Content warning: Major character death (mentioned, not described), (somewhat) graphic injuries, and swearing. Generally dark and angsty themes.

AN: The fact that this one ended up as the most popular of the bunch over on Tumblr really says something about this fandom and its love for angst. Written for Ectoberweek 2018, day 3: necromancy.

Tucker doesn't fight much with Sam anymore, these days. Every time he gets riled up, every time he finds himself getting ready to argue, he thinks back to the one time they really fought. They've always argued, of course, and without Danny their arguments kept coming and coming, but they both knew that their arguments were rarely to convince the other, and meaningless as their fights were, they burned out as quickly as they came.

But the one time it didn't, the one time their fight truly mattered, was the one time Tucker will forever regret. Because he watched Sam storm off, and in his anger, he never stopped to remember what they were arguing about in the first place.

It wasn't until far too late that he realized, and he remembered, and he regretted that he had been too caught up in their fight to stop her, and now every fight seems, well, unreasonable. What's the point in fighting if he couldn't even stop her from making that huge mistake?

He thinks about that awful fight a lot. It haunts him, just like the mistake that led to it. It's burned into his brain, and he can recall it without fail, every detail as sharp as it had been when he was there.

It was a fairly normal day, or about as normal as days got after the Accident. Sam and Tucker were hanging out in the park together, quiet and alone, steadfastly ignoring the empty spot where their best friend should have been. They had quickly learned to shy away from conversations, the rhythm off without input from Danny. It would only lead to fights anyway, which only served to make them feel worse.

Suddenly Sam sat up, staring wide-eyed at the book she had been reading. "I've got it."

"Got what?" Tucker asked as he pushed himself up as well.

"I know how we can get Danny back."

"Sam," he said as he tried to gauge her emotional state, but she kept her eyes on the book, making it hard for him to read her expression. "Sam, he's gone. You heard his parents, if he became a ghost we would have known by now."

She remained silent and unmoving. He sighed deeply. "Sam, I miss him too, but we can't change what happened."

Suddenly she turned, scowling at him. "We can't change what happened, no, but he's not completely gone. We can get him back, and it'll be like nothing ever happened."

"That's crazy! Sam, he's dead. You saw his body after the Accident, we've been to his funeral. They fucking buried him. He's gone Sam, there's nothing to bring back!"

She scrambled to her feet, face growing red in anger and tears gathering in the corners of her eyes. "You're wrong! I can bring him back, and he'll be fine! You- you just don't care about him anymore! You're a selfish asshole who only cares about himself!"

"What?!" he yelled, standing up as well. "I'm a selfish asshole? You want to try some kind of crazy goth ritual to bring him back against his own will! Sam, if Danny wanted to stay, he would have become a ghost. You can't do this!"

"Oh yeah?" she growled, "we'll see about that!"

And then she was gone, stomping off into the brushes, and Tucker was left in the clearing all alone.

Tucker glances at the boy that had once been his best friend as the boy stares back, eyes dull and emotionless and perhaps worst of all, void of recognition. He looks as he always did, wearing his usual outfit of blue jeans, a white t-shirt with red trim, and red sneakers. Tucker had wondered, at first, how Sam had gotten her hands on multiple copies of Danny's clothing, but he soon found out that she was rich. The discovery would have thrilled him if it wasn't for the terrible situation that she had put them in.

While his clothing looked as it always did, the same couldn't be said for the boy himself. His black hair was limp and lifeless, looking brittle without the shine that it had always had. His sky-blue eyes were half-lidded, and had lost their sparkle. And perhaps worst of all were the vicious injuries that cover his arms, angry and a nasty mix of red and black, worst at the palm of his left hand but clearly visible all over. They even peek out of his collar, standing out against the pale white of his skin.

The skin of his left hand was burned away completely, the only white the gleaming bone that peeked out. From there the injuries sprawled out, branching all over his body in a mockery of lightning. They remained red and angry, always looking as fresh as they did right after the Accident, but they had stopped bleeding a long time ago. At first, Tucker had wondered why they still looked so fresh, but had quickly come to the conclusion that it was a side-effect from whatever Sam had done to preserve Danny.

There was no evidence of what, exactly, she had done. He looks, and feels, like a corpse, even if he isn't stiff or decaying as one. He doesn't blink, doesn't breathe, or eat or drink. He is cold to the touch, and doesn't respond to anything. He simply sits in the chair where Sam had put him, and doesn't seem to register anything happening around him.

He had been, at some point, Danny, but he definitely wasn't anymore. This was little more than a corpse, somehow preserved via arcane magics. Even if Sam continues to parade him around (always in private, the two of them the only people there, at least so far) and acts like this is Danny, Tucker couldn't bear to think of him that way.

This mockery of life isn't Danny. The little life that it carries had been forcefully taken from a boy who had passed the opportunity to become a ghost, and so they were left with little more than a shade of what had been.

If Tucker has to refer to the shade, he calls it Phantom. He thought that Danny would have appreciated it, a play on his last name, since the boy had always enjoyed puns.

Phantom doesn't enjoy anything.

Phantom isn't Danny. If only Sam could see that.

He still remembered the first time she had shown up with Phantom. It had quickly joined the Accident and the Fight as a memory to haunt him forever.

Sam had texted him, asking him to meet her in the park. He had agreed, hoping to put their fight behind them. He had already lost Danny, he didn't want to lose Sam too, no matter how serious the fight had been.

And so he found himself waiting in the clearing that they had used many times before, distracting himself with his PDA. Hearing a rustling in the bushes, he eagerly looked up, and saw Sam approach him.

She wasn't alone.

Following closely behind her was- was Danny. His eyes were turned downward, making it impossible to read his face as his black hair covered it, but the injuries were easily recognizable.

Sam had a hand clamped around his right wrist, and seemed to be dragging him with her.

Tucker was seconds away from jumping up and hugging his best friend, when he remembered his last conversation with Sam, and ice-cold dread filled him.

He still stood up, but much more slowly, and licked his lips before asking, "Danny?"

The boy stood unmoving, and when Sam let go of his wrist his arm fell to his side. He didn't react in any way to show that he had heard Tucker.

As Tucker stood there staring at the boy, Sam grabbed Danny and carefully shoved him to the ground, guiding his limbs into a sitting position. Danny still didn't acknowledge anything that was happening around him.

When both Danny and Sam were seated on the soft grass, Sam looked at Tucker expectantly. He hesitated, but then sat down, further from the two of them than he normally would. Sam didn't comment.

She then promptly started asking him about school, of all things. As the conversation continued, she even started asking Danny for input, but he remained quiet. With slow-building horror, Tucker realized that Sam was ignoring the oddity to pretend that- that nothing had happened. When he stopped playing his role in the conversation, Sam simply started filling in for him, just as she had done for Danny.

He briefly wondered what Jazz would do if she had been in this situation, but he figured that this was far beyond what even she could have dealt with.

He steadfastly ignored the one-sided conversation that Sam was carrying to study what should have been Danny. He compared what he saw to what he knew about ghosts, how they formed, what drove them, and everything else he had learned since the Accident. The rambling from both ghost hunters that he had always zoned out of were now committed to his memory, and he started sorting through this knowledge to attempt to decipher… whatever he was looking at.

It was clear that he wasn't a ghost, even beside the fact that there was a limited time-frame for one to become a ghost, and Danny had passed that time. The boy didn't glow like a ghost, and he looked almost exactly like he had in life, barring the injuries from the Accident.

But he was dead. He should have moved on by now. Even if Sam had somehow come across an actual ritual to raise the dead, there shouldn't have been a soul left for her to bind to his body.

Maybe that was it, though. Maybe she had waited long enough for him to start moving on, but not for him to be completely gone yet. Maybe she just caught a snippet, an impression of the real Danny. That would explain why he didn't seem to be doing anything. He was a mere shade of the boy she had tried to bring back.

He had hoped, at the time, that Sam would realize the truth behind Phantom, and let the last piece of Danny move on. He still holds that same hope, but he knows it is increasingly unlikely, as she continues to pretend that Phantom is Danny.

He wonders, sometimes, when she would let go of this fantasy of hers. He wonders if he could somehow break through her illusion, and forcibly drag her back to reality. He doesn't think it likely that that would end well, however, and therefore doesn't try. While he might break through and get her to release the shard of Danny that he had dubbed Phantom, he thinks it at least equally likely that she would snap and go even crazier. He doesn't feel like risking an existence like Phantom. He still has too much to live for.

But he doesn't want to leave Phantom to Sam's fickle will, and so he continues to come when she invites him. Even if Phantom doesn't acknowledge him, and likely isn't even aware of him, Tucker hopes that Danny knows.

It's a divine punishment of sorts, he supposes, to watch over Sam as she plays pretend. He didn't interfere before, didn't stop either of his friends when they set out to make the biggest mistakes of their lives, and so he doesn't interfere now.

He had been there when Danny walked into the Portal. He hadn't stopped him. Quite the opposite, in fact, he had encouraged his friend to walk into the enormous machine, despite knowing that it might be dangerous. Most of the FentonWorks equipment was, and this was a monstrosity that was supposed to defy the natural order and tear open a pathway into a different dimension. He hadn't stopped Danny from walking in, and he hadn't done anything except scream when it turned on. He didn't think about what happened until much, much later, and by then there was nothing he could do for his best friend.

And when Sam announced to him her plans to bring Danny back, what had he done? He had yelled at her, despite knowing that she was far past reasoning, and then he had let her storm off without stopping her.

As he watches Phantom, he wonders, "What would have happened if I had stopped either of them?"

But he will never know.