Title: Astronaut

Author: Zalein

Total Chapters: 10

Word-count: 23,202

Genre: General/Drama

Characters: Danny F., Sam M.

Rating: T for language.

Summary: "I want to be an astronaut," Danny said automatically.

Author's Note: Well, people, it's been an awesome ride. Thanks so much for your reviews and comments, they've really brightened things up for me. 3

CHAPTER TEN

Mr. Smith gave him a stern look the next day, but said nothing except "Take a seat and we'll begin."

Danny collapsed onto a seat in the empty classroom's front row, leaning on his elbows and blinking tiredly. Soon a piece of paper was placed on the desk's plastic surface, and Danny mumbled a 'thanks' while taking a pencil out and reading the page's top lines.

Twenty minutes later he stood and handed the test back. Mr. Smith took the paper and immediately started grading it. Seeing this, Danny sat back down and laid his head on his desk until Mr. Smith called his name.

Danny looked up, his eyes taking a moment to focus properly. "Whu—what?" The teacher held up the paper. Danny rose from his seat and stepped towards him to take it, seeing a neutral '84' scrawled at the top as he did.

Mr. Smith watched him. "You did better this time." Like the grade he'd just given, his voice was neutral.

Danny nodded, rubbing his eyes. "Yeah, I reviewed a bunch with Jazz. Good thing, too…" It wasn't that the test questions had been hard—it was that drilling the problems with her had gotten him to the point where he could do them in his sleep. Considering how tired he was just then, that was very good indeed.

Mr. Smith nodded in approval. "Jazz is a good student. You might want to keep reviewing with her until you've picked up some of her good study habits."

Danny nodded, folding the test and putting it in a pocket. He was too tired to think of anything to say besides, "Thanks a lot for letting me retake the test, Mr. Smith," and nod vaguely to his teacher's response. He turned and left.

Since he'd gone straight to Mr. Smith's classroom after school, the hallway with his locker was deserted by the time he got to it. He took a couple of books he'd need for homework that day out and closed the locker. As he was turning around he noticed someone coming down the hall, and when he saw who it was he grinned. "Hi, Bridget."

Bridget looked up and hesitated, her footsteps faltering before continuing. "Oh… uh, hi."

Danny wondered if he'd said something wrong. "What's new?"

"Oh… nothing…" She shrugged.

He nodded. "Same here. Well, except that I just retook a test with Mr. Smith, but… yeah. Not much else." She didn't have to know about his shouting at long-since-deceased-farmers in the dead of the night.

She gave him a tight grin and nodded, walking past him without stopping. "Sounds cool. Was the test easier the second time?"

"Yeah," said Danny, turning to face her while she walked. "Or, uh, a little. How about you, has English been looking up?"

Her pace slowed a little, and Danny realized that he'd said the wrong thing. "… I guess it has," she said, shrugging. "Not that it matters anymore, to tell the truth."

Danny frowned a little. "Why doesn't it matter?"

Bridget paused before speaking, as though cursing silently, and it occurred to Danny that she might have been avoiding thinking about it. "Well, you know, it's…I guess my parents were right," she said. Danny noticed that her tone was cold and brittle, like a too-thin layer of ice on a pond. "I guess I'm just not cut out for the life of a lawyer, or whatever." She grinned without any real cheer, and snorted a little. "Figures."

"Uh…" said Danny, a little taken aback, "… did something happen? Why the sudden change in heart?

She folded her arms haughtily, obviously trying not to look upset. "I went to this law-firm company yesterday. To look around," she explained, "on my own, when my parents weren't around to say anything and get me looking at all the bad sides the job might have. I met a few lawyers, and… well, it just, it looks like a crap job. Any job I'd want to have would take years to study for and—gawd, if I'd wanted to spend that many years of my life in college, I'd have become a med student. And most of the job really is just that hellish amount of paper work, and…" She trailed away, pressing her lips together unhappily.

Danny nodded slowly, feeling out of his league again. "Well… it's your choice, whatever you want to be."

She waved a hand impatiently, saying sharply, "Yeah, but—just… damnit!" Bridget scowled and looked away, while her waving hand went to her face. Danny saw her eyes glistening a little and tried not to silently agree: when he'd called over to chat with her, the last thing on his mind had been to make her cry. She continued to speak. "I just… I hate that they'll think they're right. Mom and Dad'll be so smug when they find out, I just know it, they'll hold it over my head for years, and… And I don't know what I want to be now, y'know?"

"I'm sorry," Danny said, not really knowing what he was apologizing for. "It sounds pretty rough."

Bridget nodded, pretending to fuss with her hair while she wiped her eyes. "It is, yeah," she said, "so… uh-huh. See you, Danny. Good luck with bringing your grades up to become an astronaut or whatever."

Her tone was colder than he'd ever heard it, but Danny nodded in spite of it. "Thanks a lot," he said quietly. "See you." She turned and kept walking down the hall. Danny walked in the other direction, trying not to feel irritated by how quickly his relatively good spirits had faded through the conversation, as though her mood had somehow been as contagious as it was bleak.

"Hey, Danny!"

"Hi Danny!"

"Hi Sam, hi Tuck," said Danny wearily.

"Dude, you look like crap," said Tuck bluntly. "Was the test that bad?"

"No, the test was fine. I even got an 84 on it." He was interrupted immediately by his friends' Awright! and That's awesome, man!, and his expression brightened a little. "I met Bridget on the way out, though, and… well, she was upset over something, and now I feel down, too."

"Man, that sucks," said Tuck sympathetically. "Was something wrong?"

Danny shrugged, making a face. "Yeah, but it wasn't anything I could help with."

"Then forget about it," said Sam, sounding authoritative. "It's her problem in the first place, and if it's about that whole career-counseling thing then she'll just have to deal with it like everyone else."

"Yeah, but…" said Danny.

"Hey, Tuck, Danny," Sam interrupted, overriding the ghost-boy's weak protest and glancing around for possible eavesdroppers. She saw none, and went on. "You guys still want to go try mapping the Ghost Zone, right? I called Jazz earlier, and your parents are out for the afternoon, so how about we try today? After all, I don't have much homework, and unless someone assigned a term paper or something, I bet neither of you two do, either."

"I'm in. I don't have any homework at all," said Tuck, smiling smugly. "I did it during a free period."

Danny grinned at the idea of spending the afternoon with his friends in the Ghost Zone. "Well, I've got to go to Mrs. Stravinsky and see if she has an extra credit assignment available before we go, but I don't think it'll be due tomorrow or anything. Unless it is, I'm in, too." Tuck held out a hand for a high-five, and after the gesture had been exchanged three ways they headed off towards the History classroom.

Mrs. Stravinsky was grading papers when they found her. She smiled and nodded when Danny asked about the extra assignment (a little distantly, Danny thought,) getting a post-it note and jotting something down. When she handed it to him Danny saw it was a research-paper prompt, so he thanked her and pocketed it. By the time he left Danny was wondering if she was a little more impersonal than she had been last time, before deciding that he liked it more this way and leaving it at that.

After leaving school the trio went to Danny's house, trooping upstairs for some extra blank paper before their trip down. All three of them shrugged off their heavy backpacks while they were up there, each pile of books making a heavy 'whump' upon meeting the floor.

"Hey, Danny," said Sam, seeing that her bag had almost landed on a Fenton Thermos. "The light on that thing says it's full—should we empty it on our way down?"

Danny turned to look. "Huh? Oh, that? … I can't remember who's in that one, anyway—check the date to see how long it's been full, will you?"

Sam picked it up, turning it in her hands. "It says it's been full since last night. If you were out hunting then no wonder you were falling asleep all through lunch."

Danny's eyes widened comically, and he said, "Oh man, I can't believe I didn't tell you guys! Last night there was another new ghost, and his corn-dog attacked, and I told him that—"

"Wait, corn-dog?" Tucker repeated, raising an eyebrow. "His 'corn-dog' attacked you? Do I even want to know what that stands for?"

Danny gave him a look. "He was in a warehouse full of corn, Tuck. I'm calling him the Corn Ghost, and he had a dog. I'm calling it a Corn Dog." Sam laughed and Tuck rolled his eyes at Danny's tone, unembarrassed by his own suggestive phrasing. Danny scratched the back of his neck, looking uncomfortable, and his friends quieted to listen. "So anyway, I kind of lost it last night and told the ghost that I'd be leaving him in that thermos for a year for having woken me up. I also said I'd do the same to anyone else who woke me up or attacked during school hours…"

"Wow, man," said Tuck slowly. "You must have been pissed. Are you actually going to do it?"

"Danny, don't you think a whole year is kind of extreme?" said Sam, looking doubtful.

"I'm not going to do it," said Danny, sitting down on his bed. "I mean, you're right. A year's way too long for something like that. Besides, I don't even think a thermos would last that long without recharging, and it can't recharge when it's full, so…"

There was a moment of quiet, before Tuck said, "That kind of sucks—I mean, that would have been a good idea. Like a ghost jail, except with shorter and simpler terms."

Danny accepted the thermos Sam offered him and grimaced, saying, "That makes me sound like Walker. I don't want to keep ghosts locked up for fun—I just… you know, want them to stop interrupting me all the time."

"You don't sound like Walker," Sam assured him, "If you start running around and making rules up left and right, though, then you'll sound like him. Right now you really only have one rule, and it's a fair one. So, are we going to set him loose on our way down, or what?"

Tuck nodded, agreeing with her. Danny sighed, standing up and looking at the thermos. "Yeah, but I don't really want to just let him out…" He trailed off, looking thoughtful. "Huh—you know, this thermos this might not last a year or whatever, but it would last way more than a couple of weeks. What if I started leaving them in the Thermos for a week?"

Tuck said, "That doesn't sound nearly as bad as a whole year. In fact, I could even write a program for you that would remind you when their time was over for you to let them out."

"I like that idea," Sam said. "It's practical, humane, and it'll stop them from bullying you like they are. Way to fight back, Danny." She gave him a smile.

Danny smiled back and pretended his face wasn't feeling hotter than it had been before. "Thanks, Sam…" He paused. "Uh, I mean, thank you too, Tuck—a program like that would, uh, help a lot."

Tuck looked from Sam to Danny and smirked knowingly. "No problem, Danny." He turned abruptly and made to leave the room. "I'll just leave you two lovebirds to find the paper alone, shall I? Meet you two downstairs!" Instantly he was gone from the room.

That didn't stop two shouts from chasing him, yelling "We're not lovebirds!"

"We'll have to start over from scratch," Danny decided, looking at the Ghost Zone around them. "I tried to do a rough sketch earlier, but everything's changed since then. Tucker, what time and day does your PDA say it is? We should do this periodically for a while before we try going anywhere else for a different angle, because trying anything more complicated than this will probably just confuse us when we're starting." Danny folded his old drawing, putting it away. When his friends didn't reply he looked up, catching them trying to hide odd looks. Danny fidgeted self-consciously. "Uh, what?"

"Dude," said Tuck. "Where did all that come from? You sounded all… science-y and stuff. Were you channeling your Dad there, or something?"

Danny rolled his eyes. "It's just astronomy stuff. I like it, okay? So, Tuck—time and date, please." Tuck took out his PDA and rattled off the data Danny had asked for while Sam took out a notebook to write it down. Danny absently listened to her write, staring out at the Ghost Zone around them. When she was done he handed out pieces of paper, asked them each to map out as thorough a map as they could from what they saw, and sat down on the Portal's edge to doodle with them. They were each facing different directions to cover as much 'sky' as possible, and Danny found his mind wandering while his hands moved on their own.

It was a little weird, he thought; he'd always liked astronomy, and when he was younger the stars had been the coolest thing out there. When he'd gotten his powers, though, he'd realized night after night just how far the stars really were. He'd also slowly realized that he'd never be able to reach out and touch them no matter how high he flew. Of course that wasn't news to him—he'd always known that the stars were hundreds of billions of miles away, and that reaching too close to them probably wasn't a very good idea in the first place. Still, though, flying through the sky at any time of night and day had given him a different perception of space; he'd always been able to approach the things he saw below and around him. They were reachable—they were real.

With an unpleasant feeling Danny realized that he didn't like the idea of staring at dim points of light for the rest of his life. The science was fascinating, but it dealt with things so far that he'd never reach them alive, and so old they were probably gone already by the time he saw them. Danny's pencil over the paper paused, and he wondered why these thoughts were so depressing.

A flicker of distant motion caught his attention, and Danny latched onto it with his gaze. It didn't seem very important, just some sort of rock or random object floating past distant doors in the far-off Ghost Zone. Danny chuckled a little at the similarities between it and a shooting star, and ironically thought to himself that he should make a wish. He closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them again the object was gone.

It was strange, how comfortable it was to sit here, staring into the Zone. It was so comfortable that time seemed to fly faster than ever, and all too soon Sam was standing up (standing sideways? Standing upside down? Gravity was unheard of here, it seemed,) saying she was done.

"I'm as done as I'm probably going to be, too," agreed Tucker. "We're coming back later, right? Do we need to make it this detailed every time we come?" he asked, turning his chart around for them to see.

Danny looked at his friend's sketch and smiled at a connect-the-dot hippopotamus his friend had drawn between stars. While Sam looked at it and laughed, he shrugged. "We probably won't, because that stuff's probably too far away for it to mean anything useful. Thanks guys—do you want to head back home?"

"Only if you want to," Sam said with a shrug.

"Well, I want to go back," Tuck said. "I'm hungry."

"Okay, let's go back," Danny said. He glanced down at his chart, starting to bend the paper to fold it in half. Before he could his eyes were caught on a few smudged marks he hadn't remembered making. "… Actually, how about you guys go on ahead—I want to correct my stuff before I go back in. Help yourselves to the fridge, you know where Dad keeps the emergency ham."

Sam snorted and rolled her eyes. "Yeah—thank goodness we also know what's safe and what's not." She handed her chart to him, accompanying it with a small grin.

Tuck smiled for different reasons, absently handing his own chart over, too. "Yeah—anything that's meat is safe, and anything else there that isn't is toxic waste!"

Sam folded her arms in mock-confrontation, saying "So says Mr. I-don't-need-to-worry-about-cholesterol, here!"

"Oh please, Sam, I…" Tuck's words were lost as he stepped through the portal and vanished from view. Sam strode after him, clearly already working up a returning volley before she even knew what he was saying. Danny watched them go with a fond smile, shaking his head a little.

After a moment he looked back down at his chart, then at the Ghost Zone. He saw a few 'stars' he'd drawn further away from neighboring 'stars' than he should have, so he erased those and drew them properly after he corrected his smudge. Then he saw another error, then another, and then another. Ten minutes later he was finally folding his own chart in half and moving to fold Sam and Tuck's with his, before curiosity made him pause. He opened Sam's chart and held it up to the Ghost Zone his friend had been facing, comparing the two.

That 'star' was a little off to the left, and those few stars were kind of bunched up and too far away from that one, and those two stars were at the wrong angle to each other, and… Twenty minutes later Danny was closing that chart and moving on to Tuck's, smiling again at his friend's hippo constellation but moving to erase it regardless.

It really was strange how nice and comfortable this place was. He knew he didn't actually have much reason to be as comfortable as he felt, because after all, no-one really knew anything about this place. While he'd beaten every ghost that had come out of it, he still had no guarantee that there wasn't something bigger and meaner still left out there.

Even with all that in mind, Danny thought as he guided another stray dot back to its proper place, he still felt more at home here than he ever had in front of a telescope. This was what he liked doing. Sure he knew that venturing into the Ghost Zone and dealing with all sorts of ghosts had been one of the hardest things he'd ever done, but it had become second nature to him so quickly that it was a little terrifying. It was almost as though it was a part of him, now. Like it was something that he'd acquired a love for, and that he wouldn't—couldn't—give up.

Danny sighed, lifting his pencil with a slight frown. It was strange, the turns his life had taken since the accident. It was almost fate. Almost as though…

Danny straightened bolt upright, clenching his hands without noticing the paper crinkle. His eyes were wide with excitement as they swept over distant floating doorways without taking them in. A smile dawned on his face, starting small and growing big. Pieces and thoughts were falling into place behind his beaming grin, and his expression was becoming almost too big for his face.

It was more clear to him in that moment than it had ever been before. He'd always loved the stars, but even when things had been at their easiest they had never truly been within his reach. Ghosts, however, had always been a part of his life since literally day one. He couldn't push them away, he couldn't hide from them, and even if he went through with his recent 'jail' idea, it still would never stop them completely. He knew that instinctively—to him, it was already a fact. Ghosts were in his life, and they weren't leaving.

Danny looked down and realized he was clenching his hands so hard the maps were almost tearing. He quickly tried smoothing the papers out between his palms, not paying much attention.

Maybe it was time to stop fighting the fact that ghosts were a part of him, and that he'd never really be rid of them. Maybe it was time to embrace them instead, and find some way to be at the top of a game he could play, instead of chasing something he wasn't likely to ever really reach.

Sure, Danny knew that bigger, meaner ghosts would come in time, and that the Ghost Zone was probably going to have him tearing his hair out after a few weeks of frustrated charting and seemingly random patterns. That was fine—outer space in the human world wouldn't have been any different. And at least in the Ghost Zone, he could kick the stars giving him so much trouble!

Folding the maps in a hurry, Danny propelled himself through the Ghost Portal and charged through the empty lab with barely a glance at the stairs he was taking two at a time. When he burst into the kitchen, he skidded to a halt, spotting his friends immediately. Tuck was coughing on a mouthful he'd half-inhaled at Danny's sudden arrival, and Sam's hand was covered in a drink she'd spilled. They both looked alarmed, and Danny was oblivious.

"Guys," Danny started, "I'm not going to be an astronaut anymore.

"I'm going to be an ecto-naut."

The end.