Chapter Text
Danny stared down the barrel of his mother’s gun.
“How dare you,” she said, voice hoarse and barely there. Her hands were shaking. He knew, though, as he looked into the toxic green of the blaster, that her aim would hold true regardless.
He said nothing. Even if he was physically capable of speech in this form he would have nothing to say. He was exhausted, on all levels. He couldn’t do this anymore. His parents were the last of the stubborn Amity Parkers that refused to leave and there was no avoiding them when he was trying to defend what was left of his haunt, trying to defend the portal so that any ghosts causing mischief would steer clear. For their sake and his. The GIW had been in rare form lately and he wasn’t ready to find more ghosts strapped to a table.
He didn’t know how long it had been since the town was pulled into the Realms, stuck after he’d defeated Pariah with no way of sending everyone back to the material plane. But it felt like a long time now. He’d lost track of the exact date since he’d given up on being human.
“Where is he,” she snarled, shoving the gun closer, feet away from his face. “What did you do with my son?”
He could give nothing but a rattling echoey sigh, distorted and piercing. A smaller version of his ghostly wail and about the only sound he could make without mass destruction.
He was tired. Exhausted from his latest fight with Skulker. The hunter would not rest until he’d gained the rarest pelt of them all. Phantom’s. The child ghost. The Halfa. The Fetch. The ultimate prize. He didn’t have anything left in him after getting Skulker to leave, fighting for what was left of his life and winning by a hair. He couldn’t just dump the ghosts in the Ghost Zone anymore, not when he also lived there. They were either put in time out in the thermos or fought off. Everything within his body ached. Everything within his soul ached. He didn’t think he could survive this confrontation with his mother and he almost felt like… he didn’t want to.
He lay limp where he’d fallen after battle, resting against his own empty grave. His dad and Jazz had insisted on having the funeral after his first full year of being missing. His mom had gone off the deep end and refused to believe he was dead. She was only half right.
“You’re sitting on his grave,” she yelled, voice cracking with tears. “Where is he?”
He shook his head. He’d long since given up on returning to his family. On ever being human again. He died in that accident and pretending otherwise, no matter that he somehow wasn’t a full ghost, would only hurt everyone in the long run. He’d already hurt them so, so much.
His mom and dad were the last ones left in Amity and they needed to let go. They were already reduced to staying at a hotel for a good majority of the time, unable to stay within the Realms with their puny human bodies for long. They needed to move out, permanently. He couldn’t bare to see them waste away here. One Fenton haunting the Zone was enough.
After a few good beats of silence she drew closer- her gun drew closer. Her steps crunched in the dead grass around them, cast a sickly green from the glow of the neon sky.
“You wear the same HazMat my husband and I designed,” she said quietly. “You showed up the same time Danny had his accident.” The barrel of the gun made contact with the tinted shield that hid his face. “I need answers!” she screamed.
He knew his mother wasn’t dumb, however willfully ignorant his parents seemed at times. She was so close to connecting the impossible dots, but knew she would never make them. She didn’t want to. She wanted her son back and all that was left was a monster.
He could see his reflection in her goggles. The bright green pin-pricks that counted as eyes. The inhuman shape of the suit swallowing him. The face shield blocking any recognizable features and the entire ghostly glow that surrounded him. Maddie’s own face was hidden behind the face shield of her suit, but if he looked close enough he could see the fear and denial within her once familiar lilac eyes.
He pulled the gun closer and held it to his head. He was so, so tired.
“I watched your fight with Pariah, you know,” she whispered. “I saw how you Ended him.”
A jolt of surprise and fear flooded down his spine, his grip on the gun tightening. He hated being reminded of what he’d had to do to Pariah. Hated the blood on his hands and the feeling of the core he’d crushed within them. But this was another level. She saw him End another. His mother had witnessed him become a murderer.
“I could End you too, you know,” she said, a deep sadness in her tone. The fear within him spiked. She reached out a gentle hand and cradled his head. “End my little boy’s pain.”
Breath he didn’t need caught in his throat, a strangled sound erupting from his core. Inhuman and full of terror. He’d already been willing to let his mother shoot him, to let her take out her pain on his aching body. But she could actually End him here. She could End him knowing he was her son.
Pain like nothing else ripped through him, his emotions growing erratic and effecting his form. Everything warped and he dropped the gun like it burned as he scrambled back against his headstone, trying in vain to gather enough energy to fly. To get away.
“Hold still for me, won’t you, dear?”
Panic built within his chest, his core (his fragile, tiny core) rattling against his ribs. His arms and legs felt impossibly heavy as he clawed at the dirt to move away, digging and digging as he tried to hoist himself up over the headstone.
Here Lies Daniel J. Fenton
Beloved Son and Brother
Gone Before His Time
June 13th 19XX – August 16th 20XX
And wasn’t it funny, somehow? That he’d be dying, forever and fully, over his own empty grave?
He could feel the heat of the blaster warming up for the killing blow. Sense the necrotic scent of rancid ectoplasm building behind him. It would take more than one shot to End him, to cleave him open enough for her to snatch his core. To crush it.
“It won’t hurt too bad, baby,” his mom cooed. An edge to her voice he couldn’t identify. “Just like getting a shot at the pediatrician’s all over again.”
He couldn’t let this happen. He couldn’t, he couldn’t, he couldn’t. He was tired but he didn’t want to End. Not here, not now. Not at the hands of his mother. He couldn’t do that to her. Couldn’t let her shoulder that awful, awful guilt. He needed to get away. He needed so, so desperately to leave. Amity had long since emptied. There was no one left to protect within his Haunt. He needed to leave.
Something gave way beneath his leg, dirt folding into empty space with a horrific lurch. His face smashed into the ground as he unbalanced.
She shot him in the leg first. The one not buried in the dirt and hanging into nothingness.
A shattered wail was building in his core, as close to a scream as he could get. He was trying to gasp in as much air as he could through the clumps of dirt and fetid rot that surrounded all graves. He could feel the leak of warm ectoplasm leaving his burning limb. The more he lost the more it would take to recover. And the more it would take to get away.
She caught an arm next. It felt like she was toying with him. Pinning him down like yet another specimen to examine on the table. He could feel bone crack with the point blank range shot, his skin partially melting with the heat and bleeding even more toxic green ooze. He used his other arm to claw further into the depths. He didn’t know what was beyond this, but if he dug in enough maybe he could fall through. His hand hit something solid and he cried, desperate to break through and escape. It was his only option. He kicked at it with his leg, steel toe of his boot just barely scratching its surface. His hands were closer to whatever shape it made under the dirt. He punched instead.
She shot the base of his spine and he could feel his nerves twitch and writhe uselessly. She shot him again in the same spot and they fell still. He couldn’t feel them anymore. His digging and punching grew more frantic. He used his broken arm despite the pain, just needing to get away, away, away.
Cuts and bruises from his fight with Skulker were making themselves known in the frenzy, screaming and burning with his hurried movements. The knock to the head he’d gotten wasn’t helping things either. Everything was going blurry with panic and it hurt, hurt, hurt. He was sobbing without sound and the shaking of his core was constricting his lungs and making his chest heave. He was an animal caught in a trap, eating away at its own flesh in order to flee. To live.
Bright green broke through the ground in jagged lines, crackling with power as he felt his bleeding knuckles shatter whatever barrier had lain under the empty space. Everything gave way and the last thing he could hear was his mother’s screaming as he plummeted. Sweet relief overcame the dread as black filled his vision.
He woke, sometime later, on another man’s grave.
Here Lies Jason P. Todd
Beloved Son and Brother
Gone Before His Time
August 16th 19XX – June 13th 20XX