AN: I have always wanted to write my own origin oneshot, and my friend caldera32 gave me the perfect opportunity to do so. Merry Christmas, caldera, and same to you, fellow DP fans! :D

Genesis

Danny stared at the giant hole in their basement wall. The last time he saw it, it had been a huge mess of wires, plugs, and sockets, and he'd been under the impression his parents had somehow found and gutted a robot the size of Godzilla and transported all those innards, in addition to the original abdominal cavity, to their basement.

Jazz had thought it had all looked more like mechanical pumpkin guts, but to each their own.

That had been a few weeks ago. Since then, panels of shining, smooth metal had been fitted over the mess of wires, leaving behind something that looked less like robot intestines and more like something taken straight out of a CGI-rich sci-fi movie.

Or maybe I'm the one inside the sci-fi movie, Danny mused, pulling at the collar of his white and black full-body jumpsuit. Wearing the damn thing was his parents only stipulation for entering the lab, so he supposed it was a necessary evil if he wanted to see what it was that had his parents working day and night downstairs. As disinterested as he pretended to be, he couldn't help but be at least a little curious about what they were doing.

The hole itself was impressive, he had to admit. The boisterous explanation about what the hole was supposed to do? A bit less so. Despite growing up with parents as ghost hunters and paranormal scientists, whose idea of a bedtime story was a graphic description of their close encounters with supernatural events and beings, Danny didn't really believe there was such a thing as a "Ghost Zone."

And his parents were attempting to create a portal to the "Ghost Zone?" God, if his classmates had known what his parents were doing, he wouldn't hear the end of it. The entire town already thought they were nut-jobs. There was no need to give them more ammunition.

In the long run, it was a pretty good thing his parents were more interested in ghosts than they were their reputation. The portal didn't even work, and if they had announced their plans to the world, only to fail as…spectacularly as they did, Danny could only imagine it wouldn't be pretty.

It was hardly pretty now, which is why Danny left the observance deck to check out his parents' giant hole. If the other option was getting involved in the argument brewing up there, he'd take the peace and quiet of staring at a hole any day.

He knew it was only a matter of time before the noise began to follow him down here, and sure enough, Mom and Dad, who had been arguing loudly over their mountain of blueprints, over what could have possibly gone wrong, began to yell over each other.

"Jack, no, it couldn't possibly—"

"But think about it! The ectofilters were calibrated precisely. We triple checked those calculations!"

"In theory they were perfect, but—"

"It never would have worked anyway!" That would be Jazz, getting involved in something that didn't concern her and raising her blood pressure for no reason other than the fact she had to be right. About everything.

"Of course it works, Jazz!" their mother exclaimed. "Something must have gone wrong during the implementation of our calculations is all."

"And look at all those blueprints! Let's say the Ghost Zone does exist, just for the sake of argument. It will take ages to figure out went wrong! Ages! You need to rest! Get some coffee, sunlight, sleep…When was the last time you even took a shower?"

"Jasmine—!"

Danny rolled his eyes. At this point, he almost wished the portal worked, if only to spare himself from this torture. The thought made him pause, and he turned his gaze back to the hole. What would it have been like if the portal worked? His parents believed there was a whole universe out there, and they thought they could form a bridge between the two. If he allowed himself to believe in the impossible, if just for a second… A thrill raced up his spine. It would have been amazing to see. Truly.

But would this hole in the wall be enough to contain a breach between two worlds? Danny surveyed it skeptically. It was pretty deep, so deep he couldn't see the back of it, but—

Hang on.

Minding his feet, Danny climbed into the portal and carefully edged along until his fingers brushed over a raised panel on the side of the hole. He lifted his fingers and squinted at the panel, where he discovered two buttons sitting side-by-side.

Oh my God.

"Mom!" Danny called. They were not going to believe this. "Mother!"

"—check quadrant one-section C, Jack. No, not that one—this one. That is the most—"

"Moth-er-er!"

"—o, no, that's impossible. With the—"

"Dad!"

"—perhaps you're just n—"

"DAD!"

Danny's voice obviously didn't carry far enough to reach them from down here. Or they were too caught up in their conversation to hear anyone but themselves. He sighed, turning back to the very obvious ON button. Seriously. Only his parents would miss something like this. No, perhaps he should rephrase: only his parents would do something as stupid as this. Who the hell put an ON button on the inside of a portal when they'd be controlling it from the outside?

Whatever. They could thank him later.

He pushed it.

~…~

It started as an annoying whirring. For a moment, Maddie thought Danny had gone and touched something he shouldn't have. He had been suspiciously quiet the past few minutes, and goodness knew with that boy—

"Mads!" Jack yelled. "It's working!"

Maddie's reprimand died in her throat. She shoved herself away from the desk, scattering blueprints every which way, and rocketed off her wheeled chair to join Jack and Jazz at the edge of the observance deck. As she watched, a spark leapt within the portal's depths, skipping back and forth between the smooth metal walls, and the whirring grew in volume, the spark beginning to emit more light…

For a beautiful, glorious moment, Maddie realized that her life's dream was about to be realized. For a beautiful, glorious moment, her chest felt about ready to burst with pride and joy because it was happening. It was finally working. They finally managed to form a bridge between their world and the Ghost Zone. The possibilities for research, for exploration, for discovery—they were endless. Overwhelmed tears welled up in her eyes, and she turned to Jack to share the moment with him.

Their fleeting victory was shattered by a bang, an explosion of green light, and a single scream.

Danny's scream.

Maddie, frozen in horror, stared at her husband, uncomprehending. Realization dawned on Jack's face far more quickly. "DANNY!" he yelled, throwing himself at the control panel. Sirens began to wail.

"Danny…where's Danny?!" Jazz shrieked. "He's not—?"

Instinct and adrenaline kicked in, and Maddie grabbed her daughter's shoulders, trying to block out the sound of Danny's… "Jazz, honey, get upstairs! Don't come down until we tell you to!"

"Like hell I will!" Jazz retorted, wrenching herself free of her mother's grip. "Danny! DANNY!"

Distraught, Maddie let Jazz vault herself toward the bannister and rushed to help Jack at the controls. Her shaky hands made it nearly impossible to be of any use. Her panic only made her fumble more, and her head was light with lack of oxygen. The green light from the portal discolored everything around her, ugly and vindictive and greedy, and Maddie's thoughts looped like a song stuck on repeat: this is my fault. This is my fault. This is my—

There was an abrupt silence. Danny's screams had disappeared, and the concussive whirring noise had faded to a content hum.

"It's stabilizing, Maddie!" Jack's strong hands grabbed hers and gently, calmly, led her away. The blinding light from the portal was now muted and somehow…fuller. It looked as though it had substance as it swirled lazily within the portal's depths. "It's stabilizing!"

"D-Danny," she gasped. "Danny was in the portal. He—"

"There—" Jack swallowed harshly and pulled her close. "There's nothing more we can do. H-He's…"

He's gone. He's dead. I killed my child. I killed him.

Tucking her head into his chest, Maddie shuddered, her limbs losing the ability to hold herself upright.

"M-mom?" Jazz's voice, tentative and afraid, was thick with tears, and Maddie was almost afraid to face her, to see the accusation and horror in her eyes. Their daughter had been right to protest the construction of this portal from the beginning. Surely she saw them as monsters, now that her brother…"Mom! Dad!"

The sudden urgency in Jazz's tone caused Jack and Maddie to break apart, and they watched dumbly as their daughter bolted down the stairs to the lab floor, where someone was leaning against the mouth of the portal.

Maddie didn't even think. She was down those stairs in an instant, and she rushed up to Danny—it was her boy; obviously it was her boy—and fell a few feet short when she saw a head of white hair, glowing aura, green-hued skin, and flickering green eyes.

A ghost. She'd never seen one so corporeal before, so humanoid. She could only imagine the secrets it held. Maddie's scientific persona took over, and she marveled at the creature before her as it rubbed its gloved hands through its hair, chest heaving as though it were actually winded. How fascinating. It had to be a young ghost, who obviously had no idea it no longer had any physiological needs. She had to wonder about its psychological and anatomical makeup, how its reflexes were still working to such an effective degree. Just how long before the remnants of its neurons stopped firing?

Her thoughts screeched to a halt when she noticed Jazz rushing to the ghost, offering her support as it staggered away from the portal, eerie green eyes locked on her.

"J-Jazz," Maddie said, voice trembling. "Jazz, back away."

Jazz looked at Maddie, completely confused, and gasped when the ghost slipped into intangibility, falling through her hands. Maddie jolted forward to grab Jazz, but then it spoke, halting her in her tracks. "M-Mom?"

Its—his—voice echoed as though it were trapped at the other end of a tunnel, but it was Danny. All the signs she missed before stood out in terrifying clarity: the soft curve of his cheekbones, the scar at the corner of his lip, the way his bangs flopped into his eyes, the freckles dotting the bridge of his nose, the shape of his chin and eyes and nose—that…that was his grandmother's nose…

Disgust and horror welled within her, and she finally grabbed hold of Jazz, who was staring blankly at her hands. "No," she said, pulling her daughter away. Tears slipped down Maddie's cheeks, and she felt about ready to vomit. "No."

But denying it wouldn't make it any less true. It wouldn't reverse the damage done. They had not only killed their child: they had doomed him to an eternity of obsession and pain.

The ghost—Danny's ghost—noticed Jack standing beside her and mouthed, "Dad?" Jack gripped Maddie's shoulders as Danny's ghost took a few unsteady steps toward them, only to collapse in a heap on the floor.

"What—what happened to him?" Jazz whispered. When neither of her parents responded, "Mom! Dad! We have to help him! Call 911! Something!"

Maddie wiped her cheeks. Staring at the ghost, whose chest rose and fell evenly, self-hatred and rage flared before dying completely, leaving nothing, absolutely nothing in its wake. "No," she heard herself saying.

"No?! Mom—!"

Detachedly, Maddie grabbed a prototype weapon from a bench nearby. "That's not your brother anymore, Jasmine."

Jazz's eyes flickered between the gun and the ghost. "No. No. Mom, you can't be serious. He's not…"

"Jasmine! He's gone! Danny…Danny's ghost won't remember you before long. He won't remember any of us! We—"

"No! No, I don't believe it. I won't let you do this!"

"Maddie," Jack said, his voice hoarse. "He's our son."

"But he isn't!" she screamed. Fresh tears blurred her eyes. "Not anymore! He's dangerous! We need to put him down before…"

"Perhaps we can contain him," Jack suggested optimistically. "Try…try—"

"Jack, you know as well as I do that ghosts can't be reasoned with once their obsession takes hold!"

"Mads…"

"This isn't what he would have wanted! I can't—I couldn't live with myself…It dishonors the memory of the boy we knew! This isn't right! It isn't right! We've already ki—"

A flash of light emitting from the (unconscious?) ghost on the floor caught them all off guard, and Maddie cocked and raised the weapon in preparation for an attack. Rather than the green she had learned to associate with a ghost's power, however, the light was a brilliant white. When it died away, the gun fell through numb fingers.

Black hair, white jumpsuit, no aura…

Oh my God. What…what have I done? What did I almost do?

Maddie raced to her son, yanking off her gloves and probing at his neck. Sobs wracked her entire body, and her distress only increased as she struggled to find his pulse. Jack was at her side in an instant, and his fingers replaced hers.

"There's a pulse!" he announced. "He's alright! He's…"

"Alive," Maddie breathed, pulling her son toward her. She brushed her fingers through his hair and placed her palm across his forehead. He was chilled, but he was alive.

"Jazz! Grab the first aid kit!" Jack ordered. Jazz, still shell-shocked and confused by what had just occurred, obeyed without question. Jack turned back to Danny. "How—how is this possible? How did—?"

Maddie shivered as her hand slipped straight through Danny's forehead. She recoiled and turned to Jack, whose wide-eyed expression told her exactly what she needed to know. He had seen it too.

Everything was about to change. Their whole world was about to be turned upside down, but at the moment, Maddie waited for the spurt of intangibility to pass before she continued stroking her son's hair.

He was alive, and that was all that mattered.

~…~

Danny jerked awake, gasping for air and groaning as a rip-roaring headache burst between his eyes. Someone sitting next to him—Mom?—held his hand in hers, and she squeezed. Danny squinted and turned his head toward her.

His mom smiled and slowly, carefully, reached toward his head. Her fingers combed through his hair. "Hey, sweetie," she whispered. Oddly, her eyes didn't meet his. She stared at a spot just above his eye-line.

"Hey," Danny croaked.

"How're you feeling?"

"Um…" He felt a little strange, but he couldn't quite put it to words. Everything ached with cold. "I'm not sure? Wait, Mom, what—?"

"Do…do you remember what happened?"

Danny leaned back into the pillows, and staring back at the ceiling, he strained to remember. "There was a lot of green light, wasn't there?"

His mom nodded, and he noticed her gaze remained fixed where it had been before. "You were in an accident, Danny. In the lab."

And with that, memories assaulted him. He remembered seeing the raised panel with its ON and OFF buttons on the inside of the portal. He remembered climbing in, trying to call his parents' attention to the discovery, and then…

"There was an ON button. In the portal. I…"

"You pushed it."

"Yeah, yeah, I did."

"Daniel Fenton. That was extraordinarily stupid."

"I tried to get your attention! I just didn't think—"

"Obviously!" his mother scoffed. "You ended up turning the portal on from the inside!" Ah. That would explain the significant pain he was trying to block from his memories. "You're lucky you're alive!" And that would explain her fury. "We thought you had—!"

Annoyed, Danny scowled and interrupted, "Mom, please. I have a headache. Can you yell at me later?" Her frown suggested she wasn't all too pleased with his attitude, and she was about to yell some more, he assumed, when he decided he couldn't take it anymore. "But if it can't wait, could you at least look at me when you're yelling? It's freaking me out a look like the headboard of my bed did something to offend you."

His mom's expression went from furious to sheepish in the span of a heartbeat. Her eyes skipped around face. "Oh. Oh, um, I'm sorry, sweetie. That must be disorienting. It's just—you're invisible at the moment."

Danny stared at his mother. "Invisible."

"Yes."

He wasn't sure what was going on here, but he decided to play along. "And…why is that?"

"Well, something happened when you were trapped in the portal."

"Something…happened?"

"Yes. We're still trying to understand what happened to you."

What the hell…? "Understand what?" Danny demanded. "I got a little shock. That's it, isn't it?"

"It was more than a little shock."

"Fine. It was a big shock."

"That nearly killed you," his mother said sternly. "But we'll discuss that later. We—we have a lot to discuss about what happened, Danny."

Danny caught the serious tone and eyed her cautiously. "Mom?" he asked hesitantly.

His mom took a deep breath. "This is…Danny, please try to keep an open mind. When the portal activated and you were inside, the energy we generated to create the gateway, in addition to the corresponding energy from the Ghost Zone, passed through your system. It…made some changes."

"Um…what sort of changes?"

"You've been displaying some…ghostly symptoms. You have turned intangible a few times, and now you're invisible."

This was so not happening. His basement was already a scene from a sci-fi movie. This—this was too much.

"Mom, you've got to be joking."

"I'm not. Just take a look at—Oh."

Danny had pushed the layers of blankets off his torso to look down at himself while she was talking. He was in his pajamas. Nothing unusual. Nothing invisible. Quirking a brow, he met his mother's eyes.

"Welcome back to the realm of visibility," she joked.

Danny rolled his eyes. "Mom, alright. Seriously. I don't know if this is some sort of punishment for scaring you—and I'm sorry; I really am—but this isn't funny. If it'll make you happy, I won't go down in the lab again. I won't go near the portal again. I'll do whatever. So please—"

He cut off, a sudden, gripping chill taking hold of him. It was weird, but exhilarating—roller coaster G-force-level exhilarating. He was aware that his mother was calling his name, asking if he was alright and if she could do anything to help, but she went silent when a burst of light, originating from his waist, leapt across his entire body.

And all Danny could do was watch in astonishment as his PJs morphed into black spandex and he started to glow. The G-force sensation ebbed away, and he almost mourned its absence…until he realized he was floating.

"Mom? Whoa. What? My voice…No, that's not important." Danny shook his head. "I'm floating."

His mother looked like she was about to burst into hysterical laughter or tears. He couldn't decide which. Perhaps it was both. "You are. It's incredible, isn't it?"

"Yeah," Danny said dazedly. He wobbled a bit midair. "I—I suppose it is. But, um, how do I get down?"

"That's what we'll have to work on. Controlling these…powers. And transforming back. Until we can figure out how to…fix this, if we can."

There were a few things very wrong with those few short sentences. One: Danny did not, in anyway, feel comfortable with the word "fix." Far more concerning, however, was number two: "What do you mean 'transforming back?'" he asked aloud.

His mom stood and took his forearm. "I'll show you."

Gently, she tugged him through the air toward his mirror, where he suddenly re-familiarized himself with gravity upon seeing his reflection. Danny stumbled his landing and leaned forward to catch himself on the dresser, but his hand went through the wood. He probably would have broken his nose if his mom hadn't steadied him, but he barely noticed her touch, captivated by what he saw in the mirror. His skin was pale green skin, and his hair, snow white. Shaggy and unkempt from lying in bed, it hardly did much to hide slightly tapered ears, and his eyes...

"You can change, back and forth, between ghost and human," his mother explained.

The question left his lips before he could stop it. "So I did die?"

He felt a flood of remorse when he saw his mom's expression falter in the mirror. For all her jokes and anger, she really was only putting on a show. He'd scared her. He'd scared her really bad.

"Not quite," a new voice said from the doorway. Danny half-turned toward Jazz, who leaned against the jam. "Your heartbeat is about sixty bpm in human form and ten bpm in ghost form, but it still beats. Soooo not dead. Nice going."

"Hey, Jazz." Gesturing toward his reflection, he attempted a smile. He'd freak out later. He'd most certainly freak out later. For now, he could only attempt to process what was happening and take it in stride. "Crazy stuff, huh?"

The expression in Jazz's eyes gave her away. He'd scared her too. "Dad's in the lab right now, trying to understand how it works," she said. "You should see him. He's really having the time of his life. But yeah, this is pretty crazy stuff."

Danny nodded, watching the phantom in the mirror mimic his movements. Silence reigned for a few precious moments, and he took a deep breath. "I can't believe this," he finally said. "What…what are we going to do?"

Jazz came to flank his other side, and she shrugged. "We're Fentons. It's weird, and we're weird, but we're going to figure it out."

Their mom smiled and squeezed Danny's shoulder. "Together."

Danny tore his gaze from the reflection and looked down at his hands. If he concentrated, he could feel power racing through his body, subtly chilling and electrifying. Weird was the word for it, but somehow, Danny couldn't help but feel…complete, like a vital piece of himself had finally been returned to him.

Warmth pooled in his gut, and light flared. When he looked back up, he felt heavy and warm, but it wasn't a stranger who greeted him in the mirror. He exhaled an overwrought laugh and asked, "So when do we start?"