Disclaimer – Danny Phantom belongs to Butch Hartman. I am making no money off of this and am writing purely for pleasure. The title of this fic comes from the song "45" by the band Shinedown.
Summary – An unseen demon is slowly murdering Danny's soul, piece by piece, and will not stop until he claims all Danny has ever held dear.
A/N: This fic is not what it appears to be. I warn you, it is very, very dark and has adult themes, including murder, insanity, sex and violence. If this disturbs you, please turn around now and don't look back. Danny grows throughout this story and will act as a young adult when that time comes. This will be posted in two long parts as to not overwhelm. This is only my second Danny Phantom, and so I ask you be wary of those characters whom I butcher with their characterization. Thank you.
-GraySkyeMourning
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What ever happened to the young man's heart
Swallowed by pain, as he slowly fell apart
- 45, Shinedown
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Puzzle Known as Life
By: GraySkyeMourning
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Silver streaks ran in tendrils across the sky. Shameless, unforgiving rain beat upon the ground violently, soaking all under the heavens. Lightning breezed through the atmosphere, lighting a candle for a brief moment, only to be doused the next by the rain.
Danny hugged his arms around his knees, pressing his forehead against them and closing his eyes. The canopy of trees above him sheltered him slightly, and he huddled closer to the trunk. Coldness swept throughout his body, and he shivered, opening his eyes to once again make sure he was alone.
The park was deserted.
He inhaled deeply, sucking at the humid air and then releasing the breath in an aching cough.
He closed his eyes, and remembered.
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"You cannot escape this, child."
Danny leaned against the cold steel doorframe, ignoring the fact that if that demon so pleased, he could blast open the door and destroy him. He rested his burnt cheek against the steel, taking an ounce of pleasure from the feeling. He closed his eyes, and listened to the maniacal laughter that wafted from the other side of the door.
"Everyone is gone. There is nothing left."
He didn't want to think about that. It hurt to bad. Slowly, he slid with his back against the door until he was sitting down. He held his knees to his forehead, and leaned against them, attempting to shut off the pain. His burns hurt.
But the aching, gaping and unfinished hole that dramatized the center of his heart positively flamed.
He'd failed them.
He'd failed them all.
"You know this must be the end."
No. It couldn't just be the end, could it? That wasn't possible. This wasn't how things were supposed to turn out. They weren't all supposed to end up… like they did. They weren't all supposed to be the selfless incarnations of their former selves. This wasn't supposed to happen like this.
"I'm sorry they turned out like that."
No. The demon was never sorry.
The demon only killed.
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Burning tears made way to his eyes. They fell from his face like scattered seeds and moistened his already soaked neck. He pounded his temple into his knees, wanting desperately to strike the pain away. His burnt face throbbed agony, and when he brought a hand to his head, he felt the warmness that could only come from blood.
The feeling only caused him to sob harder, his hacking cries lost in the sound of the downpour and only to ever be heard by the sky.
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The demon was a white haired, clear skinned monster whose eyes were like daggers. The demon was relentless; if he could not have Danny Fenton, then all those close to him would pay for the fact.
Before Danny even knew what was happening, the demon took Jazz. She's known for a while, he found out later. She had known since that duel with Spectra, and had been blessed enough to never let a soul know that she knew but Sam. Sam had been angry at first; Jazz couldn't be trusted, could she? But that idea had fallen away over the months, and when the trio turned into sophomores, the idea was nothing more than a whisper.
The demon took her in her sleep. At her cries, Danny had fled to her room, unsure of what to find. Perhaps bad dreams? Or had the ghosts who sought him finally decided to use lethal strength?
It was the latter. By the time he got to her room, she was already gone. His parents were devastated. Ghosts, they'd screamed. It had been the ghosts who had taken their daughter from their own home. His parents vowed to not let the thing go unpunished, and with that they shut down the portal to the Other Side and picked up their equipment and RV and left.
Danny was fifteen at the time.
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The tears fell faster now. He held his hands in his face, bitterly wiping them away only for his cheeks to be softened again a second later. His face ached. Hysterically, he intertwined his fingers through his hair, pulling hard and breathing relief when that pain eased his burns.
What had he done to deserve this?
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For whatever reason the demon fancied, it was Tucker who was taken next, a year after Jazz was.
His parents thought the road would not be good for Danny, and arranged for Tucker's family to take him in. He hated living in their charity, but the Foleys liked him, and Tucker was ecstatic to be living with his best friend. His parents sent money and letters constantly at first; they were in Wisconsin, they were in Ohio, they were in Alabama. The ghosts were plentiful, but they couldn't find the one who had murdered Jazz's soul. He asked them how they would know which one had been the culprit; they would know, they said. They would know.
The letters stopped coming after a year or so. His home was still open to him, and so sometimes he would visit, open the portal to the Other Side and try to find the demon on his own. It was a hopeless search, one that yielded no information and no leads. He was devastated, but apparently not as much as his parents. The lost of the letters had hurt him, but he'd expected it. His mother had written they'd come into seriously haunted territory and were extremely busy, and probably wouldn't be able to write much.
The Foleys were understanding, and kept Danny, even though the initial plan had only been for Danny to stay for a year. In the last letter, his mother had offered for Danny to move across the country to Alabama to stay with his aunt, but the Foleys would have none of it. Separate Danny and Tucker? Not on their lives!
He missed his parents. They'd been a burden back then, but they were always there. They'd cared about him.
But, he thought bitterly, not as much as they cared for Jazz, and not enough to see pass their pain and look at him.
They'd never known about his alter ego. They'd never known he could have saved her if he had been a moment earlier, or that he could have prevented the demon from taking her if the accident had never happened. It was his fault, and he was grateful, if not guilty, that they had not known of his fault. His parents were kind, loving people, but they would look at him with shame in their eyes and hatred in their hearts.
It was his fault that their only daughter had been stolen from him.
Tucker and Sam were good for him after his parents went AWOL. Tucker was always there, of course, during school and during the night when his nightmares seized him and would not let go. In those cases, Tucker would grab his flailing arms and hold him steady, urging him to awake and that it was only a dream. Danny wasn't sure if he could have made it through the nights without Tucker.
And Sam was just… Sam. She was passionate, she was wily, she listened to him in the way Tucker could not bear to. She held him when he cried out his heart, and never made him feel lame for not being strong enough to look away. She could run her hand through his hair, and when she did that he saw her, and didn't remember the way his mother or Jazz would. She loved him with all her heart, and accepted that it would maybe take a while for him to do the same.
They began dating formerly at the end of sophomore year. He took her to a movie and a moonlit stroll through the park that was blessedly not haunted by his enemies. He'd made a fool of himself, and she'd giggled and appreciated the way he was still himself. When he began to cry again for no apparent reason – it happened a lot after his mother left – she'd held him in her arms and had kissed him truly for the first time, and there was nothing fake about it.
Tucker started drifting then. He'd always been a jealous person, and having to share Danny with Sam forced him into feeling left out. Danny had tried his best to make him see that it wasn't possible, that Sam did not have the bond he shared with Tucker. They were brother, he had said. Nothing could ever change that.
But Tucker saw things differently, and when he was taken, Danny had been in the same room.
They shared a room in the Foley residence. Most of the time Danny took the cot, but Tucker was gracious and allowed him to have the bed after his nightmares. It was an easy partnership that was tested after he started going out with Sam. Tucker would hold his arms to the side of the cot and then return to the bed, giving no words of comfort. Danny hated that, but Tucker would not give.
There were no nightmares the night Tucker was taken. If it was one thing, it was that fact that Danny could not let himself forget. Maybe if he had been dreaming, he could have awoken and been awake when the demon took his best friend, his brother. But he had not dreamt, and when he awoke it was to Tucker's startled cries and screams.
The demon was already gone by the time Danny opened his eyes, and Tucker was gone as well.
Danny was sixteen at the time.
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Thinking of Tucker always hurt, but tonight the torment was positively unbearable. His fingers softly untwined from his hair, and he stared at them, startled at how hard they were shaking. He held his knees for a second, and then transferred them to his elbows. He rocked back and forth sadistically, slamming his back again and again into the oak he sat beside. The wood drove sharp pin pokes of pain deep into his mind, and for a moment he forgot all about Tucker and his guilt and the pain that brought.
But it was only for a moment, though.
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His parents were taken next, as if they weren't already gone to begin with.
After Tucker was taken, his parents tried to be kind to him. Yes, yes, they sobbed, Danny, we want you to stay; you were his best friend! But Danny couldn't stay with them. He saw the burning conviction in their eyes, that heavy curtain of accusation they so cunningly threw at him: they blamed him. He had been in the room with Tucker. Why hadn't the demon taken him? Why their son?
Danny wondered the same.
He had never really believed in the notion of pure evil. Yes, the ghosts he fought were to some extent bad and generally not good. But he did not look fully at their actions, he looked at their motivations. Wealth and revenge were something he could understand, and he did not think it fair to blame them solely for their actions. Society bred that desire for such a thing. The need to control puzzled him, but he accepted it and understood.
The demon was pure evil. Danny understood it the moment Jazz was taken from him. Something made of pure evil deliberately set out to cause pain. That's how Danny saw it. For some reason, the demon wanted Danny to hurt. The demon wanted Danny to suffer. Danny did not know why, and for a long time he didn't care or want to know. The only thing that was clear to him was that the demon had set out to harm him, and knew the one true way to do such a thing was to take those who meant the most to him.
That was pure evil: to strike at your opponent, or anyone, from the inside out.
Danny moved in with Sam. Her parents graciously accepted him into their home, knowing of his troubles and sympathizing with him about his parents' absence. They were very strict, though. He was not allowed into Sam's room after nine o'clock, and they were not allowed to show affection to each other in the presence of the Masons. It offended them, Sam explained. They thought it weird to be housing the child their daughter loved.
He accepted this; they were, after all, doing him a favor, and now that Danny had moved into a family buzzing with wealth, his parents did not feel the need to send money as often as they had. He was welcome to the food, of course, but asking for money to buy new clothes was hard. He kept the majority of the money his parents kept in a white envelope, knowing he would need it once he graduated from high school.
He used that money to visit his parents once in Alabama. He'd flown there, and had seen them for a little while. He didn't remember much.
Tucker's absence was well felt. It was Sam crying most of the time, not Danny. She felt terrible about it; Tucker had departed still very much angry with her for taking Danny from him. That knowledge pulsed within her heart and tore at her soul. He would hold her when he could, hugging her tightly and kissing her hair.
The news of his parents reached his ears two weeks after the fact. It was the last month of his junior year, and he was sitting in physics class with Sam, holding her hand, when the runner from the office came. He was taken to Lancer's office in the administration building where Lancer, the principal, and Sam's dad were waiting for him. Mr. Mason asked him to take a seat. He did.
His parents were gone. They weren't coming back.
Danny sat in the chair rigidly, grasping the armrests so tightly he was surprised they did not break. He was tired suddenly, so tired. He gaped at the trio of them, unsure of what to do or say. The shock receded within him for a long time. The principal left, as did Mr. Manson. He would be back when school ended; there was official business to be taken care of, but could he stay at the school until then?
Lancer stayed with him, and asked if he would like Ms. Manson to join him. He'd nodded mutely, staring out the window at the cloudy sky. He suddenly wanted to fly, go intangible and flee from Lancer's office into the heavens. He wanted to go, just go.
His anguish bubbled to the surface the moment Sam walked in, tears already in her eyes. She rushed to him and enveloped him in her arms. He began to sob uncontrollably, and Lancer stepped out. He'd be back in an hour.
Danny fell into her, his legs completely going numb. She gripped him around the arms, and they lowered onto the ground. Half hysterical, he screamed onto her shoulder, again and again. Lancer came racing back in, saw the two of them, and left again, saying he'd get the school physiatrist and she'd be here in thirty minutes. Make sure he didn't hurt himself, Ms. Manson.
He wanted to burn his heart out and throw it to the wind. He wanted to cut out his eyes and torch them. He wanted to escape from his body and watch it burn. The pain hurt so bad. So, so bad.
She cried with him, held him and rocked him. When the doctor came in, she told her the service wasn't needed. But Lancer had said so. Sam said it was a mistake; she wasn't needed, could she please just leave? She was upsetting him. The doctor left in a huff.
Lancer didn't come back in the hour he had promised, nor did he come back the hour after. He returned shortly after the final bell. Danny had passed out somewhere around fifth period and was still out when Lancer returned. Lancer looked down at him with pitying eyes and told Sam her father was waiting with the car out front, but had said he would wait for the crowd to die if that was what she wanted. Sam said yes, and they waited for another thirty minutes to leave.
Danny was dazed. Lancer supported him on the trip to the car, earning a few stares from the few students milling around. The teacher dumped Danny gently in the back of the car and slammed the door. No, he told Mr. Manson, he didn't expect Danny to show up for the next week or so. He would send him homework at the end of week.
Mr. Manson drove them to the legal office of Michael Tyler, his parent's attorney. They'd had an attorney? Danny asked.
Everyone did, Mr. Manson said briskly.
Tyler told him bluntly his parents had not left him much. The house, the equipment, the RV and their savings, which did not amount to much. Danny sat there in stunned silence. Mr. Manson had brought along his own attorney, who Danny had met a while back and had asked to be called Andrew. Andrew sat stiffly and took notes next to him.
Tyler told Danny his parents had requested his legal guardian become Vlad Masters. That one piece of information brought a gasp from Sam and a jerk from Danny. Tyler then told them that if the Mansons wanted to claim guardianship of Danny, they could if Danny emancipated himself from Vlad after the custody went through.
Mr. Manson called his wife and asked if she would accept taking guardianship of Danny. They'd talked for a long time, and listened to Sam's pleas that they do so. They could sell the stuff, she said. That'd be enough money. Did Danny want to, they asked. Yes, he said in a voice that did not sound like his. He very much did.
They agreed. Tyler and Andrew hammered out the details, calling Vlad and asking him if he could accept custody of one Daniel James Fenton. He'd be delighted. They faxed over some papers. Vlad signed them and faxed them back. Daniel now wished to be emancipated. Vlad was quiet and exploded.
Danny signed some papers in barely legible scrawl and they sent it to Vlad. If he didn't sign it, they said, they'd have the Wisconsin police over in a heartbeat. They heard Vlad snort over the phone as he signed and then faxed the paper back. He hollered goodbye to Danny and hung up.
Tyler had Mr. Manson sign some more papers and told him to contact the attorney in a day. But for a moment, Daniel James Fenton legally belonged to Mr. and Mrs. Robert Manson.
I'm glad, Mr. Manson said, and took Sam and Danny home.
They let Danny stay in Sam's room for the night after the pair promised nothing too intimate would go on. As soon as her parents backed out of the room, Sam kissed Danny violently over and over again, as if she could somehow steal his pain out through his lips. He kissed her back, and was sorely tempted to break their promised before Sam had enough sense to turn on the light and just hold him.
Danny had Mr. Manson sell everything but the Spirit Remover. He snuck it into Sam's room and hid it in her massive closet. He kept it… just in case.
Danny was 17 at the time.
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Danny giggled to the wind thinking of his parents. Parents! What parents? After Jazz had been taken, they didn't care! What parents loved for so little time and didn't care for the rest? His parents weren't parents; they were imposters, truly dreadful, terrible imposters who had only pretended for a long, long time. Parents, ha! That wasn't true.
He wondered vaguely if it had ever been true.
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