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Powerless

Chapter 10: In which people open their mouths and speak different languages

Of all the things Danny thought he'd never dread, seeing his own town was one of them. Amity Park had always been his safe haven—his first piece of territory he'd claimed back from ghosts. And now, he felt an energy he very much disliked from it. He landed tentatively at the city limits of Amity Park, where the green grass and trees of the suburbs began to thin out into urban concrete sidewalks.

It all seemed so innocent, with some of the nearby civilians waving at him. He waved back dutifully but took back into the sky. He felt a peculiar sense of disquiet about their worship suddenly, and he desired nothing more than to hide himself in the hills. To forget about facing Sam.

Her words—"I wish Danny and Desiree were back in their bodies so they can defeat the dragon and not get anyone hurt—" still rang in his ears.

Sam had retracted her own wish. Her voice had been garbled in a way that suggested she'd been crying.

Danny's face twisted, the glow around his body dampening with nausea. He in no way wanted to face her.

But at some point, he would have to.

The wind caressed his stressed face as he flew through the air. "What do I even say to her," he whined under his breath. He swallowed hard.

Sam was a woman he'd wronged as much as she'd wronged him. There was so simple apology—no clear battle lines in this kind of fight. He did not want to kneel at her feet for forgiveness for objectifying her because that was what she'd done to him too.

Danny groaned. "Everything's always so complicated," he whined to the sky, even as he spotted the roof of her house. There, he saw her small form sitting next to Tucker's. Her face turned up to the sky toward him. From such a distance, he could not tell the expression on her face, but he did see the way she suddenly stood up, as if in fright. Tucker quickly followed, raising a hand to block the sun as they watched him.

Now or never, Danny thought. And so he swooped down to land upon her roof, landing gracefully with a soft click of his boots. The air cooled around them all as he stood there.

His lips pressed into a thin line, his lithe form tense. "We need to talk," he said to Sam, noting her bloodshot eyes. His voice was tight. "In private."

Tucker was the first to speak after that. He looked down at his watch and gasped, "Oh, wow, look at the time. Is it time for me to leave? Yeah, I think it's time. Bye, guys. I've gotta go…do stuff." And he patted Sam's shoulder, then walked toward the door back inside the house.

The instant the door shut behind him, Sam inhaled sharply. She crossed her arms over her chest, looking vulnerable. "Look," she said. "I know what you came here to say."

"I don't even know what to say to you." His voice was rough. "Thank you for undoing your curse on me after you got your kicks and giggles in? Sorry that we're both assholes?"

The woman blinked, and then she blinked faster to fight off tears. "Maybe you're right," she said, voice sharp with pain and anger. "But you know I didn't mean for any of this to happen."

Danny's face twisted hard. "Oh, but you ran with it, didn't you."

"You made me feel like shit," she hissed to him, even as she began to cry. She knew she was destroying her eye makeup even more, and so now she would look ugly as it ran everywhere. Good. She felt ugly. "I'm just human, Danny. I can only take so much before I snap, and—" She ran a hand through her hair in stress, feeling a few strands fall out with her fingers. "Dammit, that second wish did something to my head."

"You wanted it to do something to your head," he accused, his eyes narrowing. "That's why you wished for it in the first place! So don't blame anything on it. This was you. This was all you."

Her lip curled in fury. "And you? Chasing after other girls? Pushing me around? Acting so weird after saving the world—"

"—You wanted me to be this," he argued back in pain, taking a step closer. He picked at the glove on his hand. "The savior of the world. Your trophy boyfriend who fits all your 'gothic darkness.' Remember?"

Tears slipped down her face, even in her anger. "I liked you better," she whispered, "when you were a nerdy outcast like me."

He swallowed back emotions but failed some, as tears brightened his eyes. "You didn't want Danny Fenton," he said. "Nobody wanted him because he's a weak kid who can't do anything."

"That's not true," Sam said. "Dammit, that's not—"

"— Would you have even loved me?" he demanded. "If I hadn't been Phantom?"

Her voice raised with pain and fury. "I like dark things, so sue me. But if I hadn't liked you before all that, I would've left a long time ago."

No apologies slipped from the lips of either of them. They stood in silence for some time, only the distant sound of cars driving by to fill in the spaces. Their shreds of pride kept them both from breaking down to confess to any fault.

"Then…maybe we should," his voice halted, "stop pretending like we can fix this."

"Yeah," Sam agreed. She blinked rapidly and rubbed her eye, trying to hide a new wave of tears. This was it. This was it. "Maybe we should."

They'd hurt each other too much to fix whatever they'd become.

He stepped backwards then, stretching the chasm between them. His lithe form turned away to hide the burning in his eyes. "Well, good. I'm glad we agree on something. For once."

The woman pressed her lips tightly together. "Hard to believe," she muttered.

The words cut him in an odd way, given that he knew every line of her body, and that she knew his.

His face twisted again, and this time, without another word, he spiraled up into the sky to fly far, far away—before Sam could see the tears in his eyes.

In that moment, even their years-long friendship unraveled. As he flew from her roof, he did so as an unwelcome guest.

Sam stood her ground on the roof, feeling her breaths shorten and her tears fall faster. Some small part of her had hoped that Danny would arrive with a full apology, which would then inspire her to apologize for making everything worse, and maybe they could pick up the pieces of at least their friendship. Her heart still carried a soft spot for him, and it bled hard to watch him fly away.

But now, who knew what they were.

Later that day, one Daniel Fenton trudged through the front door of his house.

"Hold it," his mother commanded, voice hard. She was standing in the living room, holding up some kind of scanner. "My son has had his body stolen."

"Mom," he said tiredly. "It's me. I got it back."

She waited tensely until the scanner confirmed that his signature was in fact Danny's. She lowered the scanner with great relief. And then she stared up into his bloodshot eyes and teary face, and her heart broke for him. "Oh, my boy," she cried, tossing the scanner aside and opening up her arms. "My baby boy."

He swallowed hard, then embraced her tightly, hiding his face in the crook of her neck like a child would. He felt his mother's nimble fingers brush through his hair.

"What's wrong, dear?" she said to him softly. "I saw that battle in New York. Are you hurt?"

The words—his mother's unconditional concern—yanked another wave of emotion through him. "No," he said, but his voice was watery.

"Then what is it?"

"I don't know who I am," he confessed, his breaths quick and unsteady. "I—I don't—"

She pulled away and cupped his chin, narrowing her eyes in concern. "Maybe this is an effect of a body transfer?" she murmured to herself. She pressed the back of her free hand against his forehead. "Perhaps some part of you is still recalibrating back to your body."

Danny closed his eyes, leaning into her touch. "It's not like that," he said miserably. "It's everything else. With Sam. With…everybody. I don't know who I'm supposed to be."

The mother paused, her mind reeling at bit with such a sudden, complicated confession. "I see...Earlier on the phone, you said Sam wished this body-transfer on you?"

He nodded.

"Why on earth would she do that?"

"I don't know," he said. "Or I do. She thinks I'm a jerk. And…maybe I am." His eyes watered. "But so is she, and everything's all wrong, and I can't fix it."

Maddie's face tightened with a deep pain as she stroked her son's haggard cheek. It was rare for Danny to reach out for help of any kind. His sudden desire for her opinion meant something was very, very wrong. "What's going on between you and Sam?"

He pulled away to eye his mother straight. "Am I a bad person?" he demanded. "Just…in general?"

The mother blinked in surprise. "You saved the world. You just saved New York City. Surely Sam doesn't think that's bad?"

Danny pressed his lips together in frustration. "I mean, minus the saving the world part."

Maddie huffed almost in amusement. "Bad people just don't save the world, dear. You can't take that part of you away."

His mother's immediate support to his side made him feel uneasy. "Even if I flirt with other girls? And…used Sam and made her feel…bad? But I thought she was just using me too? And then I found out she really did love me, and now she doesn't?"

At that, her face began to fall in sadness. Danny, as an uncertain person, tended to lean on other people's approval of him. Sometimes, it made him do strange things—something that the ghost Desiree had also seemed to understand about Danny, given the photography scandal and her biting words in Danny's body. "It's not bad to want other people to like you," she said softly.

Her son caught the hesitance in her voice. "But…?"

"When it comes to a relationship, dear, you need to be honest about what you want out of it." She softened. "No one can read your mind." Then she flipped her hair and lightened the mood. "At least, my initial experiments into telepathy yielded nothing, but then I used your father as my test experiment, so maybe that was my problem."

A small spark of humor reached his eyes, but it quickly flickered back out. "You and dad are so different," he said, voice strained. "But you still make it work. With me and Sam, it's like every little thing sets us off into an argument. And then all the other girls—" He swallowed hard. "Sam's right. No one really loves me." His voice softened with pain, hitching on the word love.

His mother cupped his chin. "You," she said softly, "are a precious soul. You are the light of my life, along with your sister. You always have been. And you always will be, no matter who or what you are, or what you do."

Her words squeezed tears from his eyes. "How can you say that?" he whispered. "I've done bad things too." Deep down, his fear was that Daniel Fenton was in fact still a weak, gullible, and conniving person.

"No one's perfect, dear." She pulled him into another tight hug. "We all make a mess of things sometimes."

Danny leaned on her, allowing himself to breathe in her comforting scent. He remained silent for a while.

"I feel something on your hand," he said suddenly, pulling back. He blinked away tears in his watery eyes, gently grabbing onto his mother's hand. A few of her fingers were wrapped in a splint. "What happened?"

"Nothing, sweetheart," she said. "Just…cornered a ghost, is all."

"Did Desiree do this to you?" he asked, looking pained. "In my body?"

"I don't think it was intentional," Maddie said hesitantly.

Danny pulled away as if he'd been burned. His own body, whether he'd been in it or not, had hurt his mother. His face twisted uneasily as he stared up at her, his eyes watering all over again. Despite having his body back, he still felt entirely out of control. "I'm sorry," he said suddenly. "I'm sorry—I don't know how you even look at me like—"

"—It wasn't you," his mother cut in firmly.

"But it was," he said. "Kind of." He began to back away, feeling nauseated.

Maddie reached out and grabbed his hand, patting it gently. "It wasn't," she said again.

He swallowed hard, still staring down at her hand.

"You've been through an awful lot, dear. Why don't you go rest?" she offered. "Take the rest of today and tomorrow off from fighting. Stay away from reporters. If any ghosts pop up, your father and I can take care of them. I'll give you one of our communication devices so you can call the lab if you need us."

"…Yeah," he said softly. "That might help."

She searched his eyes. "I want you to be happy, sweetheart. You have a family who loves you no matter what. You just have to figure out what will make you happy."

He then looked away, flushing a bit as he caught sight of a nearby newspaper with his scandalous picture on the front page. "I don't know," he whispered. He grabbed it quickly, crushing it into a ball in his hands, and then then materialized out of the room without another word.

The mother sighed, her lips wrinkling a bit in worry.

The next day, Danny flew to a nearby lake where he and his father had fished several times in the past. It was a peaceful lake, with thick, surrounding foliage. It hid him from the prying eyes of the urban reporters, who were desperate to interview the "new Danny Phantom."

The new Danny Phantom who had no girlfriend. The new Danny Phantom who wanted the spotlight and to cater to his adoring fans. The new Danny Phantom.

"Maybe it's just the old Danny Phantom all over again," he muttered to himself as he skipped rocks into the water. The smooth rocks skipped a few times and then slipped peacefully into the water, sinking into the depths. "Maybe that's all I'll ever be, just a doormat for other people to push around."

Neither the water nor the trees answered him. Instead, his voice lifted up into the sky as he sat glumly.

"Is love even real?" he dared to ask out loud. "Or is it just some big racket to make you miserable?"

Danny fell into a deep silence for a time, listening to the distant birds and the sounds of the waters

Without thinking, he muttered, "Stupid love and relationships—they're such a joke. I wish…"

And then he caught himself.

But not before his ghost sense went off.

"What is it that you wish for now, little warrior?" a smooth, female voice called tiredly.

He flinched suddenly as he turned his head.

The beautiful wishing ghost Desiree sat upon a rock nearby, looking for all the world like a mythical lake sprite. To the average man, she was the pinnacle of beauty. But Dann's face simply twisted in nausea at the sight of her.

He waved his hand out to the lake. "Can't you see I'm in the middle of a heated existential crisis? By myself?"

Her full lips raised up. "Ah, but you called for me."

His green eyes narrowed. "Not intentionally. Now go away. You hurt my mom and messed up my life, and now you're messing with my time off from fighting ghosts."

Desiree huffed, the coins on her harem clothes jingling lightly with her movements. "Your mother surprised me. And it was not me but your scorned lover who made the wish to ruin you."

"Well, I learned my lesson, okay?" he muttered, drawing his knees up and wrapping his arms around them. He looked petulant and afraid. "I'm not gonna objectify people again. So you can go away now and be buddy-buddy with Sam."

The power dynamics between them were now terribly odd. Danny Phantom was by far one of the most powerful ghosts in existence. He could easily crush Desiree's core and snuff her out as if she were nothing but a fly. But here she continued to defy him without fear.

She flung her long, dark locks over her bare shoulder. "I do not care to be, as you say, buddy-buddy with your lover."

He snapped irritated eyes to her. "She's not my lover. And I don't care what you do, I just want you to leave. Go make someone else miserable."

The beautiful ghost tapped her fingertips on the rock, and her perfect nails made a small clicking sound. "You brought misery upon yourself," she said, her red eyes almost merry with darkness. "You now have everything you wanted. Freedom, the love and affection of the entire world, popularity." She leaned forward. "One of your adoring fans is currently wishing that you'd arrive on her doorstep and make rough love with her."

He panicked. "Don't you dare grant that wish. Don't you dare."

Her face split into a dark grin. "Why not? You are the one mad with lust, in desire of worship from the masses."

"You know that's not what I want," he said tightly. "Or, uh. Not…anymore." His face twisted. He had very much wanted to be worshipped by everyone, at one point. The thought of having someone use him, just to say I had sex with Danny Phantom—it made him nauseated further.

Desiree seemed to enjoy his torment. "And what do you want then, little warrior? You began your wish, but if you do not complete it soon, my power will be forced to grant the wish of your…adoring fan. Right now, you have my full attention."

His mind raced, desperate to keep himself out of the grabby hands of a fan. "Uh…Uh. I want to know why you're a wishing ghost in the first place, making people miserable. You know, like truth or dare. Except this is truth, so you only have to talk instead of doing something that'll make me more miserable."

Desiree's body seemed to glow a bit stronger, her core soaking in the wish. She rolled her eyes. It was a weak wish. "Of all the things," she complained. "I will not gain much power from such."

Danny hesitated. "That's kind of the idea."

She angled a dark, sculpted brow. "I am a wishing ghost because I want to be, and your question is the greatest waste of a wish I have ever heard." She leaned forward and tempted, "Instead, I could alter the mind of your wayward lover and make her completely obedient to your will."

His eyes narrowed. "Oh, come on. That's just hypocritical coming from you."

Desire then smiled, and it made her face seem more beautiful. "What is this? You do not desire a submissive lover, or you simply fear what your wish would become?"

Danny was beginning to realize that he was being tested. "Both," he snapped. "I might hate Sam right now, but I don't want to take this out on her. And you'd twist her into something from a horror movie." He paused. "Not that she doesn't act that way already sometimes."

The woman dared to laugh, the sound as beautiful as bells. "Oh, your scorn for her is just precious." She relaxed in her mental battle against him, seemingly accepting that he had truly changed as a result of Sam's wish. "To be so young, so emotional."

"Stop acting like you're above all this," he hissed. "It's all your fault anyway."

She hummed. "I have had several centuries to watch people in love. You all make the same mistakes over again."

"Oh, and what do you know about love, huh?" he demanded tightly. "You're just a genie who ruins people for the hell of it." His face twisted. "And you're sleeping with Vlad. Which is a definite yikes."

"A woman's affairs are no one's business but her own."

"What do you even see in him?" Danny demanded. "Is it just because he's rich? Because he lives in a freakin' castle like some sultan from your past?"

This time, Desiree's face darkened, and her beautiful hair began to lift around her shoulders with increasing irritation. It made her seem almost snake-like. "Do not presume to judge what you do not understand, little warrior."

"Enlighten me," the boy demanded.

The woman hissed, "He lost everything. At near death where your father left him, he wished for a second chance to be a better man. He respects me and offered me all his possessions in return for sparing his life. He is not some snot-nosed, self-entitled brat."

The insult made Danny flush. "But he was," Danny muttered. "And so is Sam with all of her stupid revenge schemes and holier-than-thou crap."

Desiree rolled her eyes. "You are both brats," she declared. "You are both silly little children incapable of seeing yourselves."

And then suddenly, the wishing ghost materialized away, the power of his wish to understand her giving out in favor of wishes from others.

It left Danny sitting by himself once more by the peaceful lake. But now he was agitated and flushing red in embarrassment. He grabbed onto another nearby rock and tossed it hard. It crashed onto the beach on the full other side of the lake, splintering dirt and plant leaves up in the air.

Meanwhile, a fan girl stood at her door, wishing for one Danny Phantom to appear and whisk her off her feet. She held a newspaper detailing Phantom's breakup with Samantha Manson, which meant any eligible girl in Amity Park was fair game to be his next girlfriend. "Please," she whispered. "Oh, please oh please oh please."

And then the doorbell rang.

The girl gasped in delight, and she opened the door—only for her smiling face to fault into a somewhat horrified visage.

A portly delivery man stood at her doorstop, carrying a life-size Danny Phantom cardboard cut-out, complete with voice activated buttons.

The man grunted, "Yeah, I got a delivery for a free Danny Phantom cardboard cut-out? For a Miss Smith?"

"…Oh, but I didn't want a cut-out," the girl whined in pain. With great sorrows, she took the life-size outline of her crush, only for it to unbalance her, and she fell backwards. It unceremoniously fell on top of her.

As she fell, the fan girl did not see the tendrils of green power that slipped from the cardboard, nor did she hear the amused laugh of one Desiree in the distance.

A/N: Hey, everyone! I'm back, so sorry for the long wait. I kept receiving anonymous reviews begging me to update this, so I made it through my latest chemistry test and worked to get the next chapter written. Life's been very crazy between various medical appointments and then trying to apply to a master's program. Apologies for the long wait, but thank you for the continued interest in this twisted story!

Please review with your thoughts, questions, constructive criticisms, or ideas. Thank you!