A last minute NaNo project dreamed, plotted, and written during the last week of November, because otherwise I would have been a complete and epic failure. Enjoy seven days of rambling.

Cross-posted on Tumblr. Check out my tumblr blog for several tumblr-only stories!

Loosely inspired by the song, "I Will Remember You" by Sarah McLachlan.

Weep not for the memories…

Memory

A Danny Phantom Fanfic by Cori

What's a memory worth?

Chapter 1

Her shoes squeaked on the waxed floor. Next to the steady click-click of her companion's shoes, the squeak sounded childish, like she was wearing wet sneakers in school, following around a teacher to find dry socks. She tried to walk a little straighter, to not have her feet swivel when she stepped, but it only resulted in a louder squeak. With a held-in sigh, she stopped worrying about it and surveyed her surroundings.

The walls were as shiny and polished as the floor. Her reflection gazed back from the opaque, white plastic walls. Buzzing fluorescent lights gleamed overhead, placed too close together to cause much of a shadow. Everything was bright and glistening and blindingly white.

It was almost like Heaven, if she believed in such a thing. Even her companions were dressed in white, from their crisp uniforms to their glistening shoes.

She wasn't dressed in white. She was a glaring splash of color against the monotone background. Originally, her dress had been red. Red was far from her favorite color, but it had been a small concession. He'd wanted red – blood red – and she'd agreed when he'd given her that smile. Now, though, it was stained strange combinations of red and brown and green.

Her gaze flicked back over to her reflection, walking behind the reflections of her two white-dressed companions. The dress was ripped and torn, almost indecent if she took too big of a step. Her hair, which she'd spent hours trying to make look nice, hung in black, ragged strands around her face. Her makeup was smudged from tears.

And thick, heavy manacles held her wrists bound together before her.

It was supposed to be one of the most magical nights of her young life: prom. And with the guy she'd fallen desperately in love with. She'd planned for months to get the money to get the dress she wanted. She'd rented a limo. She'd made sure to pick him up at the front door of his house and gave him a ride to the dance.

The men in front of her stopped, causing her to stumble backwards a step rather than plow into them. They certainly wouldn't want to get her stained clothes on their pristine white.

The thought made her glance backwards, suddenly understanding the squeak of her shoes. Greenish footsteps trailed down the hallway. A mar of color. A grin crept at the corner of her mouth.

"Inside."

A door had been opened. She glanced from one of the guards to the other, then raised her chin and straightened her back and stalked into the room like she was the queen of all she could see, rather than a dirty prisoner. The room was white – she wasn't much surprised – and a single chair sat in the middle of the room.

"Sit."

There was the clicking sound of the door closing and locking. A tingling buzz ran through the floor as a variety of ghost shields snapped into place around the room.

"Can you possibly speak in multiple-word sentences?" she asked, trying not to sneer and failing miserably. It was simply not a good night to be polite. Not after everything that had happened.

"No." There was a hand at her shoulder, pushing her towards the chair.

"Alright, alright," she muttered darkly, shaking off the hand and stalking towards the chair. It reminded her of the old-style electrocution chairs. She'd seen one in a museum not that long ago. Straps ran around the chair, ready to bind a hapless victim in place. She hesitated before the metal chair. Its legs were welded into the ground. She could feel the buzz of the ghost shield running through the chair itself.

A click and a whirr made her glance to the side. A sickly green glow filled her vision. The barrel of an ecto-rifle, pointed straight at her head. "Sit," the man said again.

Very gingerly, she sat. The electromagnetic field running through the metal of the chair made her nerves tingle unpleasantly. She shifted, trying to find a way of sitting that allowed as little of her body to touch the chair as possible.

Her guards were having none of that. One pushed her back against the chair, solidly planting her firmly against the cold metal. She hissed at the sensation as her manacles were released and her arms and legs and torso were belted to the chair. Color seemed to dance before her eyes like rainbows.

"We're ready, Sir," one of them said.

She turned an evil eye on him. "I knew you could speak a proper sentence," she muttered.

The man ignored her. Rifles still charged – she wondered for a moment how long the batteries would last with a charge at the ready like that – the men flanked her, weapons pointed in her direction. Then the door creaked open.

"Miss Masters," came a slimy-sounding voice.

Pushing the worst of the sensation from her mind, Danielle Masters sat up as much as her bindings would allow her. She couldn't see very far through the oil-like rainbows. The far end of the room where the door was located was just a wash of colors straight out of a 60's music video. "You are…?"

"Couldn't keep your fingers to yourself."

Danielle didn't bother to answer. If whoever this was wasn't going to answer her, she certainly wasn't going to answer him.

"Now."

A vague shape appeared through the rainbows. She struggled to keep herself from squinting and trying to make out the form. From here, it looked something like the Slenderman pictures people posted to the internet. Long, spindly, with too many arms.

"That chair must be uncomfortable."

She gazed in his direction, not willing to comment on that. Of course the chair was uncomfortable. It was reacting to the ectoplasm in her blood. It was, honestly, a good thing she'd mostly used up her ghost energy getting caught – otherwise she would probably be screaming in pure agony.

The thought made her grimace. Her body was constantly recreating the energy she'd used. This chair would get more and more painful as time ticked by. There was definitely a clock running on this encounter.

The form of the man walked forwards, losing some of the fairy-like proportions but remaining tall and skinny and, strangely, keeping some of the extra limbs. "I don't know entirely what to do with you." A hand appeared in her vision, snagging her chin, and making her head turn from side to side.

Danielle flinched backwards, snapping the back of her head against the chair, startled that he'd been close enough to touch her. It wasn't just her color vision that was wonky – apparently so was her ability to judge distance. She could have sworn he was still a dozen feet away.

"We've been tracking you for months." The fingers were cold, and they tapped against her jawbone. "Collecting all sorts of interesting data."

"I know." The words slipped out despite her decision to remain quiet. She focused on his eyes, which seemed to swirl from orange to red and back. There also seemed to be three of them – two normal eyes and one that shifted from the end of his nose to the top of his forehead. She wondered for a moment if this was what it felt like to be high on drugs, then forced herself to focus. "Your men aren't exactly winning World Best Spy awards."

The face nodded. The third eye crept down to his chin and then dripped onto the floor. "And yet you were so overconfident in your abilities that you remained. What were you doing to that poor young man?"

"None of your business," she muttered, trying to jerk her chin from his grasp. With her body trussed up, she didn't succeed.

He let go of her chin, however, rubbing his hand on a cloth. His fingers left behind some streaks of strange color. "It is my business," the man said. "Humans are my business. Protecting them, especially from things like you."

"I wasn't hurting him." Fury at the accusation slammed through her, causing the ectoplasm in her blood to spike. She screamed in pain as the chair reacted, her vision going white.

She sagged against the straps. It felt like energy had been drained from her. No doubt this strange chair had done something to her. She blinked furiously, trying to force herself to stay awake. "Wasn't," she mumbled.

"All the fight goes away so fast," the man said. She felt his cold fingers brush hers, then creep up her arms. She squirmed, uncomfortable with the sensation, as the fingers paused on her upper arms. "Always does."

She glared at him, having had more than enough of this. His face looked to be only a few inches away, but she didn't know for sure. Little, psychedelic things crawled over and under his skin. "Let me go."

He shook his head. "No." The fingers appeared on her face, carefully tracing over her eyebrows and then down her cheekbones. "Unacceptable."

Pulling at her wrists, Danielle felt her heart start to beat faster. Tied to this chair, there was very little her ghost would be able to do to help her in this situation. Even if she were out of the chair, she was far too tired to call on her ghost powers anyways. It was why she'd been captured.

"Such a young girl," the man whispered. Then he sighed, stood up, and walked away. His body turned back into the Slenderman-like shape from earlier. His voice turned hard and empty and forceful. "You have been possessing that young man on and off for months. You coerced him to attending a high school dance with you by directly manipulating his brain chemistry."

"That's not-" She broke off, biting her lip. It wasn't totally untrue. That just wasn't how it had gone! "You have to-"

"I don't have to let you do anything." The man's voice was sharp and dangerous. "We have you tied to eight bank robberies across the state, and implicated in about a dozen more. You've manipulated the authorities and school officials into believing your little lies through the use of your abnormal abilities. That young man you coerced is in the hospital. His brain barely functions without your help anymore."

She stared down at her knees. Her life definitely wasn't going the way she dreamed it would, but that really wasn't how it had gone. She was too young to get a job – how else was she going to get money? And she hadn't taken that much, and it had all been from the bigger banks that could afford it. She had no birth certificate, no papers, no legal identification. How else was she going to attend school and have something resembling a normal life? And the boy… She loved him. She hadn't been hurting him. She just knew what was best to keep him safe. "Nobody died," she said stubbornly.

"That's your moral compass setting? It's okay if nobody dies?" The man sounded slightly incredulous. "Your mind is that far gone?"

"My mind's not gone!" she snapped, pulling at her wrists again. The wave of exhaustion had mostly faded, leaving her feeling like there were ants crawling around under her skin. "And I'm not a bad person-"

"Yes," he interrupted. "You are. You steal. You manipulate to get your way. And when that young man started to resist your orders at the dance, you nearly killed him. Murder is just next on your list."

Her fingers crept into fists. "Everything would have been fine if you hadn't shown up!" she said, forcing herself to remain calm. She couldn't do another of those shocks because she let her powers get out of control. "It only went bad because you-"

"And unable to accept the responsibility for your actions. Blaming others for things that are mostly your fault," he said.

"I'm not evil!" Her breathing was harsh and broken, her body shaking from the effort of containing her abilities. Silence fell through the room.

Then he spoke again. His voice was soft and understanding. "No. You're not evil. Not yet. And you won't ever."

"What does that mean?" she whispered. He was walking around her chair, circling like a shark or a vulture ready for a meal. She tried to follow him, but with her vision on the fritz it wasn't working very well.

"None of that blood on you is yours," he said. "None of the ectoplasm either." He chuckled. "You landed eight people in the hospital with serious injuries trying to get away from us." The cold hands settled on her shoulders. His breath rustled the little hairs by her ears. She forced down a shiver at the feeling. "We want our recompense."

She stared straight forwards, trying to appear unaffected by his words. Inside, however, her stomach was twisting. She was only eighteen, for God's sake. She'd only been alive for six years. She didn't deserve whatever this man had in his mind. "What are you going to do to me?"

She could feel the warmth of his lips near her ear. "I'm going you a choice," he said. "Because…" his voice trailed off and she felt some of the dirty strands of hair dangling around her eyes get pushed back behind an ear.

"Shove it up your ass," she hissed, jerking away from the touch of his fingers. "Whatever you're selling, I don't want."

He laughed, low and dark. "So it's okay if you manipulate others to get what you want, but it's not okay if I manipulate you?"

"I'm going to burn a hole through you big enough to drive a truck through your empty heart," she breathed, trembling with the effort it took to keep her eyes from glowing. "I'm going to hang your head from a streetlamp. You and everyone you love."

"Nice threat." He backed up a few steps, walked around to the front of the chair, and dangled something before her eyes. It was some sort of box with buttons on it. A rainbow-colored remote control. "Two options, Miss Masters. Play along, or utter destruction."

She spat a mouthful of spit at him.

"Death it is," he said blandly. "Maybe we'll learn something from your dissection after you stop breathing."

One of the guards finally spoke up. "Doctor Marion wanted one alive."

She could feel their eyes on her. She forced down an unsteady breath as the silence went on for a beat too long. Being picked apart as a living lab experiment was one of those recurring nightmares.

"We'll hold off on death for a bit, then," he said. "Let the chair do its work for a few hours. See if she decides to change her mind."

"It'll be cold day in Hell-" she snarled.

"I have no doubt that there is a special spot in Hell reserved just for creatures like you," he said, sounding almost cordial. "Whereas people like me, people that spend our lives ridding the world of demons like you? I'll be sitting at the side of my God, basking in eternal glory." He took a few steps closer, looming over her. "I can't wait for my judgment day, Miss Masters. Are you ready for yours?"

Then he walked away. The door snapped shut behind him. She was left alone with her oily rainbows and her two silent guards and the steadily increasing pain of the chair she was tied to.