Hey y'all thanks for giving me a chance and reading! I hope you really enjoy. If you do, lemme know please. And if you don't, also (kindly) let me know. I'm writing here to grow! Anyway, I'm not going to leave you messages before and after every chapter, just here. So, for the record I don't own Danny Phantom or any of the characters. However! If you feel like you've read this story before, you might have...well, sorta. See, a long while back I wrote and published The Way Things Turn Out as a fanfic. But, after losing my practice in writing for a few years, I decided that it was silly to let something I loved so much go. This is my same, original work, but TOTALLY re-edited, and re-written, many years of training later. Again, I hope you enjoy, review, and have a blessed day!

Sweat dripped from Danny's colorless face, heat soaking in and setting him ablaze. Distraught, he lie in his bed, curled up in a tight ball. Both knees clutched close to his chest where his heart murmured of relentless torment. Countlessly, as incurable hiccups, a soft mist of blue-green pushed through his mouth. He lied still there.

The chiming of a doorbell resonated from downstairs, followed by several heavy knocks and an, "I'll get it," from Jazz. Muffled voices followed the sound of an opening front door.

He wasn't in the mood to talk or see anyone. He wasn't in the mood for anything at all. His deepest desire was to disappear completely from existence. He had considered suicide, but knew it would do no good. He would simply become full ghost and find an eternity under the pummeling hands of a company of revenge seeking enemies. He also took into consideration just remaining invisible and intangible always. That wasn't the answer either. He would still be miserable and alone. He would also have to bear watching his friends and family live on through his loss and then the rest of their days. There was simply nothing he could think of to do, no loophole, nothing but the company of hope in the impossible. It would come to him. It was his passionate desire to never have been born. The one thing he craved he believed would never be his, which further drove this need to be forever gone.

"Danny, can we come in?" Tucker asked from outside the door.

He answered nothing.

"It's us Danny. Sam and Tucker. Are you there?"

"Hello?" His door cracked slightly open. Quickly, he made himself invisible. Sam peeped her head in and at the sight of his imageless figure lumped beneath the sheets, Danny realized the flaw in his reflexed reaction. He surrendered to their visit and became visible again.

"Danny…"Sam gasped, looking in on her best friend. The bleak sight robbed her of breath and wit. "Oh, Danny…how did it get this far?"

The girl stepped in revealing ectoplasm stains on her clothes and in her hair. As she sat on the edge of his bed, Tucker entered the room, also stained with the ghostly green.

Sam placed a hand on Danny's shoulder. His eyes closed and let out a long slow breath, like a runaway train steadying to a stop. Her touch cooled his burning body.

"Danny can you hear me?" She asked, trying to hide the beginnings of a wild cry. "Tell me you can hear me…please." A few heavy sobs were choked back, and as she dried her eyes with tight blinks her hand slid up his neck and into his wet hair where she wriggled her fingers, sending chills down the boy's spine. The roasting fever he had been experiencing only moments ago dripped down to sharp, stinging normality. Something in him hated how she could so easily tame his wildfires, yet, at the same time, he cherished every goose-bumped blessing of Sam's iced touch.

Each recent day, miserable Danny had sunken deeper and deeper into sudden, and consuming depression, and today, it had seemed as though he'd drowned. Things were worse than doctors or physiatrists had ever seen, much less had a cure for, and everyone seemed to care more than anything to pull him out, except for he who wished to delve deeper, and surrender into the mental fires burning up any will for life.