More episode-based stories at Through Danny Phantom: s/8169889/1/Through_Danny_Phantom

Once I started writing, I couldn't stop. Told my family to have dinner without me. Never done that before. Never would have gotten away with it before… O.o Anyway, this chapter coming to you with very little editing.

Unintended

A "What You Want" fanfiction

written for Through Danny Phantom

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It wasn't supposed to happen. That was all he could say about it now. It wasn't supposed to happen this way. None of it. He didn't mean for any of it to happen. He hadn't meant to start any of the multiple balls rolling, yet here at the end of the day, there was no one to blame but himself.

(there was no one to blame but himself)

He hadn't meant to show off around Sam and Tucker with his newfound ghost powers. He hadn't even realized he was doing it. They had all agreed that he needed to practice and since they were the only ones he could tell and the only ones he could trust, they were the ones who helped track his progress and heard of every new development. Some of the new powers could definitely be considered perks of achieving halfa status, but honestly, when it was his life on the line every single time another ghost came through the portal, he didn't think it was all that cool.

He didn't mean to push Tucker to the point where he was so jealous he would wish to have the same powers and certainly not to the extent that when such powers magically appeared, he wouldn't be suspicious at all, but embrace them freely.

When he first found out the situation from Desiree, Danny was shell-shocked, didn't know what had happened. He didn't believe her for the longest time. And by the time he realized that she was right, he didn't know what to do. It was his friend (his best friend) burdened with the trials he suffered every day. He tried to tell him, tried to talk him out of it, tell him to get rid of them while he still could, but the guy refused to listen.

(he thought it was fun)

And he was using all of his powers for fun. Well, for his amusement, at least, although no one else found the practical jokes at all funny. He was mean. It was all wrong. Tucker and Sam had talked him out of acting the same way countless times, but now he couldn't do the same.

It was like seeing all of the best qualities of his best friend being warped and twisted and ruined and exploited. And he couldn't do anything about it. Except confront him.

What a disaster that turned out to be. Coming head to head only resulted in numerous bruises and battered egos for both of them. It resolved nothing, only managed to drive them still further apart.

(he couldn't say anything that Tucker understood)

Danny had never meant for it to get that far. He'd never meant to drive away his almost-brother, to alienate him when he most needed someone who understood.

He could never have guessed what would happen next, but that didn't stop him from blaming himself. (there was no one else to blame) There was no way he could have known that with his parents down with some ghostly flu and the rise of spectral occurrences throughout Amity, the city council would send for some government agents to help keep the town secure.

And he never would have guessed that these outsiders would spot in an instant the phenomenon that had slipped past the populace at large for months. Granted, he had tried to keep out of sight, to transform behind buildings or in between his best friends, and not expose himself and his dual identity to the whole world, but still, how many times had he accidentally transformed in public or say his name or let something slip without anyone getting any the wiser for it?

That was his mistake, though, imagining that it would be the same for Tucker.

It wasn't the same. He didn't have two forms.

He flew around as himself (as his human self) in plain sight, shouting out his name to the city at large, rarely trying to go invisible when people began to stare.

There was no way that even the people of Amity wouldn't make the connection, wouldn't call the right people. And there was no way that those people wouldn't act upon such once-in-a-lifetime information.

Tucker was gone before he even knew it, whisked off to some faraway lab.

It took him days to track him down to a facility in D.C. Days without food or sleep or anything but the driving need to get Tucker back because he was his friend and this was all his fault.

The spell wore off long before then. The intense fear when being confronted with chains and needles and white coats and antiseptic smells and everything that could ever resemble a sick and twisted hospital (hospital hospital hospital, no it was a modeling agency not a hospital) in one place at the same time and focused on him wiped out any desire to remain a halfa. All jealousy was gone when he realized the consequences of ghost powers. Without the driving force behind the spell, the effects wore off before he had been in their hands to work with for an hour.

They didn't believe it, though. It took them nearly a week of dissecting and poking and prodding and tearing and measuring to realize that there must have been some mistake somewhere along the line. Some miscommunication. Something in the water. Several hallucinating agents in white coats who needed to be moved to white padded rooms.

When they were finally finished examining every bit of him, they realized there was nothing more to be done and decided to send him home.

(what was left of him anyway)

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Danny stared at the sleek black box that hid his friend's body from him. Just sat and stared. The deep bags around his eyes becoming even more pronounced as each hour went on.

(one hour, two… so long for him sitting here. not long enough when he was blindly searching for Tuck. not nearly long enough. how had it taken him so long to track them down? he should have tried harder. should have prevented this. should have saved him. from everything)

It was all his fault, but he refused himself the luxury to cry. Unshed tears shone bright in his eyes and made his world fuzzy. Everything but the black box which refused to become less black or shiny or real.

(nobody asked for it to be opened. they said it was an automobile accident. and nobody questioned it. no one questioned his week long absence or the pronounced lack of traffic fatalities)

When he was forced from the room by concerned parents and friends, Danny came back to hover above the table invisibly and undisturbed.

(this wasn't how it was supposed to happen…)

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I would really love comments on this one. I never thought I would write anything like this, but the idea would not leave me alone and now that I'm done and hungry and exhausted, I want to know what you think… *is suddenly nervous* Because I cannot believe I just did that to Tucker. And I also have no idea how to use angsty parenthetical inserts.