Author's Note:
The ball is rolling. This is a foreign feeling, I think. Thanks for all the reviews last chapter~! :)

Also, what am I even doing to my writing style? O.o Who knows, but I suppose fanfic is for experimentation, in the end.

Forever a Phantom

A Fanfic by Pseudinymous

~ 3 ~

Truth is Relative

Danny had fallen with a terrible shriek, and he kept falling until he finally figured out how to stop.

But now he was floating, hanging upside-down with a pair of feet haphazardly phased halfway through the laboratory ceiling. Panic, which was flooding him right through to the tips of his intangible toes, had decided that this was a very good time to set up shop and, if allowed to have its own way, never leave. No, it was going to stick around, get comfortable for a while. Because that's exactly what the poor boy needed.

Logical thought is spared to few in the depths of shock. And so Danny pulled his legs out of the roof in a confused twisting motion, which led to a spin that was utterly stomach-churning. It didn't particularly help, either, because he was still upside-down and still quite a ways away from the floor. He didn't know how to move about, he didn't understand even the smallest thing about this, and in his current panicked state he didn't have any hope of figuring it out anytime soon.

The height made him feel dizzy. What if he fell? That would mean taking a nosedive face-first into the floor. And if not that, then what if he just kept on falling through the ground, unable to stop? At the moment, he couldn't touch a single thing — he'd become heavily transparent, and suspected that the only thing he was ever going to make contact with was Maddie's odd pair of gloves. So did that mean he could keep falling through the Earth, on and on? What if he breached the Earth's mantle, if that was even possible? Would he simply melt? Or would he just keep on going until-

But he didn't fall. Everything seemed to be… okay. And his body soon returned to "normal" — or at least, relatively speaking. Somehow, he began to relax.

Danny's eyes slid to the other side of the room, to the green swirls of the portal which rippled at its entrance. It taunted him about his creation and this very strange mode of existence, and yet watching it was oddly enchanting, calming — something it had no right to be. It lulled him into an odd sense of security, as he began to realise that existing as a ghost must have been a reality for an immeasurable number of entities who 'lived' this every day. It would be all right. They'd had to have gotten through it, even if they were hidden just beyond the veil…

"Danny! Danny!"

Danny's attention wandered back from the portal to the stairwell entrance, where Maddie burst through and gave an uneven stumble on the way down. She grabbed the safety rail at the last moment and brought herself to balance, however, and finally looked up. Danny looked back down. Although, from his perspective one might have also considered it up.

"… Hi," he said, giving a peculiar little upside-down wave. "So, uhh, how do I get down?"

She gave a few more tentative steps forward, shaking her head in a slow motion of near disbelief. But then Maddie was shoved out of the way by Jazz, who had raced down the stairs, pushed passed her, and then stopped only to take three big steps backwards. Apparently realising that your brother was almost standing on the ceiling did that to a person.

"Yeah… long story," he said. But then he gave the whole situation a little more thought. "Actually, no, short story. I fell through two stories worth of solid floor and then I got myself stuck here. Help would be good right now!"

A broom handle was extended almost to the roof, held up by Maddie and narrowly missing his face. He grabbed on.

"All right," she said.

Jazz darted out of the way as Danny was lowered gently to the floor, although this had not, unfortunately, solved all of their problems. Danny soon realised that being level with the floor didn't mean he was going to stop floating — it was as if gravity had buggered off to the pub for the day, and was adamant it wasn't coming back until it was heavily plastered. Using the broom to push his feet to the floor was a great idea until he let go, because as soon as the external force was gone they weren't too intent on staying there. Maddie was watching the spectacle with unease.

"So… you don't have any idea how to move around at all, do you?" she asked.

Danny looked down at the floor, and then gave her an exasperated look.

"Sorry… sorry, standard question."

But Jazz shook her head, and quietly commented, "Mum, that doesn't sound like the sort of question that has ever had to be standardised."

"I'm with her," said Danny, pointing at his sister. Jazz tried not to flinch.

Maddie's eyes were weary but she rolled them anyway, turning in a swift motion to put the broom back up against the wall with the other cleaning equipment, where it belonged. "Regardless," she said, with a little sigh, "I better go and get those gloves, just in case we need them. You don't really seem to have any control over anything, Danny… so Jazz, just watch him, okay? I'll be back in a minute."

Jazz nodded, but in a way that made her seem more like a terrified infant than an upstanding and thoroughly mature older sister. This didn't mean she was going to protest the matter, though, and she stood where she was as if she were a sentry on guard duty. Only when Maddie was out of earshot did she open her mouth.

"Ghosts aren't supposed to be real. Ghosts are supposed to be that ridiculous figment of mum and dad's imaginations."

He watched her carefully; Jazz wasn't just apprehensive of him, she was as terrified as he was about this whole ordeal — although maybe for different reasons. Danny's eyes crept back to the hypnotic swirls of the portal, away from his sister. He didn't know how to answer her.

"Danny, why did you go into that thing? I didn't think you even believed-"

"I-I don't know, it felt like I should," he replied, lamely. "I wanted to know what'd happen."

"And it never occurred to you how dangerous it was?"

Saying something would have been pointless — there wasn't anything that could be said that would appease his sister. And so instead, he continued to stare fixedly into that portal, taking notice of the faint shadow that lay just beyond the swirls. It appeared to be the Fenton Anti-Creep Stick, which remained stuck inside. Danny couldn't help but want to go and retrieve it, even if the idea terrified him. Perhaps he wouldn't stop at that, either — that primal urge to explore was still welling up inside, and it was doing a real number on his proper sense of terror. For what reason would such an act seem so enticing? Especially when he still couldn't move?

But Jazz stopped those thoughts in their tracks.

"Danny, I'm sorry… I know you wouldn't have done this if you'd have known what it'd do to you. It's mum and dad's fault for making this stupid piece of junk."

"It's not stupid!" Danny protested.

But his older sister was staring at him as if he'd grown an extra head. "If it's not stupid, then it's ridiculous. I mean, haven't you ever wondered how the hell they knew what they were doing, to build something like this? We're not talking about simple science here Danny, this is fringe science, and it's esoteric and weird. There's nothing out there in scientific circles to help anyone figure out how to create this. I don't even know how mum and dad got this far. Even if ghosts are real, it should've been impossible…"

"Well, what are you saying?"

Jazz huffed. "I'm saying that something's up. I don't think either of us know the whole story."

Anger whirled around in Danny's stomach, and he made a failed attempt to squash it down. His sister had just single-handedly destroyed his sense of wonder and awe about his parents inventions, and now it was steadily being replaced with other thoughts and feelings he found truly disturbing. "How come you never just trust them, Jazz?!"

"May I remind you," she began, chewing at the inside of one of her cheeks impatiently, "That they have nearly accidentally killed both of us on numerous separate occasions. And now you're— Danny, whatever's going through their heads, they don't have our best interests in mind."

Danny would have argued right back if their mother hadn't finally made her return into the basement. She pulled the glowing rubber gloves on, allowing them to make a sharp flak as she stretched them over her wrist and let them go. Somehow, this didn't inspire any confidence in anyone.

"Jazz, your brother's in a bad enough state as it is, you shouldn't be telling him off like this after everything that's happened," Maddie scolded. "I could hear the pair of you arguing from upstairs."

Perhaps it was a trick of the light, but Danny thought there was a flash of relief that passed over Jazz's face. "Sorry," she said. It was probably from the realisation that their mother didn't have the faintest clue what they were truly arguing about. In a sense, he was relieved too.

And Maddie kept on talking, as if nothing had transpired. "Danny, I'm taking you back to your room, you need rest," she said, holding out her hand. "Grab on."

In his current state — even with dreadful thoughts zipping through his mind — he didn't know what else to be, other than obedient.

Danny stared at the ceiling.

That's all he'd been doing for the past hour; staring. It was all he could do. His mother had ordered him to stay exactly where he was, while she simply… sat there. She would alternate from watching his every movement, to becoming engrossed in some ghost book or another she had brought upstairs with her. Occasionally something strange would happen, like his arm shifting out of phase. He would panic, she would scribble frantically into her notepad and try to help him however she could, but otherwise it was just a whole hour of almost nothing.

"Where's dad?" Danny eventually asked. "Did you tell him about this?"

Maddie's eyes slid to the side. "Well, not exactly," she mumbled, guiltily.

Her son prompted her to continue by remaining perfectly, frustratingly silent.

"Your father wandered off while we were shopping. I told him we were heading home when we couldn't find him, but according to his text he wanted to head out to the hardware store. He said he might be a while."

"So dad's going to walk in, say "Hi, I'm home kids!", and then find out that his son's a ghost?"

Maddie's expression bordered on the extreme range of discomfort. "… now, Danny, you have to understand-"

"But you don't know what he'll even think! What if he wants to dissect me? What if he doesn't believe it's me?! What if-"

She stood from her chair, leaving her little notepad behind. And then she kneeled down alongside Danny's bed, eye-to-eye with her son, and put a single gloved hand on the side of his face. "Neither of us would ever do anything like that, Danny."

"But he was always going on about-"

"I know. But this situation is very different."

A gut feeling twisted inside Danny in a manner that almost made him feel sick. How? How was this different? The only difference here, was that he was their son. They'd always said that ghosts… they had the imprint of a person's consciousness, but they were never the person themselves. Did his mother even believe he was real? Or, alternatively, was the only reason she treated him like her one-and-only son because there was no body, and she wasn't sure yet whether or not he was a special case?

And then his eyes widened. What if this went even deeper than that? What if he really wasn't himself? What if he was just some identical imprint, memories slotted in exactly as they were before the accident? What if the real him was… gone?

"Sweetie?" his mother asked, a little urgently. "Hey, tell me what's happening."

"I—!" Danny began, but then he glanced away, at anything but his mother. "Nothing, just… remembering when I got stuck in the portal."

"Oh Danny…" she said, her face melting into sympathy. "I can't even begin to imagine how painful that must have been. I've had a few minor electric shocks before, but nothing even close to that…"

Danny gave a short nod, but decided quickly to change the subject. "So… when do you think I'll be able to control this intangibility and floating stuff?"

"Never met a ghost before, so I've no idea," Maddie mumbled, feeling a bit like a broken record at this point. "At least that blanket is keeping you in one place, though."

And it was. Danny still hadn't managed to re-trip the gravity switch, so the only way to hold him down to earth was to put something over the top of him. This was just another reason why he was now stuck in his room in his bed; getting around was an issue when you could very easily get stuck midair with nothing to push off from.

"Maybe it's like learning to walk," his mother mused. "I mean, these functions are built into you, they're a natural thing to attempt, but… you have to put in the effort to have any control over them."

"Great. At this rate I'm going to have to give a pair of those gloves to Sam and Tucker so that they can walk me to school."

But Maddie's face became quite serious. "Unless you gain some sort of control over these abilities, I don't think you'll be going back to school for a while. Even then… there are just so many problems with this, Danny. Just because your father and I have always been fervent believers, doesn't mean everyone out there is. They aren't ready to deal with and understand something like you just yet. I can't even begin to project the repercussions…"

Did she just call him something, and not someone? Danny tried to let it go, but it stayed there, nestled and tucked away into the back of his mind. It wasn't going anywhere. So he tried to ignore it instead, for now. "What about Sam and Tucker?" he continued, a little more urgently. "I can still see them, can't I? They can come over?"

His mother turned the idea over in her head. And then she melted a little. "They're your friends, I wouldn't deprive you of that… if you just wait a little while, until you're more in control of yourself. But Danny, they mustn't tell anyone about this, not until we've figured out how we're going to deal with it."

"Well, I didn't expect them to tell anyone!"

Maddie looked away. "Good! … That's good."

She went back to being rather silent, and started to look down at the book she'd decided to bury herself in. Danny didn't bother trying to figure out what it was — no doubt, it would be something ghost-related. He closed his eyes, erring on the idea of even sleeping for a little bit, but that didn't seem to be happening. Perhaps the two hours he'd supposedly been unconscious had given him enough of a nap for now.

Or perhaps ghosts just weren't supposed to just sleep. Who really knew, anyway?

Danny flicked his eyes back open after giving up all hope of proper rest, turning over to check his phone. 5pm. No new messages. His mother didn't seem to notice this movement, and continued to be utterly engrossed in her book. So he pulled his head under the covers, and flicked the phone to silent.

'Tucker,' he wrote, quietly typing out the text. He wasn't sure Maddie wanted him contacting anyone at all, not quite yet. 'Don't tell Sam, but I did something really stupid. I went into the portal. It works, it actually works, but I got stuck in it while it was turning on and… things are getting pretty weird.'

The message flew off into the city's cellular networks, and Danny put his phone down quietly on the mattress. He was getting restless, he needed to talk to Tucker (or even Sam, who might kill him properly this time), and after all that had happened today, he couldn't just lie there in bed waiting for things to get better on their own. It didn't matter what it was, he just had to feel like he was doing something to help make this situation better, somehow.

He poked his head up above the covers, again, and peered over at Maddie. She stole a glance at him and then went back to her book, but Danny ignored this. And against all of his better judgement, he climbed out from underneath the bedcovers and jumped.

"Danny!" Maddie gasped, nearly dropping her book. "Hang on, I'll-"

"I don't want help! I'm going to figure this out on my own!" Danny declared.

At least he wasn't upside-down this time. It was still doing his head in, but hadn't the damage already been done, today? He was a ghost, for crying out loud! So, if he was already a ghost, then how bad could this really be?