A/N: Welcome to Jack's one-shot! Yes. One-shot. There will be no continuation of this story after this chapter. But that's okay because it still has an ending, right? Right. And probably no one was expecting me to write/post this anyway, myself included. I mean it's been more than a year, and I feel like my writing has gone down hill over here but maybe, hopefully, you think differently. Enjoy?

Jack Fenton sat in the driver's seat of the Fenton Family Assault Vehicle driving 80 miles per hour down the highway and thinking about the meaning of life.

To be precise, he was thinking how he didn't have flying ghostly clue what the meaning of life was. He thought he knew back in college. He thought he knew when the ghost portal started working. Ghosts, he cursed—he thought he knew last week when a traffic cop ghost animated all the street signs and traffic signals to attack people if they weren't obeyed.

He'd been wrong.

If he learned anything last night it was that he didn't know a damned thing about life. Death either, for that matter. Because last night he learned his son wasn't human.

When he awoke to Maddie's lips against his cheek, he wondered if it was morning already. He hoped he still had some fudge left to sneak for breakfast. In his haze of sleep, he couldn't remember if he'd finished it yesterday or not.

His wife's lips pulled away and he heard her shuffle beside him. He opened his eyes to see the sky still dark and Maddie sneaking from the assault vehicle, determination set in the thin line of her lips. Waiting, he listened as she climbed the ladder outside and approached their two children on the roof. Despite all the tech, weapons, and shields attached to the vehicle, Jack could make out every word said above him. The walls were thick, the ceiling was not. It was a design flaw he'd have to fix once they got home.

But, for now, there was no sound until the click and jolt of metal disentangling itself and Jazz stepped back inside the Fenton Family Assault Vehicle. Jack let out a loud snore and rolled over so she couldn't see his face.

"Danny…Phantom."

Maddie's words were as clear as if she were sleeping beside him, mumbling in her sleep as she often did after a long day in the lab.

"I know Danny Phantom is you."

Jack stiffened in his sleeping bag. If the ghost boy was involved… His hand crept toward the ecto-gun he kept under his pillow. If Danny Phantom was…who? He didn't understand. There were a great number of times when Jack didn't understand. Mostly it didn't matter or he didn't care because what he did understand was more important than what he did not. This was not one of those times. He knew whatever was going on above him was something he desperately needed to understand. Him and Maddie both.

A brief flash of light illuminated the night beyond the expanse of the windshield. A reflection of Jazz's face caught on the glass and Jack saw how she was smiling. He paused where he was. If Jazz was happy then it was okay.

"It's still me. Danny."

Danny?

Jack tensed. It wasn't okay. He knew that, but still he didn't move. What would he do? When it came to ghosts his gut reaction was to attack, to capture, to study, but, if he was hearing correctly, this was Danny. His son. Jack held tight to his covers as a new realization took hold. Yes, he sought to study ghosts, but underneath that he wanted to understand them. Because it was Danny up there, he would not react. He did nothing but listen as the conversation above him wove together. When Maddie proclaimed Danny to be dead, tears leaked onto Jack's pillow. She was right. Maddie was always right about those kinds of things.

Except she wasn't.

"Feel that? It's my heartbeat. My heart still beats, Mom. Last I checked, dead people don't do that."

Heart still beats. Heart still beats. Danny's words filled his head as the increasing beat of his own heart filled his ears. But what did that mean?

Danny Phantom was a ghost. But Danny Fenton still had a heart beat. Was his son alive or dead?

Jack pressed down on the gas pedal. The speedometer climbed to 85 then 90. Maybe, if he drove fast enough, he could leave last night behind him.

Unbelievably, Danny was sleeping. Jack couldn't stop his eyes from finding him in the rearview mirror every mile. Curled up on the backseat, arm slung over the side so his open hand rested on the floor, his son breathed deeply. Easily. Though, Jack supposed, if he could fly faster than a racecar, he'd be sleeping now too.

Fly. Danny Phantom could fly, which meant his son could too? He wasn't sure.

Jack could only remember bits and pieces of what it felt like to fly from the time he'd been overshadowed but what he did remember made his stomach queasy. Or maybe it had just been the ham and cheese sandwiches, shrimp, guacamole, peanut butter, and ample amounts of fudge he had had that day. He always forgot certain foods mixed together upset his stomach. Once he ate it, the food was out of sight, out of mind.

What he overheard—it was not something he could get out of his mind. But what could he do about it? Just open his mouth and ask Danny if he was dead or not? He already knew his son's answer.

"I don't know. All I know is that when I came out of that ghost portal, I wasn't completely human anymore."

And that was when Jack lost all hope of understanding. Of life. Of death. Of his son.

He tried to make a mental list of all the facts he'd overheard, but every time he remembered something to add the rest of the list melted away. This wasn't abnormal. He was notorious for forgetting things. It was why he would come home from the grocery store with just fudge or ham. It was why he asked Danny to do the things he knew he would later forget. It was why he started writing reminders to himself and putting them in places he knew he was sure to see…eventually.

But it had never felt more important to remember something than it did to remember the things he'd heard Danny and Maddie say the night before. He had to get home fast. He had to get home and write it all down.

He pulled his mind back to the present and swerved away from a turned over trashcan near the side of the road.

"Dad," Danny said from the back and Jack jumped in his seat, "don't you think you could slow down?"

He met his son's blue eyes in the rearview mirror and paled. Was it his imagination or had they flashed green? Was this knowledge messing with his head?

"Just a bit?" Danny added, one eyebrow raised.

In the mirror, his eyes flitted to Jazz's stricken expression and then back to Danny. He glanced over at Maddie in the passenger seat beside him and her white knuckled grip on her armrests. Even she was worried. He slowly pulled his foot back from the gas pedal, letting the assault vehicle cruise down the street towards home.

Jack knew the chair he sat on—the one propped up by only three wheels—was too small to hold him. He didn't care. Part of him wanted the chair to break just so he would end up sprawled the floor like the trash someone (Danny) forgot to take out. Because that was exactly how he felt. Like trash.

He stared down at the written words on the desk in front of him. He'd already read them too many times to count. The list was precise, neat, and consisted of every word Jack could remember Danny saying the other night. Jazz would be proud.

But the list, even if it was the most orderly thing he'd ever composed, did not help him. He did not understand and he was beginning to worry he never would.

Life, death, or where Danny was in it. If Danny even fit at all.

Danny had to.

He clicked the mouse beside the keyboard and scrolled back to the beginning of the only footage he and Maddie had ever managed to capture of Danny Phantom. He studied the way he flew through the air, the way his legs morphed to form a tail, the way green jets of light blasted from his gloved hands. There was no doubt about it. Danny Phantom was a ghost.

He paused the video, listening to the sound of his family upstairs. He heard Danny call to Maddie, asking her what they were having for dinner. He heard him wander around the kitchen. Then came the loud unmistakable crunch of Danny taking a bite out of an apple, and then another. He could not deny Danny Fenton was human.

But Danny Fenton was Danny Phantom.

Jack dropped his head into his hands, groaning. It was too much. His head hurt. His eyes watered from a lack of sleep or from staring at the computer screen for hours. He didn't know which. And his list—his list was rubbish.

He'd have to ask. Confront Danny, admit what he'd overheard, and demand he explain it to him. He was his father. He'd have to listen.

Crumpling his list of facts in his fist, he rolled out from behind the computer desk. Feeling defeated, he didn't stomp up the steps like he normally might have, but softly crept up them. The basement door was cracked less than inch, but it was enough for him to hear the conflicted exchange of conversation occurring in the kitchen. He hadn't realized Jazz and Maddie had joined Danny.

"You have to tell Dad, Danny," came Jazz's insistent tone.

Jack nodded behind the door. That was his Jazzykins. He reached for the handle, ready for his questions to end.

"He wants to hunt me, he's not going to take it well," Danny protested.

Jack froze, hand midair.

"Sweetie," Maddie's tone was soft, consoling, "did you think I would take it well?"

Danny's answer was mumbled, nearly indistinguishable behind the basement door.

"No."

"And how did that turn out?"

More grumbling. "Fine."

"We're a family, Danny," Maddie said, her finality ringing in the kitchen. "We need to handle this as a family."

Like any normal teenager, Danny ignored his mother's irrefutable words. "I've been handling it just fine on my own for more than a year," he protested.

It wasn't Maddie who spoke this time, but Jazz, her voice a tentative whisper, "Have you?"

No one answered. Jack flashed back to all the times he'd encountered Danny Phantom. He'd been the first ghost he saw—barreling past him, head first into the ground, a look of desperation on his face. Phantom was the ghost he caught and then let go to save his—their—family. There was always coverage of one of Phantom's ghost fights on TV. His son had been shot at, pummeled, captured, and who knew what else.

"Maybe not," Danny admitted softly. "But I know what I have to do and how to do it. Having you two know it's me out there…" he trailed off, leaving the rest of his sentence hanging in the air between them.

"We can help you, sweetie," Maddie said.

Danny's breath hitched and when he spoke again Jack knew he was asking what he really wanted to say since the start of this argument, maybe since that night on the roof of the assault vehicle. "What if he doesn't accept me?"

Jack wasn't stupid. He also knew he wasn't smart. Not like Jazz or Maddie…or even Danny. But he was smart enough to understand his son, his own flesh and blood, was afraid. Afraid of him. Afraid of his mother. He wasn't sure how to fix this but there were a few things he could do to start.

Maddie was near tears. He could hear it in her voice when she said, "I accepted you."

Danny's next words were an echo of Jazz's, but, when he spoke, Jack's heart cracked.

"Have you?"

Jack pushed the needle through the cloth. In one side and out the other. Over and over again, he repeated the action. His needlepoint was almost finished but he had yet to solve the problem that was his son. Solve the problem tearing his family apart.

Every time he thought he had Danny figured out, he'd jump out of his seat only to slouch back into it seconds later. He didn't know what it meant to be alive anymore. He didn't know what it meant to be dead. And, ghosts, he didn't know what Danny meant when he told Maddie he wasn't completely human. Or, as Maddie had corrected him, human and more. He didn't know why Maddie hadn't answered Danny in the kitchen. She'd seemed fine with whatever was going on up until that moment.

Had she realized something about Danny and Phantom? Was Phantom actually a parasite attached to Danny? He slouched some more. If that were the case, Maddie would have done something. She would have already fixed it. But she wasn't looking to fix Danny. Instead, she'd just taken him out for ice cream.

Jack bolted up and out of his chair, a simple, singular understanding finally coming to him. She wasn't looking to fix Danny because—whatever this was—there wasn't anything to fix. And that meant…

He collapsed back into his chair.

…that meant what?

His transformation, Maddie had called it that night. So Danny transformed. The needle in between Jack's fingers pricked the taut fabric. Danny transformed. Jack flipped his needlepoint and saw the tip of the needle piercing through to the backside. Danny transformed. He pulled it through, dragging the thread with it. He stared down at the work in his hands. Turning it back over, he poked the needle through again. He ran his fingers over either side of the needlepoint. Each side different. The picture he thought the threads were meant to show on one and the colorful tangle of threads he didn't want to see on the other. But both sides were a necessary part of the whole.

He clutched his needlepoint tighter. His fingers worked furiously as he pushed and pulled the needle. Through one side and then the other. Back and forth and back and forth. Two sides, one whole.

At last, he understood.

Danny was the needle. And Jack would no longer choose which side of his son he wanted to see.

He hadn't realized he spent all night in the lab. With no windows to alert him when the sun went down and the clock on the wall broken since Christmas, Jack had no way of knowing what time it was.

Neither Jazz nor Danny bothered him. Maddie didn't tell him to come to bed. She came down once, looked around at the mess he'd made, and simply left him a cup of hot coffee on the desk. It was cold by the time he remembered to drink it. But he downed the whole thing in one big gulp.

He started with the Fenton Finder. A device he originally thought was just another failure to add to the list he didn't bother trying to keep track of. It was too long. The Fenton Finder, he remembered, was just one of their inventions that had keyed into Danny. But he had to start somewhere.

The screwdriver felt heavy in his hands as he stared at the invention and thought about what he was about to do. He gripped the handle tight. Danny didn't believe Maddie. His son wouldn't believe him. So he would just have to prove it.

Someone once said actions speak louder than words, and as Jack attacked the Fenton Finder—removing the bolts and pealing back the paneling to reveal the mechanisms on the inside—he thought it was high time he put that saying to the test.

The hours passed and that broken clock, stuck at 2:55, was right at least once during the night. Occasionally Jack heard footsteps above him or the rattle of the fan in the air conditioner or the hum of the refrigerator, but no one interrupted him. Which was good since he didn't want to be interrupted. He had too much work to do.

He hadn't realized just how many inventions he and Maddie made until he tried to count them. There was the Fenton Finder, the Fenton Bazooka, the Boo-merang, the Fenton Ghost Peeler, the Fenton Ghost Weasel, the Spector Deflector, the Fenton Crammer, the Ghost Gabber, his namesake invention the Jack o'Nine Tails, and many others he'd simply taken to calling the Fenton Ghost Weapons since he couldn't remember their proper names.

Upstairs, multiple thuds told him his family was up. The tantalizing smell of bacon floating from the cracked basement door told him Maddie was making breakfast. His stomach grumbled at the thought, but he ignored it. Food could wait. This was more important.

"Danny!" Jack boomed. He loved the acoustics in the lab if only because they always made his voice sound louder than it was. He never had to worry about not being heard.

"Yeah, Dad?"

"Come down! I want to show you something!"

Jack picked up the bazooka on the table nearest to him and passed it between his two hands. He'd spent the most time working on it this morning so he knew the weapon was ready—he glanced around at the dismantled weapons scattered around the lab—more so than any of the others. But he couldn't wait any longer.

He held it up, aiming at a spot on the stairs, and smiled. The bazooka would do the job.

"What is it, Dad?" Danny asked, hopping down the first few steps. "I'm supposed to meet Tuck—"

"Don't move, ghost."

Danny stood frozen at the bottom of the basement steps. He paled and swallowed nervously.

Jack chuckled. "Sorry, Dann-o," he said, "Didn't mean to scare ya, I just had to say it one last time."

"One last time?" Danny repeated, his brow furrowing with the question. He still looked a bit pale.

Jazz opened the door and stuck her head down, calling, "Daaaad! Daaanny! Mom wants to know what kind of—"

But she didn't finish. Her words were lost to the whining of the bazooka in Jack's hands. He lifted it, lining up his shot.

"Dad?" Danny asked, eyeing him.

Jack pulled the trigger.

A jet of bright green light shot out of the cannon and barreled through the air. It was headed right for Danny.

"Mom!" Jazz screamed. She hurdled down the steps, trying to reach Danny. But Danny didn't move.

Jack shot again.

Jazz yanked at her brother, trying to pull him down to the floor, desperate to shield him.

Jack shot at his son once more.

And then Maddie was at his side, wrestling the bazooka out of his hands.

"Jack!" she shouted. "Jack stop! It's Danny! Our son! It's Danny! Stop!"

But he had already stopped. He let Maddie pull the bazooka away from him, a smile on his face.

"I know it's Danny," he told her calmly.

"Then why did you shoot him?" she demanded. Her face was beat red, her hands shaking.

He smiled wider. "I didn't."

His wife gapped at him. "Wha—"

"Mads," he interrupted, "look."

She turned and gasped.

Three bright green balls of light hovered in front of Danny's chest. They each bounced and circled him once before shooting back towards Maddie and Jack and disappearing inside the bazooka. There was a soft chime and a mechanical voice announced to the room, "No ghost threat detected. Fenton weapon deactivating now."

The basement was silent. The whine of the bazooka died. Three Fenton heads turned to stare at the eldest among them, shock, confusion, and something unrecognizable written on all their faces.

It was Danny who finally spoke. "What did you do?"

Jack frowned. How was it that he was the one with all the questions but it was Danny who got to ask? He thought once he showed Danny the altered weapons his son would open up, explain everything to him like he had to Maddie the other night. Maybe he just had to be the one to start.

"I fixed all our weapons," he told his son. He gestured to the piles around the lab. "Well, some of them. I'm going to finish the others today."

Jazz was still staring at him. "Dad, how exactly did you fix them?"

"They aren't going to key into Danny anymore," he said, shrugging. "It wasn't that hard. We'd already added the DNA locks to most things so I just had to use that information, tweak it a bit, and ta-da! Like the bazooka said, there aren't any ghost threats down here."

Maddie's eyes went wide and, behind her, Danny's did the same, apprehension dawning on his face.

"Jack, honey," Maddie started, her voice patient and careful, "why would you do that?"

"Because I don't want Danny getting hurt," he said gruffly.

"But, Dad," Danny said, his voice rising slightly, "I'm not a ghost."

Jack nodded. "I know. But you are ghost…ly?" he finished awkwardly. He didn't know any other way to describe what he'd learned.

"How—" Maddie started but Jazz cut her off.

"You were awake," his daughter said, "and you—"

"—heard everything?" he filled in. "Yup."

"So you know," Danny said quietly.

"But I don't understand."

Maddie laid a gentle hand on his arm, a smile on her face. "The best way to understand," she said, "is to watch."

Jazz gave Danny a significant look.

Danny rolled his eyes at his sister. "Lay off, Jazz," he grumbled. "I was already going to."

Jack watched Danny close his eyes and whisper something. In an instant, bright, white rings of light surrounded him and began to separate. When they blinked out, Jack blinked too. In the same spot where his son had been standing stood Danny Phantom. The ghost opened his eyes, the glow of green ectoplasm illuminating them in the dim basement light. They were powerful and inhuman, but they were also Danny's. Jack could see that. He saw his son, weaving between human and ghost, just like his needle.

Danny's eyes followed him as he stepped closer, his apprehension as apparent as the unearthly glow surrounding his body.

"It's okay, Danny," Jack told him. "You're afraid. But you don't have to be. Not of us. Not anymore."

When Danny smiled at him, Jack smiled back. They would be okay. They were a family. They were together. And finally he understood that that was the key.

To the meaning of life.

Thanks for reading! Thoughts?