But first, a word of instruction

by SnippySchnapps

Summary:

Step Two: find the shape of infinity.

Meet your own eyes in a mirror. Play back a recording of your own voice, and mimic it again, and again, and again. Feel the ground under you; your shadow feels it, too.

***

(He avoids doorways, during the wandering; he isn’t sure why. It’s an instinct, backed by something unnameable, not quite fear. Preservation, maybe - like flinching away from something hot enough to burn. He avoids doorways, and simply floats through the walls instead. And if he can’t bear to think of the portal - if the thought of that singular, ultimate threshold makes him choke on air that he doesn’t really need - well, that’s his business, isn’t it?)

Notes:

technically this is yet another yesternight crossover because i have utter brainrot, but the character in question is never properly mentioned and you don't need to know anything about them, so...

Chapter 1

 

There are times when Danny just can’t seem to sleep no matter what he does.

 

Often, his nights are disrupted, uncertain - when it’s not ghosts waking him up for fights and bickering, his dreams remain haunted, nightmares more often than not. Danny is no stranger to waking up unsettled and unrested.

 

But the other times - those times, where he just can’t sleep? Those are different. Those are… not quite worse, but definitely tiring.

 

It starts with restlessness, usually; an urge to wander, thoughtlessly, more like some listless wisp than a fully-formed ghost. He’d tried desperately to ignore it and get some well-deserved rest, initially, but he has since learned that it’s no use - at least if he’s wandering he’s able to distract himself, a little bit. When he doesn’t…

 

When he doesn’t, it’s as though his thoughts consume him, and he’s left with questions - terrible questions. Questions he either can’t answer or doesn’t want to know the answers to. 

 

(He avoids doorways, during the wandering; he isn’t sure why. It’s an instinct, backed by something unnameable, not quite fear. Preservation, maybe - like flinching away from something hot enough to burn. He avoids doorways, and simply floats through the walls instead. And if he can’t bear to think of the portal - if the thought of that singular, ultimate threshold makes him choke on air that he doesn’t really need - well, that’s his business, isn’t it?)

 

***

 

Ever since working out his differences with Clockwork, they’ve easily become one of Danny’s favourite people, and every time he calls them ‘grandfather’ it makes something like happy satisfaction curl in his core. Visits to their tower are not uncommon for him, these days; occasionally, if Danny has had a very bad week and not enough sleep, Clockwork will even pause time for him to let him catch up. It’s nice to feel cared for.

 

That being said, their ability to confuse him has not decreased whatsoever. In spite of being god-adjacent and as close to omniscient as Danny thinks is possible, he does still wonder, sometimes, if they don’t just enjoy messing with him.

 

Right now, for instance, Danny has been given a large, leather-bound, scruffy-looking book with ‘Journal of-‘ written on the spine, in words that are vaguely painful to look at. If there was once a name there, it’s long gone now, because part of the binding has been torn off entirely. “It’s a... diary?” 

 

“More of a research journal,” says Clockwork, fondly amused. “It was given to me by an old friend. I suspect you may find some use in it.”

 

“Do you suspect or do you know?”

 

Clockwork just laughs. “I’ve marked some passages that may be of interest to you,” they say. “They may provide some unique insight regarding some of your recent troubles.”

 

Clockwork could easily be talking about the ghost fights, or his parents, or school work, or anything, but somehow he knows that they aren’t. He thinks about doorways and thresholds; he thinks about not being able to sleep.

 

"Thanks," he says, and leaves.

 

***

 

Clockwork is usually right, unless they’re playing a prank on him, and Danny has no reason not to trust them in spite of their cryptic non-answers. This is why Danny does at least try to find the time to read the journal - but between antagonistic ghosts, homework, and sleep, it isn’t until a week has passed that he actually gets to look at it. He opens the journal to one of the ribbons that clockwork has stuck between the pages.

 

The first thing that stands out to him is that the pages are all completely black, and seem to be made out of a stiffened fabric instead of paper; the writing, too, is strange - it’s obviously handwritten, but it glows, which wouldn’t be unusual for a ghostly artefact except that now that he thinks about it… the book doesn’t actually seem all that ghostly. It has a presence, certainly, but he doesn't think it's ectoplasmic in nature - where ectoplasm is softer, almost more like a gas or a liquid than the strange not-quite-energy that it actually is, the book seems... sharp. Staticy.

 

Which doesn’t make sense because it glows so how could it not be ghostly?

 

When he focuses on the words, a faint buzz starts up in his core and seems to migrate to behind his eyes, and for a moment all he can register is the utter cognitive dissonance that comes with reading a language that he doesn’t actually know and yet being able to understand it.

 

Well, Danny thinks to himself, Clockwork did say they got it from a friend. No wonder it’s weird.

 

But he doesn’t get to think on it for long, because it’s then that he gets called down for dinner.

 

...Later. He’ll look at it later.

 

(Even as he makes the journey down the stairs, he thinks about the single sentence he’d managed to read before the interruption - “ Step One:” it had said, in figures that may have been artful calligraphy, if he was reading the glyphs right; “understand that what you are is not the same as what you control.”

 

He doesn’t stop thinking about it all through dinner, and is thoroughly distracted until cold smoke rises in his throat, and then he’s distracted for an entirely different reason.

 

***

 

The translations are rough, he realises as he reads the journal in class when he’s supposed to be doing equations. Sometimes the words are clear, whole, cohesive. Other times, they come through as vague impressions, slightly off-key; a passage on what he thinks is a plant is filled with technical terms that he’s either never heard before or which just don’t exist in English, and beyond that are weird, complicated frankenwords that mean things like “the-feeling-of-light-colour-sound-sensation-bouncing-off-of-surfaces” and a name for what might be a colour which is described as “hard-to-see-pink-yellow-blue-distinct-bright” and a word that he’s 90% sure is supposed to be a description of the experience of slowly dying due to radiation poisoning (or something similar, at least?), all condensed into a few syllables. 

 

Learning to get past those particularly difficult concepts to actually understand the text on a whole is hard, but eventually Danny finds himself back at the passage he’d been reading previously. He realises, now, that the writing here had definitely been inked with far more care than many of the surrounding passages - where the others have been thin and slightly scratchy, occasionally accompanied by what looks like very large fingerprints and smudges, the lines here are more similar to brushwork, and each glyph is noted with delicate precision. 

 

He finds the words that had interested him before at the start of the page, and begins to read.

 

Step One: understand that what you are is not the same as what you control.

Once you have done this, you will be nothing, and in doing so will be everything. 

 

Step Two: find the shape of-

 

“-Mr Fenton,” comes Mr Falluca’s displeased voice, interrupting his flow.

 

Oops.

 

“Uh, what was the question?” 

 

But Mr Falluca only glares. “Please refrain from reading unrelated material in my class, Mr Fenton,” he says sternly, but otherwise just turns back to the whiteboard at the front of the class to continue giving a demonstration. Danny breathes a sigh of relief, but closes the journal and stuffs it under his desk. 

 

***

 

It’s after a standard (but still remarkably nasty) fight with Skulker that he’s suddenly assaulted with a memory of the passage again - ‘you will be nothing, and in doing so will be everything’. But what does that even mean?

 

In the past, he’d have scoffed at something so... poetic. But having attended enough gothic poetry nights with Sam to have gotten at least a passing appreciation of the artform, coupled with Clockwork’s marking of the page - it has to have some significance. Right?

 

You will be nothing, and in doing so will be everything. Maybe something’s getting lost in translation, here. How could something be both nothing and-

 

Oh. oh.

 

(All or nothing, dead or alive - aren’t those questions he’s already been asking himself for so long, now? Is that what Clockwork meant, saying the book would be useful?)

 

***

 

“So what’s up with that book you were reading during class, anyway?” Asks Tucker as they walk to the Nasty Burger that afternoon. 

 

“Oh, uh, Clockwork gave it to me,” Danny replies. “They said it could be helpful, but I’ve only just started looking at it…”

 

Sam gives him a look. “Right. And they gave it to you when, exactly?”

 

Danny mentally starts to tally the days, and then shrugs. “A little over a week ago, I think,” he says. “They wanted me to look at it, but they weren’t acting super urgent or anything, so I don’t think it’s gonna be something bad. Not for now, at least.”

 

“You seemed pretty deep in reading it, dude. Mr Falluca called you twice before you finally looked up! What’s got you so hooked on some book?” Asks Tucker.

 

“It’s more like a research journal, I think,” Danny says, echoing his grandfather’s words from the week before. “It’s kind of hard to parse, but it’s… I dunno, it’s interesting, I guess.”

 

“Wow, Danny Fenton, interested in a book? I never thought I’d see the day.”

 

“Wha- Hey! Sam! I read!”

 

“Sure.”

 

Tucker snickers alongside Sam, and cuts in. “Come on, Sam, you’ve seen him read… as long as it’s a ghost book given to him by his adopted ghost grandfather.”

 

“You guys are awful. I have terrible friends,” Danny deadpans, but he can’t quite keep the laughter out of his voice.

 

***

 

Danny dreams that night, and for once it’s… not a nightmare. Not quite.

 

At first, he thinks he’s in space, but the stars are a little too green, and a little too close; the discrepancy doesn’t bother him. Actually, nothing bothers him; he feels- he feels…

 

He isn’t sure what he feels.

 

(He? Is he a he? What’s a pronoun, again?)

 

Mostly, it’s a dream about stars, and it’s wonderful, and wow, wouldn’t it be cool to be star? Why isn’t he a star?

 

He doesn’t know. He can’t remember, but he doesn’t care, and suddenly it’s all he can think about: he wants it, so badly, he wants to be bright and beautiful and burning just like all the other stars, because he is, he is a star, he knows it, and if only he could just change-

 

He wakes up abruptly, but not from fear - no, when he regains his bearings and catches a glimpse of his hands, he realises that he’d startled himself awake with his own transformation.

 

***

 

The second part of the passage fills his head with fluff and static with how many borderline-untranslatable words there are in it; the first is a string of syllables that, at first glance, make him think of looking in a mirror, but when he re-reads it he is caught up in a sensation like… like he’s just made a duplicate, and they’re staring at each other, and he’s both of them and he’s looking into his own eyes, except then he re-reads it again and again and again and for every time he reads it it’s like there’s more duplicates, more eyes, more reflections.

 

He stops reading that word.

 

The rest of the paragraph is no easier to decipher, but he finds himself studying it intently, and every time he thinks he’s figured something out, he writes it down on a bit of scrap paper. Eventually he’s left with a few short lines of chicken scratch staring innocently up at him from the page.

Step Two: find the shape of infinity.

Meet your own eyes in a mirror. Play back a recording of your own voice, and mimic it again, and again, and again. Feel the ground under you; your shadow feels it, too.

 

...so maybe his translation isn’t any better than the original, because what? Is it supposed to be a riddle? Danny’s- well, okay, he’s not terrible-terrible at riddles because that’s a useful skill to have among the more fickle of ghosts, but still. That doesn’t mean he has to like them.

 

He needs to talk to someone about this.

 

***

 

‘Someone’ ends up coming in the form of Ellie, appearing for one of her loosely-scheduled (for certain values of ‘scheduled’) bi-monthly visits to Amity. 

 

“I just don’t get it,” Danny complains while they sit together, half-hidden on a flat roof. “I mean, can you understand what any of this is supposed to mean? Cause I don’t!”

 

“Really?” Ellie asks, and her face is unreadable. 

 

“...why are you saying it like that.”

 

Ellie looks at him and speaks with something indecipherable in her voice. “I guess it might be different for you, since technically I was never… since this is all I’ve ever been. But, it feels sort of- right? Familiar? Like, I already knew all of that, just not in so many words, you know?”

 

His first instinct is to disagree, to argue that no, he really doesn’t know. That it’s meaningless to him. But…

 

(Distantly, he thinks about those first few moments after the portal; he thinks about seeing himself in a mirror and not recognising his reflection. He thinks about a shadow, distorted strangely at the edges by its caster’s own glow. He thinks that she’s right - that he does know this, somehow. That he has always known this.)

 

What he says instead is, “What do you think it means - the whole, ‘your shadow feels it too’ thing?”

 

“Maybe it’s a metaphor,” Ellie replies flippantly, and doesn’t elaborate. 

 

Danny drops it.

 

***

 

Step Three: choose a new name, or live deliberately in your old one.

You are who you say you are.

 

***

 

As apprehensive about it as he is, Jazz is the one he asks next.

 

“Hey, Jazz? You remember when I came out?”

 

“As trans?”

 

“No, as a ghost- yes, Jazz, of course as trans!”

 

Jazz holds out her hands placatingly. “Okay, sorry! Just checking!”

 

Danny huffs, and after a moment of silence, his sister continues, tentatively,  “Why are you asking me that, little brother?”

 

“It’s just… something I read recently reminded me of it,” he says, and then he tells her about the journal. 

 

When he’s done, Jazz gives him an inscrutable look, and he is reminded uncannily of Ellie. Just as he’s beginning to get uncomfortable, she speaks. “So it reminds you of choosing a new name? That doesn’t seem like such a bad thing.”

 

“Well, no- I mean- I just- ugh. I don’t know. I just feel weird about it. Sometimes…” here, his voice peters out, the confidence leaving him. “Sometimes keeping my ghost half from mom and dad just reminds me of… before I came out. Before I was Danny to them.”

 

“Oh, Danny…”

 

“And it’s- ugh, it’s stupid! But isn’t it kind of the same? I mean, at first it was just a- a dumb alias name, but now…”

 

“‘You are who you say you are’?” Jazz says quietly, and-

 

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah.”

 

***

 

In the end, Danny goes back to Clockwork. He doesn’t bother with small talk, because Clockwork always knows what it is that he wants, and even now they’re already staring at him with an air of expectation.

 

“Why did you give me this?” he says, and he doesn’t need to specify what he means.

 

Clockwork, as they are want to do, does not answer him directly. “The one who wrote it was skilled in the changing of their shape; they viewed it as an art form, in fact. It is poetry as much as it is a guide.”

 

“You said you thought it’d help me.”

 

“And did it?”

 

Danny doesn’t know how to answer.

 

Clockwork is patient with him; when he doesn’t offer anything up at first, they place a guiding hand on his shoulder and drift towards a plush armchair - Danny’s favourite, situated before several rows of bookshelves and surrounded by ticking clocks. He sits in it with his tail curled over and around himself, and he thinks.

 

And thinks.

 

Clockwork doesn’t press him; at some point they place a plate of cookies on a nearby table, still hot, although whether this is because they are truly fresh or due to their meddling with time, Danny is unsure. They taste good, in any case. He’s pretty sure they have ectoplasm in them.

 

A step-by-step guide had been staring up at him from the pages of the journal for weeks, but he’d never stopped to think what it was meant to be a guide for - only that it was strangely familiar, and spoke to something in him just edging on uncomfortable. 

 

What had Clockwork said about the author? That they thought shapeshifting is an art?

 

Somehow, despite referring to himself as having different forms, despite regularly changing his face with barely a thought - has he ever thought of it like that? As something he does, rather than something he is? 

 

He’s on the edge of something; he knows it.

 

And he thinks, he thinks, he thinks - does he have forms? Does he have different states he switches between - or is it just him? Has it always been just him? Different hair, different eyes, and yet still exactly the same?

 

(What is the difference between a human and a ghost, save for time?)

 

Danny has his answer.

 

He doesn’t bother with a re-introduction to the conversation; instead, he waits until Clockwork comes within earshot, and then mutters, “I think so.”

 

Clockwork nods, once, quietly approving - and that’s all that needs to be said.

 

Danny looks at his hands, hidden under white gloves; catches his reflection in a clock face and sees green flares on the glass. He breathes, and finds that, for once, the pressure in his chest lessens, just a little.

 

***

 

As he’s leaving, Danny’s grandfather calls, as though in afterthought, “Oh, and Danny?” 

 

He turns.

 

“You should finish that passage,” they finish, watching Danny levelly while he hovers in the doorway. He nods in acknowledgement, and with a final wave and a smile, turns to leave.

 

***

 

Step Four: make art.

 

The canvas is you.

 

Chapter 2: Gauging interest

Summary:

Not a new chapter - posting this for the sake of people who are subscribed/have this fic bookmarked so that they know I’m back on my bullshit. More info inside

Hello! This isn’t actually a chapter, but I have stuff to say regarding this fic that probably wouldn’t reach most of my readers if I tried posting it to tumblr. So, anyways, with that said:

in this fic, danny is given a journal written by an unnamed character who is credited as being a shapeshifter. I didn’t elaborate on this in the fic because it wasn’t relevant and didn’t really require any further explanation… but, in my head, that character was always meant to be my biggest, oldest blorbo, Möti, who is a character from my WIP original fiction work, Overmorrow (part of a larger original storyline/worldbuilding project called Yesternight).

In theory, I think it could be really fun for me to write an accompaniment to this fic exploring the backstory behind Möti writing the journal/existing as a ghost in a dp crossover rather than just the canon I have going in Overmorrow. It would probably be good practice for me to continue getting back into the swing of writing them too. But… I’d like to see if anyone would be interested in that kind of thing first. I don’t think I’d really be able to get into the swing of it if I didn’t think anyone would want to read it, and as of right now the only person other than myself who is at all invested in Overmorrow is my partner, so there’s not exactly a large audience there.

If I did write a fic like that, I’d treat it like a writing excercise where I have to speedrun introducing the most relevant worldbuilding in a concise and understandable way, so don’t worry about being unfamiliar with the world - although if you do want to know more, I’ve been working on a carrd to function as a sort of proto-wiki for Overmorrow, which isn’t done yet but currently has a few pieces of information about the setting. You can find it out here: https://yesternight.carrd.co/

if you’re in any way interested in anything I’ve said here, please let me know! You can send me asks over on tumblr (@snops or @snippyschnapps), or just leave a comment here. I’d love to hear from you!

<3

Notes:

Whew, that was a tough one. I've been agonsing over the particulars of this fic for a good long while now, but thats cool. at least i managed to actually finish it

as always, comments fuel me, so if you liked this and want to see more (or even if you just liked it in general), don't be shy :] I dont bite i prommy

(Title from out of body by gorillaz)

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 1 of Danny phantom fics that may or may not be connected in some way