So brave to stand in the face of the world in ruins. To stand so tall when in fact in ruins. To face that kind of darkness and dive in, just solemn and alone, and to fall down... Interview At The Ruins by Circle Takes Square

Danny couldn't sleep.

Not because he was in Vlad's house. No, he was over that. Vlad was trying and whatever agenda he had, it would be worth it to have these peaceful moments far removed from the rest of his life. He felt like he was a world away, somewhere foreign where he wasn't expected to put on an act. The bed was warm and plush and had far too many blankets, the room was overly modern and had enough video games and DVDs to keep a fleet of teens preoccupied. His problem wasn't Vlad's attempts at accomodations. The man was clearly trying his best, however awkward and stilted that might be. Danny's problem sleeping was that the more he popped pills, the harder it was to fall asleep organically. Two days in a row rendered him an insomniac.

He'd done three solid days of forced sleep. Now he was tired but unable to sleep, staring at the ceiling of the unfamiliar room, and thought of the future. Not the future of his life. God, no. The future as a whole was an unfathomable monster, a mountain at a one hundred and twenty degree angle he couldn't scale. The very thought of the rest of his life was enough to drive him to some very dark places mentally. He survived by taking things one day, one ghost fight, one failed test and one moment at a time. It was the only way to endure the endless monotony that was slowly wearing him down as months passed. Sometimes he felt pathetic that day to day life was too much for him. His parents didn't beat him, he'd never been assaulted or hurt sexually or abandoned or something truly awful. He just couldn't take everyday living anymore. And he had no good reason other than the truly emo and pathetic 'I'm alone'.

He forced his thoughts back to the rest of the time he had with Vlad. Vlad had suggested Danny just take a day off to play video games, read and relax. There were things they could do, some ice fesitval thing a few towns over, a chairty ball Vlad had been invited to, things that sounded like desperate attempts at socialization to Danny, but all of those could wait until later. Every thing was very deliberately optional, as if Vlad was aware Danny needed time and space. His enemy knew his weaknesses and he didn't care. So what if Vlad was aware of how pathetic he was? What was he going to do, kill him? He could've done that with a sniper before now if he wanted it. Nothing made any sense anymore. That wasn't new. Things hadn't made sense since Tucker's funeral.

Whatever evil plans Vlad had, though, if they involved a bowl of warm soup and idle chatter over dinner, they couldn't be all bad. The least he could do was give this a shot. He'd come this far, after all. He'd had a symbolic dream and a relatively painless free day. Those had to be good signs, even if the dream was really straightforward and poorly put together and the day had been composed of a lot of awkward silence. This was still progress. The next couple of days might be fun if he tried hard enough. He might be able to make this into some brief moments of painlessness with enough help. It was worth trying for. He wasn't really sure how to try, but it was still worth it.

Life after that wouldn't be. Eventually, he had to come back to Amity. Just like how no amount of schnapps with Andrew could cloud over the inevitability of returning to his house. Eventually, he always had to go back to the routine that was slowly dragging him down. That was why he had to focus on the now, the immediate future, tomorrow and nothing past that. Otherwise he would have a breakdown. He couldn't afford a breakdown. He was Danny Phantom. He had to be tough. He had to be two people. One person who was a figurehead and a hero. The other was nothing. The other couldn't afford to be anything to anyone. Fortunately that half of him wasn't loved or wante by anyone, so nothing he did mattered. There was a sort of silence that came with apathy. Not peace. Just silence. It was the closest to contentment he had anymore.

At some point after midnight he finally fell asleep, and had a dream that he didn't have the burden of remembering when he woke up.

Danny was gorgeous when he stumbled into the kitchen, clad in yesterday's clothes, jacket rumpled, face clouded in tiredness.

He was gorgeous because he didn't look depressed or sad or hurt, and that was what Vlad wanted. He looked better, the bags under his eyes slightly lightened, his gaze more focused. He wasn't back to normal - things were never that easy - but it was progress and that was worth celebrating. Vlad smiled at him and gestured for him to sit down as one of his servants made breakfast for them. Danny's hair was a mess of black strands, his skin paler than it should be and he slumped in his chair. Something about all these things in concert with each other was just so human Vlad couldn't help but feel affectionate towards him. This was the Danny he knew and loved. The broken man he'd seen yesterday wasn't right. This wasn't right either, but it was leaps and bounds closer.

"What time is it?" Danny asked groggily.

"A little past nine, Daniel."

He groaned. "It's too early. Ugh. My internal clock must still be set to school time. What's for breakfast?"

"French toast." He smiled as Danny's eyes lit up. "Oh, I see I've found your one true weakness."

"I love breakfast food. I'd eat it for every meal if I could. Granted, Jazz always said it was unhealthy, but I think she was just jealous of how good my omelettes are." He seemed almost normal, almost happy. "It's a rare gift."

"So you're in a house with one of the richest men in the world, who could offer you the destruction of your enemies or riches beyond your imagination, and you want breakfast food." Vlad shook his head. "Your mind is truly a unique entity."

"I'll take that as a compliment. It sucks, but it's nine, so that makes sense. No one can think until after eleven."

"I see. And where did you obtain that fact?"

"Made it up."

Vlad grinned. He couldn't help it. Danny managed a sleepy smile as he rubbed at his eyes. In doing do, he drew to Vlad's attention that he was still eternally lad in that black jacket. Why he couldn't have grabbed something else when Vlad had a whole closet prepper for him, he didn't know. Maybe Danny was just so tired he'd forgotten to even change clothes at this point. Well, he was free from that exhausting and miserable place now, and Vlad was going to make things better before they hit unrepairable levels of insanity.

"Is there anything in particular you'd like to do today, Daniel?"

"Teach you to call me Danny. Daniel makes me sound official and important."

"Official?" Vlad asked, quirking an eyebrow. "I thought I was being polite. Although I suppose one leads into another. Danny, then. What do you want to do?"

"I don't know. I thought about piggybacking off your richness to get Sam something, but her parents would just throw it out, so..." He deflated visibly. "Tucker would've loved the new PDAs your tech division has. He'd have geeked out just at the ads."

Danny's happy mood was draining out of him and all Vlad could do was watch. Oh, little badger, you have lost everything. He wanted to know how it was possible he could negotiate for international patents without being able to understand a teenage boy. All his genius and wealth was useless as Danny drifted off into that awful lost silence. When Vlad's cook set the French toast in front of the boy, he didn't even look up. She frowned.

"I-is something wrong, sir? Would you like powdered sugar or more butter, perhaps?" she asked gently. She glanced at Vlad, who raised his shoulders in a gesture of cluelessness. "What would you like to drink?"

"Orange juice," he said dully, picking up his fork. "Thanks."

He ate without tasting any of it, eyes a thousand miles away, and slipped away after that. Vlad found him passed out in a cushy chair in the library, curled up with a book about NASA's moon missions. He looked so small and frighteningly young and incredibly old all at once that Vlad wasn't sure whether to leave him there or wake him or carry him back to his room. This whole thing seemed surreal. How did we get to this point? Vlad asked himself, and then he noticed something. It was only by chance that he glanced at the floor or saw it, but there it was, an unassuming circle of white sitting benignly on the plush Persian rug.

A pill.

What was the appropriate response to that? Because he was experiencing the entire gambit of emotions at once. Anger. Betrayal. Fear. Shock. It all swirled and ran together and he felt the urge to crush it in his hand. Instead he grabbed it and phased through the floor, making the way to his lab on sheer instinct. Some part of him was on autopilot because every other part of his mind was spinning. Daniel had always been a good kid. An honest boy. A heroic man. This wasn't him. This couldn't be him. He would never have touched this as Vlad knew him - but the Danny Vlad had knew was killed the night Tucker died, standing isolated and apart in the waiting room, blue eyes dull as if coated over by ice suddenly. So he had begun to sink and Vlad found himself not sure who to be more angry with, himself for not seeing it coming and preventing it or Danny for giving in to the bliss of chemicals, the peace of pills that were easier than the rest of the world. But he was never really around Danny to catch this early and Danny was still trying so hard to keep his normal life in tact, how could Vlad blame either of them?

Really he was angry at Maddie and Jack. Their son was doing drugs. A drug. Whatever. He was clearly struggling with some depression or he wouldn't have considered it, normally Danny was an upstanding citizen, so this had to be a synptom of a greater problem. And how had they missed that problem? How had they missed the signs? The tiredness, the detached outlook, those rings under his eyes, he was so pale, too thin, how, how had they missed this? Maddie had told him Danny was being more of a homebody and his grades were dropping. You foolish woman, it's far worse than that! He's dying! He's... Vlad dropped the tablet onto the surface scanner of his computer and inhaled sharply. He's dying. Why hadn't she seen that? She was a very intelligent woman, an incredible mind and a kind soul, how did she miss this? How did she look at her son missing dinner and failing his favorite classes and think it was okay? He had lost his friends, he needed help, in light of circumstances it was all glaringly obvious and-

Jack.

Vlad froze. Jack had a single minded obsesiveness that Maddie shared but she'd never been as intense with it as he had. He was self centered and shallow, hard to talk to, impossibly unsympathetic, a man whose world revolved around his studies and interests, his world, his life. Maddie had been trying to keep him from going off the deep end with new paranormal investigators making so much progress lately. He was trying to keep up with them, outdo them, take them down with his experiments and inventions, the endless sea of useless ghost hunting junk - of course he hadn't seen Danny's downward spiral. He hadn't even come up from the lab to greet Vlad when he stopped by. He was so deeply engrossed in his own ego and his own reputation and the salvation thereof that his son, his only present child, wasn't even a sidenote on the back of his mind. Vlad's eyes glowed red without his permission as he thought of Danny trying to save the town and cope with everything and then come home to nothing and no one, no sympathy, no compassion, not even a fully stocked fridge.

He could barely breathe for fury. Danny wasn't innocent. This was a stupid decision on his part. But it was a desperate one, a lonely one, something he did to give himself the comfort and break he wasn't going to get otherwise from anyone. He understood Danny's mistake. He had dabbled in drinking after his own accident. More than dabbled, really. It had consumed him until fury overtook it and he began formulating his rise to riches. He had fallen to. But he had been older, more able to bounce back, more sure of himself. There had been hope and a future for him. There was nothing for Danny. No friends and no family. Nothing but work and pain.

The gray haired man had a lot to do. Social Services needed to hear about this. Maddie needed to be told in no uncertain terms what madness Jack had wrought upon them all. Jazz needed to be informed - smart, savvy psych. major Jasmine might even know what to do next, how to approach recovery. He needed a doctor to tell him how to manage a detox. He needed a conversation with Danny about why this wasn't the answer. But more than anything he needed to go wake Danny up and hold him close and tell him the real reason he had been brought here. Vlad's ulterior motive had nothing to do with the ghost or human halves of the young man. It was about his heart. About his soul. About the Danny who he admired for his bravery and enjoyed for his snark and wanted to talk to just to see how his mind reacted and his thoughts worked. It wasn't about ghost DNA or Phantom. It was about, truthfully, embarrasssingly...

He'd invited Danny over so that Vlad could have a chance to tell him he loved him.

The plan wasn't very formed or well thought out beyond that. He was going to pick an appropriately serious and quiet moment and tell him flat out, as clearly and hopefully sincerely as possible. That had been the plan. The plan had been shelved that day after school, when Danny had collapsed in his limo looking like Hell. After that the plan was just to somehow revive Danny back to his old self. If Danny hadn't agreed to come, he might've overdosed and there never would've been a chance for anyone to reach out to him ever again. Vlad wasn't one for religion, but he thanked whatever higher power existed that he had this last chance to try to salvage both his relationship with Danny and Danny himself. He wasn't really the best at interpersonal relationships. He didn't know where they went from here. All he knew was that he would not stop until things were okay. He would make everything okay. He had to. No one had done it for him, and he'd found himself in some very dark places, contemplating some very permanent solutions in his youth. He wouldn't let Danny drown like he had. Jack Fenton might be content to ignore those he loved in favor of fame, but Vlad was better than him. He loved Danny. He loved him and he could use that to somehow repair that which had long been falling apart. Vlad had failed his first love, failed to be the person he needed to be. He would never do that again.

He couldn't live with himself if he did.