Author's Note:

This won't be a massive longfic, but there will be a few chapters. I'm on a massive Lancer kick right now.

William Lancer didn't just think there was something wrong with today — he knew it.

Gaps plagued his memory. Great big black holes of nothingness between the time he had breakfast and the time he'd arrived at school, all the way over lunchtime, and somewhere between two and three in the afternoon. By the time he'd regained his wits his students were staring at him as if he'd been possessed, and at this point he no longer was sure he wasn't. The Fentons had warned of what it was like to be overshadowed. The gaps in your memory, the distinct feeling that there was some other presence you couldn't detect… and sure as hell, he could feel it creeping at the back of his neck.

Exactly what he'd taught during that memory blank of two to three o'clock he had no idea, but his students seemed unusually absorbed in everything he had to say thereafter.

Maybe I'm going mad, he thought, and shuddered to realise that idea was entirely preferable to that of being partially possessed. If he was losing his mind, then at least the only person who was a danger to him was himself. Possession posed a different threat in its entirety.

Still, he moved through the rest of the school day, hoping against hope that it just wouldn't happen again. That he would be free, and this day would just go down as an oddity he thought back to occasionally, wondered about, and then forgot.

When his awareness skipped forward from five PM to dinnertime, however, it was far too much to cope with.

Lancer sat in his armchair. "What should I do?" he asked his otherwise empty apartment. His voice bounced lightly off the walls. "What am I supposed to do?"

He thought briefly of going to the Fentons. No. Oh God, no. There'd been horror stories about that. People screaming that it'd turning out they weren't possessed by anything, but the Fentons thought they were. Torturous scenes of attempted ghost extractions minus the presence of an actual ghost flashed through Lancer's mind, and he quickly decided that definitely wasn't the correct course of action.

Who else could he go to? The Guys in White? Not if he wanted to end up as some sort of experiment — and they had access to all his tax records, too!

The teacher tapped his fingers along his arm nervously. "Ehem," he began, again to nothing except his blank white apartment wall, "L-look, if there is a ghost — not that I would think anything so laughable — but if there is, could you please kindly remove yourself from my person?"

Silence.

Lancer had another hour-long blank before he went to bed, and resolved to do something about it in the morning.

Of course, he did not sleep.

Danny had a feeling, and when Danny had a feeling it wasn't wise to ignore it. The problem was, he hadn't the faintest clue what it was about. By the time he'd gotten to class that morning he was well and truly paranoid, waiting for some ghost to break through the ceiling and cause a riot. But that moment never came, and aside from Sam and Tucker exchanging worried glances at him throughout English, there wasn't anything out of the ordinary.

Well, except for Lancer.

The bald teacher looked as if his eyes had been peeled awake for several nights, or even as if he had aged by several years. As he spoke it was not without the occasional stutter, and Danny had to wonder what on earth had happened between now and last week to put him in that sort of state. Surely it couldn't have been stress? It wasn't like he had several billion exams to mark — exam period wasn't for another two months. Normally Danny couldn't wait to not pay attention to Lancer during English, but today he just couldn't stop.

"You seem unusually tuned in today, Mr. Fenton," Lancer noted, suspiciously.

Danny tried his best to make it seem like he wasn't lying. "Yeah I just… you know, actually got a full night's sleep last night."

"Well, that would be a change…" Lancer gave a deep sigh, and continued on tiredly with his class, paying too much attention to his watch. It looked like he couldn't wait to leave.

"Yeah, dude, what's up with that?" Tucker murmured, as soon as the lecture half of the class was over and they were permitted to speak quietly as they worked. "I've never seen you so perked up for English. Well — you know, not before the accident, anyway."

"Something's off with Lancer," Danny whispered back. "Look at him. Do you see how tired he is?"

"Maybe he had a late night?" Sam offered, leaning in from the other side of Danny.

"Yeah, but how often do you see that happen? I dunno guys, something's just not sitting right."

Tucker shook his head. "Whatever you say, dude. I mean it's not like he's overshadowed or anything."

The trio stole a quick glance towards Lancer, who was already staring at them when their eyes arrived. They looked away quickly. "Okay," Tucker corrected, "No, you're right, that was weird."

"Maybe we'll just focus on our work before he starts getting even more paranoid." Sam was whispering with her mouth turned slightly sideways, trying to look as though she was as engrossed as she could possibly be in her worksheet. "He's kinda scaring me."

Danny gave a short nod. "Sounds like a plan." He stared down at his worksheet. The boy had almost forgotten how behind he was in English — it made it hard to do any of this work at all. What was Macbeth's motivations for killing the king, anyway? He thought about what he knew about kings and thrones and whatnot. Extra privileges? The king was evil? Maybe Macbeth was trying to usurp the throne? But — Danny's brain started to fall slightly to shambles, here — it wasn't like anyone was calling him Prince Macbeth or anything, were they? How could you get the throne if you weren't prince, anyway?

Lancer continued to steal glances at him throughout the rest of the class, and by the end of it Danny was truly uncomfortable. Sam and Tucker began to march themselves out into the hallway after everyone else. Their friend, however, was instructed to stay behind.

Now Danny was downright suspicious. He walked with hesitant steps up to Lancer's desk, holding tonight's homework in a manner that suggested he already felt guilty that he probably wasn't going to complete it — after all, it was already a miracle that class hadn't been interrupted by another ghost attack. Little could be said for what would happen when he finally got home. But instead of the reprimand Danny was expecting, the teacher gave him a pleading look.

"Mr. Fenton," he began, nervously. "You know a thing or thing or two about ghosts, don't you?"

Danny was stopped in his tracks. His mind began to scream It's a lie I'm not a ghost!, but he squashed that down before it could dare escape his lips. "I don't know, I'm not involved in it like mum and dad are…"

Possibly the worst-placed pause in history occurred then and there between them. Danny could feel his throat attempting to strangle him as all the what-ifs flew through his mind, including the most dangerous what if he thinks I'm Phantom?. But that never came. Instead Lancer fidgeted and said something completely different. "I h-have a problem, but your parents are…" he stopped, trying to find the right turn of phrase, and gave up. "Your parents are mad. You've learnt about ghosts from them though Danny, right?"

The boy didn't realise it was possible to be relieved about his secret being safe while becoming suddenly uneasy at the same time, but there they were. "I guess I know a bit," he admitted. "What's wrong?"

Lancer's expression bordered on conspiratorial. "Since yesterday there's been gaps in my memory. Large ones. But I've apparently been acting normally. Do you think it's a ghost? Do you think I'm possessed?"

"What, like, overshadowed?!" Danny asked, unable to keep the surprise out of his voice. "Um, Mr. Lancer, if there's a ghost overshadowing you… you don't get to have awareness in between."

"But what if the ghost's coming and going as it pleases?!" Lancer added, desperately. "Please Danny, is there some sort of test you can perform on me or my apartment to get to the bottom of this? I'll give you extra credits! Just don't — please don't — get your parents involved, I don't want to go through —" he shuddered "— one of their exorcisms."

Danny's face had twisted into quite an odd expression indeed, somewhere between skeptical, surprised, and ever-so-slightly horrified. "You know this is pretty suss."

"Please, you can bring Jasmine along if safety bothers you, just anything to make sure I'm not being haunted. I—I don't like admitting this, but ghosts terrify me."

… Maybe he could live with this. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad. Danny tilted his head. "How many extra credits?"

"Enough for you to pass English," Lancer hissed. Had this been an eighties cartoon, Danny's eyes would have shown up dollar signs.

"Fine, I'll look at it tonight," Danny declared. "You gotta give me some time to sneak the equipment out of my folks lab though, okay? What's your address?"

"Come on, it can't be that bad," Danny pointed out. "He's probably worrying about nothing. My ghost sense didn't even go off!"