In each life there are defining moments. They can happen to anyone, at any age and any time. A person can, of course, have more than one, but they are always the things we remember. They can be anything, from something as heroic as saving a life to something as small as a drawing we did when we were a child. From winning a medal to scoring a touchdown, from starting a first job to taking our first step. From forming a fear to facing it.

And for a rare few, a person's life will be defined by the way they died. Or in this case, the way they didn't do it fully...

He stepped into the hexagonal tunnel, squinting through the gloom. He ran a hand hesitantly over a steel ridge, breathing in the cool tang of metal and the aseptic, detergent-y smell that filled the hole.

'I wonder what went wrong…' Mom's theories were usually right and Dad was pretty good with blueprints. 'Dad can be clueless though.' It was pretty common for an invention to fail because Dad made a small mistake – crossing a wire, inverting a capacitor – when he put the thing together. He'd gotten fairly good at troubleshooting for that when Dad pulled him into the lab to help. The portal washuge… and fiddly. Lots of places for error.

Some brightly-coloured wire on the roof ahead caught his eye. 'Might as well check those…' He stepped towards the mass of thin cylinders.

Suddenly he was stumbling. He glanced down for split second – glimpsing the toe of his black boot caught under a metal panel – before pitching forward, trying desperately to regain his balance. He reached out to the wall, feeling a smooth, hard square. It gave way, plastic clattering to the floor. He leaned against the now-irregular surface to steady himself. Something under his hand pressed inwards, a gentle click echoing through the tunnel. He looked down to the plastic square. 'The safety cover must have come off the internal activation switch' he registered numbly.

A soft whirring began at the back wall.

Safety cover.Internal activator. Realisation was like a blast of icy water. 'Oh cra-' he turned on his heels, sprinting for the open mouth as the whir built to a throbbing hum around him, wires sparking into life. He moved faster, but the entrance seemed a long way off – he hadn't realised how deep he'd gone. A shout echoed from the lab as light flared behind him.

Blinding.

Pain.

Fear.

It consumed him, burying his body, his mind, his self in iridescent green. His nerves were on fire, muscles tearing, bones charring. He was burned and shocked and frozen all at once, lightning pouring through his veins – but somehow he was numb. His breath was harsh in his throat, the machine roared around him, and yet everything was oddly silent. He couldn't see, couldn't feel his face, his hands, his legs…

And then he was clear, staggering into the clean white, gasping at the warm air as his vision flickered. His body collapsed under him, pitching him forward onto the non-slip tiles of the lab floor. Everything blurred, footsteps pounded towards him.

Then it went black.

Sound returned first.

"..."

Voices. He knew those voices.

"..."

They were familiar. Where did he know them from?

"...ny"

Sam? Tucker? Were they here? Why were they here? Where was here anyway?

"Danny!"

He sucked in a gasp as his senses snapped back into place. It was all bright, too bright, fading in and out of focus. He winced, the voices unnaturally sharp and loud, but garbled – as though they were talking down a cardboard tube. The world was spinning madly, his head was throbbing and his tongue felt like lead. A prickling sensation crawled over every inch of his skin. He felt too light and too heavy for his own body at the same time. Dizzy. Sick.

"Danny! Oh my god you're..."

His face wasn't pressed against the lab tiles anymore. He was lying across someone's knees, a pair of hot hands on his arm, while another pair clutched at his hair and shoulders. They were shaking him, rocking back and forward. He coughed, whipping his head violently from side to side to clear it.

"Dude? Dude! Are you okay? Can you get up?"

"Tucker! Look at him! Do you think he's okay?"

Hands pulled him roughly into a sitting position.

"Danny? Danny, look at me. Look at me dammit!"

He blinked, eyes watering in the overly bright light as his friends' faces came into focus. Sam was stricken, fair skin grey with fear, violet eyes huge. Tucker was terrified, teal eyes wide and glazed behind his glasses, ashen despite his dark colouring. He looked like he was about to be sick.

"Oh my god we... dude, look at you... we..."

"Danny, I'm sorry... I'm sorry... I'm so, so sorry..."

"Sam what if he's... I think we... Danny we..."

"You're a..."

"Dude... I think we killed you."

His stomach churned – he was going to throw up. He gagged, tearing away from his friends arms as he staggered upright, stumbling for the toilet attached to the lab. The world was still spinning. He lost his balance again, grabbing the basin with white-gloved hands to steady himself. Wait… White? His gloves were black. He held his hands out in panic, clenching and unclenching his fists, studying them frantically. White.White gloves. And they were glowing and 'oh my god they just went transparent' and what was happening? The portal. The ghost portal. Glowing.White. Transparent. Was he...?

He jerked his head up, staring straight into the small mirror over the sink. A scream built and died in his throat, escaping as a strangled croak. It wasn't his face. It wasn't him. It was a stranger. The suit colours were wrong, white where the black should be, black in the white parts. His skin was too dark, almost tanned. Danny had black hair. 'Like Dad's.' The stranger's hair was white, unnaturally white. And those eyes. They were green – vivid, toxic green. And they were glowing, shining like the sign that hung outside their house. Like the energy that had swirled inside the… He raised his hand to his face. The stranger copied. He reached a hand out to the mirror, the stranger mimicking him, twin hands meeting cold glass. But it wasn't cold. It was barely even cool. He looked at his hands. At the mirror. Back to his hands. Mirror. Hands. Mirror. Hands. Mirror. He grabbed a tuft of hair, yanked down it into his eyes. White. Mirror. His breathing came faster, hitching and choking. The stranger's, no, his eyes – his toxic, neon eyes – looked back, wide with fear. He was glowing and white and he wasn't himself anymore and-

He couldn't hear his heartbeat. It should be pounding, racing. 'Why isn't it pounding?' He scrabbled at his neck, tearing at his collar as he fumbled for the carotid, fingers searching desperately for a pulse. A small voice in the back of his mind – it sounded like Jazz – told him he was panicking, going into shock. He continued to press, to prod and feel, searching, searching.

Nothing.

The world stopped turning. Time froze and accelerated at the same time. Everything was spinning again, breathing faster and faster as the truth poured into his mind, that one simple fact consuming all others.

His heart wasn't beating. He had no pulse.

'I'm dead.'

This was actually meant to be a little piece in the bigger crossover story I'm writing, but I really can't see a way for it to fit into that plot right now. I'm happy with how it turned out though, so I thought I'd put it up here anyway.

This is a stand-alone one shot. A similar version may possibly appear in my longer story at a later date (unlikely) but other than that it's just meant to elaborate on the event as it happened in DP canon.

Please review! I'd love to hear your thoughts.

-3WD