had.

But he knows that this was all his fault, that they never would have dreamed of going in there if he hadn't made such a big deal about everything. If only he'd kept quiet, been able to more of it himself, been stronger …

Does he know why they were in the portal?

Oh yes, he knows all too well.

They were there because he was too weak to handle life without them and they had known it.

His best friends were going to sacrifice everything to help him.

But now, now he is here all alone, the only one left, and-

He's crying, hot salty tears streaming down his face and soaking his sheets as he sobs openly into his pillow, curling his fingers around the edges and punching uselessly into the soft depths when crying isn't enough, can't possibly be enough.

Now they are gone. They are gone gone gone gone gone

And what is he going to do now?