It's just something I've always felt that I needed to write, to get it down, but I don't know why I never have…

This story takes place a week after Phantom Planet.

Disclaimer: I do not own anything except the meager belongings within this dorm room.

Maddie Fenton stared into the deep abyss of the ghost zone from the safety of her lab. Miles upon upon miles of dense green fog stretching out before her, further widening the gasp between her and the science she loved so much.

A week ago she had watched her son, the boy whom she had raised and watch grown so carefully into the young man he was, turn into a ghost. One week ago, she had watched her son save the world.

And as she turned away from the swirling depths of the ghost zone, carefully placing her thumb on the Fenton Genetic Lock, she realized what she had missed in the last year. She realized what a truly special son she had.

But, there was something she could not get over yet, an odd butterfly feeling she got in the pit of her stomach as she tried to grasp the concept, like a hard physics problem which is just out of reach… Her son, her only son, was a ghost. Her son was a hero.

He was now something different than herself, something that the world admired, something they attained to be and she was in awe of her baby and yet… in shock of how it had come to be that her son had to bare these burdens.

How had he delt with the last year? How had she missed him growing up to be, not just a teenager, but a young man before her very eyes. How had she not been there, by his side when he needed her most? What battles, what terrors had he seen and fought that she could not help with now.

Her son was a hero, and she couldn't be prouder, despite a tangle of emotions. Of anxiety each time she saw him defy gravity, despite the countless times she had seen him do it. Her heart would forever jump to her throat as he fought a dangerous ghost. He eyes would widen in surprise and shock each time she saw him do something amazing, ghostly.

But, despite his hero status, of his powers and newfound glory, Danny was still her son. As Maddie lifted her goggles to the top of her head, slowly walking across the lab and upstairs, she knew that she'd find him there, rushing through the homework he was so desperately behind on because of ghost fighting, his attention diverted as he yelled at his sister. And, in fact, that was the scene the mother of two walked in on, her daughter, Jazz, leaning over Danny's shoulder, trying to help her little brother understand how algebra homework was done.

"Come on little brother, it's just like the last one… Just move the two over and subtract."

But instead, Danny was glaring at the paper, his eyes aglow, too annoyed, too angry at math in general, to care what his sister said. "I just don't get it! Why can't I just pull the entire side over? Why just the 2?"

"Because you have to work it through step by step. Just give it a minute and you will pull the entire equation over."

"Except the y?"

"Not quite… You want to solve for X"

"Argh!" The black haired teen glared again at the paper, still having not noticed the third occupant in the room. She smiled, walking over to the stove to turn on the kettle for tea. It was moments like these, the truly average, mundane ones, which reminded her how her life was. Even though ghost fights and ectoplasmic explosions might be a daily activity, this was a somewhat normal household, one which needed everyday love and care that only she and her family could create and matintain.

But, as she heard her son gasp and Jazz proclaim, "Another one? That's the third one today!" that she thought about how abnormal her life was. A bright light shifted her vision for a moment before Maddie turned around, seeing her daughter fall into the same, empty, chair her brother had been in moments before.

"He'll be back soon. All of the stronger ghosts are still holding some kind of truce since the disasteroid incident."

Maddie nodded, having heard this same conversation straight from the mouth of one of her son's apparent enemies, a metal armored ghost by the name of Skulker.

That was one thing about her new revelation which Maddie still couldn't grasp the concept of. Each of these ghosts, which she had before then only thought of as malicious beings with non-conscious thoughts and obsessive motives, were something more than that. Though malicious and certainly obsessive, they were full of qualities she had not expected, an intellect she had dismissed and left undocumented in her quest to prove ghosts were evil and less than human kind was.

The ghost zone, though desperately unorganized, seemed to run a some type of chivalry system with loose based rules and long held traditions that she, as the mother of a half ghost, would be learning in a brand new way. Instead of research, and sampling, Danny would help with field work, moving Maddie and Jack's hypotheses from simple questions to deeper areas of the ghost zone and the stories of his own experiences with the other ghosts.

But, as she watched her son talk to these ghosts, form friends and enemies with them… That feeling returned to the pit of her stomach. That inevitable, bubbling, butterfly pit that could not be soothed. That feeling that maybe her son had grown up more than she expected and no longer needed her as much as she expected…

Letting her tea stew for a minute more, Maddie sat across the table from her daugher, picking up a light conversation as Jazz waited for Danny to return.

"I have to wait, because if I don't, he'll just disappear to Sam's and I'll never get him to finish his math homework."

Maddie couldn't help but laugh at her daughter's attempts to help the unwilling student. And several minutes later, as Danny appeared right next to Jazz, getting a startled jump from her, Jazz grabbed his shoulder, shoving him back into the chair before even giving him time to begin thinking about transforming out of his ghost mode, so he called it.

The mother of two left the siblings to finish the homework, grabbing her tea and going to the living room. She sat where she could watch them, the red head pointing aggressively at the directions, the white haired boy furiously erasing what he had just written.

It was so normal, but so abnormal at the same time.

Maddie continued to think, taking a deep sip of her tea.

Whoo! I hope that you all enjoyed Maddie's thoughts on Danny's secret. … you never know if I'll write another of these…. Seriously… with my updating schedule you never know

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Wing-edZenith