Inspired by "I'm Still Here" by the Goo Goo Dolls.

And I want a moment to be real, want to touch things I don't feel,
want to hold on and feel I belong.
And how can they say I never change, they're the ones that stay the same,
I'm the one now and I'm still here.

I'm Still Here
A Danny Phantom FanFiction by Cordria

Prologue

Danny screamed into the nothingness, wishing desperately that he could form hands and feet to beat against the inside walls of the Fenton Thermos. No doubt it wouldn't have made much of a difference even if he could have beaten himself bloody, but he still wished he could. It would have given him something to do in the blankness of this place. He knew his yells and screams would go unheard by other ears, since he didn't have a mouth to make noise with, but he still called out in fear and the incredible desire to be free of this small container.

He struggled, nothing more than a mist of condensed ectoplasm and consciousness, not accomplishing anything but tiring himself out. Let me OUT! Round and round he whirled, his mind tracing the exact contours of the tiny Thermos over and over.

100 cubic inches. 600 cubic centimeters. His entire body compressed into a space about a hundred times smaller than usual. It was painful to even contemplate that it could be true, much less to have it actually happen. It didn't physically hurt, being in the Thermos, but the thought that it should hurt captured his imagination and made him ache. His entire body crammed into an area smaller than a box of tissues. He would have shuddered if he'd been able to.

He couldn't see, he couldn't feel, he couldn't hear, he couldn't taste, he couldn't smell… his whole world was defined by that timeless nothingness. There were no cracks in the Thermos; there would be no escape.

He wondered if he felt movement, but it was probably all in his mind. A half-thought sound brought him up short from his endless circling, his mind poised on a cliff and focusing on the outside world. But there was nothing – no sound, no light, no indication that anything was happening. For all he knew, the Thermos might have been dropped off a building, buried underground, or been lost in one of his parents' messy desks. There was no way to tell, no way to know.

Finally he settled down, tired from running in circles, eyeing the lid of the Fenton Thermos with his mind like a cat crouched and waiting for its prey to move. Minutes passed, or maybe hours, or perhaps even days. Danny couldn't tell – the Thermos was a piece of the world exempt from the normal forces of the universe. Neither time nor gravity held sway in his tiny world.

Surely Sam, Tucker, or Jazz would release him. Even his parents, hell-bent on experimenting on him now that he had been captured, would have to open the lid at some point. They wouldn't be able to run tests on a ghost locked away in a Fenton Thermos. It might take a few hours, maybe even a few days, but someone would set him free.

Someone would set him free, he knew it.

And so he waited.

To be continued.