Epilogue

"Well, that's over," Danny said. It was the first thing he had said in a long while. His words skipped across the beach like a flat stone. Stuck somewhere in the sand. Buried by the waves and the wind. He wanted to say something more, something less final, but he couldn't trace the thread of his own thought. The sound of the wind through the leaves brought him to exactly where he was; where he'd always been, once upon a time. A forgotten space. Stars winked away in the twilight haze. The sky held traces of pale pink on a seafoam-green brimmed void. No hint of malice lingered in the forthcoming of dawn.

The clouds had all thinned. The water had receded from the shoreline, leaving a mud-soaked shore. The broken, lifeless ghost had drifted into the water after they vacated, and not even a tire track remained of its passing. No evidence. This is not victory. He wasn't even sure if he wanted to call it survival.

He pressed his lips together.

A summer zephyr threatened frozen dewdrops. This too would melt. Soon this patch of forest and lake would be so peaceful that none would look upon it and wonder about the boy who had disappeared here.

But he would carry the scars forever. He could see it sealed into his palm, the imprint of red prongs like a snake's bite, positioned just above the circular scar from his first interaction with a portal. Irony had blessed him with divine comedy, and the two marks combined made the face of a howling cartoon ghost.

He pressed his forefinger and thumb together. Sand trickled from his palms. He tried to call forth a spark, a flicker. Something. Anything.

No electric miracle graced the persuasions of his exterior.

Powerless.

Alive.

Nothing to show for it. Thud, thud, thud, the awful reminder of his resilience filled the silence. The sound of his own heart a discomfort without ice to dull its pulse. Something horrible happened behind his forehead, a time-worn war drum that beat, beat, beat. His stomach packed with steel nails. So this is what it was to be human. Danny didn't believe life was meant to feel so miserable.

It's the failing that makes it; an ache that has no place but everywhere.

He thought he could save him. An impulse. A genius idea, a brisk moment in the space between love and loss. An electric pulse, a lighting strike, and the taser falling from his shock-stung fingers. He did it to save Dash Baxter.

To save nothing.

He tipped his head back. Tucker laid in the sand beside him, watching atmosphere leave sky; he kept his phone trapped between his palm and his chest, motionless. He hadn't said anything more than 'Gone?' and 'I think I'll rest for a bit.' though time had drawn those words to distant isles. Was this a remedy? Sitting still. Danny wanted to travel, through the doors of time, to windows where he could break apart the things that sent him into the dark. To feel the break of day with a passion for the light. Isn't that what humans did? Heal. He wasn't sure he knew how to do that anymore.

Too much had gone wrong. Danny could feel the wake and press of his heart inside of his chest, a race across the clock. A thing he once knew. Hours ago, he had an unbending force inside his veins. Now he felt empty. Twisted by the remorse of his own shortcomings. Perhaps he should have followed the advice he was given, and taken from Dash that which never belonged to him. At least then the loss would be incomplete, insubstantial.

Fragility is the failing of mankind, and failure had a bitter taste.

His ghost kept him upright. Strong. Responsible. His jaw set. Ghosts have their obsessions. Tests were his. Pass, fail. Crash, soar. That mattered at the end of the day. Without his driving force, in the face of absolute destruction, would the fight just evaporate from him?

When a candle is snuffed out, the wax remains.

"Who am I without it, Tuck?"

Tucker pressed one ear to the sand to look at him. "Is it really gone?"

"Yes," Danny said definitively. Unlike his usual encounters with the maximus, he harbored no chill whatsoever. And if he was being honest, he felt almost too-warm, like he could be running a fever. "I'm not supposed to be like this."

"Like that?" Tucker gave a wary eye. "You're seventeen. It's summer. You know what you should do? Hamburgers. I'm talking JJ's, with carne asada fries. Extra grilled onions. A mango salsa side-salad."

"You can't be thinking of food."

"One of us has to."

"Dash is dead."

"You're not planning on joining him, are you?"

He sank back. The answer was yes. In the heat of the moment, when he turned the maximus on himself, he thought that he would die and Dash would live. All he needed was a stable core, right? Something to keep him from fading into the background of the forest. And wouldn't it be grand? Death by self-sacrifice. Test passed. Flying colors, black and white.

Grey, gray. A flash, an abrupt end to everything, the storm, the water, the strange-cold skip of energy in his veins. It's all over.

"What do I do now?" He refrained from adding, How do I move on from this? Because it wasn't something he wanted to face.

Tucker sat up, dusting the sand off his shirt. "You don't have to know. Growth isn't measured by time, or distance. It's measured by small, inconsequential steps, one at a time, until someday…"

At a glimpse, the mountain peaks turning gold were insignificant. Just another morning. Yet still, Danny's eyes watered at the rising of the sun. With it came a warmth, a sinking thing. He got to his feet, stretching, pacing, needing movement to employ his thoughts. Heat flushed his cheeks, chasing away a winter that had gone on for so, so long.

"Things change," Tucker finished, "and you're somewhere new."

He wondered about the bottom of the lake. Was there a boy down there? A ghost of his own right. Maybe there was, maybe there wasn't. Maybe Dash Baxter would be a better Phantom than he ever was. What mattered now was not what could be or what might have been. Tucker was right. He had to face the day, the task at hand.

Time could handle the rest.