The car crash was deafening, and she hadn't even heard it.
When Sam heard the news, she couldn't even scream. It seemed that your voice always failed you when you needed it most. It was a phone call, and she answered all business, all professional, Samantha Manson, who is this? Because of course, she didn't recognize the number.
It was the police station. Her parents were dead. Got hit by a drunk driver on the interstate, driving on the wrong side of the road.
And if she had thought clearly, in that moment, she might have thought that this wasn't how she always expected her parents to die. Because Samantha Manson was a morbid person, and of course she knew how her parents "should" die. They were supposed to grow old, Pamela and Jeremy, and they were supposed to both go together, happy, with her mother in her chic pink dresses she was always fond of, and her father playing along.
Or, perhaps, they should be killed in the line of fire, when some of Danny's enemies figured out that they should target his loved ones – or, in this case, his loved one's loved ones. That would almost have been preferable to this. No warning. No time to grieve. No time to adjust. Just sudden, inexplicable, death.
Sam knew the statistics. She knew how many people were killed by drunk drivers in Amity Park. She knew how many were killed in Fezville, across the way. But she didn't know that becoming a statistic was one of the most painful things she could have experienced.
Danny was there to comfort her, after the crash. As Sam wept, wept for parents that she loved deep down even if she claimed the contrary, wept for parents who had always been there for her when it really counted even if they tried to change her, wept for parents who were imperfect and she wished she could trade for anyone else, Danny was there.
In retrospect, they would agree later, the death of Sam's parents when she was 17 was probably the catalyst for the rest of their lives.
The first thing Sam did when she found out was to cry and wonder why she couldn't scream. The second thing was to cry and call Danny and ask him to pick her up from work – her part-time job at a nearby bowling alley, because Sam thought it was important that she work, that she separate herself from the money she had inherited. No, it wasn't going to be her future, she wanted to go into law enforcement, maybe even law. All of a sudden, though, that didn't matter.
Sam was an orphan at 17, and as she stood with her grandmother and aunt at the funeral, looking at the beautifully engraved stone she'd had made for them, all she could think was, "I am alone."
Danny seemed to understand what she wanted when she said that she needed space, because he didn't leave her side for weeks, and when she truly asked to be by herself, crying and hugging her blankets to her chest, he would vanish from sight, invisible, but even so would not leave. She knew he sat beside her on the bed, hidden from view but rubbing her back, silently.
The will stipulated that she would get it all. The house, the company, the assets. No requirements. No hoops to jump through. Sam had always suspected that they would add a clause into the will, making her marry for money or do something equally stupid, but it turned out that it was just a waste of thought. Her parents loved her, and even if they didn't approve wholly of Danny, they still wanted her to be happy. Maybe, after the world found out that she was dating a superhero, maybe they had changed their minds about him. She never found out. Her father treated him the same as he always had, and her mother never invited him over, nor his parents.
So Sam was alone in her empty mansion, her grandmother, getting old and slowing down from the bright, spry thing she had been, being the only company she had besides her ghost boy. Tucker, Jazz, Valerie, they visited occasionally too, but she suspected that she threw off such a depressing air that only a half-dead man and a wizened-to-the-world, old Jewish woman could stand it for more than an hour.
They let her take as much time as she wanted off from work, but she still quit after a few weeks. Her boss understood. He was an older man, probably about forty or so, and he seemed to know what it was like to lose your parents. Lancer and the principal let her take as much time as she wanted off from school, but that she returned to after a week or so. The gloominess of the mansion, which she had before so thoroughly enjoyed, was stifling, and even if it meant seeing people like Star and Paulina and Dash and Kwan, school was still a place where there were other people around.
She stopped caring about keeping up appearances, though. Let her hair grow out back to the blond she was born with. Stopped dying her eyebrows. Lost the dark make-up, the purple lipstick, the foundation. Wore sweatpants and ragged t-shirts and frayed blue jeans and, occasionally, a black tank top with a purple dot, and plaid green skirt. Sometimes, she heard the girls in the cafeteria talking about her, saying that she looked like a "sad mess." She didn't blame them. Sam herself thought she looked like a ghost.
She'd considered asking Danny to find her parents in the Ghost Zone, to see where they had ended up. She even mentioned it, once. But Danny, with years of wisdom she didn't suspect could come from a teenager, said that not all dead people ended up there, only the ones who still had something they needed to live for.
Well, aren't I something they should be living for?
Yes, he had said, but some things are stronger than love.
Those words broke her heart more than anything else could have, and Sam retreated back to her shell. Yes, slowly, she recovered. Slowly she began to smile again. She talked to a therapist, made it a point, after a couple of months, to go out to eat with Danny and Tucker, like they always had. She would even hang out with Jazz and Valerie, watch movies, do nails, talk about the boys (Sam had Danny, of course, and Tucker and Valerie were slowly starting to become an item, and Jazz had a crush on a boy from her college classes off at Harvard). Even with these victories, even with this steady recovery, though, there was always the sad, broken feeling when she was alone.
It was out of this loneliness that Sam made a very rash decision: she wanted to have a baby.
Danny and Sam had been talking about it for months, maybe even years, at this point. There were worries, troubles. They were getting married, for sure (Sam wore the silly ring he gave her like an engagement ring anyway, so it wasn't like he needed to get her a new one) and they were going to figure everything out after college like where they would live, what they would do. But could they even have children? What kind of mutations had Danny suffered when he got into that ghost portal those few years ago? Even if they could have kids, would they inherit the powers? Would Sam be okay, carrying a baby with ghost genes? And what about all the ectoradiation Sam had been around, as she'd fought alongside Danny. Had that messed with her, too?
Sam had no way to be sure of any of these things, save one. It was just that she needed, she had, to try.
Danny was relatively young for his class, since he was born in April, so when Sam first mentioned it, over Christmas break their Senior year, he spluttered something about only being 17, and why would you want to have a baby right now, and all that.
But what was the problem? She was rich, she had plans, she could get by for a long time without having to work a real job, even if she wanted to. The company would run itself, that's what they had CEOs for. They were young, they were in love, they wanted to get married, and she was 18 (being born in October) and could do what she wanted, dammit, and besides, she was just so lonely most days.
Danny put his foot down round New Years, told her that he didn't want her to do something stupid just because she was alone. It wasn't his fault that there were enemies around, he said, and couldn't be beside her all the time, and came home at odd hours. He was working on it, he said, with the Wardens in the prisons in the Ghost Zone (except Walker, damn that man to hell) trying to get everything reinforced, and besides there's a war going on right now on that side, don't you care?
But no, Sam did not care about the Ghost War, and she did not care about any of the politics Danny was dealing with, and she did not care a bit about college or high school or family or Tucker running for mayor again or anything like that. She just wanted something to hold, because there was no one around to hold her, and was that such a crime?
Unfortunately for Danny, Sam's mind was calculating and clever, and she knew just how to manipulate him to do what she wanted. All it took was a little convincing, the batting of an eyelash, and if all else failed, bribery. And damn her if she didn't know a perfect bribe.
One sad side effect of being away on what amounted to business trips was that Danny was rarely home at night, and during the day he was at school (unless he was called off on an emergency). Longing glances in the hallway showed just how much he missed spending time with her, but aside from conversations at lunch when Tucker got up to get food, they had no time to be alone. Yes, the janitor's closet had occasionally been tempting, but they didn't have class together and Sam wasn't usually one to skip (unless she was also called off on an emergency).
If there was one thing that she knew he missed, it was her body. Yes, yes, the love was there, and she knew that Danny cared for her in an almost obsessive fashion, not desiring that she get hurt in any way, planning on spending the rest of his life with her. And she, too, loved him, loved everything normal and supernatural about the boy, loved the black hair and the white hair, the blue eyes and the green eyes, the warm skin and the cold tongue. But even with all of this, Danny was still a man, and men had needs, just as women had needs. He was being chivalrous, she knew, since her parents had died, and not asking, even tentatively, for so much as a kiss on the cheek. He was going to wait until she sought him out, because he didn't want to confuse her or hurt her or get her into a bad emotional state. She knew this, even though he'd never said it to her.
Since her parents died, they'd not done anything past kissing, holding each other, a few gropes in his sleep that she allowed because they made her feel wanted, and besides, it wasn't like he could control what happened when he wasn't conscious. Sam was fine with this lack of intimacy, because she wasn't sure she could handle more than transient love and intangible emotion. Danny was fine with it because Sam needed him to be, and so he was. He didn't quite understand, of course, why she didn't want him to make her feel better, even in that way, especially since she loved it that way, when she was clearly suffering. But he did know that she needed both space and affection, and he was doing his damndest to do both, when the rest of the world wasn't going to intervene. And now, especially now, because Sam wanted to have a baby, and all of that was bad news. Not that he didn't want to have kids with Sam, but they were still in high school, and college, and all of the other old arguments that popped up again and again, every time Sam begged.
But the longing for something to hold, to hold a piece of herself and himself, was starting to prove too much. Perhaps, Sam thought, it is my broken emotional state. Perhaps I am trying to substitute something old for something new. I don't know. All I know is that this is what I want, with every fiber of my being, and damn the cliche.
She did research, talking to their friends and allies they had made over the years. Could humans and ghosts produce children? Many of them did not know, but pointed her in what was hopefully the right direction. Months and months of sneaking around in the Spectre Speeder, while Danny was doing his diplomatic duty, travelling to ghost libraries and hunting through dusty tomes of mythology and supernatural happenings. Until, finally, there was someone who knew.
"Hi," the blonde boy said as she shook his hand. "My name is Neil. It's nice to finally meet you."
He lived on the South Side of town, past the Nasty Burger and near the old psychiatric hospital. He was her age, perhaps a bit younger, and had been in hiding up until when Danny made his alter ego public information.
"We've been here in secret," he said. "We didn't want to get involved with you three, so we hid out here."
Three of them, another trio like themselves. Two girls, and Neil. Chaiya, Rose. All with powers. All from the area.
How? Well, he wasn't sure. Amity Park was a hotspot for spectral activity. It wasn't a surprise that so many people had experienced mutations. "You know," he said, "There are so many places where the
Ghost Zone comes into our world. It isn't surprising that there are so many of us freaks, when you think about it."
Why? Well, the same reasons as everyone else. Wanting to fit in. Wanting to hide. Needing to carry out their goals in secret. "We've been trying to stay under the radar," he said. "Not like you."
It's amazing, Sam had said, that you all have been under our noses this entire time, just down the street. Helping us from afar, and taking care of the little guys while we've been after the big guns.
They were friends fast, through email in the beginning, more so after their first meeting in person. She'd gotten his name from a friend, from a tip-off, from a rumor.
"Yes, it was my mother," Neil told her, as she sat on his dusty couch, the other girls beside her, taking in the infamous Sam Manson. "She came over through a portal, met my dad. They fell in love, and here I am."
He'd lived between the two dimensions during his childhood, like a child of divorced parents (except that his parents were still madly in love, he told her, shaking his dead head), shuffled from one house to another on weekends and during school vacations, and still he popped back and forth occasionally, though he mostly stayed on this side of the divide. He protected his father, and the school, and everything else, from the few, miniscule threats that had come by before the Fenton Portal had opened, and he protected his mother from getting swept up in the politics. Luckily, when the real influx of enemies had hit, there was another, more public figure to take care of it.
He'd grown up his whole life with powers and being around other people like himself – because, of course, there were always halfas made the old-fashioned way, or through their own freak accidents. Chaiya had inherited a cursed necklace that she couldn't take off. Rose got her powers from a lab accident. The three of them had found each other young and were inseparable now.
"You have to meet Danny," Sam said, when she first met the three. They were in agreement.
But Neil was her only help with the baby situation, and she explained it to him. She, of course, left out the information that she was trying to get pregnant as soon as possible. Sam doubted that he would help her if he knew that.
"You usually don't have to worry about it," he had said. Baby ghosts don't usually show their powers in the womb, his mother had told him, and halfas were supposedly the same way. Humans and humanoid ghosts can breed – it's a genetic mutation, he said. Has to do with radioactivity, chromosomes moving around, and he spouted off some science that she couldn't follow.
Usually a fifty percent chance of having a child with the mutation, he said. Depends on the sex of the baby, where the mutations are. You'd have to get him tested, to see where it is. "But," he said, "Don't have sex with him in his ghost mode if you can avoid it. It does strange things to the baby's powers." She was intrigued, but didn't say anything. She knew what his ghost half was like with her.
"Introduce us to Danny next time you're here," Neil told her, as she was leaving.
She was elated, walking on air as she drove back home to her empty mansion, to her grieving grandmother, to her busy friends. A baby, she thought, elated, a burden off her shoulders. I can still have a baby.
By February, she was blonde, and by April, Sam had been accepted into Northwestern University. Undecided, but she wanted to go into Law Enforcement. Danny hadn't decided yet where he was going, since almost every college he'd applied to wanted him in their program, but he was also looking at Law Enforcement. He wanted to know the human way of fighting crime, and besides, he wasn't any good at science or math, so what did that leave him?
April 3rd was Danny's birthday. Finally 18, finally ready to go out into the world as a real adult. His mother and father had planned a party for that weekend, with all of his friends and relatives. Jazz was even coming home from Harvard to be there (not that it was a feat – Jack Fenton had gadgets that could get to Cambridge and back in a couple of hours) and she was bringing her boyfriend, with good news, she said, and if the whole group wasn't in a tizzy making rumors about it, Sam didn't know what to call it.
But the night of his birthday was a Thursday, and that meant that Sam had him all to herself.
Perhaps, in all of the chaos surrounding college and graduation, Danny had just forgotten about Sam's need for a child. Certainly he hadn't forgotten about her need for space – they still weren't up to functional in terms of their intimate relationship. He didn't want to force Sam to do anything, and she seemingly wasn't up to doing anything herself. This, of course, was all a ruse after she'd made her decision. She just had to save it for a special occasion.
The clock struck twelve midnight, as Sam sat on her bed and waited. He had told her, earlier that day, that he was going to make sure he was home. Take a day off, she had insisted. Lord knows you haven't had any of those in a while. The Wardens could wait, all of them. The war will still be on tomorrow.
Danny phased in through her window (their window, rather, as he almost never slept in his own bed) and landed on the floor as his human self, wearing a familiar look of caution, longing, and fatigue. New, tonight, was the excitement. An adult, he said. I'm an adult.
That's silly, Sam said, the covers wrapped tightly around her. He'd been an adult since he was 14 years old.
Danny chuckled, walked towards her and sat down. Should I ask what you're wearing underneath that blanket?
A laugh. You can read me like a book. The covers dropped to her waist – nothing underneath but too-pale skin and a too-rosy blush. The reaction was delayed slightly – she saw his hand hesitate, watched those blue eyes glance up to her face. How did she feel tonight? Had the hints that she'd been dropping for weeks been lies all along?
Sam kicked off the rest of the covers. Happy birthday, Danny.
Not lies, then. She watched his eyes flash green – want, desire, that obsessive side of him that always came out when he got like this. No asking for permission, no more stuttering. His hand made a fist all but briefly, before it had wrapped around her arm, the other hand in her hair, mouth on her collarbone, knee pushing her bare thighs apart.
The tension in the room made her eyes water – it had been so long, for the both of them, since they'd done anything passionate, anything that involved mouths and hot breaths. The car crash, then the arguments, then the wardens and wars and politics, all in the way before and now gone and forgotten.
Danny, Danny, she breathed. Please. His mouth travelling down her stomach – he looked up to her to ask if it was all right. Yes, Danny, yes.
A hot groan as he heard the desperation in her voice, stifled as he buried himself between her legs. Slow. Careful. Methodical. Oh, she'd almost forgotten what it was like. A little whimper, just what he was looking for from her. Faster. Harder. Rougher. Oh there, just there, please Danny, yes.
Explosion.
She didn't have enough time to process, didn't have enough time to do anything other than breathe before he'd kissed his way back up to her neck, sucked lightly, grabbed at her breasts and pumped against her, rubbing. Inside, let me inside, he was trying to say.
With purpose this time, Danny, Danny, she gasped. Wait, Danny, wait.
The groan this time was one of want and disappointment. What, what is it?
I want you to change back.
He was still for a moment, confused. He looked up at her – the green pulsing and swirling in his blue eyes. Change back to what?
Your ghost form, Danny, change back.
What? He shook his head. I'm cold, I'll make you cold. She'd never asked before. Maybe he knew he would lose control.
No, no, please, I want you to change. I want to know what it's like, please. She wanted to know how the hair felt, how it would be like with him so cold against her so warm, how it would be like if she let the green swirls take over completely. They'd never done it like that, never done more than just share heated kisses on the battlefield. Please, Danny. It was all she could say. Please, Danny.
A moment of hesitation, a bright light, and a sudden draft. Her shiver, her little squeak of surprise from the cold. All green, now. Hypnotizing. Her breath came out as mist, she instinctively pulled him in.
She whispered, Yes. That was what did it. He made a noise like a growl, wrenched her hips up, no more hesitation, inside, inside and pumping.
His hair was coarse.
Fuck, he said, and that was it for her. She was gone again, but he was still moving into her quivering body. She couldn't breathe, it was too much, too much mist in the air and the sweat was cold, too cold, beautifully cold.
She stammered, stuttered. It was like he was a different man. Gone was gentle human, here was impassioned ghost. And how much lovelier he looked atop her, so much more handsome than with black and blue.
It had never been like this before, for them. Sam could still read his body like a book – she'd never seen him enjoy it this much, never seen him when he wasn't fighting to stay in control. The control was gone. He looked down at her with only glimmers of love and concern in his eyes, like the obsession within him had overwritten everything else.
Danny, she said. Please. Come inside me, please.
A rumble, a groan, a forced shake of the head. She was winning him over, she could tell.
I want to know what it's like, please! An extra hard thrust, a punctuated rejection. She gasped, her head dropped back, she could not keep it up anymore but this was her only chance.
She grabbed him by the back of the head, wrenched him down to look at her. I'm begging you, she whispered.
Sam didn't know what did it that time. Maybe it was the plea. Maybe it was the rough handling (he loved when she grabbed his hair when he was inside of her, it made him quake). Maybe it was the fact that he had complete dominion over her and that he'd finally let go of the restraint.
He clenched his fists on the sheets, S-Sam, one last jab, and she'd won. Danny bit his lip, like he always did, Sam sighed like she always did, and then he was on top of her, black hair and blue eyes and skin suddenly hot as the burning sun.
It was the next day that she introduced him to the three other hybrids, but she was only half-listening as they swapped stories and filled in the large gaps in each other's knowledge.
A baby, she thought. I'm going to have a baby.