Gah, this fic was so hard to write. It kept on turning into Phantom/Fenton for some reason, though, before you ask, I intended, and still do intend, for this story to be Danny/Sam.

Disclaimer: I do not own Danny Phantom or the sparrow story.

There was a tale, once, of a sparrow that flew and flew through a pitch black space. It had always been flying, and always will be, for the sparrow had no need of food or rest or even death, as if it had a choice. It had no need for memories, either, because all that was there was this blackness, and one hardly needs to remember something unchanging and monotonous and always there.

Then, one day, the sparrow flew into a room, and there was light and brightness and it could see. It could smell and feel, and there were things that it could touch and speak with. For the first time, he—not "it" anymore—would stop just for the sake of stopping because there were so many new things to absorb, and God, was it beautiful, this place, and he flew and flew and wished it could last forever, because for once in his wretched life, there was something else there besides the darkness, and at last he could have memories. And as he flew, he lived, truly lived, and loved, and laughed, and cried, and everything was so…real. No more was there that dreamlike quality of the black place.

But the sparrow kept flying, until one day he flew out of the room, and as it—not "he" anymore—continued going the place became smaller and smaller behind it until the pinpoint of light shrank away, and the sparrow knew it would never see it again. And the darkness came back, and the nothingness came back, but…something was different.

This time, there were memories.

And the sparrow keeps flying like before, feeling nothing, seeing nothing, smelling nothing, but it remembers a place filled with light, a place that it could never forget. A place full of love without longing.

A place where, though the rain knocks you down, you can still believe in the existence of the sun.

Before Danny, Phantom had no form, no shape, only a floating mass of…the essence of the Ghost Zone. It was a stream of consciousness—that, and nothing more, and it had never wanted more, or even wanted to want something more.

So it lived like this, if you could call it living, wandering from place to place until it had no sense of self left in it. The Ghost Zone was an infinite void to Phantom, and it remembered nothing before that. Just this place, with its never-ending gloom and secrecy.

Phantom was the sparrow, and the Ghost Zone was the darkness that tried to swallow it up.

But one day, it happened.

Phantom had been somewhere…time had passed, but it had not cared, and what was the luckiest of coincidences occurred. There was pain—it remembered that much, at least, in the swirl of feelings that had struck him, until he felt a violent jerk, and he was being pulled through a light, a bright, shining, blinding light, and…

Something happened the day Danny gained his powers. He was no longer alone. He and Phantom, Phantom and he, they became one and the same. Their minds, their consciousness, their psyches had merged, until Phantom had been completely swallowed by Danny. And he was perfectly content with this, because for the first time in his life—no, existence, he could truly see.

It was a room. A room, with boundaries, and a ceiling and walls, and there were people, and so many things! There was awe, disbelief, perhaps, that this was too good to be real, before Phantom faded at last into Danny.

It didn't matter though, because the sparrow had found Danny, his bright place.

Danny never knew. Phantom had become a part of him, though at night, when the silence was deafening and the darkness was alive, he could almost feel him, the warm presence in the back of his mind. Always watching. Always there. His sparrow.

Danny's fights became Phantom's fights. Danny's strength became Phantom's strength, his joy became Phantom's joy, his weaknesses and pain became Phantom's, chaining him down, making him fragile and breakable and human.

And because of this, somewhere inside of him, Phantom loved the boy.

Phantom doesn't expect anyone to know what it's like. After all, no one has been in his position, not even Vlad Plasmius, who would rather focus on his hate and the past and the dim, murky blackness instead of the future. Could anyone imagine what it was like? To drift in the darkness until you burst into the light, running and falling and picking yourself back up again? To understand, in one flash of brightness and pain, everything that truly mattered in life?

And Phantom thinks: How could I have been so naïve and stupid to think that all there was to life was nothingness? How could I have not known that something like this existed, that people who lived their lives like this all the time existed?

Danny's friends are Phantom's friends. Danny's love is Phantom's love.

But humans…humans are temporary and delicate, and ghosts like Phantom last much, much too long. When Danny dies, Phantom wants to go with him to wherever he is headed. But most of all, he wants to meet again with…

It wasn't love at first sight. It was merely…interest.

She fascinated him. He absorbed every last detail of her, from the pitch black hair to the strange purple eyes to the lingering scent of lilacs he could smell on her whenever she moved. She buries herself in her dark clothes, her menacing aura, an intimidating attitude, fighting against chains she doesn't know she's already broken. And he doesn't tell her, because if he does, she will realize this fact and she will spread her wings and fly away from him forever.

He likes to watch her when he doesn't think she's looking. He likes the way her eyes crinkle just so when she's happy, the way the corners of her mouth curl unevenly when she laughs, really laughs. Where she was concerned, he was obsessive, happily trapped in hopeless adoration.

If Danny is Phantom's bright place, then Sam is Phantom's light.

Eventually, Phantom the sparrow flew out of the room, away from the light, back into the grasping darkness.

Danny was gone. Sam was gone. And they had not, no matter how much he had hoped and wished and prayed to a God he did not believe in, taken him with them.

Was this how the sparrow felt? Abandoned and betrayed once the light had left him?

But, Phantom promises himself, it will be different this time. I will not forget these precious things I have learned. I will remember, and I will search until I finally find the light again, and it will not be so lonesome.

Now he traverses among the dead once more, this time with a goal in mind. He searches and seeks, and all the while the dead feeling in his chest never goes away. He has loved and he has lost and he has never, ever felt so alone.

When he finds them again, though, they will wrap him in a fierce embrace, and all those happy things from before will rush back at him. There will be blinding brightness and warmth and love without loneliness.

But as the years go by, his mind slowly deteriorates, until all that's left of him are these faded memories, the last of which he will not let go, no matter how they hurt. Phantom has reverted back to his old form, stripped of his senses, but just because you are blind does not mean you cannot see the things that are important, and just because you are deaf does not mean you cannot hear the things that truly matter.

And so, after death, he cannot rest, instead wandering through the Ghost Zone, searching until all he remember are a pair of violet eyes and the lingering smell of lilacs...

Phantom may be the sparrow and Danny the bright place—

—but Sam is both the light and his memories, the things that keep him sane now, and the one who has inadvertently taught him this fact:

Just because you have dreams does not mean they will come true.

. : A dream is not a dream if you can achieve it. : .