Written quite a while ago, dug up and retouched. Original is on my tumblr; link can be found on my profile.

Trigger warning: if you don't like all the tropes that come with murder/suicide/etc you probably shouldn't read.

Summary: What does Valerie do when she discovers that Fenton and Phantom are one and the same? …She pulls the trigger. – Gray Ghost. Character Death.

She Pulls the Trigger

—

Valerie is frozen in shock.

She stands rigid, her eyes wide, unable to even lower her ectogun—her eyes and gun barrel are locked on the place where Phantom's chest usedto be.

Now, Danny Fenton is sprawled across the ground, choking on his own blood.

For a moment, nothing makes sense. Reality refuses to click. Her mind spins, searching for an answer, any answer, to explain what she might be seeing. But the scene is too impossible, and her logic is jammed like a gun.

She chased Danny Phantom into a corner. She shot Danny Phantom in the gut. Danny Phantom fell to the ground—

—but now it was Danny Fenton instead, sprawled and gasping and bleeding bleeding BLEEDING—

And something clicks in Valerie's brain, like a gunshot going off. She isn't hallucinating. This isn't one of Phantom's tricks, either. What she's seeing is the truth. Though she doesn't know how, though it doesn't make sense, she suddenly just knows.

Danny Fenton is Danny Phantom.

She just shot Danny Fenton.

"Danny, I – oh my god—" Valerie falls to her knees. "This… this can't be happening," she stammers, shaking. It still doesn't make sense, the reality of what she's just done. She reaches out to touch him, to ground herself, to make sure this is real.

Her fingers brush up against his arm, pressing against skin that is too cold and fleshy and solid, too solid to be a hallucination, or to be a ghost. It's a human boy—it's her Danny—who is lying broken on the pavement.

She recoils. "You're not supposed to be here," she cries, as if reminding him will make reality right itself. It doesn't. Danny keeps bleeding and bleeding.

"I—I don't understand!" Valerie yells. "I was supposed to—to defeat Phantom—to, to make the city safe!"

To make YOU safe!

This isn't how it was supposed to go. Killing Phantom—it was supposed to be her final victory. When a hero slays her ultimate villain. She's played it out in her head a thousand times before; after striking the killing blow, she would stand triumphant. Victorious. A great evil would lift off Amity Park. The sun would emerge from the clouds, and the citizens would cheer. The world would be set right again.

But her villainjust stares up at her from the concrete, blood bubbling from his open lips, eyes clouded with pain.

And her victory doesn't feel right at all.

"I didn't want this." Valerie cries, her voice breaking. "I just wanted to set things right! Phantom, he's—he's evil, and I—"

But she stops, because that's a lie. Valerie crumples inward on herself, crying out in anguish. Because that's no villain lying broken on the ground, that's Danny Fenton. Those bloody lips are supposed to be smiling, those pained eyes are supposed to shine with joy.

His smile had always helped her through the hard days. He was kind when no one else was. Valerie treasured him like no other, and she always feared the ghosts would take him away from her.

But it isn't right. The pieces don't fit, the world is tearing at the seams, and he is dying on the concrete because she just shot Danny Fenton.

"Please… Danny, don't die. You can't die. I… I did this to—to—!"

She can't choke out the words. Her lips tremble. She looks down at Danny, and suddenly, realizes he is looking back. He's still awake, still alive, still clinging to the last threads of his life as he listens to her pleas.

A glimmer shines in Danny's—Phantom's?—eyes. A glimmer of understanding. But he can't form the words, can't speak the phrase she needs to hear.

It's okay, Valerie.

She crawls forward and cradles him in her lap, crying. Despite his pain, he tries to smile for her.

She sobs.

"…I did this to protect you."

The world feels cold. She wraps her arms around him protectively, but it's far too late for that. His eyes are growing ever more distant. Soon his choking gasps dwindle down, leaving her in silence.

So she sits there and she cries, arms wrapped tightly around his shoulders. Minutes stretch into hours, and the silence is thick, broken only by her sobs. She cries and cries, until she has no more tears left to shed. She's left with nothing—nothing but a horrible truth that echoes in her head, over and over and over.

I just shot Danny Fenton.

She'd always been afraid that a ghost would kill Danny. That the ghosts—that those monsters—would see him as an easy target and destroy the only light left in her life. Valerie had done everything she could to protect Danny from that fate, yet in the end, she was the one who hurt him.

Who was the real monster now?

She does not know how long she sits there, or how long she cries. The room is too quiet when at last her tears subside. Her breath shakes as she lingers, not wanting to face the truth.

But she looks; she looks because she must. Her eyes stare down at the boy in her lap, and a hollow corpse stares back. The light in his eyes has vanished—and she knows she is alone.

Her body is numb and hollow as she sits in the silence. The gun is still in her hands, and she stares at it, empty. The metal gleams silver-bright, all but for the muzzle, splattered in red.

He's gone.

No one is there to comfort her now.

No one is there to take the treacherous gun from her shaking hands.

And no one is there to stop her when she lifts the gun and aims it at her temple, the metal cold against her skin.

—

She pulls the trigger.

—