A/N: Thank you all so much for your support in this story! Your kind words made every minute of writing, re-writing and editing worth it and your insights and suggestions made this story so much better than before. As a Christmas present and to thank you all for everything I'm posting the last chapter early!

GirlFish: Yeah! When even Dan is kinda depressed about the future you know it's bad. So far the Fentons have believed, implicitly and explicitly, that the future would be better without Danny Phantom, not worse. Besides they, like a lot of people who do horrible things, have been deliberately blinding themselves to the humanity of their 'enemies.' It's an unfortunate human tendency to dehumanize an opponent. I decided on Dan, because not only would he show them some of the most soul-wrenching moments of the future, he would also rub some salt into the wounds he inflicted. The Fentons are really stubborn people so they need a stubborn ghost. Thanks for the review!

Godlynarutofan: Glad you like it :D

RavenXian: Thanks!

Animals Rule: Hope you like this chapter then ;)

Guest 2: Don't die, here's another chapter.

Guest 1: Future Jack and Maddie's realization came too little too late, they did realize Vlad was telling the truth about their son, that they'd tortured him to death years ago. As for the lesson present Jack and Maddie learns…that's in this chapter ;)

Merry Christmas everyone :D

The End

"But this is not my judgment," the Ghost of Christmas Future said.

Maddie and Jack bolted upright. They were back! Back in their own bodies. The feel of crinkling wrapping paper and sagging cushions was their own, the pain of bashing their heads together in their haste was also their own. No sign of any ghostly guide, only their own blessedly whole and undamaged living room. Christmas decorations lit up with the early dawn light: bows twinkling merrily atop presents, ghost lights glowing brightly. Wife and husband laughed aloud with relief.

"We're back," Jack whispered.

"We're back," Maddie agreed. "I could almost kiss those spirits. They," she finished the line, "They did it all in one night."

Joy slid off Jack's face. "Phantom."

"The lab," Maddie finished his thought.

Over the years, despite their attempt to adhere to professionalism and maintain some line between home and work, the Fentonworks Lab became a second bedroom and a second office. Over the years the pair had filled it with bits of themselves. First test tubes and glassware, all lovingly hand-made; then their own inventions in preference to anything store bought. Even the scalpels and dissecting tools had been Maddie's patient blacksmith work. After those, calendars and pictures and the usual trappings of home had wandered in to stay.

Now the Fentons approached their own lab with the tentative wariness of ghosts, despite their living bodies. Though completely undisturbed since they'd last been downstairs, the pair stepped with more caution than in the ruined Amity Park. The stench of ectoplasm brought forth another glimpse of the terrible future, like phantom pain. Their eyes jerked immediately to the figure slumped beside his own writing on the ecto-proof glass.

'I forgive you,' was still etched painstakingly on glass.

Phantom lay in a pool of his own blood, hair stained green and black with bits of natural white showing through. Arms and legs curled slightly toward his body as though he fell asleep in a place slightly too small for him. The gag bound him to silence, his side rose and fell with slow, shallow breaths.

Sleep should've relaxed Phantom, as human as he looked, and given him the facade of a child. Whether because of their laboratory or his capture, even at rest his muscles were slightly tensed, expecting a fight at any moment. Bruises weighed heavily beneath his eyes, furrows lined his brow with pain; even dreams offered no escape.

Danny slept like that sometimes, more often these days.

One hand clutched the floor, gloves burnt off at the tips. His fingers were deceptively human looking, with blunt nails over tan skin save for the pads scorched red and peeling around flesh burnt black like a handful of macabre flowers. His eyes were clenched shut too tightly, limbs jerked against an unseen opponent and soft sounds managed to escape the gag, like screaming.

Even in his sleep, they tortured him.

Once Jack opened the container, Maddie stepped inside—disregarding all their safety procedures around ghosts—and unlocked the cuffs. Stripes of bruised, red-flecked green wrapped around Phantom's ankles where metal had once been, slashing through a gash.

Maddie threw the chains away.

Jack crowded into the container and deftly undid the gag with dexterity such enormous hands shouldn't have been capable of. He threw the metallic contraption away alongside the cuffs. The blindfold joined it moments later.

Between the two of them hauling Phantom to the nearest vivisection table was easy work. They didn't bother strapping him down, not for this test. Most of their instruments were horrifically, disgustingly, immorally invasive but they had considered, in their pragmatic way, the necessity of a machine that didn't vaporize ghosts. The ecto-scanner had been born. They powered the non-invasive machine up and guided it to slide above Phantom's prone form. Harmless ectoplasmic light studied him.

The various densities and composition of Phantom's ectoplasm the machine revealed perfectly mirrored the human body. Yet that was the most heartening news the scanner portrayed. His muscle system and humanoid organs were riddled with lacerations, lungs filled with soot; the skeletal-like structure filled with breaks. On a human those wounds would have hacked away at life and felled it hours ago.

Phantom still clung to existence.

While the machine finished scanning Maddie stopped upstairs to grab the nearest first aid kit. The damn thing was half empty; somehow one or the other of their children had been breaking into it, but still has enough gauze and bandages for Phantom.

Hopefully.

Jack brought back a needle filled with something green and glowing, but slightly more an emerald shade than ectoplasm. "The ecto-dejecto. The failed formula. It should help him."

Maddie nodded and took the needle. "Honey, we need to inject this into his core, right? For best effect?"

"I think so."

"We need to cut away the suit from the torso. Get one of the scalpels, I'll perform the injection." Poised with the needle, Jack with the scalpel, they loomed over either side of Phantom, who picked the worst time in the world to wake up.

Phantom jerked away like a fly evading a swatter. Jack quickly yanked the scalpel back before he could accidentally give the ghost another laceration. The table, taking so much weight on one end, lurched up and Maddie snatched it before it could topple over onto the wounded young man. "Easy, easy."

Too late. Phantom hit the floor in a tangle of limbs, biting back a shriek of pain, body trembling all over as fires of agony bloomed like volcanoes. The time he'd spent asleep hadn't done anything to help, not when the lab door looked a light-year away by crawl. The ghostly hero opened his mouth to speak.

And was overcome immediately by a fit of coughing. The ragged barks of someone retching a disease from their throat turned to a violent torrent of nauseating hacks that nearly brought his lungs up. Black bile splattered on the floor. Maddie snatched the nearest cloth, one of her lab-coats, and handed the sleeve as a handkerchief. Phantom hung his head over it, white hair drooping limply around his face.

By the time Phantom's ragged, full-body hacks died to harsh panting and light coughs the white lab-coat sleeve was stained black. "Sorry," he croaked.

"Don't speak," Jack said gently and approached once more with the needle and scalpel. Phantom jerked back.

"Please," Maddie whispered. "I know you have no reason to trust us but please, we're trying to help you."

"We promise," Jack added. He knew nothing could repay what they'd done to Phantom. They'd fought him, caged him while wounded and bleeding out, bound and gagged him like an animal…no, worse than an animal. He couldn't invent a bandage to fix that.

But they could—would do better going forward.

Phantom finally gave them the slightest of nods, hesitantly pulling himself back to the table. He still needed help getting on and as gentle as Jack tried to be, the hero still let out a hiss as broken bones were jostled. He lay perfectly still as Jack cut away part of his suit. "This is ecto-dejecto Maddie has."

Phantom relaxed, staring at them in surprise. "You know what it is?" Maddie asked.

He nodded. "It's," he coughed, "Good idea. Know about…inventions."

"Hold still then, I'm going to inject this right into your core. This will make you feel better." Watching the needle pierce the ghost hero's chest felt uncomfortably similar to vivisection but the pain couldn't have been too bad. No bitten-back screams and only a tiny wince was Phantom's reaction and the substance did well. The once dim glow flared brightly, pale skin darkened as though a bled-out corpse had been returned to life. Wounds closed and bones knitted together. He still looked bad off, but more like ten miles of bad road through hell than a hundred.

But Phantom was far from being out of the woods yet. His wounds were diminished, but the worst hadn't caked over in scabs. The flesh needed to be stitched together. Carefully Jack took out a needle and thread.

"You need to use the ecto-line…something I can't phase through…otherwise…" Phantom broke off but there was no need to elaborate.

"Oh."

That terrible knowledge came from experience. He needed to stitch himself up because someone shot at him. Because they shot at him.

Noting their darkening expressions, the ghost hero spoke again. "Hey, it's okay. You guys were pretty lousy at hurting me." Phantom gave them a lop-sided smile made all the more horrible by the suppressed wince when Jack thrust needle and ecto-resistant thread through damaged flesh. A special brand of awful slid through their hearts at the attempted comfort, but Jack continued his stitching and Maddie continued her binding.

Jack was the first to break away, last stitch knotted. He rushed to the nearest sink and scrubbed like mad at the green blood until he tore through his own gloves with the brush. Maddie lingered, looking anywhere but at Phantom as she fiddled with the Fenton Weasel, releasing a good half a dozen ghosts. Most darted toward their portal like startled fish but one turned and spat in her face in passing.

"Hey, why are you helping…?" He rasped, waving a hand at the ghosts and himself.

"It's what we should have done a long time ago," Maddie said guiltily, wiping off the ectoplasm. "We should have realized…" She freed another ghost, this one of a dog. The puppy bolted not for the portal but for Phantom, tail lifted from between his legs just long enough for a friendly wag before disappearing.

Jack, face still clammy, finished freeing the last of the ghosts. "Sorry ma'am." What else could he say?

The elder woman glared at them before her features softened, "In the spirit of the season I'll forgive…but no cookies for you!"

Once the Lunch Lady was gone Jack took down one of the distilled water bottles. "Here," Jack held it out and Maddie unscrewed the odd lid before handing it to Phantom. Hesitantly he drank, the water refreshing him. Lowering the bottle, he scrutinizing the two of them with some unreadable emotion in his eyes.

"We won't hurt any more ghosts," Jack said. He glanced down at his hands and ran to the sink again.

"You can go now if you want. We won't keep you here anymore," Maddie added.

He surprised her a second time by not leaving the lab like every other ghost. He didn't even make rude gestures. "Not that I don't mind the help because it's a really nice Christmas gift but…are you guys okay?"

"No," Maddie gave the honest truth.

To Maddie's shock Phantom limped awkwardly to Jack's side, prying his hands off the brush and guiding them to the water. Blood, ripped from her husband's flesh from hundreds of bristles on the scrub-brush, flowed away until the tiny scratches stopped bleeding. They didn't have any gauze left, but Phantom took a hand-cloth and patted Jack's hands dry, wrapping them in pristine white again. Through the whole thing her husband stood like a doll.

The stench of ectoplasm, ghostly blood, hit her. Maddie lost the battle with her own stomach and couldn't reach the trashcan in time. How long she spent with her forehead on the floor beside her own vomit, trapped between the horrific past—ecto-converter, know it's working when the ghosts screams—and future horrors Maddie didn't know. She was dimly aware of Phantom and Jack leaving, then of a cool, ghostly hand on her forehead replacing the floor as another arm nudged her up the stairs.

It was difficult to remain in a horrified daze on a warm couch surrounded by holiday decorations so the Fenton couple snapped out of it. Phantom turned to leave, wounded and tired as he always seemed to—no, always was—and they couldn't let him leave without anything. Without something.

"Thank you." Maddie actually hugged the ghost, Phantom, who stared at her so desperate and disbelieving of simple, human kindness. Did he have anyone to spend the holidays with? Did he have family at all?

Jack's hug was just as gentle and Phantom looked between them both like they lost their minds. "Um…what?"

"We're so sorry," Maddie whispers, running her fingers through his hair, sticky and matted with blood and ash and who knew what else, trying to make it clean and neat again. There was still some swelling on his scalp from too many blows. "For everything, for every wound and every hurt and every shot. We were wrong."

"Um…yeah…you guys sure you aren't possessed?"

"No," Jack said with a weak chuckle. "We've just been Scrooged."

Phantom stiffened and stared between the two, "You two were this year's Scrooges?"

That statement whetted their curiosity. Maddie really wanted ask him what he meant but now was not the time. Later maybe, after they'd built a bond of trust—if they could. Instead the couple hugged him closer, probably weirding the poor ghost out of his mind. "Did you…figure anything out?" Phantom asked cautiously, stiff as ice in their arms.

"That we were wrong," Jack said, "And I guess we were Scrooges after all."

"I don't see how you can forgive us for everything…but we will do better in the future," Maddie promised.

Jack suddenly perked up with the familiar smile of someone who has a great idea in their head, "Wait one moment."

He came back bearing a festive cookie tin, one of many they often saved just for gifts like this. "My Mads makes the best cookies and fudge and…here." Jack had stuffed the tin with cookies and to Maddie's surprise all the remaining Christmas fudge. "Merry Christmas."

"Thanks," Phantom said hesitantly, taking the gift. For a moment Maddie worried: could ghosts even eat? Was he insulted? Then he gave them a smile sincere with gratitude, which only burned the guilt within them a little more. But it was a good kind of pain, the pain of a scab peeled away to reveal new, fresh, raw skin.

She almost didn't ask, after all he's done for them, for the whole town, after all they've done against him. But her question is not for herself and she couldn't keep silent. "Do you know where our son is? Those ghosts, the three spirits and…and Vlad all said he was in danger."

He eyed them warily but admitted, "Yes."

Both Maddie and Jack stiffened in renewed fear, staring at the ghost before Jack said, "And…is he in any danger?"

An ancient smile distorted that youthful face. "I don't think he is anymore."

"And…could you get him for us? Or at least just let us know where he is," Jack asked. "You're free to go anyway but…he's just a kid. He doesn't deserve to pay for our sins."

Phantom seemed to hesitate glancing from his boots to them, to the lab. The sun rose slowly higher. Upstairs Jazz stirred at last, having slept in later than normal. Maddie wondered what kept her up. The ghost hero mulled for what seemed an eternity.

Finally he let out a heavy breath, shoulders slumped, head down. "Yeah…I think I can." Again he met their eyes, his back straightened, shoulders squared as life-changing determination settled over his features.

White rings appeared around his waist and suddenly Jack knew what was going to happen. Knew the impossible conclusion he'd been avoiding for so long was right. Unconscious knowledge became conscious as Phantom transformed. The impossible became possible, though the how still boggled Jack's mind.

Danny. Phantom.

When the light flowed over Phantom's body, their son was revealed. Maddie and Jack finally found the last piece of the puzzle the spirits had been coaxing them to solve all this time. Their son had been right before them all along. Unseen.

"Danny," they cried out in broken voices.

"Hey," he croaked. "It's okay. The ghosts did it all in one night."

Jazz chose that moment to walk downstairs, rubbing sleep out of her eyes. "What happened?"

"I'm fine, it's okay," Danny says again.

"Um?" Both Jack and Maddie looked between their children and Jazz looked between her parents and her brother.

Danny spoke up, "I told them. They know I'm half-ghost."

"Oh? Oh! Congratulations! This is a wonderful step in your self-acceptance and psycho—"

"Yeah, yeah, come on Jazz its Christmas, save the psycho-babble for tomorrow," Danny rolled his eyes.

"She knew?"

"He didn't tell me," Jazz admitted. "I found out on my own."

Silence haunted them: a past they could never change, a present barely realized in time, a future looming like a guillotine. As much as Maddie wanted to gather him in her arms, the raw nerve of guilt tied her arms. Her husband had no such reservations, wrapping his arms around his missing son.

Danny flinched.

Jack let go.

"Oh Danny..."

"Sorry, sorry, it's just gonna take a while."

To get used to your ghost-hunting family not trying to murder you, Maddie thought. "You don't have to apologize," she said. "I thought you would be angrier at us." More softly she admitted, "Your future self was."

Danny turned ten shades of paler. "What!" Every muscle went rigid and his baby blue eyes flashed ectoplasmic green. "What happened?"

"Maybe this should wait," Jack protested. "It's Christmas."

"Putting it off will only make it worse," Jazz pointed out. "Do you really want this kind of ghost haunting you?" No one said anything. "I'll get us something to drink."

By the time all was said the presents remained untouched, the sun was high in the sky and the hot chocolate Jazz made had turned cold. "Honey are you angry with us? You have every right to be," Maddie said.

Danny glanced at his mug, which he had frozen solid with his nerves, and put it aside. "I wanted to be…sometimes…a lot of the time," he admitted, "But that dark future self, he's all the worst parts of myself and more. I'm not going to be that. I promised." He smiled wearily at them. "And I've learned my own Christmas lesson about holding onto anger," Danny said.

"Scrooged?" Jack asked curiously. He couldn't imagine his incredible heroic son needing the sort of lesson they did.

"More of a Grinch," Danny corrected, "But the thing about Grinches and Scrooges—none of them are too far gone."

This time he hugged them.

Nobody flinched.

"But you owe me big time for locking me up like that. Like no more groundings or punishments ever big."

"Why didn't you tell us?" Maddie asked, still serious. "We could have killed you."

"You wouldn't have," Danny reassured, but the words rang hollow next to the future revelation. His shoulders slumped, "A lot of reasons but…one of the big ones was…I didn't want you to feel guilty."

"That's our fault," Jack said, a hand on his son's shoulder. Danny had grown, his shoulder no longer engulfed by his father's large hands. "Besides I wouldn't want to be the kind of father who didn't feel guilt." He paused, "Do you hate us?"

"Never," Danny said. Rubbing his neck awkwardly he asked, "Do you hate me? For keeping this a secret?"

"Of course not sweetie," Maddie said.

"Now this is the best Christmas present," Jazz declared.

Clockwork turned away from the Clock-tower screen as Jazz suggested watching 'A Christmas Carol'. The scene warped to a future, a brief snippet of a green shield rebounding a pink ecto-blast. Better than a broken shield by far.

"You should have let me keep them there," Dan Phantom grumbled. "The future will now die of boredom."

"Violence dying is hardly boring," Frostbite remarked. "I for one am pleased at this outcome, a far better one than even rescuing the Great One—"

"—I was eagerly awaiting the total destruction of Fentonworks—"

"—thank you Clockwork."

"You are quite welcome and thank you for your help," Clockwork's smile turned slightly naughty at the Ultimate Enemy's disgust.

"Fine, Christmas glurge is saved. Can I please go back to solitary confinement now," Dan grumbled, glaring at the decorations festooning the gears as if they had personally offended him.

"Do you? This is the Christmas truce. You must honor it but so must we. A little more freedom might do you good," Frostbite commented, motioning to the party in the next room. This year the time ghost had opened his doors to be the host.

"Keep your redemption shit between yourselves," Dan said, turning away. "That eggnog better be spiked." He left. Frostbite followed.

Clockwork waved his staff and the sounds of the Fentons loudly denouncing Jazz's choice silenced. The screens, covered in garland from an overenthusiastic ghost obsessed with decorating, slept. There would be troubles but the future was secure now. Turning away, the Master of Time joined the celebration of Christmas. One of the best in a long time.

A/N: Alas, all good things must come to an end and despite all the darkness in this story (and the potential for it in canon) I'm a sucker for a happy ending. And it's Christmas, I can't do a downer on Christmas. Danny and his family are going to have trials to come but the worst is over.

Merry Christmas Everyone :D