Author's Note:

Alright. Let's just come on out and say it: I'm the slowest writer of all time. Really, guys, I apologize. I'd been working on this chapter FOREVER, and I just kind of got to the point where I'd read and rehashed it all so many times it looked like shit no matter what I did. So I took a break for a couple of days. And the days turned into weeks. How that happened is still a mystery.

But okay, I'm back now, and this chapter is super long so quit your grumbling. A little treat to ring in the new year. Please read and review, as always. Infinite thanks yous to everyone out there who supports this story:)

Coming chapter: Wicked Business

VI. Revelations

"You!"

Danny's fierce whisper shattered the heavy silence. He stood stock-still and swallowed hard, weakly clasping the hickey on his neck. His wide eyes were focused on the mirror as though he couldn't bear to face at the man standing in his doorway. "It was you?" he rasped. "You?" Vlad's body felt as though it was encased in ice. It took him a long time to find his voice, and even when he did, he found he had no idea what to say.

"Daniel, I—" he began hoarsely. But Danny wasn't listening.

"Oh my god," the boy muttered to himself, rubbing his temples with shaking hands. "Oh my god. Fuck. FUCK." His fist came down hard on the dresser. Vlad barely had time to blink in surprise before Danny closed the distance between them and grabbed Vlad by his shirt, roughly pulling the bewildered man into his room and slamming the door shut behind them. He threw Vlad up against wall as soon as it was closed.

"I asked you if you knew!" he hissed, fists clenched at his sides, face contorted in a furious snarl. "I asked you if you knew and you said no!" Vlad stole a glance into Danny's fiery eyes and saw a mixture of anger and shame and… and what? Hurt? Was that possible? No, of course not. Even so, Vlad couldn't look for long; it was more than a bit embarrassing to face Danny under such circumstances, even if the boy didn't know about what had transpired in the shower. Vlad shifted awkwardly, trying to edge out from between the boy and the door.

"Look, Daniel—"

"Goddamn liar!" spat an indignant Danny, cutting Vlad off once again. He stepped back and began to pace the room, pulling at his hair, ignoring Vlad as he mumbled frantically to himself. "Why did we…? How…? I didn't think…."

Vlad crossed his arms and leaned back against the door, feeling a frown work its way across his face. This wasn't the reaction he'd been expecting from Daniel. Panic, regret and anxiety, yes; outrage at having been lied to about it, no. Not right away, at least. Still, thought Vlad, as uncomfortable as the situation was, he was not about to let Daniel simply ignore him. Vlad Masters was not ignored.

"Daniel," he said, surprised by how difficult it was to keep his voice level. "Daniel, we need to discuss this."

"No! I don't want to hear it, Vlad," shot Danny angrily. His gaze flicked from one object to the next, falling on nearly everything in the room except the man in his doorway. "I-I don't want to talk about it."

"Is that why you dragged me in here, then?" snapped Vlad, annoyance sharpening his tone. "To not talk about it? Seems a bit counterintuitive to me." Danny's face grew dark.

"That's not…" he began, voice low. "That's not what I meant. I just… just…." His face screwed up in unidentifiable emotion. "I'm just so fucking pissed at you!" he finally spat, rounding on Vlad and pointing an angry finger in the man's direction. "You should have told me what happened! You should have been honest with me!" Vlad narrowed his eyes.

"Hold on, Daniel," he said slowly, taking a tentative step from the door. "Are you upset because of what happened… or because I lied to you?"

"B-both," Danny stuttered, biting his lip. "It-it's the principle of the thing," he tacked on quickly. But a blush rose in the boy's cheeks and he faltered, dropping his gaze to the floor. When he spoke again his voice was small. "What happened last night, Vlad?"

"What?" Vlad could feel his anger building. "I thought-I thought you remembered!" Danny pursed his lips and shoved his hands into his pockets. Vlad stared at the boy, shaking his head in dismay and disbelief. "You… you don't remember, do you?"

"Yes I do!" the boy hissed back, glaring at Vlad. But he paused, brow furrowed. "It's just… it's all hazy, you know? I was pretty wasted…." His voice tapered off.

"God, Daniel." Vlad fell back against the door, holding his head in his hands.

"Just tell me!" Danny cried, stamping his foot in exasperation. "I know it was you, okay? But I only remember bits and pieces of what happened. Just tell me if we… uh…" He twisted his fingers together, looking uncertain. "Did we…?"

"No," Vlad answered shortly. "We didn't." He heard Danny breathe a sigh of relief.

"Good." They stood in awkward silence for a moment, both unsure of what to say next. Vlad frowned, trying to determine whether or not to tell Danny the whole truth, that they very likely would have gone much further if it hadn't been for Jack—

"We were… interrupted," Vlad finally muttered. Danny paled, his blue eyes flying wide in horror.

"What? By who?"

"Your father."

"WHAT?" Danny wavered, turning a visible shade of green. "Oh my god, how did he—Did he see? Oh my god, Vlad, what did he… oh my god, holy shit, dude, oh my god—"

"Daniel." Vlad placed his hands on Danny's shoulders both to quell the boy's sudden influx of nervous babbling and to steady him; he looked about ready to collapse to the floor. Danny fidgeted, but swallowed and grew still. His frantic eyes traveled up to lock with Vlad's. "Jack didn't see anything, alright?" said Vlad sternly. "He was drunk, and he didn't realize what was going on. He didn't even see you. So calm down." Danny blinked but eventually nodded, chest heaving out and in, out and in.

"You shouldn't worry," continued Vlad. "Jack has a tendency to… well, to miss a lot of what's going on around him." His voice, though still firm, was now softer, almost nostalgic. "Jack's smart, I'll give him that, but the man's completely oblivious. Subtlety is a language he just can't understand…." And Vlad paused, finding himself no longer talking solely about the night before. He shook his head, dragging his mind back into the present.

"But you know that," Vlad finished hastily. "He's your father, after all." He realized with a jolt that his hands were still on Danny's shoulders and pulled them away quickly, clearing his throat. Danny took a small step back, fingers running through his shaggy, damp hair.

"You shouldn't underestimate Dad," said the boy warily. "Yeah, he's completely oblivious most of the time, but with some things…." His eyes grew cloudy. "With some things he's actually quite perceptive." Vlad's face twisted in a skeptical frown. Perceptive was not a word he'd ever think to use to describe Jack Fenton.

"I find that rather hard to believe, Daniel." Danny only shrugged in response, crossing the room to sit down heavily on his unmade bed.

"Whatever you say, Vlad," he mumbled, staring bleakly into the floor. He nudged he edge of his carpet with his foot. "Just don't tell my parents, okay?" His voice was barely more than a whisper. Vlad scoffed and rolled his eyes.

"Daniel, why on earth would I tell your parents about this?" He said, massaging the bridge of his nose under his glasses. He chuckled darkly, imagining the conversation out loud. "Oh hey, Jack, Maddie, funny story, you'll never believe what happened last night between me and your twenty-year-old son—"

"Quit it, Vlad." Danny's voice was terse and icy, but Vlad ignored it.

"We were both drunk, just completely hammered, right? And when I found him outside we shared a cigarette and a nice little chat about how much he hates you two before he started climbing all over me like a cat in heat—"

"Vlad—"

"And it's lucky you walked out when you did, Jack, because I'll be damned if the two of us didn't nearly fuck each other ragged in the alley next to your house—"

"Vlad!"

It took Danny literally shouting his name and leaping off the bed in anger to pull Vlad out of his rant. Even in the bright morning light the man could see Danny's eyes flash that dangerous and all too familiar shade of green, and his dark sarcasm quelled when he recalled that he no longer had his own ghost powers to counter the boy's. Vlad hadn't meant to carry on so, but once he'd started it he'd found it difficult to stop. He was surprised by the acrid bitterness he'd heard in his tone, and by how quickly the emotion had boiled to the surface. Scowling at his ineptitude, Vlad tossed his hair out of his face and settled for staring despondently out the window. After a few minutes of tense silence he noticed Danny shifting about uncomfortably out of the corner of his eye, biting his lip as if he had something to say.

"What, Daniel?" he growled impatiently.

"Is… is that really what happened?" Danny's voice was weak. Vlad glanced over to see that the anger had melted from the boy's face, rage giving way to layers of shame and fear. And there he was again, up out of the ashes: the Danny Vlad remembered. The vulnerable Danny. The innocent Danny.

"Just about," mumbled Vlad gloomily, feeling a nauseating knot coil in his stomach. He didn't want to talk to this Danny about last night. This Danny was too much like the boy Vlad remembered, the boy who was in so many ways his father's son, the boy who was a bright, cheery, good person and who was still just fourteen….

"God," Danny whined, pressing his palms into his eyes. "Vlad, how could we have done something so stupid?"

Something defensive and automatic hitched in Vlad's mind at those words. He opened and closed his mouth several times before speaking.

"We?" he finally sputtered. "Daniel, you initiated the whole thing. And you didn't exactly act like any of it was new to you, either!" Vlad's words were little more than a snarl. "Can you really blame me?" He tucked a strand of loose hair behind his ear, flicking imaginary dust off his shirt. "What was I supposed to think?" Danny started and stared up at Vlad, lost and confused, eyes wide with shock.

"E-excuse me?"

"In fact, I'd have to say you were quite the little expert." Vlad's voice was cold and he knew it, but something about that helpless, pleading look in Danny's eyes terrified him. That, and something about the way the boy had said "we." And so, as if by reflex, Vlad made to push the boy away. It was easier than being part of a "we", he reasoned; in fact, distancing himself from others was something he'd gotten quite good at over the years, and, as Vlad had begun to realize earlier that morning, he knew enough about Danny to hurt the boy deeply.

"That's the kind of skill that comes from practice and practice alone," Vlad spat. "It's no wonder your mother's a nervous wreck over you." Now he was just being cruel.

Danny opened his mouth to speak, only to find he wasn't able to make a sound. His cheeks were scarlet. And Vlad could swear that there were the beginnings of tears in his eyes, though perhaps that shine was merely the result of the dark anger filling the boy's heated face. Well, good. It was better this way. Better if the boy hated him. Because there was not, was not and simply could not, be a "we" between him and Danny. Danny Fenton, of all people.

"Last night was a mistake, Daniel," said Vlad, managing to conjure up the authoritative tones in his voice he'd learned to adopt as a CEO. "We were drunk and we weren't thinking clearly, and it was a mistake. It shouldn't have happened." He paused, watching as Danny wrapped his arms around himself, lips turned down in a tortured grimace. "And it won't happen again."

Danny's all but whimpered at the last sentence, and Vlad noticed with a twang of guilt that the boy was blinking furiously, eyes plastered on a spot on the floor near his feet. Tears, then. Well, even this Vlad could handle; after all, he'd been in this position before, said nearly the exact same things he'd just said to Daniel to other people, watched them cry and snivel and become furious with him as he broke off their relationship before it really was one. So it was no big deal, really.

Perhaps, but you've never felt guilty about it until now, have you?

Vlad twitched, swatting the disturbing thought from his mind like an annoying mosquito. This really wasn't the time for his conscience to kick in.

"We won't discuss what happened with anyone, agreed?" said Vlad, and when he spoke it sounded more like an order than a question. Danny hugged himself tighter before nodding quickly, refusing to look Vlad in the face. His cheeks and the tips of his ears were still bright red. "Good," muttered Vlad, turning for the door. "It's best just to forget it ever happened." His hand had just begun to turn the handle when he heard Danny mutter something muted under his breath.

"What was that, Daniel?" Vlad looked up but stopped short—the boy had disappeared.

And Vlad didn't need a ghost sense to know the room was empty.

---

Maddie was just finishing laying out brunch when Vlad made his way downstairs, mind heavy with thoughts of Danny. And the mysterious clone. And the subsequent loss of his ghost powers. It was too many things, he thought grimly. Too much to have to deal with in a single night, especially considering that it was all taking place at the home of Jack and Maddie Fenton. As he entered the kitchen, Vlad found himself wondering, not for the first time, why he'd accepted Jack's invitation at all.

Vlad was dimly aware of Maddie smiling sweetly up at him, handing him a plate and a knife and fork and saying something to him—he muttered something noncommittal in response, not really able to listen properly. He'd done well for twent-five years, kept largely away from the Fentons for twenty-five years. He'd thought he'd finally managed to break whatever ties had kept them bound for so long. He'd thought that had been enough time. But then Jack up and calls him out of the blue, and in a matter of days Vlad finds himself sucked back into the heart of the very storm he'd fought so desperately to escape, out his ghost powers and apparently a considerable portion of his sanity. How was that fair? After all, some bridges were better off burned.

"Morning, V-Man!" Jack's booming voice echoed through the kitchen. Vlad didn't have time to blink, much less respond, before he was cuffed in the shoulder so forcefully his nose nearly careened into the eggs Maddie had just ladled onto his plate.

"Good morning, Jack," Vlad growled into the food, pulling the strands of his hair that had fallen to the table away from the grease with a small sigh of annoyance. He looked up just in time to see Jack peck Maddie lovingly on the cheek as she handed a plate of food to him.

"Crazy party last night," Jack said cheerily, plopping down at the table and proceeding to pour a generous amount of syrup over a large stack of pancakes. "How'd you sleep, Vladdie? I was out like a light."

"Wonderfully," Vlad lied, watching with a mixture of awe and disgust as Jack tore into his food. Seeing the man eat was like witnessing a train wreck—one almost couldn't look away. Unfortunately, the sight obliterated what little appetite he had, and he ruefully nudged his plate away with his fork.

"Is Danny up yet?" Jack glanced at the clock and twisted his head about, scanning the kitchen as if expecting the boy to leap out of the woodwork. "He should come down for breakfast."

"Oh, don't bother him, honey," Maddie answered quickly. "He wasn't feeling too well earlier." Vlad didn't miss the subtle tension in her voice, nor the fact that she didn't look in his direction when she spoke. Jack's brow knit together.

"Hmm, well, okay," he said heavily, turning back to his plate. Vlad saw something dark flicker across Jack's face as he contemplated Maddie's answer, though the look was swept away quickly and replaced with a goofy grin.

"I want you to come down and check out the lab, Vlad," said Jack, pointing at Vlad with his fork. "Mads and I have a ton of new projects going on, you'd be proud, and—oh!" In a flash Jack bolted up from the table, darted into the living room and grabbed something off the floor before rushing back to the kitchen. "This," he said excitedly, slamming the object in his hand down onto the table so hard the silverware clattered in place. "We need to take a look at this."

It was, of course, the knife. Vlad eyed the gleaming blade warily before glancing up at Jack, who was still grinning like a loon.

"If this thing kicks ass like you say it can," said Jack, "then we should get started right away. It'll be revolutionary. It'll be awesome."

"Don't get your hopes up, Jack," interjected Vlad hesitantly. "It's only a prototype. It doesn't work." But an image of the clone's disturbingly blank face flashed through his mind. That face, and the slick warm feeling of oily blood on his face and hands and shirt— "At least I don't think it works."

"Well then we'll get it to work," said Jack, relishing in the challenge too much to notice the spasm of nausea that briefly flared on Vlad's face. "You, me and Maddie. It'll be like old times, V-Man. What do you say?"

Vlad pursed his lips in thought, eyes moving from the knife to Jack, back to the knife and then to Jack again. As distasteful as getting back to anything even mildly resembling the 'old times,' as Jack had called it, sounded, Vlad couldn't deny that getting the weapon to function was the key to regaining his ghost powers. He himself had given up on getting the thing to work ages ago… so perhaps letting Jack and Maddie take care of his dirty work wouldn't be so terrible, even if it meant he would have to work with them.

"Old times, you say?" Jack nodded hopefully. "You know, Jack," said Vlad finally, swallowing his reservations and putting on his best happy face, "there's really nothing I'd like more than that."

---

Vlad had to admit that the Fenton lab was decidedly more impressive than anything he'd been expecting. Though he'd always given Maddie plenty of credit, he'd never given Jack much at all, and as a result Vlad had expected that the 'lab' to which Jack was exuberantly ushering him would be little more than a ramshackle collection of odds and ends, interspersed only every once and a while by a working piece of equipment. What he found instead was nothing less than a sleek and sophisticated laboratory, a well-oiled machine retrofitted seamlessly into the basement of the building. It seemed that a city commission had done the Fentons well. Intricate glassware sat among shelves upon shelves of binders, books and notepads, all accentuated by the glowing light of partially disassembled machinery and the continuous soft drone of high-end equipment. Vlad noted that the Fenton ghost portal, the center of such heated conflict between him and Daniel years before, was sitting inactivated at the far wall. It looked to be in a state of disuse; several boxes and a shelf of files had been piled in front of it, and looked to have been there for some time. Jack showed Vlad absolutely everything, moving animatedly from one object to the next, all the while explaining their current projects and recent discoveries.

"So," said Jack once the extended tour was over. "Whudduya think?" He turned to Vlad, eyes nervous as though his friend's approval would make or break his entire life's work.

"It's one hell of a lab, Jack," Vlad conceded, smiling despite himself.

"I knew it," said Jack, bouncing about happily like a small child. "I knew you'd like it!" In his excitement he leaned back a bit too roughly on a bench piled with delicate equipment, sending a small test tube shattering to the ground. "Oh, damn." Both men watched as the corrosive acid spread and started to fizzle and eat away at the tiled floor.

"You want to perhaps… do something about that?" asked Vlad.

"Uh, yeah…" Jack muttered. "I'll ask Maddie about it later." He nudged a nearby file box away from the spill with his foot. "Should be okay, though, the pH will neutralize in a few minutes."

"Uh-huh." Vlad said, shaking his head, the beginnings of a teasing smirk on his face. He picked up a notepad lying on the bench next to him, leisurely leafing through the pages and running his eyes across a spread of diagrams and calculations written out in Jack's nearly illegible scribble. "Typical," he muttered under his breath. "You know that breaks about fifteen federal regulations on proper lab procedure, right Jack?" Vlad finally said, pointing to the spill with the pad. Jack scoffed good-naturedly.

"You're one to talk, V-Man. I seem to remember a certain research partner who used to clock in to the lab to work at two in the morning high as a kite." Vlad pursed his lips, lightly shrugging off the accusation.

"Hey," he said. "I had work to do; I got it done. No harm no foul."

"Yeah, work. Work like Amy Leher?" Vlad's eyes flashed up from the notepad just in time to catch Jack's devious grin. "Was she proper lab procedure, Vlad?"

"I'm not gratifying that with a response," Vlad muttered, visibly flustered. He hastily plucked a pen off the desk and began to correct an error he'd caught buried in the equations, soothing his discomfort with the rythmicity of the mathematics. How could Jack possibly recall something like that? It happened twenty-six, twenty-seven years ago; Vlad himself hardly remembered—

"Hey, what are you writing?" Jack asked suddenly, carefully sidestepping the acid spill to peer at the notepad. "Those are my notes for the spectral converter—"

"Which you obviously didn't check carefully," Vlad snipped, feeling bit out of sorts at having been caught in the crosshairs of Jack's disturbingly accurate memory. He finished scrawling out a last few variables before handing the pad to Jack, who snatched it back possessively.

"This is all preliminary, you know," muttered Jack in defense of his work, but as he began to read over the corrections Vlad had made to his calculations his eyebrows shot up in surprise. "Hey… this, this looks right," he mused brightly, a grin brightening his features. "This accounts for the drop in conductivity I kept running into at high temperatures!" He flipped through the pages, smile widening as his brain clicked into action. "If these models hold Maddie and I could have this thing built in a couple of months! We'll have something to show the review board after all."

"Review board?" asked Vlad.

"Oh god, yeah," sighed Jack, face falling. "It's part of the commission deal. Every nine months the two of us have got to head downtown and give a little presentation to the city and convince them that we've made enough progress in R&D to retain our funding. They'll pull the plug if we can't show continual development." He cracked his knuckles and rolled his eyes. "It can be a little stressful, to say the least.... Bunch of uptight suits," he muttered. "No offense, or anything."

"None taken," chuckled Vlad. "Rest assured I've been called worse." How odd to think of the always wild and spontaneous Fentons adhering to strict guidelines and federal regulations….

"Anyways," Jack said, "just how do you remember all this?" He waved the pad of equations in Vlad's face. "Twenty-five years out and you're still sharp enough to correct my notes on superconductors just by glancing at them?" Jack looked up at Vlad, grinning widely. "Just how much quantum physics does a guy need to know to be a CEO these days?"

"Oh, well," Vlad began, tucking a strand of hair behind his ear. "I just keep up on it, you know… I read the papers published on whatever looks interesting…." His sentence trailed off when he spotted the skeptical smirk spreading across Jack's face. "What?"

"Oh come on," Jack said bluntly, the grin causing his eyes to twinkle. "You're lying." Vlad blinked.

"I am not," he shot back, but his voice faltered in surprise. Jack shrugged, crossing his arms.

"Well, maybe not lying, but you're definitely keeping something from me," Jack said, his voice arcing up into a light sing-song tone, chuckling at his friend's bemused expression. Vlad's heart, though, was racing. How had Jack seen through his ruse so easily? "With some things," Danny's words from that morning echoed through his head, "…with some things he's actually pretty perceptive…."

"You might as well tell me what it is," Jack continued. "Seeing as how I'm not going to let it go until you tell me." Vlad's eyes narrowed, and he clicked his fingernails against the steel bench behind him, deciding. Finally he rolled his eyes and sighed.

"Oh fine," he muttered, crossing his arms. After all, what harm could it do to tell Jack now, after all these years? "The truth is I went back to school about fifteen years ago as soon—" Vlad paused for a fraction of a second, about to say as soon as I could afford it, quickly revising his story "—as soon as I had the time. I finished my degrees in physics and chemistry…." He bit his lip. "…And I got my MBA."

"Vlad, are you serious?" Jack's eyes went wide. "That's amazing! Why didn't you just tell me that? Why keep it a secret?" Vlad paused and adjusted his glasses, trying to formulate a proper response… and to decide how much information was too much, even for Jack. Maybe, murmured a small part of his mind, especially for Jack.

"I-well, I had to use company money to pay for my education, and that meant a lot of red tape from my investors," Vlad began. "You know, it didn't look very reassuring for the CEO they were backing to ask to reallocate nearly a hundred-thousand dollars so he could finish his business degree." He took a deep breath. "And it wasn't something of which I was exceedingly proud. But in the end I managed to convince them—"

Liar. You embezzled that money.

Vlad froze, choking rather unglamorously on a breath of air. There was that voice in his head again, the voice that sounded like his own but twisted up and wrong. It made his skin crawl. It was louder than ever, and it was laughing.

Crooked bookkeeping, a few well-placed calls, threats, ghost powers—that's how you operate, isn't it, Vlad? You've never really done an honest day's work in your life. Do you even know how?

Stop this pathetic charade. Go ahead, tell your best friend the truth about yourself; he's standing right there. Or better yet, go tell Maddie—I'm sure she'd like to know what a complete fuckup you turned out to be, that she made the right choice leaving you for Jack—

"Vlad? Vlad?"

Jack's voice broke the crest of Vlad's mind, forcing the man back into reality. He felt queasy and frail; his head was reeling and he was gripping the bench behind him so hard his fingers stung. His legs felt liable to buckle beneath him at any second. What was that? What the fuck was that? Vlad looked up, breathing hard, to find Jack eyeing him suspiciously.

"Vlad, you okay?" Vlad nodded, straightening himself up against the bench in an attempt to regain at least a bit of composure. Jack arched a skeptical brow. "You sure?"

"I'm fine, Jack," Vlad said curtly. But of course it was a lie—people who were fine didn't hear voices like that…. Was he going insane? Slowly, Vlad raised a hand to his neck to straighten his tie, only to remember that he wasn't wearing one. He frowned, swallowing the creeping fears and clearing his throat before looking back at Jack. "What, uh, what were you saying?"

"Just that it's great you went back to school," Jack said slowly, tinges of concern and curiosity coloring his voice though he was clearly anxious to get back to the previous subject. "How long did it take you?"

"Two and a half years."

"That's it?" Jack balked. "Two degrees and an MBA in two and a half years?"

"I studied chemistry and physics in college, remember?" Vlad said dully, pulling off his glasses to clean them on the hem of Danny's shirt. They weren't dirty, but he didn't want Jack to see that his hands were shaking. "Chemistry, physics and paranormal studies. I was going to triple major."

"Oh right," said Jack, head tipping thoughtfully to the side as he recalled Vlad's consistently booked college schedule.

"So," continued Vlad, "I didn't have to start from scratch when I went back to school. At least not with the science—that was mainly an issue of getting my old credits to transfer and finishing up what I needed for the degrees. Honestly, I spent most of those two and a half years on the MBA."

"Well, your dad would be proud," said Jack, fiddling absentmindedly with a device on the bench behind him. "Wasn't he always telling you to quit science for business?"

"Ordering, was more like it," muttered Vlad, frowning. "A Soviet capitalist… that man was contradiction incarnate." His voice was low and bitter. "And a complete son of a bitch." Vlad slid the glasses back up his nose, his eyes fiery like angry coals. He crossed his arms and glared disgustedly off to the side, the unnerving voice temporarily forgotten and his mood spoiled at the mention of his father. Jack shifted his weight uncomfortably, rubbing the back of his neck.

"Well, Vlad," he said, laughed weakly, "four degrees. That's pretty impressive… I know we called you crazy for taking all those classes back then, but, I mean, I suppose it all worked out in the end."

"Yes, well, I would have graduated sooner if it wasn't for…" Vlad glanced at Jack over the rims of his glasses. "…certain incidents." Jack's eyes widened and fell to the floor. The temperature of the room seemed to drop about ten degrees.

"You mean the accident," he murmured quietly. It wasn't a question. Vlad glared up at Jack, sharp eyes flashing behind the newly shined lenses.

"I do." Vlad didn't care to check the vehemence in his tone. He couldn't help it; what was Jack thinking, nosing about his past and bringing up his father…. Vlad was positively livid. He wanted Jack to feel absolutely terrible about what he'd done, if only for a moment. The idiot deserved it. And for the briefest second Vlad saw a spasm of dark emotion flit across Jack's downturned face, though it vanished before he could identify it properly.

"I…" Jack began, face pained. "Vlad, it-it wasn't supposed to happen; you have to believe me, I didn't know…."

"It happened a long time ago, Jack," interrupted Vlad tersely. As satisfying as it was to see that hollow look on Jack's face, the truth was that the lab accident was something Vlad had never been comfortable talking about. "It happened in the past, and that's where it belongs. The past. Okay?" Jack winced before swallowing and nodding firmly.

"Okay, you're right. Best to just move on." He turned and picked up the knife Vlad had given him. "Now let's take a look at this thing and see if we can't get it working—"

His sentence was cut off as a door slammed loudly upstairs.

"Danny?" Maddie's voice echoed faintly down the stairs. Both men stopped, their eyes flashing to the stairwell, listening intently. For a few moments the voices were too low to make out clearly. Suddenly, though—

"Danny, your face! Are you bleeding? What on earth happened to you?"

"Dammit, mom, I told you I'm fine! No-no-no, just stay away from me! God, what the hell is wrong with you?"

"Danny, please! Let me help you! You're hurt!"

"No! What the fuck do you care, anyways? You never showed this much interest before—"

"What are you talking about Danny? I'm your mother! I've always loved you!" Danny laughed harshly. There was a jumble of activity followed by the sound of something glass shattering on the floor. "Daniel Charles Fenton!" screeched Maddie. "Are you drunk?"

"So what if I am?"

"It is two-thirty in the afternoon!" Maddie's voice was filled with exasperated rage. "It is two-thirty in the afternoon and you've just staggered into this house drunk and bleeding! Where in the world have you been?"

"It's none of your goddamn business, that's where I've been!" roared Danny.

"Daniel!"

"Oh fuck off, mom!" The boy's scathing voice grew distant as he traveled up to the second floor. "Go call Jazz and cry about it for a while; you'll feel better…." There was another faint slam that Vlad supposed was Danny shutting himself in his room, and an odd strangled sound from Maddie that sounded like halfway between a scream and a sob, followed by nothing but awful silence. The entire exchange had taken less than two minutes.

"Sorry about that, Vlad." Jack's voice was as small and strained as Vlad had ever heard it. Vlad, rather uncomfortable and at a loss for words, looked up from the bench he'd been staring at and was slightly taken aback by Jack's pallid expression.

"Don't worry about it, Jack," said Vlad. His eyes flicked towards the stairs. "Do you need to, you know… see to things up there?"

"No. Maddie's tough; she can handle it." Jack's voice was gruff, and Vlad got the distinct feeling that the answer was an excuse to avoid the situation upstairs. "This kind of thing isn't all that unusual, after all," Jack finally grumbled. Vlad shifted his weight, adjusting his glasses as he tried to process what he was hearing and formulate an appropriate response but finding himself unable to do either.

For a long time Jack cradled the small device he'd picked up in his hand, fingers mindlessly twisting the coppery ends of two frayed wires together, lost in thought. His face was heavy with a look of dark and brooding contemplation.

"Vlad?"

"Yes?"

"I-I have… well, I have a favor to ask of you." Jack's eyes flashed quickly to Vlad's before dropping down again. He was clearly breaching an uncomfortable topic but seemed set in his determination to do so.

"A favor?"

"Yeah. About Danny."

"Oh?" Vlad's voice was high and small.

"Yeah…. I was wondering—Well, actually, Maddie and I were both wondering if maybe you could… talk to him." Vlad arched a brow in confusion.

"You want me to talk to him? Why? About what?" Jack fidgeted, brow knit together.

"You heard what happened up there," he muttered. "The truth is that ever since Danny left for school he's been so distant… his behavior's changed, he doesn't keep in touch—"

"He is twenty, Jack," said Vlad, keen to evade the favor. There was no way he could talkto Danny. Not now. "Did you get along with your parents when you were twenty? It's probably just a phase—"

"I'm worried about him, Vlad," said Jack, and there was a stern kind of desperation in his voice that shut up Vlad and commanded his attention. "He drinks, he smokes, I've caught him with pot and I know he does worse than that. His grades are erratic; he's not going to class. I contacted his professors and they told me skips more classes than he attends." Jack set down the device he was holding and rubbed his temples.

"But that's not the worst of it, Vlad. His roommate last year told me Danny would be gone for long periods of time—he'd disappear for three, four, five whole days, and when he'd show up again he'd be drunk or high and looking like he hadn't slept in all that time…." Jack's sentence trailed off and he stared blankly across the lab to a far wall. When he spoke again his voice was strained. "He lost five jobs last year, Vlad. Five. In six months. He's got one now thank god, but who knows how long that'll last…. This kind of behavior—it's-it's not like him, Vlad. Danny was a good kid; he never had these kinds of problems before." Vlad crossed his arms, frowning. When he spoke again his mouth was unnaturally dry.

"Have you ever tried talking to him, Jack?"

"Of course," spat Jack, almost disparagingly. "But he refuses to talk to Maddie and I, and if we try to press him he gets upset. We tried to sit him down and talk to him last year, kind of like an intervention, and it turned into an argument so loud I'm still shocked the neighbors didn't call the police." His face turned grim. "Danny stormed out of the house—we didn't hear a word from him for four and a half months after that. He wouldn't even come home for Christmas…. That was hard for Maddie." He shrugged. "It was hard for all of us." Vlad said nothing.

"And as for his friends," Jack continued, "well, there was only ever really Sam and Tucker, and they haven't told us anything. I thought they'd know something; after all, the three of them used to be thick as thieves, I didn't really see how they couldn't. But they've denied knowing anything helpful every time I've asked."

"I see."

"I'm scared Danny's going to get himself into serious trouble, Vlad," said Jack finally. "He's got a problem controlling his temper. There've been fights; he broke a kid's nose at school last May—"

"What? Why?"

"I'm not sure. He wouldn't ever really tell us. But he was really bent out of shape about the whole thing. I think… I think the kid was bullying him about being gay. You know, teasing him about it? I heard Danny talking on the phone to someone… Anyways, we're lucky the parents didn't file a lawsuit; they threatened to at first."

"Hmm."

"Look, I'm not trying to force you into anything you don't want to do," reading Vlad's impassive expression. "But I was just hoping that you could at least try… he might open up to you. You've got certain things in common… that might make talking easier…." It took Vlad a second to make sense of the 'certain things' Jack was referring to.

"You mean because I'm bi?" he finally sputtered. "Is that why you're asking me?"

"I'm asking you because I trust you, Vlad," said Jack earnestly. "But…well, I mean, okay, yeah, that's also part of it. I-I can't tell you how hard it was for me—I knew he had questions, I knew he was confused, but I didn't know how to help him at all." He looked down at the ground, clearly ashamed. "And a father's supposed to be able to help his son learn about that part of life, you know?" He said to the floor. "But what was I supposed to tell him? The things he was experiencing weren't the same things I experienced when I was his age. I wanted Danny to be able to come to me for answers, to be able to talk to me and confide in me and trust me… but it didn't take either of us very long to figure out I didn't know how to help him. Not really." For some reason Vlad was finding it difficult to breathe.

"The truth is that I thought of asking you before… but things just come up, and, well, I didn't want to put that kind of burden on you then." Jack rubbed his neck, a nervous half-smile spreading on his face. "I know it's a lot to ask. But things have gotten so bad between Danny and Maddie and me lately. " The smile disappeared. "I feel like I'm losing my son, Vlad. And I'm scared because I feel like I might actually lose him—there's times when I won't hear from him for weeks and weeks I feel like I'm just sitting and waiting for the call telling me that he… that he's…." His voice broke and finally trailed away, sending a wavering needle of guilty sympathy through Vlad's reserved psyche.

"Well," said Jack finally, "I just want my son back. And you're my best friend, Vlad; I've known you since I was ten. So yeah, I think he might open up to you because you're bi, but I'm asking you because I wouldn't trust this to anyone else."

Vlad shifted, surprised to find he was actually considering the offer. Because as much as he wanted to say no, he wasn't sure how he could. Jack's words had worn on his usually indifferent heart like waves on a crumbling shore. Still, after what had transpired between him and Danny, agreeing to spend further time with the boy seemed like a Pandora's box of poor decision. And aside from all that, Vlad didn't know the first thing about raising kids. Even on his best day, how good of a mentor could he possibly be?

"I don't know, Jack," Vlad said hesitantly, but he stopped when he saw Jack's face fall in an expression of crushing disappointment. The man's entire body seemed about ready to implode in sorrow. And, be it because of Jack or guilt or some combination of the two, Vlad changed his mind. "Well, okay," he sighed. "I'll try."

"Oh thank god, Vlad," said Jack, clasping his hands together in gratitude. "Thank you, thank you, thank you—"

"Well, don't count your chickens," Vlad warned, stuffing his hands in his pockets. "But I'll be in Chicago for a few weeks anyways, so we'll see what happens." Jack grinned and was about to say something when the door to the upstairs swung open.

"Vlad?" Maddie stepped into the lab, holding what Vlad recognized as his phone in her hand. "You missed a call," she said, handing it to him. "I figured it was probably important, so I fished it out of your coat pocket for you."

"Thank you, Maddie," said Vlad, flashing her a quick smile. Her eyes were slightly bloodshot and puffy. "It was my broker," he muttered scathingly, seeing up the man's name flash on his caller ID. "I should call him back before he fucks up my entire portfolio." Jack chuckled.

"No rest for the weary, huh?" he said. Vlad grinned.

"Not a chance."

---

Twenty minutes later Vlad shivered against the biting cold, turning halfway to wave a final goodbye to Jack and Maddie before stepping outside and shutting the door behind him. The weather seemed to have taken a turn for the worse; angry clouds churned low in the sky, spurred on by a vicious wind. Vlad pulled the collar of his coat tight around his neck as he made his way to his car, carefully sidestepping several murky puddles leftover from the previous night's storm that were now in the process of freezing over.

Vlad's parking job wasn't exactly spectacular. The man found his little silver car wedged nearly sideways across three spaces, the left side of the nose just a few centimeters from the curb. And he'd left his headlights on. For over twelve hours. In this freezing Chicago weather. Perfect. It was lucky his cars were kept in immaculate condition, Vlad thought moodily, yanking open the door and slumping into the driver's seat. If they weren't, the battery would most likely die before he was halfway downtown, and he'd find himself stranded on the Skyway or in some similar mess.

"Which would be the perfect way to top off a truly hellish two days," Vlad grumbled to the windshield. He noticed with a frown that big, fluffy snowflakes were beginning to fall, collecting on the tinted glass. He swore bitterly and reached for the ignition.

"Language, Vlad," came a sardonic voice to his right. Vlad yelped, jumping a few inches in surprise and scrambling around to locate the origin of the voice. And there he found, much to his shock and displeasure, a lethargic Danny stretched out across the passenger's seat, staring out the window with just the faintest hint of a grin submerged in his features.

"Get-get the hell out of my car, Daniel!" Vlad gasped, snarling as he tried to recover from the unpleasant shock of having the boy suddenly appear next to him. Danny only turned his head slightly, meeting Vlad's glare with a defiant gaze.

"No," he said flatly. Vlad could see a nasty reddening scrape at his temple that had yet to scab. It must have been the wound Maddie had seen when she'd noticed Danny was bleeding. "We've got unfinished business to deal with, Vlad," said Danny. He turned away from Vlad again, running a listless finger across the wood paneling of the dashboard. "Nice car, by the way."

"Daniel," warned Vlad, his grip tightening on the wheel. "I don't have time for this." He pointed to the door. "Get out."

"Make time," said Danny simply, drawing his knees up to his chest and twisting his body about to face Vlad completely. "This is important. We need to talk."

"I thought we agreed to not speak of what happened again," growled Vlad. Danny shrugged.

"Well, I know I said that," he said innocently, his grin widening. "But then I got to thinking, and I realized that that conversation wasn't very fair." Vlad felt his heart begin to thump in his chest when he noticed that Danny was slowly leaning forward, inching towards him in an overtly seductive fashion. His eyes darted quickly to the Fenton's building, as if expecting to find an outraged Jack and Maddie staring at the scene unfolding in the car through the back window. But he saw nothing save bleak bits of ash-like snow—he and Daniel were very much alone.

When Vlad turned back, he saw the boy's face was already just inches from his own, and with a frustrated grunt he scooted as far backwards as possible, pressing his back uncomfortably against the uneven surface of the door. The smell of liquor on the boy was nearly overpowering.

"Are you drunk, Daniel?" Vlad hissed. "Again?" Danny only laughed, strands of thick dark hair falling into his eyes.

"What's the difference?" he mumbled sloppily, leaning in further. He was almost entirely in Vlad's seat by now. "You look cute with your glasses on, you know," he said, reaching up to Vlad's face to poke at a lens. "I didn't get a chance to tell you earlier."

"Oh my god, Daniel," said Vlad. Desperate and exasperated, he smacked Danny's roaming hand away. This was far, far, far too reminiscent of the night before—

"Don't make this same mistake again, Daniel," Vlad mumbled breathily, shuddering as Danny took the opportunity to press against him fully, pinning Vlad between his warm body and the deathly cold window. But it did feel good, felt just as good as it had the previous night, and just as before, Vlad felt his body reacting in a very inappropriate way. His hands were already tangled in the boy's hair, pulling their bodies closer together.

"Oh, but it wasn't a mistake, Vlad," whispered Danny in his ear, his hot breath making the hairs on the back of Vlad's neck stand on end. "I wanted what happened last night." Hands were on Vlad's shoulders. "I wanted more." Hands were on his chest. "And so did you." Hands were kneading into his skin, sweeping across to his back, moving so perfectly with Vlad that the man tipped his head back and began to pant into the roof of the car—

"Daniel, please," managed Vlad between breaths, feeling his own body move against Danny's as if of it's own accord. "I don't want… I-I can't take advantage of you like this. Not again…." But even as he said it he shifted position slightly, spreading his legs apart just enough to let Danny slide in between them. The boy sighed in obvious pleasure.

"Then stop me, Vlad," Danny said huskily, nipping along the edge of Vlad's jaw. "Stop me if you don't want this." Vlad growled but said nothing.

They spent a few minutes like that, moving against one another, nipping and biting and scratching, walled in by the steering wheel, leather upholstery, and quickly fogging windows. And it was at that time, when he was convinced that there was no going back, no use in even trying to comprehend how many kinds of wrong what they were doing was, that Vlad finally dared to delve his hand into Danny's pants.

"Oh god, Vlad," moaned Danny, arching his back and thrusting up into Vlad's palm. "Oh fuck, Vlad, fuck, I don't care, I love you. I love you so much." And his lips came crashing down onto Vlad's so hard the man barely had time to register that a tongue was pushing deep into his throat. But those things paled in comparison to what happened next, because at that exact moment Vlad felt something shift in the space around him. He was falling; a pocket of dense air seemed to ripple through his body, and before Vlad even felt the explosion of icy air on his skin, his head slammed back into gravelly concrete so hard the wind was knocked from his lungs.

And in that moment of impact Vlad sensed several things, like grotesquely tangible images, very fast and all at once: the scent of old-fashioned ink, a mechanical beep and a flash of red light, a casket, a revolver, the echo of a searing pain in his side, the crash of an empty bottle of gin as it shattered against a wall, and, far off, a sea of warped and shadowy faces staring down at him, though whether they stared in reverence or contempt or something else entirely Vlad couldn't quite tell. They were already steeped in shadow, stretching out into a limitless horizon, as taut and brittle as a string about to snap.

The first thing Vlad saw as his eyes fluttered open was swirling grey Chicago sky. Though he felt as though he'd traveled a thousand miles, he was merely sprawled on his back on the ground outside his car, glasses askew. Blinking to clear his head, Vlad let snowflakes fall and melt on his face, slowly coming to grips with what had just happened: he'd phased through the door of the car.