Disclaimer: I don't own Danny Phantom

It was peaceful, a scene that Amity didn't see much of.

Many gave the praise to Inviso-bill but there were still those that scorned him for some of the flops he'd had in his earlier years. He wasn't the public enemy anymore, though, and even the Fenton's had stopped hunting him. Danny still hadn't told them he was the mysterious Phantom though.

Knowing that she'd stopped hunting him didn't lessen the guilt Maddie was feeling though. She could tell that her husband was feeling the same just by looking at him. He wasn't bouncing around or working on one of his inventions that she'd end up finishing for him. He wasn't doing anything but sitting on the couch, staring at the television. She was in their chair, staring at him. They hadn't talked about what they'd seen yet and it'd been two days.

Danny was blissfully unaware of their knowledge and he was at school.

Despite her guilt she knew that they needed to confront Danny; it was the only way that they'd ever get back to their normal selves. When could they though. He'd been out all day Sunday and he'd returned right at his curfew only to rush to his room yelling that he was going to bed. Checking the monitors again the next day they found that he'd allowed the ghost back into his bed and they'd done more than sleep.

The monitor had gone off as soon as the first piece of clothing had.

How were they supposed to react to that? She had no idea how a normal parent would confront their children after finding out they were sexually active and she had the pleasure of confronting him with not only that but she knew that he was half dead.

There was no real way to do it easily or subtly and with Jack acting like he was she knew that she couldn't count on him to yell out the problem like he normal did. Bluntness wasn't her gift, it'd gone to her better half, she was blessed with subtlety yet this situation demanded none of it. How could she be blunt without actually doing it? It was an impossible, wasn't it? But then again, so were ghosts.

"Ghosts." She told herself, her eyes widening behind her goggles. All their failed inventions were decreed failures because they'd always gone after Danny when they were supposed to go after a ghost.

She was up and running to the lab immediately, looking for the device that could help her with her little conundrum. "The Specter Deflector." She said, sounding happy for the first time since Danny's reveal. Harmless to anything while off yet dangerous to ghost while on. It was off her moral standing to willingly cause her children pain but she knew it would only be a quick zap before he dropped it.

All she had to do was hand it to him while it was on. He was human while all the other inventions went after him why wouldn't this one do the same?

Danny didn't get home untill around five thirty, much later than he normaly did after school, and by then Maddie had prepared herself for whatever would happen when she placed the belt in his hand.

"I'm going to the lab to do my homework!" Danny yelled as he walked through the hall around the kitchen.

"Oh, honey." Maddie called, "Can you take this down there for me." A few minor tweaks and the belt was activated without anything to show it was on. Her son peaked his head around the corner to see what she was asking him to do. She held her trap out for him, waiting for him to take it.

"Sure." He said after a moment. There was really no harm in touching it, as he'd learned over the years, as long as it was off. On was another matter entirely, as he'd also learned through experience. The belt was designed to react to ecto-energy, something ghosts were made of, and the stronger the source was the more of a charge it gave. He'd only grown stronger since his last experience with the ghost retardant belt and, at the time, it felt like a freight train had hit him.

He placed his hand over his mother's to grab it from her.

There was a small problem though.

"AHHHHH!" His voice cracked as he screamed. The belt has pulsed him away, pushing him across the kitchen and into the wall. He could feel his body convulsing on the floor but nothing else seemed to register in his mind. He knew this though, he knew what was happening. It was the first stage of the mental restart he had to do when something like this happened. First was the searing pain, check, then was the numbness, check, and next would be the part where he woke up in a few hours fit as a fiddle and ready to go get what was left of him killed.

His parents would be there when he woke up though, not his nurse and moral support, not Sam and Tucker.

Maddie simply stared in shock at what the tool had done.

"What happened?" Jack yelled, bursting into the room. He froze when his eyes landed on Danny. His boy was lying on the floor in front of a cracked wall while his wife was staring at him, the Specter Deflector in her hand. Jack was impulsive, irrational, and often lacking common sense but he was one of the smartest minds in Amity, possibly all of North America, and it only took a second to figure out what had happened.

It only took a second to understand that Danny had been repelled by his device.

"Take him upstairs, Jack." Maddie said, her normal, loving, tone gone. She was still in a form of shock and he could see it on her face.

(Danny)

He was in pain, not the burning pain of battle, or even the pain of Ember's nails against his skin, which he'd just become accustom to, but an aching pain all over his body. If he actually had a choice he'd of decided to go back asleep and not wake up for... ever. It wasn't a choice though. The memory of what happened was clear in his head and he knew his parents would be frantic, if not panicked.

As he'd told himself only a few days ago, they were close to finding him out. He knew the Specter Deflector worked and they knew it worked to. That meant that they knew that Danny Fenton was partly ghost. They may not have known more than that, or they could have called his friends. Sam and Tucker knew that if his parents found out about him being a ghost they were to explain everything so his parents wouldn't freak out.

It'd happened before, and they'd accepted it. Their memories had been wiped every time though and the process started over again.

"You okay, Danny?" Ember's sweet voice soothed him a little. The soothing ended when he realized he'd heard Ember's voice. His eye's snapped open to see her sitting on the air next to his bed.

"What's going on?" Danny asked sleepily, not understanding why she was there.

"You were zapped." She told him as she lowered herself a little, grabbed his blanket, and put herself in bed with him. Her cold body felt heavenly on his skin. "You're friends are downstairs right now explaining you're unique existence to your parents. I'm not entirely sure what happened." She poked his side lightly, "But they know about me and you."

"Angry?" He asked. It was a double question. Was she angry that people knew and did she know if her parents were angry?

"No, I'm not." she told him, only getting the first part. "But I'm leaving now." She pressed her lips to his lightly. "I'll be within earshot, but it would be best if I wasn't here when they come to talk to you."

Danny nodded before bringing his hand up to her cheek. "Thanks." He pulled her lips to his again, not really wanting to separate from her. Fate always seemed to be against him though, though he'd prefer to blame Clockwork though. The ghost was probably watching him as he pulled away from Ember and she fazed away. Probably already knew what would happen too. Not that he'd give anything away.

Deciding that waiting was a displeasing concept he went through his bed and floor, right into the living room. He wanted to get back to sleep, preferable with his personal ice cube next to him, but he had no choice but to go to his parents right now. He had to tell them that he was what they'd been hunting and watch as they either accepted it of tried to capture him. They'd accept it though. Every time he'd become revealed they had.

He was intangible when he entered the room. "So Danny's the one that stole the ecto-skeleton." Was the first thing that he heard?

It was quiet after that but he could see Tucker and Sam nodding. His father and mother had pained looks on their faces and Danny knew what they were thinking about. The ecto-skeleton that his dad had built nearly killed him and they knew that would happen if it was worn to long. They were thinking about how close their son had come to death.

In reality, it hadn't been the first time he'd knocked on deaths door, hell, a few more times and he might be able to consider himself a ding-dong ditcher. He knocked then left again and it would happen again and again till death finally caught him.

"Danny's known the risks." Sam said after a little while. "He's known them since he first started protecting Amity."

His parents remained silent, Jack holding his wife tightly against his side. "Mom," he let himself become visible, shocking both his parents. Sam and Tucker were used to his sudden appearances and if Sam was honest with herself, she known he'd been there since he'd first entered the room. He was a walking cold front in his ghost form and she was wearing clothes that revealed a lot of skin. Nobody else was and she'd felt the temperature change.

"Danny." His mom said quietly. She'd known about him for two days but actually seeing it… it was different, odd.

"Mom," Danny repeated, "Dad." He looked at them before sighing. They were staring at him with expectancy, like he would do something; he wasn't sure what they wanted though. The shear fact the he'd spontaneously appeared in the room should have been more than enough proof that he was a half ghost. Did they want him to say it?

"Danny, son, what… when?" Jack settled with, at a loss for words.

They did want it from his lips then, Sam and Tucker hadn't been enough. "When you created the portal, it didn't work." He started. "Sam urged me to look into it and I did. I accidentally started it while I was still inside of it and it… changed me. I'm half ghost and half human. One of the strongest ghosts in Amity." He couldn't stop his laugh as he waved his arm toward Sam and Tucker, "And this is team Phantom." He said, using their old team name as a joke to hopefully lighten the tense mood that the room held.

Tucker and Sam laughed, remembering their early days as Danny's teammates.

Jack and Maddie didn't laugh though they did seem a little more relaxed than they had been.

"I don't know what else you want me to say." Danny said after a few moment of silence.

There were a few more moments of silence before Maddie broke her voice cracking as she cried out. "We're sorry, Danny!" She all but yelled. She got off the couch she'd been sitting on and moved to hug him. Jack was right behind her, taking both her and Danny into his massive arms. Danny felt like he was going to be crushed in the hug but he smiled regardless, they were going to ask more questions, sure, but they'd accepted it, his secret, again.

They canceled everything they'd planned for the day and Sam, Tucker, and him sat down and explained everything. Every question had an overcomplicated answer but it was what Danny's parents wanted. They didn't want the censored version of it so that they could sleep easy they wanted the truth and it shocked them. They'd been frightened for Danny when they learned that he'd taken the ecto-skeleton but that seemed almost trivial to some of the other situations he'd been in over the years.

Finally the question that only Danny could answer came up.

"Are you a virgin, Danny?"

His mother asked in the tone that told him he couldn't lie but the words slipped through his lips before he could stop them. "Of course." His voice didn't waver, and he sounded confident enough but his mother seemed like she didn't believe it. It was in the posture she'd taken before asking, like she knew. His friend couldn't bail him out of this if she did know and he wasn't going to pull them into it. "Why would you ask that?" he asked, just as confident as before.

Without missing wasting a second Maddie pointed to the vent in the upper corner of the room. Being the nerd that Tucker was, he was the first to figure it out. "You have a vent like that in your room as well, don't you?" he asked.

"Yeah," Danny shrugged, "there's one in every room; it's the air conditioning."

Sam caught on as soon as Tucker had brought it up and she could only send a disapproving glare at Danny's parents.

"I know it was wrong," Maddie said, catching Sam's glare. "But he'd been kidnapped and we hadn't known. Then we learned it was by a ghost, from inside the house. We had to make sure he was safe."

Danny, not yet understanding what was going on, floated across the room, and stuck his head through the vent to see what was so impotent about it.

There was a camera in it. That meant there was a camera in every room. That meant that his parents had seen him and Ember. She'd said they knew about her but he'd assumed that Sam and Tucker had told them about it for whatever reason. No, they had a recording of him and Ember having sex in his room. The thought excited him, oddly enough, but it passed quickly as disgust set in.

"Did you watch it?" He asked, pulling his head out of the vent.

"We shut it off when we realized what was happening." Jack answered his voice strangely low. "She's a ghost, Danny, you realize that. She's not going to change, age… live"

So Ember was a problem. He could hear it in the way he said live. He wasn't stressing the word, he was holding back anger and as soon as he'd said live it had slipped. "I told you, I'm one of the most powerful ghosts in Amity and while I hate to hold my power over you, I like Ember, Dad, I really do."

"You'll threaten us?" Jack asked, standing up, leaving Maddie on the couch to watch. She had no objection to Danny's choice. She hated that he hadn't waited to have sex, but she honestly didn't mind the girl. She'd seemed so caring, attentive, in the videos she'd allowed herself to watch of the two, the ones where most of the clothes stayed on. She'd never seen Danny smile so happily. She liked that smile on her son and she wanted to keep it there.

"No, I'm not going to threaten you. You're my parents, I'd never do that. But I'm bringing it up to point out that I don't need your protection or your care. I'm capable of taking care of myself without your help. "

"She's a ghost, Danny!"

"So am I!" He yelled back immediately.

Jack shut down there. His enraged look disappeared and he took on a solemn, disheartened appearance.

"Dad…" Danny looked at him intently. His friends and mother were staying out of the conversation, letting him know that they didn't agree with Jack, and it was a wise decision. This was between father and son and Danny was winning. "I'm not asking you to accept Ember. I'm asking you live with it, that you acknowledge my happiness."

"What about Sam." Jack said after a moment. "She makes you happy." His voice was still low. It was different though, changed. It was the voice of defeat.

"We tried that," Sam said, "a few years ago. It didn't work out. We were lucky to save our friendship afterwards."

Jack hadn't even looked at her as she spoke but Danny could feel his mood worsen. "I can't have a normal, human, relationship with someone. I need somebody who's on the same playing field I am. Someone who understands the difficulties I face, the troubles. I need a ghost, dad. It's the only way I'll ever be in a working relationship."

(Later)

A relationship.

Is that what he had with Ember? Were they in a relationship or was it a friends with benefits kind of thing. They did more than sleep with each other though, although it was quite a prominent part of their current standings. There was talking though. Ember had spoken of her life, telling him things that he could use against her, weaknesses that shouldn't be told to an enemy. She'd shown him so much trust in such a short time.

A human would never be able to do that. It was against their nature.

He returned the trust, talking about the things that threw him off and even his fears. He'd revealed his Autophobia, how he was afraid of himself and what he could become. He'd told her about Dan and the reason he refused to allow his alignment to waver in the slightest.

It was the trust two lovers gave each other, and he'd only known her intimately for three days.

"What's wrong, Danny?"

He rolled over, propping himself up on his elbow to look at her. She was naked in her bed again. Rough sex after a rough day, it fixed everything… If only.

He'd gone to the ghost zone after his father had retreated to his room, his mother following shortly after. Sam and Tucker each chose to return to their homes. Ember followed shortly after, meeting them him at her door.

"What are we?" He asked her while he ran his free hand's fingers lightly along the underside of her arm.

She rolled up so she could face him, her hair flaring around her as he asked. She liked the question, or what it could lead to anyway, her hair was burning with pleasure. "What do you mean? You're the good guy, I'm the evil ghostly that you fight." she said lightly, as if she was talking to a child.

Danny smiled at the small joke but quickly regained his composure. "You know what I mean." he told her. "Are we… in a relationship or is this a… strong friendship?"

Her eyes, despite her state, were alive. They shined with beauty and he didn't really need her to answer the question. They spoke more words than she could ever make vocal. The singer could never express the feeling he saw with words. It may have been love, or pure happiness that he wanted to state their relationship, but he didn't care either way.

He grabbed her, pulling him to him, and wrapped her in his arms.

They were together, connected.

(La Fin… The End)

Peace Out!