Behind Blue Eyes

I don't own Danny Phantom, but man I wish I did.

Sorry about the slight delay, had some trouble figuring some specifics out in a way I was happy with and didn't ruin the theme and pacing of the story so far. I think I've finally got it, so hopefully a conclusion to this story should be reached soon. Read on, readers.

Eerie Silence

It had been a whole day since Star talked with Sam and Tucker.

It had been a whole day since she learned that Danny Fenton had been Phantom for as long as Phantom had been around saving people in Amity Park and she still didn't know what to think. Sam and Tucker were nice enough to answer a lot of her questions but it still felt like there was so much she didn't know.

There were some questions she wished the two would've answered better, but those were the same ones they told her to ask Danny about. They said that if he wanted her to know about things like how exactly he became Phantom and whether or not he was dead or alive that he would tell her.

That's not to say she didn't get filled in on a lot; many of the dots she'd been pointlessly trying to connect had connected themselves with the revelation of Danny's half-ghost status. She also learned that that was what he and the other ghosts referred to him as; a half-ghost and that apparently most if not all of the ghosts knew that he was a half-ghost, half-human and his human identity.

"Isn't the point of a secret identity to keep your enemies from figuring out who you are?" Star had asked after Tucker mentioned the other ghosts knowing.

Both Tucker and Sam paused a bit too long before Tucker belted out a nervous laugh.

"Danny never was good with remembering comic book tropes, he got a little confused." Tucker tried to joke through this bit of the conversation, but his stilted tone and Sam's aversion of eyes gave her a bad feeling in the pit of her stomach.

It had been a whole day until she realized why.

Danny was more afraid of humans than ghosts. Ghosts knowing who he was seemed to be nothing more than an inconvenience; they seemingly never tried to expose him or go after his friends all that often, was them really knowing who he was that big of a difference? Even if they did, fighting back against them was as easy as breath-... was easy, comparatively. He couldn't exactly fight his parents or the government the way he fought ghosts.

It was the humans that would change things. His parents might not believe him, might think he was possessed. They might have done unspeakable things if he told them the truth. The rest of the town was no better; it was only in the last few decades that segregation and racism had stopped being normal, unproblematic things and for some reason, Star wasn't sure she trusted that everyone would accept Danny was still Danny. Still human.

They said that before her, only three people knew about Danny's secret; it was the two of them and Danny's older sister Jasmine Fenton. They were the only one's he trusted enough to know, to count on, to tell the truth with. The ghosts that he fought on a daily basis, that tried to invade the world and take over the town, that maimed and scarred and brutalized him for the last two years knew him better than almost every single person in Amity Park that he had grown up around and seen every day for over ten years.

And now, because of her and everyone else's carelessness and obliviousness, it had been two whole days since anyone had seen Danny Fenton or Phantom anywhere. He had missed school two days in a row, Sam says Jazz told her he hasn't come home or called her either and neither Sam or Tucker heard a word from him since she pulled him back after school that day.

Star, along with Danny's friends and sister, couldn't help but get increasingly worried.

At first, they told her this was somewhat normal. This wasn't the first time Danny had disappeared, caught up in his own ghostly adventure and was either too forgetful or unable to call them and it surely wouldn't be the last. But the other times, the ghosts attacked Amity Park in his absence.

There hadn't been a single ghost sighting in Amity Park for two days. Since Phantom and the painter had their brawl through Amity's skyline that fateful afternoon forty-eight hours ago. Everybody noticed the lack of ghosts, but only Sam, Tucker and Jazz seemed more on edge without ghost attacks than with.

Star was beginning to see why.

Amity Park was somehow even more eerie without ghosts than with them. And just as much so without Danny Fenton, Star couldn't help but notice.

No drops in temperature throughout the day. Interesting new stories on ghost battles were replaced with boring traffic reports and weather updates. Conversations and gossip between parties at school slowed to a crawl with nothing interesting in town going on anymore. Human crime seemed to be on the rise with people no longer fearful of being caught up in the destruction of their battles or being stopped by Phantom. Overall, it made the city feel slower.

The absence of her fellow classmate, however, was what was felt a lot more to Star.

It was strange not hearing Dash's cries of Danny's name in the halls. Not hearing his tired reply during role call. Not hearing the smack of his head against his desk in the middle of a lecture. Sam and Tucker felt it a lot worse than she did, she couldn't begin to imagine how they were holding themselves up enough to come to school.

Nobody else was even aware of the very real chance that Danny Fenton might not come back. They didn't even know something was wrong, much less so that he could be in danger. She didn't know how they had managed to live like this for two years. They went through two years of keeping secrets, of pretending. She felt like she was about to explode after two days.

"Miss Anderson!" Star was jostled back to reality by Falluca's cutting voice. "Not dozing off in my class, are you? I trust you know better than trying to be the new Mr. Fenton."

She bit her tongue when she found herself desperately claiming there was no reason for a new Mr. Fenton. She looked away, trying to give the impression she was embarrassed she was caught while she glanced backward to Sam and Tucker.

They both sent her small sympathetic smiles even though they each looked like they hadn't slept since yesterday.

"Sorry, Mr. Falluca." She replied as quickly as she could, regaining her thoughts.

She winced, the phrase reminding her terribly of Danny, but nobody noticed.

"Is this what it feels like? To not be noticed?" Star asked curiously to Sam as they stood in line at lunch.

"What do you mean?" Sam replied tiredly. She was functioning on autopilot, barely looking at what was shoveled onto her tray.

"I feel like I'm breaking inside, but nobody else knows. Nobody else can know."

Sam paused and Star didn't think she was getting an answer. They stepped out of line, Sam immediately throwing her tray in the trash, realizing the slop on it for the first time and started walking away. A few steps later, she turned.

"Why don't you come sit with me and Tucker today?"

Star smiled for the first time that day.

Every class for the rest of the afternoon, Star wanted nothing more than for Danny to burst in like he usually did, proclaiming something about getting lost or falling or even a sheepish apology.

He didn't, and Star could feel the pit in her stomach growing with each figure she saw pass the door that wasn't him. Sam left the room before Lancer could call Danny during role in eighth period, unable to hear him not respond for the umpteenth time that day. Tucker took responsibility for bringing homework to the boy despite knowing he wouldn't be there to drop it off to.

Star walked out of the building with them, ignoring the looks in the halls and Paulina's once scathing words.

"Feel any better?" Sam asked quietly.

"Yeah," She paused. "Thanks."

Sam and Tucker lived in opposite directions, so they split up a few blocks from school. Catch you later, they said. Star could only nod before dragging herself all the way home.

She was practically torturing herself doing this, but it brought her a strange form of comfort to watch some of Phantom's ghost fights online. It was the most she could see of the ghost boy right now and it was a lot closer than she could get to Danny Fenton's baby blue eyes.

She found one from a few days ago, the day after he saved her at the football game and suddenly a few things became clearer than ever. She watched as Phantom fought Skulker, one of the more frequent members of his rogue's gallery, through the skies.

It was different, seeing him fight while knowing the truth.

She and the A-list had once watched videos like this for entertainment and enjoyment. Paulina would rave about how handsome the Ghost Boy looked saving people and swooping onto the scene. She never failed to mention how hot he was, mentioning his muscles and powers at every turn while Dash and Kwan looked at him like their own personal Superman. Even she herself had gotten caught up in it all before, cheering on Phantom like the ghost fights were a boxing match on cable television.

But now, as she watched Phantom's leg get caught in a giant green bear trap and leave him open to a giant rocket launched at him, she winced instead and remembered Danny Fenton only minutes after the fight. Palm sized ink blotches on his left thigh weren't ink at all, but blood seeping from wounds that no ordinary person could recover from and no doubt severe burns on his right shoulder where the rocket struck, severe enough that the weight of even his backpack strap and simple t-shirt would irritate it.

Phantom's screams of pain and frustrated grunts were once something she didn't think twice about, but those days were behind her when all she could picture in his place was the classmate she grew up with in his place. It wasn't too long ago she wouldn't have even noticed those kinds of injuries on him in class, but now that she knew enough to recognize what made them was something that she wasn't sure she wanted to be able to do.

She watched as Phantom parried Skulker's fist with his own only to have another bear trap shoved in his face by Skulker's other hand. The green metal snapped shut as it was pressed into Phantom's face, snapping ruthlessly on either side of his head and Star was sure she just nearly had a heart attack. The only thing that seemed to save him was his reaction time, having experienced the trap once before was enough warning to let him phase out of it with little more than small punctures on both sides of his face and neck.

It was something as simple as seeing the effects the fights had on him that made Star feel uneasy. They all thought he could do anything, be anywhere, save anyone. There were worse ways to see him, and Star was sure that unlike a lot of his other fans there was nothing Phantom could do or say to convince Dash and Kwan that he wasn't a hero, or invincible or Superman. But it didn't sit right with Star anymore, knowing.

She wasn't sure if she liked it better or not yet. She was glad she knew, glad she figured it out and glad that Sam and Tucker hadn't shut her out upon her revelation. But there was a part of her that wanted more than anything to go back to the way things used to be; normal.

Normal seemed like such a weird word now and she wasn't sure she would ever use that word to describe her life again. Even just the thought of the word made her feel totally helpless and then she remembered she could only begin to understand what Danny, Sam and Tucker felt like. They had pretended for years to be normal and their worlds had changed drastically more and at a much faster pace than hers had.

Her thoughts had left her unable to pay attention to her laptop until she heard cries of pain again, much more intense and she was jolted back to reality. Her computer had auto played the next video in her absentee behavior which she was now realizing was a video of Phantom another ghost who showed up a lot; Plasmius.

She wasn't sure what they were fighting over or why, but it was Phantom's strongest power that had jolted her back to reality.

The Ghostly Wail.

Even through a computer screen, the effects the Wail had on anybody listening were awful. Every time he used it, it was loud and destructive but there was always a sense of anger, desperation, loss and so much more. The town had only confirmed the name and the source recently since it was a power Phantom rarely showed off presumably for multiple reasons. But it always seemed to get the job done.

Star could remember being mere blocks away when Phantom had unleashed one once and it felt like all she could hear were the screams of a thousand souls being burned alive. Wailing in desperation, trying to escape. Trying to live. It shook everybody the same way, it seemed, because whenever the attack was used it seemed to disorient everybody in the area.

The Ghostly Wail created a very eerie, haunted noise when used and left behind a deafening, cold silence. Star almost wondered if that's what Danny sounded like when he died.

It was that thought that made her slam her computer shut, unwilling to think about those kinds of things now more than ever with Danny missing. She didn't understand, but she felt like all the problems in the world would be solved upon his return.

She had to do something to stop herself from thinking, but she didn't know what. There was no way she could hang out with Paulina or any of the A-list after her stunt in the hallway. She hadn't come groveling to Paulina for forgiveness yet, so she would still be on the outs for them. Not that she would want to anyway, but just because you don't use the safety net every time doesn't mean you don't notice when it's not there.

Sam and Tucker were also probably a no-go. She wanted to try and ease into their friendship, not force herself upon them. She wanted to be friends with them, not just Danny and not just because she now knew some of their secrets and that would take time. Besides, hanging out with Danny's best friends probably wouldn't help her take her mind off Danny very much.

Phone in hand, she scrolled through her contacts and debated over calling the one person left she thought might be able to help her.

Valerie Grey.

They hadn't talked much since Paulina kicked her out of the A-list, but they talked still. Against Paulina's wishes of course, as she desperately didn't want anyone that she was friends with to be associating with the now lowly Valerie Grey. Still, Star couldn't help herself and found herself not only talking with Valerie still, but not bothering to hid it from Paulina.

Valerie was the single person Star felt like she could be honest, truly honest, with for a long time. Valerie was always the kind of person who took her friendships seriously and deeply, so it was no wonder she grew closer to Star than the other girls whose friendships seemed to take a more surface level approach.

But still, Star felt like she had failed Valerie by letting Paulina cast her aside and leaving her alone. After the incident, she was rarely seen with anyone in school again except for, ironically enough, Danny Fenton and his friends but those times were few and far between. At the time, Star had been totally encapsulated with Paulina and her Queen Bee status, she never would have thought about giving up her position in the A-list for Valerie.

The more she thought about it, that was her biggest regret. No time like the present, right?

She pressed dial.

So as you can see, another shorter, Danny-less chapter here. I had some specifics to figure out since this story changed so much from what I was originally envisioning when I started, which is why some of you more observant readers might have noticed the summary change.

I hope everyone is happy with the slight change and deviation from the original plan, but it shouldn't be too long now before the rest becomes clear. Hope to be back again soon! As always, leave your thoughts behind!