Work Text:
The fresh bruise under Danny’s eye throbs, a punishment for not going ghost fast enough.
Danny is scrubbing a noxious mix of blood and ectoplasm off himself in the upstairs shower when the idea hits him.
I must be crazy.
He is crazy. Not quite fruitloop-nuts. That's reserved for one person.
But crazy, for sure.
Endless classwork. Fielding the questions about what major he'll pick. Constant ghost fights. Plasmius winning re-election. Curiously, the fruitloop hasn’t bothered him in years. Almost as if he’s avoiding him. Even at festivals and City Hall speeches, it seems like Plasmius avoids looking at him.
And then, Danny couldn’t help but notice the chilly pressure in his chest, the frost creeping up his throat, as if to reach out. If Plasmius was affected in any way, he said nothing, only entertaining any of Dad’s compliments and antics.
None of the usual taunts and sneers.
Whatever. That should be a good thing. Not like Danny’s begging for Vlad to talk to him.
And without anyone else to talk to in person, no one except Mom and Dad. Then, it’s often better to not say anything at all.
There’s nowhere in Amity Park to escape. He supposes he could find somewhere near his college.
Despite his ice core, for the past year, he's felt like he's going to boil over once he decided to take a "break" from college.
A semester, a year, indefinitely? He's not sure yet.
What will he do once summer break ends? Pretend to be at college and...go where?
Danny should tell Mom and Dad, eventually. Sam and Tucker, most definitely. Jazz? Absolutely, but he doesn't want to bother them. They have their own lives, and so does he.
He needs a place to think without footsteps and whispers. Without worried looks or the constant need to perform.
Plasmius does have that place in Colorado. What is it called, a chalet?
With all his busy mayoral work, it’s not like Vlad goes there. Every now and again, on a spare weekend, he might slink back to Wisconsin, but not Colorado.
Besides, once all the sick experiments were ended, his lab destroyed, the only thing that haunted the chalet was Plasmius himself.
A chill rakes down Danny’s back when he remembers the last time he was there, and yet...
And yet. To think, for a time, he can sneak in and claim it. Not that he can ever truly have it. But he can exist there without fear. It’s a nice little spite-act against Plasmius, and it doesn’t require any punches or ecto-blasts.
The best part is that the fruitloop doesn’t even need to know Danny’s there. The spite is purely for Danny’s benefit. Sometimes, that’s all it takes.
He can sneak in and claim it.
Think.
Plan.
Reassess.
Rest.
He watches the sullied water circle the drain.
Escape.
I must be crazy.
***
Convincing his parents that nothing is amiss is easy. All he tells them is that he’s going to visit Sam and Tucker over the summer and chill out like they would in the old days.
Old days. Like it’s been forever.
It feels like it has.
In his ghost form, Danny flies alone to Colorado, gliding close to storm clouds as rain falls on the small world below. He has the coordinates of the chalet from information taken from both the Boooomerang and the Specter Speeder, from last time.
He doesn’t bring much in his bag. Fresh clothes. A toothbrush. A comb, to convince himself to brush his hair. A large bottle of 198 mg jatenzo pills. Sixty days’ worth of trazodone; a hundred and twenty if he halves them.
And he can always fly to the nearest town for groceries; the stronger his core becomes, the less he cares about food, anyway. The idea of shoveling a Nasty Burger #1 combo meal with fries down his throat makes his stomach feel tight and cold, like a bag of ice.
Everything’s going too well.
Something must be wrong.
Can he really keep up a charade for three months? Obviously, he can’t just go without talking to anyone for that long. Phone calls, maybe video chats without the egotistical portrait of Vlad Masters smoking a pipe in the background. He can manage that.
He’ll need to lie to everyone.
Is that who he is, a liar? A schemer?
Well, to keep his identity a secret, that’s what he’s been. Who he’s been.
This is all to keep him from losing his mind.
From disappointing everyone as he gives himself room to sulk.
That's at least partly selfless, isn't it? And if it isn't...
He's doing this one thing for himself, only for the summer.
Once the season ends, everything will be normal again.
***
It’s late evening when he arrives at the chalet. The sky is a deep pink, the dusk warm with a cool breeze that ruffles his hair.
A speckled, brown rabbit darts into the flowering weeds.
When Danny tries the front door, just in case, it's locked. So, he goes intangible and helps himself in, landing in the immense living room with its red furnishings and a dead hearth. The rows of bookshelves, like the bear rug and taxidermied elk, are like dormant beasts. Who the heck labels their own bookcases?
No alarm.
Maybe Plasmius has given up on this place altogether, and he doesn’t care if anyone rummages through.
Danny sniffs. His nose itches from the dust layering all the surfaces and books, and a cobweb swings lazily in his face.
The place is abandoned. Like, really abandoned.
Good.
Well, mostly good. He might not be the cleanest guy, but he’ll definitely have to freshen things up.
Yeah, of course the jerk has so many properties that he can forget one exists. Danny wonders if Plasmius has ever really cared about anything.
He looks over the place. The first thing out of sorts is a broken bureau, the dresser and mirror he broke when Danielle blasted him into it.
When Danny steps by the couch, he pauses when something catches his eye on the floor. A pool of dry, sticky liquid, so darkly red it’s black against the scarlet carpet and pocked with a prickly forest of mold; glass is stuck to the spilled wine, the lip of the bottle.
Danny scoffs.
Seems like Plasmius had a temper tantrum before he left.
After he tried to kill Danny. Tortured him.
Danny's nails bite into his palms.
The place isn’t changed much from when he last saw it, though Danny hadn’t exactly been admiring the interior design. Some of the details are...not as Vlad-esque, until he remembers the stuffed and taxidermied animals had mutated ghost forms. From experiments. Vlad’s stupid, insane cloning experiments.
“Stupid fruitloop.”
He has pairs for everything, doesn’t he? It doesn’t make sense, if Vlad had wanted both Mom and Danny by his side.
A lump forms in his throat.
Danny yawns.
Tomorrow.
Tomorrow, he will explore more.
After all, he has nothing but time.
***
Vlad’s red, king-sized bed looks awfully big for one person. Danny has half a mind to leap into it.
Instead, in his human form, he approaches it like it’s a slumbering lion.
It looks comfy, but it's weird to think of Plasmius sleeping here normally. Like a human being.
Despite Vlad’s usual extravagance, the room is simple. A large closet and adjacent bathroom on one side, a pearly vanity on the other. There's money in the decorations, but it's not very Vlad. No Packers helmets or cheeseheads. The only painting on the wall is a generic scene of a lake and snow-capped mountainside.
Danny hates that he knows what is definitively "Vlad."
The lack of anything really too personal reminds him of his first night at the Wisconsin castle. The main hall was the most decorated place. The other halls, lit with medieval torches , because Vlad was Vlad, were barren of any decorations or anything personal. No pretentious paintings, and certainly not any photos. Even the movie theater had no posters.
It's so void, so different from Vlad's newest place, at least what he's seen the one time he could use the home portal. It's as if Vlad was desperately trying to fill the chasm with...himself. Not like there was anyone left, besides any creepy holograms, and probably at least one cat.
Well, you're not exactly planning to be around anyone for a while.
Slowly, Danny removes his pants and binder and slips under the silky, crimson sheets. The bed molds to his body, like it was made for him.
His eyelids droop as shadows darken the room.
Before he dozes, Danny stops and heads to the massive bathroom, flipping on the light and keeping the door ajar.
When he turns to face the bed, it's harder the second time.
Besides the dust, which makes him sneeze, the bed smells like Plasmius.
Vlad, Vlad Masters. Weird, remembering that even Vlad sleeps. He doesn't prowl and scheme constantly, and he—maybe—never sleeps in a coffin.
The musk is pungent like tobacco, but it carries a sweet sweet, like rose or vanilla. And something else stronger, like woodsmoke.
Cologne, maybe, but not entirely.
When was Vlad last here? The chalet feels less like a tomb and more like a museum, capturing everything about his archnemesis.
Danny lies on his back until night comes, and then he rolls on his side, curling into a ball. Something rhythmic knocks in the distance outside, like a woodpecker.
The cabin creaks. Something skitters on the roof.
Danny wants to be attacked.
Nothing.
He doesn't register when he finally falls asleep.
***
In the morning, Danny stirs and, at first, forgets where he is. Like when he was in the Wisconsin castle, and woke up from a nightmare to see its source standing at the end of the bed.
His sleep was dreamless, thankfully.
Rubbing his eyes, Danny stands and approaches the window by the bed.
He pulls the burgundy curtains back. Above, some birds fly; he can hear birdsong from the closest trees. Bright chirping, and one that sounds like a wistful sigh.
Blankets of fog roll down from the mountains.
Apart from the history of the place, it really is beautiful.
What can Danny do but sit with his thoughts?
Isn’t that the point of this?
Maybe he didn't think this through. All he wanted was some rest, but the idea of being bored in a neglected chalet with no immediate stimulation...was really, really unbearable.
He needs something. Surely, the fruitloop had hobbies besides scheming, kicking puppies, and reading.
As Danny heads out of the bedroom, like Plasmius must've done at least a few dozen times, especially during his sick cloning experiments.
The torpor of sleep clings to him. Fragments of a dream he can't really remember, but there's a lingering cloud of disappointment.
And...
A vague sense of betrayal he can’t place.
It’s not fair to feel betrayed, he tells himself. So many people care about him. Mom and Dad don’t mean to alienate him when they bring up live specimens and dissections.
He was going to have a different life, and then he became a half-ghost. He learned again and again to do everything he could to not hurt those he loved. To let Dash pummel him; to take every punch and insult with gritted teeth.
That’s what heroes do, right? They self-sacrifice.
Because the alternative was to be like Plasmius, and that meant a step closer to his darker self. To hit back would make him wrong. Sam had thought as much, frowning and crossing her arms in disapproval.
That was in high school, and...
Sam’s not here.
Nevertheless, he doesn’t want to give up on helping and saving people. It's not supposed to always be rewarding. That's not the point.
His friends and family are the reason he exists. If something ever happened to them...
(Would it really be that easy to fall?)
Still, he'd never thought he'd feel this...
Lonely.
Danny presses his hand to her chest. His core pulses sharp ice, a sensation on the edge of numbness and pain.
Loneliness, no, that can't be it. When he was a kid, he learned that crazy people who live with a hundred cats are lonely, and normal people have a family. Pathetic people and ghosts are lonely, like Klemper, begging everyone to be his friend.
Like Plasmius.
Is it pathetic?
Is he pathetic?
Look at me. I'm in my archenemy's chalet, pawing into his bed. Smelling him there.
Danny remembers the first time he came here. Encased in amber, one moment in particular. Vlad, sitting on the couch, smiling.
Rising from the spot with tears filling his eyes, bright with hope as he spread his arms and went to embrace Danny.
Then, Vlad was a venomous snake. He didn't seem like someone who'd want a hug, much less hug someone else, even with prompting.
Danny had played along, finding glee in tricking the trickster. Vlad's willingness to come close had been to his benefit, after all.
I sound like him.
Again, he thinks of his dark self. The one stuck in a thermos in a realm beyond time.
Clockwork, I hope this doesn't mean anything.
Is this all a part of the plan?
I'm not crazy. I'm not doing anything. I'm just taking a vacation, with a small amount of breaking and entering. Just to find satisfaction in how spiteful Plasmius would feel if he knew what I was doing. He hadn't even broken in, so did that really count?
His nose itches, and he finds a duster and a broom in the hallway closet.
Heading downstairs, he tries to shake off his feelings, but his Jazz-voice kicks in.
Danny, your feelings are there and validated by something that's real. You shouldn't suppress or hate your emotions; you should acknowledge them, and they're only wrong if you do bad things in response to them.
Right. Thanks, Jazz-voice.
He peruses the living room with its blood-red curtains and overly dramatic iron-latticed windows. Really clashed with the faux-log interior, where the walls look like trees stacked atop one another.
He's not too sure what to do about the wine stain in the living room, which also looks like blood.
Any moment, he expects Vlad to barge in—why not? This is his place. But since when did Vlad care about what's right?
I'm supposed to be better. A hero.
Even though he's just slept, that thought makes him tired.
Besides, while he won't automatically forgive Vlad for not doing bad things, he truly hasn't been active in a while.
As he cleans dressers and end tables, he can't help but think that if the living room with the dead hearth was an organ, it'd be the stomach.
Something about it feels looming and massive now; when he was tortured and scrambling to escape, he'd felt caged.
Deciding to snoop some more, he navigates to an adjacent room—a den with a plush sofa and widescreen TV atop a huge entertainment system. When he opens one of the massive cabinets, Danny can't help but gawk.
Inside, he finds a series of neatly compiled game systems, even a Sega Genesis, which he remembers playing as a kid in kindergarten. He remembers placing cartridges in the system with sticky fingers.
The Sega Genesis is in good condition. All the consoles are.
That’s right. As much as Danny hated to admit it, Vlad was a good gamer. Maybe he shouldn't have expected that from an out of touch recluse, but then again, maybe he should've expected exactly that.
Vlad—Plasmius, Plasmius —had to do something between scheming and obsessing over the past or the Packers.
When Danny opens another door, he laughs.
"No way," he says, pulling out one of the vinyls and looking over it.
Turns out Vlad has a lot of different vinyls. AC/DC, Journey, Def Leppard, those ones aren't so surprising. Vlad did go to college with Mom and Dad, after all.
Megadeth? Slightly more so.
Bonnie Tyler? Actually, it made total sense for Vlad to have a moment and listen to "Total Eclipse of the Heart." Drink some wine, maybe cry.
How disturbing that he can imagine it so clearly.
He's seen Vlad furious enough to kill, and he'd seen him cry. But he'd never seen him sob and weep. One would think that Vlad couldn't. He was a monster who plotted to destroy a family and hurt Danielle. And if he ever felt true sadness, true grief, who cared? Grief was no excuse to...
What do you know? In one timeline, you destroyed almost all of humanity and all the ghosts because you lost everything.
But that was all Vlad's fault. His future self said so. He was the source of evil, not Danny, as Fenton or Phantom.
Keep telling yourself that. Not even Plasmius has ever been that cruel, that sadistic to the entire world. Maybe you infected him.
"Stop it," Danny whispers, putting everything back in its place. "I'm not him. Not him. Not ever."
Is that just the denial and suppression Jazz would talk about? Denying that his dark self really was a part of him.
Maybe that's all anybody needs. A second chance.
Not Vlad. After all he's done. That's my limit.
I don't care what he needs.
Danny shakes his head and tries to find humorous solace in the idea of Vlad listening to Air Supply or Bon Jovi or Pat Benatar.
It's weird. Thinking of what Vlad must do on his off days, when the villain cape is off.
After all, he was Dad's roommate, living off a steady diet of ramen and last night's pizza.
Is there really a point of thinking about this?
Because there's not much else to do except maybe play some old Sonic or Spyro games.
But a curiosity snags him.
He's free to do what he wants. A new thought. No worrying about sudden ghost attacks or dodging his parents' questions and newest inventions.
The freedom feels dangerous, but good.
What else can he find?
Danny searches more and pauses when he finds meticulously labeled VHS tapes from 1980, eleven years before he was born.
And he's discovered that Vlad does have a VHS player and several different working remotes of various sizes.
When he finally sits cross legged on the sofa, he watches the first tape. He sees a sign: University of Wisconsin Superior, est. 1893.
Two people wave at the camera. Danny’s heart skips a beat at the sight of his parents with their neon-colored clothes and their “the higher, the closer to God” hairdos. They smile so widely at him—at Vlad. Yes, Vlad must be holding the camera. His dad is calling to him.
We did everything together.
Does Vlad ever watch these? With how furious he gets over any mention of Dad, Danny is surprised he hasn’t already destroyed this video.
More curiosity tugging at him, Danny watches another.
Now, he sees both his parents and Vlad working on something; both his parents have welding masks on.
His heart drops. The proto-portal.
Dad grins. “I guess if it doesn’t work, we can always use it to make grilled cheese sandwiches.” Danny expects Vlad to scoff or roll his eyes.
No. Vlad laughs. Genuine, unreserved. It makes Danny uncomfortable. Why?
Because this is a normal man with joy in his life. He might still have echoes of possessiveness and jealousy, but they aren’t overwhelming him. His joy is tainted by coldness or sadism.
Some moments, differently colored bars blotch the footage, his parents' smiling faces, but the audio is as clear as it can be.
Somber, Danny stops watching. He tells himself to play a game, to stimulate himself. Or forget.
Forget what? There isn’t anything he’s learned that he didn’t already know. But it was weird, seeing it all from a Vlad’s-eye view. It’s even more surreal than the time when he was young and realized his parents were their own people with pasts and passions, that they didn’t just come into being the moment he was born. Vlad is somewhere now, doing something and thinking about it. Processing it. And eventually, he’ll retire to bed and sleep. He’ll get hungry and thirsty and tired.
Instead of staying in the den, Danny heads upstairs, into Vlad's room, into the bathroom. Shedding his clothes on the berry-red tiles, he steps into the garden tub, half-full of steaming water.
He doesn’t feel it. The cold of his core numbs him. That reassures him.
***
For a few days, Danny is in automatic mode, playing games and gorging himself on potato chips. A nice break. He almost forgot what it was like to wake up without a lump in his throat and a knot in his chest.
Eventually, he watches more tapes. He can’t help himself—he even dreams about them one night. Never seeing Vlad, but knowing he’s there behind the lens.
“Jack,” the younger, unabashedly mulletted Vlad says, admonishingly, “we need to be careful with this ectoplasmic energy. We don’t know what would happen if it were to contaminate one of us.”
His voice is higher than it is now, almost shrill, but Danny can hear his archnemesis. The same one who mocked and goaded him; the same one who screamed when his perfect clone died.
Died.
I know what that’s like. So does Vlad.
“That’s right,” Mom agrees, drawing Danny back to the video. A few prismatic bars appear on the screen for a few seconds. “The effects of ectoplasm poisoning have never been studied.”
Darkly, Danny thinks, They were, on a live specimen.
A metallic clanging, Dad working on the machine. He starts to say something, but the tape goes black.
Danny stays still on the sofa for a long time.
When he does get up, he has to lean over and brace himself on the sofa because his legs are numb
Again, Danny relaxes. Plays one of the records. Goes outside on the back porch and rocks on a sturdy wooden swing; its chains creak. He watches as orange light soaks into the tops of trees.
When he retires to bed, his chest continues to ache.
He inhales, and though he’s been here more than once, it still smells like Vlad.
***
Danny spends many days in something like a haze. Not wanting to do anything but lounge around and eat, he, well, doesn't. Except for the times he texts his friends or Jazz and pretends that everything's normal.
Then, as he puts some of his clothes in the washing machine, he decides he wants to see if Vlad wears anything other than suits.
No surprise, Vlad's closet is massive and can probably fit at least a twin bed, but it doesn't have much in it. The clothes here are probably vacation spares.
Sure enough, there are mostly suits. There's also a red robe that looks warm.
There are more “normal” clothes, too, though. A green and gold sweater, of course.
And then, in the very back, under a shelf of black dress shoes, Danny sees something dully shine.
In the far back of the closet, his fingers trace one of its edges...
A small safe. Fully kneeling in the back of the closet, he pulls it out with both hands and inspects the dial.
As expected of a safe, it's locked tightly shut. Not that it matters. Who knows, maybe Vlad put some anti-ghost security measure on it. Then again, that part of the closet is pretty dusty.
Back when we first met, he probably thought I was too stupid to think about snooping around. I sure showed him. The thought is brittle.
"I shouldn't do this," Danny mutters, but it's not like Vlad ever cared about minding his own business.
He imagines the code is probably his mom's birthday or something freaky like that. That alone justifies seeing what's inside.
Shaking his head, Danny turns his fingertips intangible, and the safe goes with it.
The contents thump on the carpet. Not much and a lot at the same time—a lot of papers and a spiral bound book that has almost entirely fallen apart.
He thumbs one of the top sheets. The paper feels brittle, as if it's been around a long time. When he scans it, he realizes it’s a hospital document with some handwriting.
Vladimir Domitrovich. Vlad's birth name, right. Something about knowing it feels super personal. Glimpsing Vlad long before Danny stuck him in the dichotomy of hero and villain; before Vlad stuck himself there, too. DOB: 01/17/1961
Something else catches Danny's eye written in a tiny scrawl at the bottom.
ECT recommended
Danny racks his brain for what ECT is, until it comes to him.
Electroconvulsive therapy. Usually done, Jazz has said, as a last resort under anesthesia for depression and bipolar disorder. At least, that's how it is now. Mostly voluntary, unless someone is suicidal.
Danny wonders if anesthesia was used back then, or if it actually worked. How would Vlad’s core react to electricity?
Vlad's core runs hotter than his. Danny became all too aware when he started feeling it from a distance. By the time he graduated high school, the stifling cold in his heart, as if fighting off the sweltering waves of fire, were almost unbearable.
Another dark thought crosses Danny's mind.
Did Vlad consider suicide? Attempt it?
Danny has felt low, but a part of him always knew these moments would pass. Crests and troughs, Jazz calls them.
But when he realized what could happen to his loved ones, what he was capable of, something sank in him like a rock.
If I ever start to become like that , if I end up hurting people, I'd rather end my life than keep going.
He palms through the rest of the papers until his attention lands on the book.
When he opens it, the inside of the thin cover has Vlad’s name, meticulously straight and even. The yellowed pages boast lines and lines of clean, swirling cursive. The same handwriting that was on the tapes.
Danny had learned cursive in second grade, but the teacher always chastised him for keeping the words too close together. And each entry has, like the VHS tapes, a date, sometimes right down to the hour.
A...diary? Vlad's diary.
More specific, he realized with a cursory glance, most likely something he wrote while in the hospital.
A month ago, finding his archenemy's diary would've been funny. It would've been great fuel years ago during their prank war.
A sliver of trepidation curls in his stomach.
January 17, 1982
I've been forgotten. I am going to die here.
Vlad's entries are unusually succinct, no long navel gazing or rants about revenge, but as Danny. stares, his heart hurts. What can Vlad really say when he's stuck in the hospital, unsure of what's happening, and constantly on the brink of death? He must've felt like he's died a hundred times, instead of only once.
The amount of entries, some even just cataloging the coffee and cold mashed potatoes and peas Vlad ate that day, really remind Danny how long three years can be. He doesn't even like being in the hospital for a day as a visitor . Three years? Alone?
Danny can't imagine how he'd feel if, when he got his ghost powers, Sam and Tucker fell out of his life. It wasn't just being half-ghost and struggling with new powers, a new body. It was the anxieties about his parents' ghost hunting. Passing classes. Getting bullied by Dash. Worrying constantly about balancing ghost fighting and his future until he stared down years of battles without end.
And life, as much as he fought for it, suddenly seemed long and drawn out and terrible.
He finds another entry near the end of the diary that makes his throat constrict.
October 12, 1982
Mom died. Funeral visitation has been denied.
As Danny reads, he stands and walks out of the bedroom. Paces the length of the upstairs hall. Sets the book down, determined to leave it, and then picks it back up.
Near the end, the handwriting starts to wobble and slant sometimes, dipping in and out of faded blue lines.
Eventually, Danny goes back to the bedroom and sets the diary on the nightstand. Rubs his face with both palms. Tries to sort out his muddled thoughts.
Vlad has done monstrous things. Grief and trauma aren't excuses. Interesting motives, still a criminal.
And yet, wouldn't it be good for them to reach an understanding? A little less pain and resentment in the world. How good would it feel for Vlad, as tormented as he is, to change?
Just like he did in the other timeline.
But he has to want to. Does he? He blames everyone else for what he does. He only learned when he lost absolutely everything.
The one time I tried to apologize, he rejected me.
Sam, Tucker, and Jazz would flip if he suggested it. And Dani. They'd be right.
I have support. People who love me, but no one else can really know what it's like to die and have to struggle to control your powers. To hide from the world.
Dani mostly understood a lot of aspects, but he didn't want to burden her with talk about his death. That scream he swallowed. Having no one who truly understood. His friends and sisters cared and supported him, but they couldn't feel what it was like to be fourteen, a kid, with death in his veins.
***
Danny's mood slips into constant somberness. He feels less inclined to poke through the chalet for pieces of Vlad. They're everywhere.
He's everywhere.
And Vlad spent all those years thinking he was alone.
In the closet, he finds photos. One that's dusty and creased in one corner. From the college reunion. How weird that he kept it.
There are more, many with Danny's own parents, with deep, long indents where a pen raked through.
Vlad has scratched himself out of all these photos.
Why?
It's not like the guy hates himself. What, with all the portraits of himself he has all over his new place. Here, above the mantel, there was even once a picture of him smoking a pipe, though Danny’s sure it might’ve been destroyed in one of the scuffles with Vlad or Dani.
These pictures are old, faded, and discolored. Maybe this was after Vlad got out of the hospital.
Danny tries to think of himself as Vlad, then. Years in the hospital, no college degree, thousands of dollars in medical debt. Treated like a thing, a disease. The entire world abandoned him, so he became a nightmare. Maybe he wanted to disappear at first, but out of spite, he refused.
If I were in his place, would I be any different?
Yeah. I have Mom and Dad. I have Jazz, my friends...
But Vlad didn't.
It's not a good excuse. Plenty of people have no one. Plenty of people suffer.
But it's a reason.
And even if Danny doesn't like Vlad, wouldn't it at least be practical to find a way to keep Vlad from hurting anyone ever again. Everything he can learn here might give him what he needs, and...
Why is he pretending that his heart isn't burning?
All at once, Vlad is a mystery and an open book to him. There's the Vlad he feels sorry for, and there's the one who became jaded and cruel.
Why would Vlad keep all these sentimental things here to mildew and ruin? Why not keep them in Wisconsin or Amity Park?
Danny closes his eyes and inhales deeply.
The crossed out photos. Ruined a long time ago, or ruined in whatever storm of emotions Vlad had when he woke up alone in his lab.
Vlad wants the past to rot, but he can't let go.
The idea leaves a void in Danny's heart like grief.
Vlad really is trapped. And what's worse is that he's buried himself so deeply in bitterness and ego. With every rejection, every humiliation, he became more desperate. More monstrous.
By now, it's too late. Not even a hero can save everyone.
Leaving out the albums, Danny goes ghost and phases through the floor, down to the place he's avoided.
The lab is dark and quiet.
There's nothing there except ruined pods and broken glass.
Danny can see that horrible day as if it were yesterday.
Vlad kneeling there, watching the clone disintegrate.
Sitting on the ground with a numb thump, Danny covers his face with his hands and weeps.
***
I'm going crazy.
Not because Danny wants to leave, but because he wants to stay.
It really is madness, but he finds himself thinking of Vlad so often that it's like the man is with him. But not Archenemy Vlad or Smug Mayor Vlad. Not even Sad and Lonely Vlad. Someone who exists from pieces Danny has stitched together. Someone funny and insightful but completely harmless.
What it might've been like if Vlad could've let go.
What's worse is that, out of curiosity, Danny has started wearing Vlad's clothes. The suit jackets, the white shirts that have smooth buttons under his fingers.
Everything except the bow ties—he can barely even do a tie.
They don't fit quite right. Danny is lithe but a little stouter then Vlad, and he's shorter. Nevertheless, they don't fit too badly. He sweeps his fingers through his hair and starts to really feel Vlad with him as a tangible presence.
An actual person.
Someone who was lost a long time ago.
Someone he never really had.
A shadow follows him constantly. A tight, messy knot of emotions. And he starts listening to way too much Bonnie Tyler.
Again, he feels something like grief. Maybe this is the reason that even his brain hid from him. The reason Danny came here in the first place.
He's saying goodbye. Not to a friend or even to his enemy, but something that might've been. Except, these shades of Vlad have been abandoned.
And once—
Danny starts to have fantasies. They start off innocently. Long talks, a hug. Maybe even tears.
He pulls Vlad away from the edge. Today, or all those years ago. Instead of stopping the accident, he visits Vlad in the hospital, the frightened, wounded man's face oozing with glowing pustules and covered in bandages.
He stays with him through the long nights.
He can't be pining, he can't. With Valerie, with Sam, it never felt like this.
And they—
Danny gently pulls the bandage from Vlad's mouth. Vlad insists he's hideous, a monster, and Danny leans in to—
Lying on his stomach in Vlad's bed, white shirt half-buttoned, Danny dips his hand between the sheets and his skin, past his boxers. He inhales the sweetly sharp smokiness of Vlad's cologne, and his fingers circle the swollen part of him that's grown bigger with HRT. He doesn't touch his vulva too much; most of the time, he forgets it's there.
He imagines pressing his lips against Vlad's softly. He imagines them in the dark, clinging to one another, finally sating that hunger and emptiness in both of them.
When his climax spreads deliciously through him, Danny dozes, but he can't shake off the feeling of none of this being enough.
Is this what obsession really is?
***
Danny's surprised when summer vacation is almost at an end.
***
Back in Amity, Dad only wants to go to the arts and crafts festival because Vlad will be there.
The day is warm, though clouds pass over the sun. Danny stands by tent full of rustic antiques, a wooden owl glowering straight at him.
He keeps an eye out for the other ghost hybrid, unsure if he wants to see him or avoid—
"Oh, hello , Daniel."
His heart drops to his stomach. And worse—that voice sends a pleasant jolt to...a place.
Danny jumps and swerves to the side.
Vlad warmly smiles and claps his hands together. It's as if, amid the crowd, he appeared out of thin air.
Danny is taut, his entire body a pulled muscle. He needs to say something as Vlad approaches. Though Danny is taller than when they first met six years ago, he's too aware of the shadow falling over him.
"Hey, Vlad," Danny mutters, cursing himself for how reedy his voice is. Brittle.
Vlad cocks his head to the side. "It is so nice to see you." His eyes rake over Danny's body. "I quite like your new wardrobe choice."
Danny stares. No, he wasn't lost enough to take Vlad's clothes with him, but he started wearing more button up shirts. They made him feel both more mature and more concealed.
When Danny only stares and gawks, Vlad says, "I was actually hoping to speak with you about something."
Danny settles for as much tact as he can muster.
Tersely, Danny replies, "Yeah, what do you want?"
Vlad doesn't miss a beat. "I was hoping we could catch up sometime. Talk ." Danny hates what this man can do to syllables. "It is such a shame, you know. I haven't been able to hear about any of your adventures lately." His voice laves across "adventures" oddly, stretching it out.
Something's wrong.
With Vlad, something's always wrong. But Danny can't help but feel this is more than their usual banter—which he's missed?
No, he can never admit that. Not to anyone, but especially not himself.
Vlad is holding out a folded paper. "Here's my number. Don't be a stranger, little badger."
Little badger. The unbidden warmth in his chest is too much.
Danny hesitates for a moment, before taking the note. What is he doing? Why isn't he running away?
A shock rakes through him when, despite his valiant effort, his fingers graze against Vlad's.
His stomach cramps, and he's hungry.
Vlad glides past Danny, giving a little wave. "Well, I'm afraid I must be off. Ta."
Danny opens his mouth to respond, but he's captivated by the way the wind plays against Vlad's hair.
He swallows thickly, trying to ease away the lump in his throat.
I must be crazy.
So crazy that Vlad almost feels normal.
Cumulatively, Vlan wins the creep awards, but recently...
When Danny unfolds the note and reads it, his stomach drops.
I know what you did.
***
Three Months Ago
It's a quiet night at home as Vlad lounges on the couch, a book propped on one knee, his cat on the other.
Maddie dozes and purrs as he pets her. The TV, turned down low, gives a brief news report on a recent trial.
Everything is peaceful until a high-pitched alarm blares, and he sits up. Maddie protests and jumps off.
"Sorry, my girl, forgive me," he says, turning intangible and going to his recording room.
What he discovers only partially shocks him.
The Colorado property. How odd. No one has been there since—
A hateful darkness coils inside his chest.
Since his last chance to have a family was ruined.
Shifting into Plasmius, he flies to his control center on the other side of the mansion.
And of course, though he hadn't expected the Colorado chalet would be invaded, he wasn't surprised at the culprit.
Daniel. Meddling to some end.
It isn't enough for this cursed spawn of Jack Fenton to futilely offer Vlad the only chance of understanding his predicament.
It isn't enough for Daniel and the rest of the Fentons to humiliate and mock him.
It isn't enough to kill his perfect clone, so he had to helplessly watch as his once chance for love disintegrated in front of him.
Now, even after a long draw, Daniel must trespass.
Why?
No doubt to undermine him in some way.
What an ignorant fool.
He should go there right now and beat some good sense into Daniel.
Truly, though, Vlad is baffled. He hasn't been on the property in years, and he and Daniel haven't fought in a long while.
He'd tried to search for more power, contemplated using the Crown of Fire and the Skeleton Key.
In the end, he abandoned those efforts because they felt so empty. A placebo, drinking sugar water to fill the abyss in his body.
Why is Daniel there, a place Vlad had once used as an escape?
Curious, he watches as Danny looks over the living room, the broken wine bottle Vlad had thrown in a tearful rage.
And he hears the hero's delightful, mocking words so clear.
“Stupid fruitloop.”
"Daniel," Vlad says, glowering at the screen. "I couldn't hate you more if I tried."
The hero. It was a joke. Because for all of his righteousness, Daniel had deemed him unsaveable. And maybe he was right, but that was true of this world, too. Daniel let himself suffer, let his life and grades fall apart, all for people who disdained him in his human form. Because nobility meant being the world's punching bag, since it owes you nothing.
Vlad remembers the first time that darkness snaked in him as he was about to be released from the hospital, and someone came to ask about his payment plan.
The world saw fit to take everything and leave me with nothing. It does owe me, and I'll make it give me what I want.
And Vlad, in his own way, tried to save Daniel. Yes, he'd been thinking of how he'd benefit from some company, someone who'd understand him and could make revenge against Jack so much more poetic. But for once in years, he thought about all he could give someone else.
He hasn't eaten tonight; often, he must set reminders of when to eat, so he doesn't feel faint. Lately, he feels as if his core has been burning his sustenance quicker. The tests he did didn't reveal anything overtly wrong, however.
Vlad sits there long after Daniel has gone into the main bedroom. No cameras there.
For hours, Vlad sits and thinks in the darkness. Trying to decide what to do.
***
In the end, he keeps watching. Mostly in silence.
And keeps on.
Watches as Daniel relaxes and sags his shoulders, relieved of the burden of constantly fighting.
Then, one day, Daniel paces the hall and holds something.
The hospital journal, Vlad realizes in shock. The—Daniel had rifled through his safe.
Rage fills him. His trauma—that evening staring at the hospital smoking area from outside his window, a gazebo where red and golden leaves littered winding paths. There, in that horribly blue room, when he learned that his mother died, and no, it was unsafe for him to go to the funeral. Who else did she have? Not Father, who would, in one of his drunken rages—
It turned out that he didn't need to be a pallbearer to feel the weight of Mom's death.
Mom. The word, so simple, felt almost unrecognizable. He'd been barely a man when he last said it. As if having a mom was something he was allowed only as a boy.
Daniel looks so terribly sad.
Could he...?
Forlornly, Vlad mutters, "Oh, little badger, what are you doing?"
There's a strange intimacy here, despite Danny not knowing he's being watched, and Vlad having no way to speak to him. Even if they were face to face, Vlad wouldn't know what to say.
He's never been intimate with anyone; he told himself he was saving himself for Maddie, for everything to be perfect. He so rarely felt attraction anyhow.
In truth, like revealing his secret, vulnerability is unfathomable. His inexperience would only be another topic of mockery. About him being lonely, creepy, and single. Broken.
Here Daniel is, like the hero in the labyrinth, scouring through the maze of Vlad's life. Poring through items and pages. He isn't laughing or deriding what he sees.
Somehow, they're connecting through space and time, the past, and Vlad can't reach through and speak with Daniel about any of it. He's both lonelier and closer to someone else than he's ever been in his tired existence.
So close, but far away.
***
Daniel is weeping.
For him?
A heavy weight pools in Vlad's chest.
And, paradoxically, the void is larger. The chasm he once thought Maddie and Daniel could fill.
Then, power.
And then, nothing.
Limbo.
Ashes.
Vlad doesn't understand.
Daniel is crying, the speakers catching every sob.
And then he says something:
"I'm sorry I couldn't be there."
Vlad just doesn't understand.
But he'll find out. Though, he's decided he'll wait when the time is right.
***
Now
When he sits across from Vlad in one of many gilded sitting areas, Danny's chest is one tight knot. It takes all his effort to sit still, and he can't entirely meet Vlad's eyes.
Despite immersing himself in the man's past for the past few months, learning of his hopes and fears and shattered dreams, Danny isn't sure what he wants. To talk to Vlad, or not.
To learn if there's a second chance, after all.
Or to realize the image he's created of Vlad, sad and abandoned and desperately lonely, is false or dead. Vlad isn't a static thing composed of old writings, photos, and videos. He's alive. Maybe before the cloning disaster, there would've been a chance of reconciliation.
He knows what he is. Do you?
Finally, he looks at Vlad.