A/N: Phew! Sorry about the wait; my brain decided to take a ~30,000 word detour into another fandom (nothing posted yet, just a lot of WIPs). Hopefully this big chapter makes up for it though!
It's such a relief to be around the familiar again. Cars and houses and restaurants and streets, all of it almost exactly as he expects Amity Park to look. Sure, he might have ended up in the year he was born, but with how far he's traveled a couple decades is barely worth noticing.
With familiar territory, it's so much easier to set up shop. There's plenty of food that's plenty easy to steal, decent enough medical supplies, and good clothes are an invisible flight through a department store away. Most importantly of all, there's camping gear. Big, practical, brightly colored camping gear. And it's fall now, just cool enough to warrant cozy layers but not cold enough to regret sleeping out in the woods like the homeless freak he is.
He can almost pretend like he's on vacation!
There's cause for all this, of course. He remembers this year, these two months living on the outskirts of his home town. Normally he prefers to hop from hotel to hotel, overshadowing clerks long enough to mark a room taken and paid for so he can sleep as long as he likes. Clean sheets, hot water, all the garbage continental breakfast he can eat- an errant time traveler's paradise. And here he is, stuck with sleeping bags and canned food instead. Ugh.
Past him better be grateful he's doing all this for him, if he has anything to say about it.
In the failing afternoon light, he appraises his little camp built for two and nods, satisfied. It's not the prettiest or most high tech setup he could have gone with, but then, pretty and high tech isn't what he's aiming to teach, is it?
He grins. Him? Teaching? This'll be good for a laugh- on this side of things, at least. He doesn't remember laughing much, the first time around.
Him? Teaching? Ha!
Crouching, he stokes the campfire with a branch stripped of its yellowed leaves. He hasn't started up the stew yet since it'll just boil over once he has to rush pell-mell into the forest. He'll have time, later. As he feeds dry twigs to the fire he thinks of FentonWorks, and of the young couple that's only a few years older than he is now. He hasn't even been been born yet, in this timeline. He's still not used to it; unable to step foot in the house he grew up in.
Not for the first time he misses his mom's cooking, his dad's boisterous laughter, his sister's coddling. He misses coming home- after beating up the ghost of the day, more often than not- to the smell of burgers or pasta or the dreaded Leftover Nights. Good, hearty meals he didn't have to make himself from stolen ingredients, shared with a family that he could still call his.
He laughs, tossing the branch aside. Now isn't the time to get all wistful. He'll have his hands busy with blood and tears soon enough, but after- yes, after he's handled his past, he can look to the future again. He'll fix this, no matter what his future self had to say about it. For now, he's waiting-
"Nngh!"
Sudden pain cuts through him like a knife, taking his breath with it. He staggers back from the campfire, gasping, clutching at his aching chest. For one terrible instant he thinks he's wrong after all, that he's doomed to die here, that no younger self will appear after all. But- no. No. He has to be right. He knows.
He stands tall, his sternum clicking its protest, and he waits. His past self will show up far from him, that's fact. There was no way for him to recognize where his past would appear, so he'd just picked a clearing near the stream and called it home. What's one fallen tree in a forest, right? He evens his breathing, waits for the smallest flash of blue light to leak through the undergrowth-
There!
He's off at once, running so quickly he doesn't quite touch the ground. It's long, awful seconds before he hears the first scream, bitten ragged with pain. He forgoes the pretense of running at all, blurs away from one second to another, and then there he is.
One look and he regrets not grabbing his first aid kit. Distracted, anxious, not thinking clearly. Idiot. He knows- remembers- that it isn't as bad as it looks, but it's still a worrying amount of blood.
Past Him is fetal in a burnt-black clearing, the smell of vaporized dead leaves and rainwater and pine smoke heavy in the air. Past Him is younger, years younger, and he's wearing brand new clothes and there's a bulky bag beside him that must weigh as much as he does- not saying much, since god, but he's skinny. His face is a twisted mess of snot and tears and pain, which makes sense, considering he's got a tree branch stuck right through his forearm. Phased, rather than pierced, and all the more brutal for it.
"Hey," Danny calls out over his past self's screams. And again, "Hey!"
Past Him hiccups shock, twitching away from the tree and only succeeding in wrecking his arm a little bit more. He goes white as a sheet, mouth yawning for a scream that gets tangled up in his throat. Danny winces in sympathy, holding up his empty hands to get the kid's attention.
"It's okay," he says, trying to speak calmly though his own heart is racing. "It'll be okay. I'm here to help you. I just want to help."
It takes Past Him a few tries to make a coherent sentence. "W-who- hhgk- are you?"
"I'm you," Danny replies patiently, and rolls up his sleeve to display his own forearm. It's been years now, but he still has two faint circles there, noticeable even at this distance. Ghost healing speeds everything up, but scars still take a long time to fade.
Past him is too distracted by pain to really react to that, which is fair. He just huddles a little closer to the log and looks like he'd love nothing more than to never move again. Danny sighs.
"Okay. We can call this lesson number one. When you time travel, you always, always, always need to phase. It'll be a pain in the ass until you get used to doing it, but the alternative is getting stuck in a log. Enjoying this so far?"
"Nnn- hhfh- no..."
"Yeah, I figured as much." He kneels beside his past. It is, briefly, very weird. He remembers this moment from when he'd been fourteen years old and shredding his nails against dry bark, jaw clenched so tight his teeth should crack. He remembers the scraping and tugging of the branch in his arm, muscles rigid, his hand spasming. He remembers looking up at a young, leanly-muscled man with wild eyes and a menacing grin. He remembers being so certain that this was how he was going to die.
Flash forward and now he's the menacing stranger looming over a defenseless, injured kid in the middle of a forest.
Hmm. Awkward.
"Okay," he says, "I'm not gonna yank you free. I'd do more damage, and you've already pulled some muscle out like a champ- no no, don't look. Trust me on this. Just- hold still, okay? I'll try not to make this any worse than it has to be."
Well that wasn't menacing or anything. So sue him, he's nervous. It's weird, meeting himself like this.
"I'm gonna cut the branch instead of phasing you off it for now, because we're about a mile from camp and I'd like to minimize your blood loss as much as possible. I'll fly us back so it'll be easier on you. That all sound good?"
"Hhh- hhgn- yeah-"
"Awesome, I love it when I'm on the same page as myself."
Past Him's eyes are starting to get a little glassy, which means it's time to shut up and move. It's quick work to rip his unrolled shirtsleeve off- he really should have grabbed the first aid kit, way to drop the ball there, Fenton- and tear it into strips to staunch the bleeding and tie the branch in place. A quick slash of ecto-energy cuts the branch free. Past Him writhes, clawing at the still-smoking ground and his leg both, a shriek scraped through his bared teeth.
"Sorry, sorry!" Danny says hastily. Probably should have warned him, oops. "Sorry. I'm gonna pick you up now, so hang on."
"My buh- bag," Past Him gasps.
"Got it." Another flare of energy to summon the bag, and he swings it over his shoulder, absently adjusting the strap to fit his broader frame. He remembers this bag; remembers a Sam who knew what to expect, and knew what he'd benefit most from. Sturdy quality, nondescript color, lots of pockets. Past him is gonna lose it before his sixteenth birthday, if he's lucky. "You just came from seeing our Sam and Tucker, right?"
"Muh- hhgh- hh- month ago."
Danny scoops him up bridal style, wincing when this earns him another strangled cry. Past him curls like a pill bug, glaring daggers. "I warned you, sorry!"
He flies for camp, talking as he goes. He remembers that too, now that he's here again. How he'd latched onto the rambling voice of his weird future self as a distraction from the fucking hole in his arm. The memory makes him ramble more. "Once you're stitched up I can give you something for the pain. It's just over the counter stuff, but it'll take the edge off for now. If you need something stronger I can steal some tomorrow, okay? I'll need to go into town for more supplies anyway, so don't stress it. All you need to think about right now is not passing out, okay? You're gonna be fine. This isn't so bad. I know it hurts right now, but you'll be okay soon. Just breathe, nice and steady, yeah, like that. I've got you. You'll be okay. You'll be just fine."
Back at camp, Danny lays him on the spare blanket he'd laid out just for this. "Keep pressure on that," he orders. "I'll be right back."
He doesn't hear the weak reply, already rifling through the tent for his trusty kit. It's been through hell with him- if you want to call bouncing around the infinitude of forced trans-temporal hopscotch "hell," which hey, some days. It's dented and stained and the red cross on its lid is just about scratched gone. It still closes though, which is good enough for him. Kit in hand, he drops his past self's bag near the edge of the blanket and kneels down beside the boy.
"Hold still," he says, and hands him a piece of old leather. "Put that in your mouth. I don't need you biting our tongue off, okay?"
Field surgery done by an amateur is, as expected, kind of a disaster. It's easier than it would be if either of them were anyone else; it's useful, sometimes, to be a couple of freaks. Past Him is too much of a ghost to bleed out from something as minor as this, and Danny's too inured by years of stitching himself back together to allow his hands any hesitation.
"It's kind of nice to be the living proof I don't fuck this up and kill you," Danny remarks lightly as he prods and massages the twisted muscles back into place.
Past Him gives him a look of deepest loathing.
Eventually, the wound is sewn and cleaned and bandaged, and it's over. Past Him sprawls out on the least bloody corner of the blanket and just lays there and breathes. He's gray-faced and shaking, skin cold to the touch. Danny gives him a bottle of water and a bag of trail mix and, as an afterthought, pulls another blanket out of the tent to toss over him.
"Sip slow, eat slower," he says. "I'll get dinner started once I've cleaned up."
Canned soup takes basically zero effort to heat over a campfire, so he keeps one eye on Past Him and makes lists as he stirs. What will need to be stolen, priority versus indulgence. Medical supplies, obviously. More bandages. Ice too, for the swelling and for storage. It's kind of weird, having perishables around. Fresh fruit, definitely. Red meat, for the iron and protein- or would that fall under an indulgence? No no, Past Him needs it. Well, in a few days. For now he should probably stick to chicken broth. He's had a hard time of it; too much rich food will just make him sick. Yeah, alright. That'll do, for now.
He ladles out two steaming bowls and plops down on the blanket. Past Him twitches like it's a habit. Danny doesn't blame him. He remembers the first year like a bad dream, memories springing unbidden that still make his heart race over nothing. Trauma, Jazz would say if she were here. No shit, Danny would retort. He doesn't have the looping scars on his arms and legs anymore, but they're still a raw pink on Past Him. He remembers, even if his skin doesn't.
A flicker of green energy levitates the bowls, leaving his hands free to gather up a pile of soft things to prop Past Him up. "Hope you're hungry, because I'm not letting you sleep 'til the bowl's empty."
Past Him stares. "How- how are you doing that?"
His voice is weak. That should pass soon. It has to. Not like either of them can risk a trip to a hospital. "Doing what?"
"I can't make stuff float."
"Oh. Practice," Danny nods at one bowl, setting it down beside Past Him and plucking his own out of the air. "We'll get to that."
"Um. We will?"
"Course we will. What do you think I'm doing here? Well, apart from saving my own life by proxy, I guess."
Past Him hesitates, his spooning halfway to his mouth. "You're... really me then?"
"Yup."
"Then-"
"Shut up and eat, okay? We'll talk once you've had some sleep."
Past Him is too worn out to put up much of a fight, which is just fine with him. There's time now, to put things off until tomorrow. There's time a-plenty for them, for now.
In the morning Danny wakes to the patter of a light rain against the tent, and Past Him is gone.
"...Idiot."
He floats out of his sleeping bag and gets dressed, shivering when the cold air nips his chest. On his way out of the tent he grabs a second hoodie with a grumble. It's barely raining, really more of a fine mist if he's gonna be technical, but it's pretty chilly out and Past Him's still weak. If the idiot popped so much as a single stitch wandering around the forest on his own, he's gonna backhand him into next week! He wasn't this dumb when he was fourteen, was he?
...Okay, maybe he was. Still!
He finds Past Him by the nearby stream, sitting cross-legged with his hurt arm resting in his lap, lost in thought. Danny huffs.
"Y'have a nice walk?" He asks, walking up. Past Him comes back to himself with a slow shake of his head, but doesn't reply. With another huff Danny sits next to him, turning his gaze to the stream. The water's so clear he can see the pale river stones at the bottom, and little shadows of fish darting around. It burbles and splashes, louder than the drizzle on the gold and red leaves still clinging to the trees. It's peaceful here. Soothing.
They sit a while.
"How you doing?" He asks eventually.
"...'M'cold."
"That'd be the blood loss, dude." Danny tosses the hoodie at him, earning an indistinct noise of protest. Past Him pulls it on anyway, careful of his arm. When his head pops out he's glaring. The hoodie's a size or two too big for him; he ends up looking like a little kid pouting over not getting any cookies before dinner.
"You're awfully cheery about all this, you know that?"
"Well sure, why not? We've got food, clean water, shelter, we can communicate with the current populace no problem, and I know when our next jumps are gonna be. Oh! And toilet paper. I picked up a bunch of that yesterday and you are welcome."
Past Him sneers. "Well you might be satisfied with toilet paper, but I'm not looking forward to having this conversation again in ten years."
Danny laughs. "Wow, thanks! I'm twenty for your information, so it's only gonna be six years until you can make fun of your moping teenage self crying over how hard his life is, uh boo hoo hoo."
"I'm not crying-" He stills, the irritation bleeding from him. "...Six years?"
And the snit he'd been working up to vanishes in a puff of morosity. "...Six years," he says again, and rubs his thumb along the bandages on his arm.
Danny gets it. He does. Six years is forever when you're fourteen. Six years is impossible to imagine, even when it's snarking at you and making sure you haven't popped your stitches. Past Him wants so hard to pretend this will all work itself out, that he'll get to go home before this can really get out of hand. It's written on his thin face plain as day. But here's his future self, aged twenty and some change, as harsh a truth as a slap in the face.
Danny gets it. Six years still seems like forever to him now. But at least Danny's already lived the years between fourteen and twenty. He knows that it gets better than it's been for Past Him, that it gets easier. He'll survive, and he'll learn and see more than he ever thought possible, even if he has no control of the whats or whens. He hasn't stopped wanting to go home, and he hasn't stopped trying to get there either. But he understands that rock bottom could be so much worse than this. And if he's turned out okay, then Past Him will too.
He has to. Right?
"Hey."
Past Him says nothing, lost in the middle distance again. Danny rolls his eyes. Forget trauma, this is just drama now. He reaches out and shoves Past Him into the stream. The squawking and yowling that comes after is loud enough to chase a flock of birds out of the treeline, and Danny throws his head back and laughs and laughs.
"What was that for?!" Past Him splutters furiously, hip-deep and soaking wet.
"For brooding!" Danny shouts, flat on his back and kicking his feet.
"For- what?"
Danny drops his legs, swinging himself upright to give Past Him a Very Serious Expression he can only just hang onto. "We future-Dannys have a strict no brooding policy." This is a staggering lie. "Breaking this rule will earn you a swift and merciless dunking! If there's no nearby body of water around, we'll settle for a good punch to the nads."
Past Him gapes for several seconds, and then finally- god, was he this slow at fourteen too? He must have been but jeez, this is tragic- he remembers his arm. With a yelp that's half-panic and half-pain he throws his arm over his head, horrified. "My stitches!"
Danny floats to his feet and turns back towards camp, chest aching and mouth sore from grinning. Man, he'd needed a good laugh. "Phase 'em dry! You'll be alright."
Still chuckling, he leaves his past in the water.
Breakfast is scrambled eggs with bits of ham and bacon. Danny grimaces his way through a cup of instant coffee, the gritty taste waking him up better than the actual caffeine. He leans back in his squat fold-out chair, plastic plate balanced on one knee and plastic cup perched on the other, gives Past Him an appraising glance. He phased himself dry but is still wrapped up in a fleece blanket against the chill, pulled up to his ears. His bandages ought to be changed too, as a precaution.
"So does this time travel garbage get any less random?" Past Him asks.
Danny snorts, setting his empty plate aside. "Pfft, I wish."
"Then how come you're here too?"
"Because this is what happened for me when I was your age, and now it's happening again." He shrugs. "I try not to think about it too hard when this kind of thing happens."
"So, what, I'm destined to time travel for at least six years just to save my own butt?" Past Him stabs at his plate, looking furious. "How's that fair?"
"It isn't destiny, alright? Don't make it sound like we've been prophesied into a magical loop of time hobo bullshit. It's Clockwork, alright? This is all Clockwork's fault."
Past Him doesn't say anything, picking at his eggs. But there's a tension in his shoulders that wasn't there before, even when he'd been racked with pain. Hmm. Danny thinks back again, tries to remember this conversation. It's indistinct now, dreamy shapes instead of true memory. He remembers the meals shared rather than the words that passed between them. Mostly, he remembers being scared and overwhelmed and homesick. Trying to understand what had happened to him and unable to wrap his mind around the possibility of being preordained into having this conversation twice.
Damn.
"Hey."
Past Him eyes him warily, like he's somebody dangerous, somebody to be threatened by. Which, considering things, is a fair assessment. Still, ouch.
"I know this is a lot to take in. It's been- what, four months for you?"
A nod.
"Right, and it's been shit. I remember. And Sam and Tucker, they told you what's gonna happen, but hearing something bad is a whole lot different than seeing it." He gestures at himself, smiling and hoping he looks apologetic. "You don't want to believe, and that's fine. But the fact is, I'm your best case scenario."
"What does that mean?"
"You've seen an alternate Danny or two by now, right?"
Past Him winces. "Just one, in person. The other one was, um. His parents said he was dead."
Yeah, that's more common than he'd like to think about. Comes with the territory though, idiot kid hero trying to save the city one punch at a time. Dannys get hurt or they get dead, or if they're very very very lucky, they get to grow up. "No, no. I mean alternate time-traveling Dannys. Ones like you and me."
He looks at Danny uncertainly. "I… don't think I have?"
"You'd know if you did. They're usually dead."
Ah hell, that was too blunt. Now Past Him looks all panicky again. "I mean- what I mean is, this isn't-" He clears his throat, tries to channel Jazz's Lecture Mode. "Time travel is dangerous. Your arm's proof of that. One slip up in a jump can be fatal. Statistically, it is way more likely that we'll die instead of finding a way to fix this. A foot to the right and instead of a branch in your arm it would've been the whole log through your gut. You've made it this far okay and I've made it farther, but there's six years between us and I can promise you you're going to find some dead Dannys along the way. I'm sorry, but that's facts."
Past Him says nothing for a moment, stirring his eggs again. "...What happened to your face?"
"Huh? Oh." Danny touches his cheek, tracing the edge of a scar even his supernatural healing hasn't touched. "Ended up back in the bad future again, only a few seconds after I'd left. The Observants hit the big reset button while I was there."
"Observants?"
"A bunch of one-eyed time cops who can't grasp the concept of trans-temporal travel to save their skins." He scoffs. "Clockwork works for them."
"Really? He didn't strike me as the kind of guy who, y'know, works well with others."
Danny laughs. "Far as I can tell, you're right on the money. There's definitely some mutual hatred between them, but I couldn't tell you why. It's not often I've run into the Observants, and when I do I have to explain everything all over again and hope they don't try and kill me."
"Why?"
He leans forward to stoke the campfire with a long stick, prodding at the ashy logs until the embers burn brightly again. "Why what?"
Past Him shifts, taking another bite of his eggs. "Lots of whys, I guess. I dunno. Why would they try and kill you? Wouldn't helping us out make their jobs easier? Being, uh, time cops and everything?"
He sighs, leaning back in his chair again. As he answers, he waves and jabs the stick for emphasis. "They put on this big show of passivity- observe, but never to act, kind of their whole thing really- but they're just as trigger happy as any ghost if you startle them right. And like it or not we startle everybody, because of this." He pats his chest. "No matter what I've told them, they always think I'm trashing their tidy little timelines on purpose. They don't do much about me, obviously- it's kind of in their name- but they're annoying. They bristle up and make a big fuss in every timeline I come to as if I'm gonna go out of my way to wreck their tragically linear grasp of past-present-future, but since we've got this-" He pats his chest again, "-they just kind of grumble and posture 'til I leave."
"You…." Past Him frowns, rubs his face, and makes a visible attempt at sorting his thoughts together. This really is a conversation that should wait until the kid's got a full five liters of blood to oxygenate, but Danny knows it won't. Stubbornness is something he's always been guilty of. "They don't know who you are, over and over?"
Danny allows the clumsy question to be left alone, though he dearly wants to poke fun. Blood loss. Trauma. Et cetera. "They don't, that's the thing. They're incredibly limited in their- you know what? Here, we need some visuals, I think."
He floats off his chair to a stretch of dirt closer to Past Him. A soft sweep of power brushes an uneven square clear of leaves and loose stones, and using the stick he'd stoke the fire with Danny draws as he talks.
First, a lone vertical line. "This is one timeline; one whole stupidly long stretch of reality as our little minds understand it from start to finish. Big B and E, Beginning and End, here and here." Two little horizontal ticks to mark each. "And the Observants have existed in one form or another since like, right after the Beginning." He doodles a circle around a dot in a rough doodle of an eye. Dirt's a hard medium, so sue him. "They can see the whole of this timeline laid out like a movie reel. They see everything that will happen, is happening, or has happened within that scope, and they can see when calling in the big guns might be necessary."
"Big guns- meaning Clockwork?" Past Him asks.
"Yeah." He draws another vertical line beside the first. "The thing is- as I'm sure you've figured out by now- is that there is waaaaaay more than just one timeline out there for us to bounce around in. And the Observants from this timeline-" He taps the first line, "-can't even tell this timeline exists at all. If you try telling them Timeline A is different than Timeline B because everybody in the U.S. speaks German or whatever, they'll call you a lunatic." He fills the rest of the open dirt with vertical lines, more for visual effect than is strictly necessary. "Same in Timelines C through Z, onto infinity. You follow?"
"Yeah, I follow. Kind of the only thing that makes sense with all the, um. Places I've been." Past Him rubs his wrist absently, tracing the shallow scars rather than the edge of his bandage.
"...I wasn't a fan of her either," Danny says quietly, and nods at the scars when Past Him looks embarrassed. "At least there was water then. You're gonna hate Duulaman, if you stick around long enough to end up then too."
"Who is-"
"Maybe later," Danny cuts in, making an attempt to smile but feeling it strain across his teeth. Past Him huffs, but at least he isn't twitchy like earlier. Talking all this out is a distraction, if nothing else.
"Okay. So Clockwork works for these Observant guys, right? Having us- me?- getting jerked all over the place is definitely gonna mess up something eventually. Have you tried telling them about how Clockwork's left us out to dry?"
Danny barks laughter, tossing the stick aside. "Are you kidding me? That asshole may as well be my imaginary friend at this point. It doesn't matter what I tell them; they either don't believe me or nothing tangible comes from it. They don't interfere."
"...I see."
"I can't remember, have you tried going to his lair yet?"
"Yeah. Four times, before I gave up and went Earth-side again."
"Ah, okay." Another soft sweep of power brushes away the doodled timelines. He stands, stretching out his back with a groan as something pops. "Yeah, I've tracked his lair down a hundred times if I've done it once. No luck. Mostly I just get lost in the Ghost Zone for a while, until I pop into a time period where someone made a stable portal in Amity Park. Usually it's some variation on Mom and Dad, but there've been a few surprises."
"So he is avoiding me. Us. Whatever." Past Him shuts his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose with his good hand. "This is… way more complicated than I'm prepared to deal with right now."
"That's fair. Here, you're still looking pretty ragged 'round the edges. How about you try and get some more sleep? I promise you won't go anywhere for a while."
He nods. "I… yeah. Sleep- sleep sounds like a good idea."
It's evening by the time Past Him stirs again, and when he stumbles out of the tent he's a little more put together, a little more coherent. As Danny sets him down by the fire to change his bandages again, he looks around with the first spark of interest he's shown since he showed up. "Where'd you get all this stuff anyway? Did Sam go on another shopping spree?"
"Nah, I don't think Sam's even been born yet. Quit squirming."
"Then quit poking it. What year is it?"
"Mom and Dad just put up the Fenton Works sign on the house."
"So it's only-" He frowns. "Did you get them to buy all this?"
"They're not our parents. Not yet anyway." He tugs on the bandage to make sure the clip isn't loose, then pats Past Him on the knee. "And besides, these are pre-Portal days for them anyway. They'd think I was crazy."
At a loss, Past Him looks out at the campsite again. It's downright spartan, compared to the camping trips Mom and Dad used to take them on. Necessity has made Danny stingy and cautious, used to having nothing but the necessities at the best of times. But for this jump he splurged on lanterns and sleeping bags, a roomy camping tent and pre-cut firewood. Stuff that your normal American family wouldn't think twice on bringing out to the woods, but it's all stuff Danny's gotten used to not having. It is, personally speaking, a shit ton of stuff.
"How did you pay for all this?"
"I didn't."
"Then-" His eyes widen, understanding at last. "You stole all this?"
"We gotta survive somehow, y'know?"
"I- well-" He fumbles. "Yeah, I guess. But stealing?"
Danny smiles, not unkindly. "Lemme get dinner started before you get all high and mighty on me, okay?"
Past Him glowers. "I'm not hungry."
"Bullshit, you're not. You're really gonna turn down chicken soup because I stole it? It's like a dollar a can right now anyway, it's peanuts."
"Then you could've paid a dollar for it."
Danny purses his lips, resting his hands on his hips as he levels a distinctly unimpressed glare at Past Him. "Before you look at me like I said I kick puppies for fun- yeah, that look, knock it off- just think about it for a minute. What's the longest you've been anywhere so far?"
He may as well have flipped a switch to make Past Him look so miserable so quickly. "Two weeks."
"Right, and civilization was kaput then anyway, so it wasn't like you could buy a sandwich if you had the money to." He huffs. "I'm not saying it's all post-apocalyptic wastelands from here on out, okay? But the point is, it's really rare for me to be anywhen long enough to land some honestly-made cash to honestly-buy anything. All of this-" He gestures at their little camp site, a circle of garish colors and a smattering of tacky camo, "-is very, very out of the ordinary. I only stole all of this because I knew you'd be showing up too, and I know how long we'll both be here."
Past Him makes a face. What, did he really forget this was a temporary setup? "How long is that?"
"Two months, give a take a day or two for both of us. I've been here three days already, so I've had time to prepare. And yeah, that means I stole a whole bunch of junk I'm not gonna take with me when I leave." He shrugs, dropping his arms. "It sucks, okay? I know it sucks. But it's steal or starve, and frankly dude, I've had my fair share of starving. Haven't you?"
It's a rhetorical question. Past Him looks like a pile of kindling somebody draped a t-shirt and a pair of jeans over. "You did all this… for me?"
"Yup, but don't feel guilty about it. You weren't the one who robbed half the camping section of Wal-Mart, I did. This is all just to help me spin you up." He smiles. "Trust me, I woulda been perfectly happy sleeping in a nice hotel room for two months, but this little fall camping trip is where I learned how to survive, so now it's my turn to repay the favor."
Past Him shuts his eyes, leans back in his chair. The flickering light of the fire spills black shadows in the hollows of his eyes, across the sharp angles of his cheeks and jaw, down the taut lines of his skinny throat. Poor kid. He's had it rough. Danny remembers, with that quiet distance memory gives to all bad things. An echo, absent of pain, softened by time. Long days and longer nights all blurred together, the panic and fear and hunger rubbed away, leaving only the distinct feeling of a loneliness that dogs him still.
Six years really is forever.
"Chicken soup it is," Danny says.
A week passes quietly. For the most part Danny leaves Past Him be, answering questions when he's asked and providing commentary on little things around the camp without expecting much response. Fire maintenance, trash disposal, washing their clothes in the stream; those kinds of things. He leaves a few hours here and there, to steal more medical supplies and food, and to furtively spy on the house so recently named Fenton Works. Mom and Dad- no, Maddie and Jack, they aren't his parents, they don't even have a son yet anyway- are hard at work fortifying the roof to support what will eventually be the Ops Center. Jazz is too little to be left unsupervised long, so they take turns to play with her and feed her, a gingham blanket and lots of pillows and toys strewn on a safe stretch of rooftop. Mom's- Maddie's- hair is long and curly, and there's no gray touching D- Jack's- temples yet. They're really not much older than he is.
They're happy. He's glad, to see them happy.
A week since Past Him showed up, and he's just about healed up. One of the perks of being a freak; even a branch shunted through his arm really can't slow him down for long. The stitches come out and the heavy bandages are replaced with just two gauze pads, and even that's not all that necessary. The new skin is raw and tender, looks like ground beef instead of scar tissue, but it'll be fine. He'll be just fine.
"You okay?" Past Him asks that night, dinner eaten and plates cleaned. They've been sitting by the fire, bundled up against the autumn wind whipping through the trees. Branches sway and and creak, black outlines against a night sky spilling over with stars. It's a nice night, quiet. Past Him's even been cracking jokes.
"...I gotta show you something," he says, reluctantly. He should have done this days ago. He's put it off long enough.
"Uh-oh. You got all serious. What is it?"
He unzips his hoodie, kneads the hem of his t-shirt in his fingers and swallows. "Something you really won't like."
"You've already been nothing but bad news," Past Him grins. "C'mon, spit it out."
"I wouldn't call this 'bad news,' per se, more of an 'oh my god' kind of news," he replies, and lifts up his shirt.
"Whyyyy are you stripping- oh my god, what."
The firelight makes it look worse than it really is. Idiot, he should have thought of that. He should have waited until morning, when the light would be better, when the shadows would be honest. But he might have lost his nerve by then, and he's put it off long enough, he has. This is a cruelty Past Him has to know.
Danny doesn't look down, only watches horror etch hard lines into Past Him's skinny face, at the disgust twisting his mouth, the bulge of his eyes, how he recoils in his chair. He doesn't look down because he doesn't have to. He knows the shape of the hole in his chest like the back of his own hands, has traced its growth a thousand times with careful fingers. He knows the mottled purple bruising, the sloughed flesh that looks more like candle wax than skin, the white expanse of exposed bone, the slippery pink muscles, the glistening edge of subcutaneous fat. The hole in his chest doesn't bleed, but the steady pulse of his beating heart can be touched, if he hooks his finger right.
Past Him's hands have jumped to his own chest, reflexively trying to cover a wound he doesn't have yet.
The fire shifts with a startling loud pop and crackle, sending up a flurry of orange sparks to wink out in the darkness above. The wind sighs, and goosebumps break out across Danny's bare skin. The cold bites at his chest, a bone-deep ache like chewing on ice cubes, and he waits for Past Him to speak.
"What-" He swallows, shakes his head, tries again. "What the hell?"
"The time medallion," Danny replies simply. It's explanation enough, really.
"Howww are you… not dead?" Past Him makes a pained expression, rubbing his chest nervously. "Are you dead? Have you actually been dead this whole time and my ghost sense just didn't work, because-"
"I'm not dead. You'll know when you've found a dead Danny, trust me."
"Shit," Past Him breathes. "Sam and Tucker told me the medallion was gonna mess with me, but I didn't think- I didn't think it'd be so- so graphic."
"It's really not as bad as it looks." He adjusts his grip on his shirt a little, fetching a pocket knife from his hip and flicking it open. The little blade shines blackly, a wavering streak of orange dancing down its edge. "And it doesn't make me as vulnerable as you'd think it would." And he demonstrates this by burying the knife in his chest.
Past Him shouts, jumping to his feet, but Danny's already pulled the knife out. He tosses it underhanded to Past Him, who nearly drops it in surprise. He stares at it, then at Danny. The blade has rusted away to nothing.
"Only Dannys like us can really touch it," he says, tapping his sternum. The tick-tick of his fingernail is loud, like tapping a pencil on a school desk, the kind with a cubby hole for your textbooks. It doesn't echo, but the sound of a cluttered space inside is clear enough.
"...I'm going to throw up."
"It's not that bad." Danny tugs his shirt down, zipping up his hoodie again.
"It's pretty bad, actually!"
"Don't be such a baby. You've got a while before it'll start to show on you." Past Him's face loses its revulsion, gets that miserable dismay he wears whenever Danny talks about the future. "Once the bruising lingers, you're gonna have to get quick with the lies, and creative with how you hide it. Nobody who isn't in the know about what you are or what's happened to you can see it."
"...Who's in the know?" Well, that's begrudging as hell, but at least he's not putting up as much a fuss as Danny had been afraid he would.
Danny closes the distance between them to pat him gently on the shoulder. He smiles, hopes it's a comfort. "People you can trust. Who that ends up being is up to you."
Past Him shakes his head, pulling away. He looks at the knife handle clenched in his fist like it might bite him. "But- but how? You've got a- a- you've got that!" He points unnecessarily. "I think it's bigger than my fist! Does it- god, does it leak? Does it hurt? Like, all the time?"
"Of course it hurts," Danny retorts. "You already know that. It hurts like hell after every jump, and after a while it doesn't stop hurting."
"But you- you never said anything."
Danny shrugs. "What's the point of complaining?"
"What d'you mean, 'what's the point?'" Past Him flails a little, jabbing at his chest with the handle. "That's horrible! That's- how can you live with that?"
Danny huffs again. "Because it's either live with it, or don't live at all."
Past Him stops. Drops his hands to his sides. Looks at Danny like he's seeing him for the first time. And he staggers back, falls into his chair, and crumples up like a paper napkin. Shaky, breathless laughter jangles out of him, the knife handle falling from his limp hand to the dirt with a muted thud.
"I can't do this," he says. "I can't, I can't, I'm in over my head. This is crazy. I can't."
Jesus. He'd forgotten, he'd actually forgotten how much this messed him up the first time around. What can he say? Is there anything? What'd he tell himself the first time?
...Ah, it's been too long. He can't remember.
"You have to," he says quietly. "I'm your best case scenario."
Past Him says nothing, so Danny leaves him by the fire.
After that, Danny stops hiding his chest. He doesn't turn away when he changes in the tent or when they go down to the stream to bathe, breathless and swearing in the cold. Past Him goes white and quiet every time he sees the wound, and he presses his hand to his own chest when he thinks Danny's not looking. That's fine. He doesn't have to stop being scared of it. He just has to understand what it means.
As the weeks pass Danny finds himself in an almost constant state of déjà vu, opening his mouth to speak only to have dim memories fall from his tongue. He wastes a lot of time blinking and shaking his head, knowing he looks like a strong advocate for helmets in the eyes of his teenage self and not really able to do anything about it. It's not like he isn't aware of how unstable he looks; he remembers this much. He's already done all this. He remembers thinking, with laughable clarity, Oh good, I go totally banana sandwich because of this.
He doesn't bother excusing these brief yet annoyingly frequent bouts of confusion. They happen. They keep happening. It's almost convenient, actually, to have half-buried memories on-hand to help with the lessons he's pulling out of his ass. It helps him sound like he knows what he's doing, which is still very, very hilarious.
News flash to Danny Fenton, age twenty and some change: Teaching is a lot harder than it looks. If he ever gets a chance to apologize to Mr. Lancer, take it.
Past Him doesn't like hunting. Danny remembers that too, with that weird double-layer to his memory of this jump. Saying something and remembering someone else say it when it really was him saying it after all. He remembers being disgusted before, and horrified, and scared, and young.
Him now? He's so frustrated with this idiot kid he could scream.
"Do you really want a repeat of Plant Queen Sam's vegetarian nightmare apocalypse?" He asks impatiently, fed up with all the protests he's gotten over this. "You've been here almost a month now, getting three solid meals and all the Zs you could ask for thanks to me, but this isn't a permanent setup. We're both gonna leave, and you need to be able to fend for yourself!"
"I'm just saying," Past Him says, just as exasperated, "There's got to be a better way than this."
This is a rabbit caught in a trap and a hunting knife. This is also, apparently, an exercise in futility.
"There is, and I showed you, and you went and had a big hissy fit over how it wasn't 'fair' to the animals!"
"They don't stand a chance that way!" And he grimaces and folds his arms over his chest, haughty and self-conscious and not looking at the shivering rabbit at his feet. "It just- it doesn't feel- it's not right."
Danny does a little loop de loop in the air to burn off some tension. It's that or slap some sense his dumb idiot terrible teen self. They're both ghost right now, two black-suited shadows flitting through the forest, checking traps and finally finding something caught, and it is sorely tempting to slap Past Him through a tree or two. He'd survive it just fine, really. "You're thinking about this as murder."
"Yeah, 'cause that's what it is."
"No, it's survival. Practical application of your powers in order to sustain your own existence at the cost of an animal's. It's the food chain, dude."
Past Him makes another face. "You sound like one of Jazz's textbooks."
"Because I didn't think you'd kick up such a fuss over this and now I'm jumping through hoops trying to to find a way for this to make sense to you, you tremendous baby."
Past Him throws up his hands. "I don't want to murder a deer with my ghost powers- or a freaking machete, for that matter!"
Danny laughs. "Wow, no. For one, this is a hunting knife. Totally different types of knives. Two, who said anything about deer? What are you, greedy? What the hell would we do with a whole deer? I made rabbit traps for a reason."
"You know what I mean."
The rabbit thrashes against the rope around its feet, panting heavily. Danny glares. "Look, it's terrified right now. You'd be doing it a favor and getting a couple meals out of it. Kill the fucking rabbit!"
"I don't want to!"
"You know what? Fine." He phases his hand through the rabbit's chest, a slash of motion too quick for the thing to see. It spasms once more and goes limp. Dead so quick it couldn't have known what was happening. Quicker and more merciful than knives or guns or bows, and bloodless besides, and Past Him is a gutless coward who'd rather starve than kill an animal with his own hands.
"You win," Danny snaps, picking the rabbit up. "Have fun going hungry again."
"Wait, what?"
Danny stalks back toward the campsite, turning human mid-stride. Past Him flits after, nervously, like he's expecting to be punished. Well Danny's not gonna play Disappointed Dad with teenage him. He's too young to be a dad, and too damn peeved besides. "From here on out you don't catch dinner, you don't eat dinner."
"What? Hey, hang on!"
He ignores the whining and protesting all the way back to camp. Past Him doesn't shut up even when he skins and guts the rabbit with practiced hands, though he does hang back and go a little greener than usual. He keeps up the noise as Danny gets the rabbit on a spit and over the fire. He goes on and on, crying about how it's not fair to ask him to kill a defenseless rabbit when they're just a few miles away from Amity Park. As if proximity to easy-access food is something that can be relied on indefinitely, as if that isn't something Past Him is damn well acquainted with already. As if supermarkets and drive-thru fast food have existed since time immemorial and will keep on existing until the sun burns out.
Eventually, disgusted and irritated and fed up and tired, Danny chases Past Him out of earshot with a burning branch in one hand and a ball of ecto-energy in the other to get some peace and quiet.
"I'm trying to teach you a valuable lesson, you ungrateful ass!" He hollers after the disappeared flick of a ghostly tail.
Past Him lasts two days, lurking in the nearby woods. Any time Danny catches him in his peripheral he fires off a few blasts, aiming wide to warn the idiot off. On the third day Past Him drops a dead squirrel on his head, and Danny laughs and waves him down.
"I hate you," Past Him spits.
Danny nods. "Then we're getting somewhere."
There's just a few days left now.
Danny can't remember who left first, so to be on the safe side he's double- and triple-checking both of their bags. Necessities are priority-packed; medical supplies and emergency rations, spare socks and underwear, knives and iodine pills and parachute cord. All the frivolous trappings he'd splurged on for this jump will be left behind, one more ghost story the humans will tell and retell one another, missing case files that won't ever get solved. He sorts through t-shirts and shoestrings and canteens and tries not to think about the married couple that aren't his parents, only a little older than he is, unaware they'll have a son one day.
Past Him watches him work, floating idly about ten feet off the ground. These two months have been good to him; he's filled out, gotten some color in his face. He could walk down the street and no one would think anything of him, just one more kid killing time after school. He props his chin up with one hand and hums. "Does it get better?"
"Your cooking? Obviously."
"No, I meant this." He flaps his other hand vaguely. The two round scars on his forearm stand out like they've been drawn on with marker, but otherwise there's no telling that he'd ever been hurt. "All this stupid time traveling."
Well now. There's a choice to make here if there ever was one.
Brutal honesty, half-truth, outright lying. It's true that it stopped being hard once he got the necessary skills hammered out. It's amazing, really and honestly amazing, what he's seen and what he can still expect to see. It's been incredible and terrible and humbling, to see the many facets of himself, all the hims that could have been and all the hims that never got to be, because they died or were never born, and someone else got to live in his place. Seeing a hundred variations on his friends and family, and a hundred generations of people before and after them too. All the lives lived, all the lives never known.
Yeah, there are many times he could say he's even been happy.
This time, he doesn't need to rely on déjà vu to tell him what to say. He's been expecting this question- expecting, not remembering that it was asked. They're almost out of time. It was bound to come up.
He stops rooting around for his toothbrush, sitting back on his heels to look up at Past Him. "Listen," he says. "This sucks. It really, really sucks, and sometimes I get so homesick I could puke, and I spend so much time scared out of my mind that I'm gonna die in some hole a million years ago and no one I care about will ever know what happened to me. I'm scared I'll say something or do something wrong and mess up a timeline in some huge, awful way. Maybe I already have and I just don't know it yet, because I haven't been back to that timeline. Maybe I'll never get to know how badly I mess stuff up, or how many people I hurt by accident or by choice. Maybe that's a good thing. Or maybe not knowing is worse. I don't know. I just…."
He sighs.
"I don't know," he repeats. "I never imagined I'd grow up to be a time hobo, y'know?"
Past Him smiles down at him, a wry slice of teeth in a sun-browned face. "I don't think anybody ever aspires to be a time hobo."
"Ha, yeah. And I mean- like I've said before, the day-to-day stuff all gets easier. We jump, we acclimate, we get as comfortable as we can until we jump again. Rinse and repeat and hope maybe next time there'll be a ghost portal to go through. We learn how to really roll with all the weird shit that gets thrown at us, and I'm saying 'we' because I met a future time hobo Danny once who had this kind of- I dunno. Stone-cold, grizzled, badass action dad vibe thing going for him. It was very impressive. I was very impressed."
Another smile. "When does that happen?"
"I was seventeen. If you're lucky, you'll see him too."
"How old was- no. You won't tell me, will you?"
"Nope."
Past Him gives an exaggerated sigh, but lets it go.
Danny stands, stretching on tip-toe with his hands over his head to ease the tightness in his spine. One of his knees pops satisfyingly. Geeze. He's only twenty, and he already feels old. "We both get better at this," he says. "And maybe one of us will be lucky enough to find a way to fix this. Maybe I'm not your best case scenario after all, and maybe the future Danny I met wasn't mine."
He almost says what that would mean, for both of them, but the memories of lonely bones and cold metal steal the words from him. "I… ah, hell. It sucks. It really does. Sometimes it gets better, but then it gets worse again, and some stuff there's just no helping. I just had to keep going."
"Like your face?"
"Like my face."
Past Him drops to eye-level, an eyebrow pointedly raised. "And you're still not gonna tell me how exactly you got that? Even though really, I'd think you'd appreciate changing your past so your face doesn't get ripped open."
"It wouldn't be my past if you managed to avoid tall, dark, and homicidal. My past is for keepsies whether I like it or not." It's all tree branch and tributary metaphors for time travel; the past can't be fixed, only altered enough to create a new timeline stemming from the thing you tried to change. The past may as well be set in stone. That's just how it is.
"Yeah, yeah, you've said." Past Him lands, hands in his pockets. "It's still worth trying to change how it goes for me though, isn't it?"
Danny said the same thing, when he was fourteen. "...Good luck."
A/N: The next chapter isn't written (due to the nature of the story I've been writing out of order). I'll be doing Camp NaNo in April to get it and hopefully quite a bit more of my sad time travel ficventure knocked out, so there won't be an update until May. Sorry, and thank you for understanding. I'm still trying to get the hang of this whole longfic business; it's very weird!
Thank you so very much for the reviews! I am just delighted by the theorycrafting you guys are doing. :D As always, if you've got a question please use a PM or hit me up on my tumblr (anthropwashere) instead. I'll answer much faster!
MsFrizzle: 'Langoliered' isn't actually a word, haha. I tend to be pretty casual with my dialogue! But it is a reference to Stephen King's "The Langoliers" which is about monsters that literally eat the past. I didn't go into it because making characters explain real world references always feels a little lame to me, and because it wasn't relevant to the scene.