Wrote this a couple of years ago and rediscovered it. Danny is a ghost in case you can't tell, just not a half ghost. I was listening to "The Road" by Nick Cave while re-reading and I got a bit teary, just a warning for anyone who can't handle sad stuff. Didn't revise, so sorry about any typos.

I don't own Danny Phantom.

I. Danny watches as the steam rises from the portal, the smell of charred flesh being taken with it. Floating around the room and marking the boxes and contraptions with his scent. He watches as they drag him out from inside the mess of wires, his friend's faces crumbling as they see him die. Sam is the loudest of them all, louder than the alarms of the approaching ambulance and the sobs of his sister. She curses and grabs at his shirt, screaming at him to wake up.

"I wish I could..."

But his voice does not carry, and he is forced to watch as the paramedics arrive. They push past his friends to get to him, but still they do not move from his side. Sam chokes on her sobs as she grasps at his shirt that is still stuck to his skin.

Danny wants to go to them and make them feel better, the weight of being the reason for Sam's tears and Tucker's pain unbearable. He can only stand and watch. He watches as Jazz is ushered out of the room, and he watches as she clutches the phone with her still shaking hands and informs their parents about his death.

He can still hear Sam's sobs as she screams, and Tucker, unable to bare the sight, grabs his things and goes home.

"Don't leave me, don't you dare leave me!" she screams at his body.

Even when the paramedics declare him dead, and leave the room shaking their heads at the loss of another young life, she remains by his side. Her body convulses with the shock, and the tears flow freely down her face and land in messy splotches onto his skin. She runs a shaky hand over his face, pushing away the singed pieces of his bangs.

He wants to badly to feel her warmth once again, the coldness of this new existence almost exhausting. Yet, he cannot, and so he watches as his parents come home and usher her out the door.

II. He watches later that night as she sits on her bed and looks at their pictures.

She's not crying anymore, she's done crying. He silently thanks her for that.

"I'm so sorry, Danny... if only I hadn't..." and a final tear falls on the picture of the three of them, blurring his face with its wetness. Her words from earlier that day come back to him, and he kneels beside her bed.

"I won't leave you, Sam. I'm always right here, whenever you need me just call out."

But again his words do not carry, and she shivers and tucks the photo under her pillow.

III. He watches his own funeral, full of people he's never seen before.

Amongst his friends stand his bullies and his teachers, and a tall gentlemen with a goatee and perfectly slicked backed hair. He wonders who these people are, and why they were never there when he was alive. He silently curses their presence, and watches as they pretend to care. Soon the crowds depart, and he is left standing between his mother and his father. They do not notice his presence, for they gave up ghost hunting the day it costs him his life. They are dressed in black and not their usual jovial orange and blue, and he waits for his father to make an exclamation about fudge, or threaten to tear someone apart molecule by molecule, but he never does.

Instead he grabs his wife by the waist and guides her back to the car.

IV. He watches as the portals open up around him, whispering at him to come home.

He shakes his head and walks away, the vortexes of black and green too lonely and lifeless for his liking. He continues on, hoping that one day someone will notice he's there. But he watches each night as they go to sleep. His parents, Jazz, and Tucker. He watches as each night they will away the pain of another day, and move on without him by their side. Soon he visits Sam, but she does not sleep. Instead she lays in the darkness and she does anything but sleep, because with sleep come the nightmares.

He can hear her in her mind as she prays for death, to join him where ever he is. He can feel the guilt crushing down on her lungs. But he does not blame her, and only wishes for her to move on as the others have. He only wishes for her to sense him so he can say goodbye at last, but she never does. So he turns away and walks away into the night, unable to handle her prayers any longer.

V. He watches in class as he sits in his old desks amongst his peers.

He watches and waits for Mr. Lancer to call on him, but he never does. He watches as his eyes trail over his desk briefly and pause, and a flutter of hope sparks in the vast emptiness where his heart used to lay. But Mr. Lancer does not pause for long, and the weary old man chooses someone else to answer the question. So Danny leaves, and joins his friends again after school.

VI. He watches his friends in their booth at the Nasty Burger, where only two trays of fries sit in front of him.

He reaches out once more to try and grasp Sam's warmth, but his fingers pass harmlessly through her skin. She recoils instantly, feeling the chills rack her body at his touch. He pulls his hand away and lays it in his lap.

"I can't keep doing this, Tucker," she says as she pushes the fries away to continue. "I can't keep pretending like everything is perfectly normal when it's not. He's dead because of us..."

He watches as she wipes away her tears and laughs bitterly. "Hell, I keep expecting him to march through those doors, arms flailing and yelling at us about why we didn't wait up for him."

He resists the urge to comfort her, because she turns away at his touch. So he watches as Tucker does it for him, and silently thanks his friend.

"You need to stop blaming yourself. I'm sure if Danny were here, he'd want us to be able to move on. He'd want us to be happy, okay?"

And he watches as Tucker reaches out and rubs her comfortingly on the shoulder. He can't hear her prayers for death anymore, only sometimes when she lays in bed and cries. But those stop too, eventually. And he waits for the green and black portals to open again, but they never do.

VII. He watches as they all grow old.

He watches as Sam marries a handsome musician with a funny hair cut and sharp tongue, and he watches as she has lots of kids and grows old with him. And sometimes he'd visit her still, but she doesn't sense him.

Sometimes he'd visit her children, and they'd cry and run into her bedroom complaining of the weird boy in the jumpsuit who stands by their bed at night. She'd laugh at their imaginations and run her hands through their hair, singing comforting tunes to them. When her children are asleep between her and her husband, she'd reach under her pillow searching for the picture from so long ago, forgetting that it's not there anymore and wondering where it could have gone. She'd sigh and roll over on her side, bringing the blankets higher over her shoulder.

And Danny watches as she moves on, but he has nowhere to go.

VIII. He watches as his parents die in their beds, silently and peacefully.

He tries to reach out to them, but they pass by quickly into the black and green vortexes, hand in hand. One by one he watches them all go, Mr. Lancer and the gentlemen with the slicked back hair. So he has no choice but to visit Sam and Tucker and Jazz again, but still they do not notice him. So he talks, and he doesn't care that no one listens. He talks about his dreams that are faint memories now, and talks about his actual memories, and his feelings and things he had never expressed before. And he talks about anything and everything, convinced that eventually the wind will stop and let his words be carried to their ears, but they still do not hear him.

And eventually they die too, and the black and green vortexes still do not open for him.

So he goes home.

IX. He watches as parts of the ceiling crumble and the termites eat away at the floorboards.

He lays in his room from so long ago, on his bed where he is nothing but a breeze now. No one buys his house for a very long time, and things stay as they are. But eventually people come, but he does not want them there. The family with the little boy and girl, who took down the rusty Fenton Works sign and marked the house as their own. He does not want them there, so he throws the chairs at their faces and watches as it breaks their noses and he screams at the top of his lungs from the anger and the loneliness.

And he wishes for tears to cascade down his face as he does these things, but all that is there is the coldness and the air as it passes through his form. When he throws the boy down the stairs, the family leaves and he sits once again on his bed.

No one comes back for a while, and the word of the haunted house travels around town. This is not his town anymore, and he does not recognize anyone. Everyone he once knew is dead, and so he lays once again on his bed and watches as the rats and cockroaches become his only companions.

X. He watches as the posters on the wall crumble as decades roll by.

He forgets his name and who he was, the tale of his life and those who used to be in it. All he recognizes is the fallen and dusty figure of the room and the house, and the need to protect it being the only reason he still exists. So when they try and take it away from him, he kills them. He kills them by snapping their necks and throwing their own knives at them, and he watches in envy as they too pass into the swirling portals.

Soon the pain of watching them pass on becomes too much, and he limits himself to the room. He does not know why he feels so strongly about this room, but he does not let them take it. He lets them take the house, but not the room. And when they try to move the rusty bed and pick up the fallen posters of rocket ships, he kills them and watches as they too pass on.

And he feels colder than he ever has before, but he does not care. He has forgotten what warmth feels like now. All he knows is the room with the rats and the cockroaches and the picture he keeps under his pillow of the girl with the black hair and purple eyes who stares back at him.