Let's do this thing. Word count: 763.

April Showers Bring May Flowers:
DannyMay 2017

Day 1: Hope/Hatred

Danny stares at the ectogun pointed at his face with wide eyes. His mouth is dry but he doesn't think that he could speak around the closing of his throat anyway. The whining of the charge is making his ears ring and his head starts to hurt, a dull pain in his temples. He swallows and dares to look up into the face of his mother, speech still beyond him.

"Don't move, ghost," she spits, eyes narrowing behind her red tinted goggles.

Danny flinches back against the ghost shield he's been pinned against and gives a hasty nod. He tries to swallow around the lump in his throat and almost chokes. His breath is starting to come out in short gasps as his heart rate kicks up. He's thoroughly stuck and the terror encroaching his mind is making the edges of his vision blurry.

Maddie Fenton stares at him with such an intensity that he winces. He can't look her in the eye, afraid of what he might see. He remembers once, back when he'd still been getting used to his powers, right after his first major fight with the Lunch Lady, that he asked his parents, "Why do you guys hate ghosts so much?"

His mother had laughed and told him, with certainty, "Ghosts are unfeeling blobs of post-mortem energy. They don't feel, they don't think, they don't live like we do. They're aggressive and destructive and completely mindless, driven by their last, tortured moments. We don't hate them, but they hate us."

He remembers that he'd felt the air leave his lungs so viciously it left him weak in the knees. He'd been unable to speak to his mother for the rest of the night and he'd felt so utterly crushed by her words that he shied away from her for nearly a month. No matter what his mother says in the contrary, his mom and dad hate ghosts, and very blindly at that.

Sam and Tucker never again pressed him to tell his parents his secret after he told them what she said.

He shivers and wilts under the force of her glare, curling inward in an effort to make himself seem smaller. He doesn't know what she's waiting for, holding the fully charged gun inches from his face, but he sucks in a deep breath and tells her, "I don't hate you." His voice quivers and he can barely hear it over the roaring in his ears, but the weapon falls half an inch.

Maddie's face remains unchanged. "What did you say?"

"I…" He swallows and focuses on breathing for several beats. "I don't hate you," he forces out, louder this time. "I don't hate you. I could never hate you."

"Liar," his mother hisses, stabbing him in the forehead with the end of the gun.

He whimpers and squeezes his eyes shut, pressed soundly against the ghost shield at his back. He feels like he might collapse, his panic kicking his instincts into overdrive. His hands flicker in an out of physicality, the urge to turn intangible fraying at his weakening control. He wants to say something, anything but he's so, so scared.

"Ghosts can do nothing but hate and lie and steal and kill," Maddie growls, the shifting of the gun telling him that she's fingering the trigger. Every muscle on Danny's body is tense with terrified anticipation. "You're no different than the rest."

"I can't hate you," he sobs out, clenches his hands into fists. He can feel tears building up behind his closed eyes and he squeezes them tighter, hoping the burning wetness will go away. "I can't." His voice cracks and he sniffs once.

She's quiet for a long moment. Danny wants to open his eyes, to spill his guts, to tell his secret, but every cell in his body tells him not to. The charge built up in the barrel crackles against his skin and he's sure he's going to have a burn on his forehead where the weapon is sitting.

Maddie finally pulls the gun back and Danny's eyes fly open in disbelief. Her eyes are calculating and he dares to hope that she's changed her mind, that she's going to let him go. "Well," she says, conversationally, "if you won't hate me, then I'll just have to make you."

The hope building in Danny's chest pops and deflates as she levels the gun to his stomach. The last thing he remembers is the sound of the blast, the burning pain in his abdomen, and the ground rushing up to meet him.

Let me know what you think! Let's also hope I can keep this up all month…