Well well well.

Look who's still alive.

that's right, Freedom toaster.

Woo.

LAST TIME, on this stupid little story you've all probably forgotten about:

"You.." she choked out, her hand slowly stroking the side of his face in an unconscious movement, "you have a pulse." Her throat was burning, and it hurt as she swallowed. "You can't fake that. I can feel it. You have to be human." Her hand fell from his face to land heavily in her lap.

"Danny, how did you get out here? I mean really, don't lie to me. Not now." She stared earnestly into his wide eyes, blinking hard to hold the tears back. 'Stupid teenaged hormones. It should take a lot more than this to make me cry. Gotta be the stress. I'm not even sad.' A bitter chuckle tried to force its way out of her chest, but she held it back. 'I've eliminated a pretty big chunk of my theories,' she thought ruefully, 'I should be relieved,'

'But I'm not.'

AND WHOOOOO HERE WE GO.

She looked like she was trying not to cry.

…

Well, shit.

HIS ONE WEAKNESS.

Crying females.

Seriously, give him a ghost with a flaming sword and missiles of death any day of the week; he could deal. Crying girls? Yeah, not so much.

'Okay, Fenton, as long as she doesn't actually start to cry, you're set. Just… don't let the actual tears come, 'cause then you're screwed, and we both know it.'

Wait a second, 'Both'?

Dammit.

Reeeally not the best time for hidden psychological issues to surface.

GAH focus, Dammit.

Okay.

He, he really didn't want to lie to her. She was so close, and he felt like she was really reaching out to him. Maybe… maybe this was his chance. He'd contemplated telling her about his ghost half when they'd been going out, but in the end she'd broken up with him before he'd actually done it.

'Maybe I could make her understand. She's not holding a gun to my face anymore, and even though she obviously knows something is up she's sitting pretty darn close to me.'

Could he do this?

There was the wee problem of being completely at her mercy…

But he was pretty sure she wouldn't try to annihilate him as long as she knew he was a human, 'I mean, that's what made her let Danni go, right? That human connection?'

…

He was going to go ahead and file that as a 'Maybe'.

And that meant, if he did tell her and she went berserk, he'd need an escape route.

'hmmm hmm hmm…escape route…OH! No flipping DUH Fenton.' He'd just have to get her to get the cuffs off. And then, if she decided to kill him he'd be able to go intangible or something and convince her that the whole thing had been a trick, courtesy of Danny Phantom. 'Depressingly defeats the whole point of telling her by that point, since I'll just make her hate me more but WHATEVER at least she'll only hate half of me.'

Okay.

Now to get her to take off the cuffs.

Hmm.

"Before I say anything, you think you could do me a favor and get these things off of me? Reeeally cutting off blood flow, if you know what I mean." He smiled nervously.

She stared.

He was gonna try to do a runner, wasn't he.

She fuckin' knew it.

Damn him.

And yet…She was going to take the cuffs off anyway.

He was Danny. The pulse proved he was human and really, at this point her mind was just too tired to think up any other options. She was pretty sure she'd just drive herself in a circle, anyway.

"Haha, I mean really, Val, Do you tie up all your boyfriends this way or am I just special?"

Her face twisted.

Okay never mind. He could rot.

He was mentally smacking himself in the face.

'Damn you adrenalin!'

Always seemed to release his inner smart-ass.

Valerie stood, the urge to cry pushed away by the brand new urge to smack the shit out of her ex.

"Yeah, see, I was thinking about it, but now… Not like you need to stand to talk."

She smirked. "What are you going to do if I get rid of the cuffs, Danny? Run away? If I just don't let you go, I don't have to worry about it at all."

She bent down, resting her arm on the tree above his head and letting her face dip down until their noses were almost touching.

"And you know what, Danny? If you're not going to talk, I think I'll just leave you here."

He blinked.

She grinned and straightened, before spinning on her heal and starting to walk away.

Danny watched her walk away, hips swinging, as he gaped in shock. 'Okay THAT was unexpected. Jeebus girls are weird.' He stared for a moment more, trying really really hard not to stare as her ass. (And could you blame him? Curvy lady wearing skin-tight red leather in prime position for ass-staring, Right in front of him.) Wait a second. She was actually leaving. "Seriously?! Val, Come on! You can't just leave me here!"

Her voice, muffled a bit since she hadn't turned around, carried back to him. "What was that? Was it the sound of someone offering to tell me the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?"

"Seriously?!" He yelped.

"I'm not hearing truth-telling!" she sing-songed back.

"Fine! I'll tell you the truth! Jeesh, just don't leave me here!"

Valerie Grinned. 'Hah, knew he'd cave.'

She resisted the urge to giggle, knowing full well that she was still a little high off of the burst of adrenalin she's gotten from acting like a total BAMF and damn but she really wished she'd had a camera. His face had been priceless.

She did an about-face and slowly started walking back towards him, being really extra careful to swing her hips just a little extra more because really, it wasn't like it could hurt, right?

As smoking hot as Valerie looked slowly making her way over to Danny, his attention was elsewhere. It had been snatched away just a split second before by a strange, high pitched whining noise that was growing louder each moment. Danny was frozen, ears straining as he tried to make out what the hell it was.

"Val," he said lowly, "Can you hear that?"

She halted, surprised. "Hear what?"

The sound increased, and soon he was wincing, longing to be able to pull his hands up to his ears in an attempt to block it out.

"Danny?" Her voice was worried and he could hear her footsteps quicken as she hurried over to his hunched figure. "Are you alright?"

"Yeah" he managed to gasp out, "Yeah, I'm fine, that noise, it's just…really loud." She was kneeling next to him, hand on his shoulder, leaning in close. This would have been awesome if he wasn't about to bleed his brains right out his dang ears.

Valerie couldn't hear anything.

And it was scaring the shit of of her.

What if he had some sort of head injury, like a burst blood vessel or a concussion or something and it was all her fault? She had hit him quite a few times, and it had been surprising that he'd been okay so quickly… What if he hadn't been? 'No, don't feel relieved that means he's INJURED!' She was panicking, her hands fluttering around, afraid to touch him in case she made it worse. 'Ah! Girl, wachu you doin'? Undo those dang cuffs now! If anything's making him worse, it's those!' She scooted quickly around to the back of the tree, fumbling frantically for the key. It took her two tries but she finally got it in the key-hole, twisting ferociously and nearly breaking the key off in the lock in her hurry to get them off of him. As his wrists were released he fell forward, eyes screwed shut, and she quickly gathered him to her, brushing his hair away from his forehead. "Where does it hurt, Danny?!"

He looked up at her blearily. What the hell kind of a question was that. His ears, obviously. The problem was a noise and as soon as he'd been able to he'd clamped his hands to the sides of his head. His 'what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-you' look was apparently effective because the next thing out of her mouth was a slightly embarrassed "Oh. Yeah. My bad."

The noise was getting both louder and higher pitched and he couldn't help but curl in on himself as though it would help him get away from it. What the hell was going on? He could seriously barely think. Agh.

Valerie was still trying to talk to him, but he could hardly hear her, let alone actually comprehend what she was saying. Suddenly, she stood. He took a moment to miss the comfort of her arms around him before getting back to being in incomprehensible pain.

No.

NO.

She was standing, Danny collapsed at her feet (again), staring in horror at the scanner on her suit.

She'd been about to attempt a scan on him in the hopes that it might help her figure out what was wrong with him when she'd noticed that the newly installed ghost repeller had apparently been switched on when she'd leaned her arm against the tree Danny had been cuffed to.

The Ghost repeller emitted a high pitched whine that was tuned especially to ghosts, kind of like a dog whistle except for the fact that it was supposed to be painful as fuck and as such would keep ghosts as far away as possible.

And it looked like Danny was reacting to it.

He had a pulse.

She'd been reasonably sure he wasn't overshadowed.

And yet, he could hear the ghost repeller.

What. The. FUCK.

…

Goddammit.

AAAAND we're done.

Yay.

Reviews of all kinds make my days brighter.

I know deep down y'all are pissy little smart asses, so come on, gimme yer best flame...is what I'd say if I wasn't such a wuss.

:D

Love you all except not really 'cause I don't know any of you~

Okay, like you a lot by way of mutual obsession over fanfiction.

Also there was a lot of cussing in this. does that offend anyone? if so, tell me so i can go back and change it all to "Crud" and "Darn".