Vaugely AU.

You can find the 100 word version of this story here: s/7435347/100/Turning-Pages

Doorbell

April 1, 2013

The doorbell rang. It sounded loud and harsh, the cheerfully obnoxious notes to the ghost hunter's theme song reverberating oddly out of place now throughout the large rooms of Fenton Works. It destroyed the silence in the house and brought the two figures sitting in the living room out of their long reverie.

Jazz's brow crinkled absently. It took her a minute for her mind to switch gears and actually put full sentences together about something from the world outside her carefully constructed one. They weren't expecting anyone, hadn't invited anybody over, and she couldn't think of anyone who would be coming to their door- not now of all times. At least, not anyone that could do any good. Anyone callous enough to come knocking on their door now didn't know or didn't care about what had happened and in either case, they certainly wouldn't be worth acknowledging.

Best to just sit here and pretend not to be at home. That wouldn't be too difficult. And then whoever it was would go away and leave them in whatever peace they could try to find in a house that had become far too empty.

She went back to picking the lint off of her black shirt and falling into her own thoughts.

(Cream leather couch. Teal jumpsuit. White fuzz on a black shirt that didn't want to be brushed off.)

But Maddie's head jerked up at the noise. Wiping the tears from her eyes, she looked toward the door to see who could be there. A glimpse of unruly black hair through the cut glass of the window made her tense until she was sitting as straight as a ramrod.

Her heart began to race and her breath came in short gasps.

She knew who it was. She knew who it had to be. There was only one person it could be—only one person with hair like that. That could stick up at impossible angles no matter how often she nagged him to put a comb through it.

(He was back… he was back.)

She nearly fell over herself trying to get up off the couch and to the door.

When Jazz looked up again, she too saw the messy black bangs behind the door, her mother's frantic actions, and put the pieces together. She was up in a flash as well, but for a different purpose. She tried as hard as she could to keep her mother where she was, slipping to get between her and the door at any cost.

"Please, Mom!" she pleaded with a voice rough from disuse. "Go back to the couch, sit down, it's no one important. It's not anyone for you. It's not…!"

Maddie pushed beyond her daughter without giving her a second glance. No recognition of her face, no acknowledgement of her words. Just the certainty that she had to get past, had to get to the door, had to...

(No. It was him. It was him.)

One hand shot out and managed to lock the deadbolt- it might buy her an extra few seconds- before Jazz turned back with outstretched arms to guide her mother away from the front of their house and the figure behind the solid wooden barrier. "Please, Mom, no! It's not him. It's not him. It can't be him! You know that!"

(Please don't open the door. You'll just hurt yourself.)

(And me.)

Warm, solid hands wrapped around Maddie's shoulders, comforting, steadying, trying to guide her away, back to the sanctuary of the couch. Trying with everything she had and everything she didn't that her mother would listen, would go back to the uneasy rest she had been neglecting now for days. All of the uncertainty of the past week coalesced to become a single mission in her mind: keep Mom away from the door. But Maddie's hands scrabbled at the ones on her shoulders, trying to push her away in her panic to get to the person behind it.

Jazz choked on a sob. She couldn't do this.

It had been easy when all she had to do was focus determinedly at nothing all day. Colors, textures, blankness, anything that she didn't have to register. Anything that didn't have meaning. Anything that didn't have a connection to her brother, and really, it was a hard enough task as it was because everything in the house screamed of Danny somehow. His favorite chair, his picture in the frame on the mantel, curtains the color of his eyes, a stain in the carpet when he'd spilled spaghetti-o's Jazz had made for him when he was four and had cleaned up well enough that their parents hadn't ever noticed, the glaringly empty space under the chair where he used to kick off his shoes but had nothing there now and would never have anything again.

Now that her brain was active, she couldn't block out any of the memories she'd held at bay, pushed back by carefully maintained barriers that had been suddenly swept away with a single sound, leaving her drowning in herself, but needing to save another.

She saw what was behind the door. Just as clearly as her mother had. But she knew it couldn't be what they saw. Even though there wasn't anyone else in the world with hair that spiked like that, it couldn't be him. It wasn't possible.

(Anything was possible with Danny.)

He had been dead and alive at the same time. Despite her huffy over protectiveness, Jazz had taken for granted that he could make it through anything, would survive anything, that nothing could take him down. But even if it was possible for him to be half alive and half dead, it wasn't possible for anyone to be alive after they'd been…

(No. It can't be him. I know that. You know that.)

(So why would you make me hope when it can't possibly be true?)

Jazz looked between her mother and the door, her heartstrings being pulled in every direction. It was all happening too fast. Her brain couldn't keep up with the information. She knew what her mother thought and believed and she wanted to give into the illusion of hope as well. She desperately wanted to, but she knew that she couldn't. Because it couldn't be. It just couldn't be him.

They were seeing things, putting familiar features on people to whom they didn't belong. Or they were just plain hallucinating. But it wasn't... Couldn't be… It wasn't him behind the door.

"No!" Maddie screamed as she struggled against Jazz's determined grip and managed to unlock the door before being pulled away again. "It is! It's him, he's here!"

(He was safe. He had come home to her.)

And she wasn't going to let anything come between her and her boy. With a rush of almost inhuman strength, Maddie pushed past her daughter, prying away the vice-like grip of fingers on her arms, and flung the door open wide.

To find a young teenage girl in ripped jeans standing on their front steps. Her black hair was pulled into an unruly ponytail and she was crying, tears spilling out of her blue eyes. Eyes exactly like Danny's…

And that's how they found out about Danielle. And no, I have no idea what the back story is here. It doesn't really matter. Just the fact that Danny's dead.

Also, did this work? Every draft had a completely different style and it kept morphing until I don't even know what I'm looking at anymore. *_*