Epilogue: Swear This Heart You'll Save

Rated for violence and very dark themes. Very heavily based on Let The Right One In. Look for the heart, and skip the bad stuff to the happy ending. (Just gave it away, lol.)

I'm not really in the Danny Phantom fandom anymore, but I thought I'd finish this. I'm sorry it took so long.

Please read safely, everyone.

~o*oOo*o~

Mrs. Ives talked with the parents a bit more; a still unhappy Mr. and Mrs. Baxter made it clear that the school was to expect a threatening letter from their lawyer. Danny was relieved when the principal asked Mr. and Mrs. Fenton to take him home for the day, but somewhat disappointed when Mrs. Baxter insisted on signing Dash out, too. He would've liked other children to have looked at Dash's brilliantly violent eye, and asked what'd happened. He would've liked more for Dash to be stuck for an answer.

(Oh, Dash would come up with some lie—he'd dig his grave before admitting that the twig boy he tortured on a daily basis finally snapped back—but for a moment, he'd be stuck, fumbling, and that was enough.)

But Danny's thoughts abruptly barreled into a wall with all the force of a locomotive when briefly he and Dash made eye contact as Mr. Fenton dragged Danny out the door. Dash was squinting at him over his mother's shoulder. One good purple orb met two blue, and suddenly Danny was very, very glad to be suspended for the day. His stomach turned to ice, turned its contents inside out.

A small arrow of fear pierced him, twisting and turning through numbness until it had wormed its way into his heart. He plummeted from his high back to Earth, heart pounding in his throat, palms glistening with sweat. Only his parents' presence kept him from tearing down the hall.

Dash's evil eye spelled certain revenge. The courage that had carried him before failed him.

He was dead.

"I'm very disappointed in you, young man," said Maddie sharply as the Fenton RV sped down the block.

Jack bobbed his head absentmindedly from the front seat and hiccupped. Jazz sat in the backseat beside Danny, hands folded neatly in her lap. Her eyes positively glittered.

"No dessert for a week," The woman added reprovingly. "And no video games."

Danny clicked his booted toes against each other. This was fine, really, and not just because Mommy would likely forget her words the following morning. Jazz kept the gaming counsel in her room anyway and if he were really so desperate to eat sweets he could take from Daddy's private stash, the one Daddy told Danny Mommy didn't really need to know about.

But Maddie was not yet finished. "You are not allowed to play outside. And don't think for a second you'll be watching any television. The set stays off this week."

Danny wondered why he didn't cry. What would have tortured him before—being punished, his parents' anger, the knowledge that Jazz would always be the better and more-loved child—didn't stir him. Something about this seemed ludicrously funny, cartoonish even. He wondered at it.

"What?" exclaimed Jazz, the grin melting off her face like sugarcane in the rain. "But I want to watch My Tiny Unicorn! You said I could watch the movie on Tuesday because I got an A on my history project! Mommy…"

"I didn't mean you, Jasmine," Maddie said wearily, running a hand through her hair. "Danny, you will have no playdates with Tucker. I'll have to call Beth and cancel the one you had tomorrow."

This was a marvelous stroke of luck, something he didn't dare to hope for. He caught sight of himself in the rearview mirror and looked down, hiding his face so that he looked regretful and contrite. Thankfully, his mother could not see him smiling.

"Also," Maddie went on, "No trips to the library."

Jack threw his hands up in the air as the car zipped up the driveway, narrowly avoiding hitting the neighbor's cat.

"Maddie, the boy threw a snowball. That's all. For God's sake, why don't we just shut him up in the Fenton stockades while we're at it?"

The woman flew at him.

"He humiliated me, Jack, the way you humiliate me every day! Not only does that woman think we encourage our children to be violent, she sees Danny's father come in smashed and with a busted bucket for a brain!"

"So if I'm so useless, why don't you shut me away?" Jack challenged irritably.

"Good question! It's not like you're good for anything else!"

"My credit card is apparently good for something, you—"

While the two shouted at each other, Jazz and Danny silently undid their seatbelts and went inside. Jazz headed straight to the cookie jar, not really hungry but flaunting the fact that she could eat sweets with impunity. Danny simply headed up the stairs without another word, little hand trailing on the banister as he went.

She listened. Not one scream of anger, nor one sob. Just a deathly hush, though she could certainly hear her parents making a ruckus outside. Shrugging, Jazz dipped her hand back in and rummaged. A moment later, she wondered at the muffled noise that sounded suspiciously close to laughter.

When Danny opened his door he found Vlad sitting on the bed, absentmindedly playing with a stuffed bunny. Looking fretful, the blue-skinned specter avoided looking at the child for a moment as Danny closed the door.

"….I heard what happened," he confessed, "After you took my advice." Biting his lip and wringing the bunny's ears, he turned his remorseful eyes in Danny's direction.

"Oh, little badger, I'm-"

The man jolted as Danny rushed into his arms, effectively knocking the wind out of him. Danny simply beamed at him as he pulled back, hair falling messily into his face.

"Thank you," said the boy said sincerely. "Today was the best day of my life."

~o*oOo*o~

It must be said that Danny handled punishment much more effectively than most children his age would have. While he missed playing outside, recess was never much fun anyway because he had to avoid Qwan's taunts, or Dash grinding his face in the sandbox. So he helped Ms. Star organize the art cabinet or straighten books without much fuss. The woman didn't mind him wandering to the book corner in the classroom to read afterwards.

Yes, Danny thought he'd gotten a good deal, considering the looks Dash would give him when he thought no one was looking. Danny looked up from his picture book one day and saw Dash staring at him from outside, seething. Danny immediately looked down at his book again, but Dash's image remained burnt over his eyes, still drawing his finger across his throat.

Gone was the smug placid smile Dash wore when he sashayed up to Danny and tortured him. Now Dash's eyes were set with anger, narrow and shining and hard with pure hate. Danny needed to wipe his glistening palms against his pants when he rose again for lunch.

True, Dash and his cronies kept their distance now coming and going before school, but that was because Maddie drove them to school now. She muttered something about Danny being untrustworthy and an inconvenience, but he could have kissed her for it, almost. He only needed to make it through the next few days; that was when Vlad promised to have everything settled. One day, Danny stared out at the snow quietly falling as Ms Star lectured, blue eyes dimming.

Vlad.

Dad.

Danny now spent the majority of his time shut up in his room after school, but this too was a bonus because Vlad was always waiting, gloved hand extended.

It was then they went walking in the air, the wintry gusts and bales lifting them higher and higher. Vlad's cape flapped around them and Danny wondered if they looked like a funny winter kite, starkly white in the gloom. He looked down at the receding Earth with large eyes as they climbed higher and higher, terror and excitement whitewashed by pure joy as they were buffeted. Danny should have been shivering, or frozen like a statue at these altitudes—but he curiously wasn't. Vlad held him close under his cloak, and though the specter's deathly blue flesh emanated no warmth, something in it seemed to protect him from being overly chilled. Being held tightly, Danny wondered at the red-eyed creature's lack of a heartbeat.

Vlad did not seem to share Danny's fascination, but he humored the boy and still went higher. The Earth below kept him enchanted—cities reduced to glimmering Christmas tree bulbs and whole forests patches of twigs. Cars reduced to being toys, their headlights fireflies.

When at last Vlad would go no higher, they stopped and looked where, Danny was convinced, the world began and ended. There, several lifetimes away from the house where his parents' screaming bothered the neighbors and someone strode away in tears—where Tucker watched as his former best friend was thrown to the ground and kicked—where there was another open house and no one came to Danny's desk because Daddy was wine-sodden and Mommy had chosen to go to Jazzy's classroom over yours again—Danny spoke, in a low voice that humans would've strained to hear, had anyone ever taken the time to listen to him.

And indeed no one ever had but for Vlad, not even the school psychiatrist whom heard but never listened to anything Important, so Danny spent much of his time doodling in his presence. Raven head tucked under Vlad's chin, Danny just talked and it all came out.

The beautiful and the ugly and the strange—the frosty patterns on Danny's window that morning, the dark, hot fear of Dash, his fear that dead people (of the unfriendly variety) lurked in his room. The fact that he hated Christmastime because his parents' arguments became worse than ever, and that he ducked out of the house after opening gifts last year, seeking refuge in a blissfully-secular, confused Chinese neighbor's home until he was called back to endure Christmas dinner. He had trudged back as if on his way to an execution, hoping beyond hope Dad had not cooked this year's turkey in an oven powered by ectoplasm, thus charging the dead bird with supernatural power.

Vlad listened wordlessly, squeezing sometimes, sometimes a bit too tight and that was pleasant to a boy whom could not remember being held.

When Danny was done with talking, leaving him spent in a not-unpleasant way, Vlad taught him to trace patterns in the bright cold stars overhead, which were much more apparent over the layers of smog and light pollution below.

Eventually they did have to climb below again, and Danny would slip reluctantly beneath his quilt covers, having no appetite for the TV dinners he'd have to eat soon, his secret burning inside him like a bright star. Vlad would hug him goodbye and he'd spend dinner poking at rubbery turkey, dreaming when nights would end in stillness instead people breaking glasses against the wall.

Valentine's Day arrived. Mothers—never Danny's mother—passed around cups of punch and crumbly heart-or-cupid shaped cookies covered with red sprinkles. There were red velvet cupcakes topped with chalky conversation hearts, popcorn on napkins and children passing out valentines and suckers, bumping into each other, complaining, giggling. Smiling broadly, Danny passed out all his valentines, deftly avoiding looking at Dash as he forced a small card through the taller boy's box. After all, he was leaving soon, and maybe Dash would be softened toward him.

Dash had already finished passing out his cards, and was sitting at his desk. Danny could feel him looking at him as he beat it for his seat, tripping over his feet as he went.

Danny's shoebox was space-themed, covered with black construction paper, hundreds of white chalk dots, a yellow moon, red stars and multiple Saturns. A rocketship. He was quite proud of it.

But he peered inside the small slit at the top, and saw that it was empty. Even as the last few children were making their way back to their seats, making cheerful conversation, no one had left any valentines for him.

Silently, Danny set the box back on his desk and looked out at the grey skies, the bare trees.

Of course. He really shouldn't have expected otherwise; he had no friends in the classroom. Big deal. Valentine's was a stupid idea anyhow—just something cooked up for stupid adults that liked to pretend they were in love once a year. Stupid, empty stock-figures, and little children. He and Vlad were…beyond such things…

Trying to ignore the excited chatter and giggles from around him, Danny sank into his seat, and pushed his glitter-covered box aside. He absentmindedly picked up a nearby picture book and held it upside-down in front of his face, praying that no one noticed his burning red ears. Or his quivering mouth, which he tried to fix into a careless smile without success. Oh. Ohhhhhh.

He would not go to Ms. Star and complain. What good what it do? All she would do is sternly admonish the class—lest she think his parents would gripe or sue—that surely they remembered that she sent home a note saying that if you brought in one valentine, you brought one in for everyone. She'd probably force the grudging children to put down their cookies and punch and pick up scissors and construction paper and start making artificial pity. Well, thank you not. He was not Charlie Brown.

His stomach hurt, and he felt like he was on the verge of tears. They kept trying to blur his vision, but Danny kept angrily swiping them away, trying to focus on the pictures in his book. He wouldn't let himself care. Vlad probably wouldn't like him so much if he cried at something like this. What if the half-ghost were watching him right this second? Would he still want Danny, or would he brush him off as a pathetic joke? Would he be embarrassed? Would he not want to be Danny's friend anymore?

Humiliated, Danny sank his crumbling face into his hands, and cried. He shoved his decorated shoebox off his desk, onto the ground. The top burst off and a scrap of white came spilling out.

Danny just stared at it for a second with wide, red eyes before he immediately scrambled for it, heart racing as he realized what exactly it was: A paper bird. A crane. Not even Jasmine could make one of these, and he could tell the bird was articulately made. Beautiful. Perfect. He turned it around in his hands with some awe, eyes tearing up once again, but for an entirely different reason.

There was a small paper heart folded in the crane's wing, and Danny could see a pretty script

"Am coming for you soon, dear boy. Everything is almost all set. I am going to contact Jack and Maddie in three days; more likely than not, we will wind up in court. But my team of lawyers assures me beyond the shadow of a doubt that we will certainly succeed in getting you out of here in a good and legal fashion. Everything will be all right."

Danny slowly turned the heart around. The other side read:

"Happy Valentine's Day, my good, clever son."

And Danny smiled, eyes shining, unaware that across the room, Dash Baxter was thoughtfully considering him, something absolutely terrible bleeding into his mind.

After school, Danny waited in the parking lot for his mother's car, watching fat white flakes fall. Jasmine passed, barking over her shoulder, "Hey dummy, Mom says since you're not grounded anymore, we're walking home today."

Stupefied, Danny remained rooted to the spot, going very hot, then very cold. "What? But—"

"She and Daddy are going out tonight and she's getting her hair done today. So that means I'm in charge and if you don't listen to me, you're in big trouble and you'll get your butt grounded again."

Danny stared at her retreating form, then yelped and scurried to follow. His palms were sweating despite the cold, and he had to swipe them on his pants.

They were walking home again. Oh, God. He was again exposed, a sitting duck, and unless he could find another stone handy—

"Stop walking so close to me!" Jasmine snapped, batting at him. "I want to be alone."

Danny left a small gap between them, though he anxiously traced Jasmine's prints in the snow, keeping his face down. His hood had been down, but he tossed it up again, praying that he could slip home unnoticed. With him being inside during recess and with Mommy shepherding them to and from school, he'd been safe—

Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. He would start crying soon, he was that scared.

Shaking like mad, Danny clutched his bookbag straps as he walked, boots crunching in the snow. He wished he'd asked Vlad to pick him up. He wished more than ever he'd allowed the ghost to scare Dash senseless (the ghost offered, Danny declined) so that the very sight of Danny would send Dash and Qwan scrambling for the state border with wet pants, minds wiped blank with fear. How nice would it be to give those boys a taste of the panic that had made Danny cry at night, dreading school beyond everything else, afraid to the point of being sick—

But that was bad, and Danny wanted to be good, especially because he was leaving it all behind now. More than anything else though, he wanted to be safe. If he could just get home (or the building in which he lived, which had never felt like home at all) he would've made it.

When they'd left the school buildings behind and were a little more than half-way back, Danny allowed himself to relax just the smallest bit. With any luck Dash's parents picked him up today, and though Qwan was just as nasty as Dash, the other boy tended to lose the wind in his sails without his best friend, and sometimes didn't notice Danny at all. Tucker lugged behind them both, sometimes carrying their backpacks. If the boys wouldn't pursue him, Tucker wouldn't follow their lead.

"Hey, Fentinas!"

Danny couldn't help himself; he stopped dead out of habit, heart thudding against his ribs. Jasmine turned as well, frowning.

"It's Fenton, you morons. What do you want?"

To Danny's dawning horror, all three boys were hurrying towards them now; the snow had muffled their footsteps. Dash's healing eye was open a sliver, and it was gleaming with ill-suppressed delight. Danny immediately stepped behind Jasmine, whom pushed him.

"We just want to show you guys something," Dash panted as they came to a stop in front of the Fenton siblings. He was flushed pink with cold and exertion and he was grinning ear-to-ear. "Well, don't we?" he asked innocently, turning to his friends. Qwan just sneered; Tucker had the grace not to look up. He was biting his lip.

"Yeah." He said at last, when Dash pushed him irritably. "It's really weird…in the pond." He inclined his head to the small patch of water he and Danny had combed for frogs last summer. It had frozen over by now.

Jazz crossed her arms and frowned, although she looked curious. "Why? What's in the pond?"

"Oh, you'll see," said Dash, reaching for Danny's arm. When the other boy pushed him, Qwan proceeded to push him away, sending the smaller boy landing on his bottom with an "Oomph." Then, Dash grabbed Danny by the hair, and Qwan seized Danny's scrabbling hands, and the two boys proceeded to drag the struggling boy over to the thin ice—

"HELP! Help, Help, HELPHELPHELPHELP!"

It was too late; the pond was not frozen solid, and the ice shattered beneath him. Danny went under, the electric shock of cold shooting through him, effectively knocking the wind out of him as he went under. Gasping, stars looming in and out of his eyes, he kicked to the surface, wheezing, every inch of him burning, Qwan and Dash looming over him with identical smiles as they each pushed down on his head. Danny thrashed, tried to avoid slipping under again. He begged, "Jazz….h-help!"

The little girl just stared at him, mouth partially open. She didn't speak or move. Tucker pressed his knuckles to his mouth, looking decidedly panicked as Dash and Qwan ducked Danny underwater again. Dash grunted as he tangled his fingers in Danny's dark locks, and held him there.

"Guys, c'mon," Tucker fretted. He was very, very uncomfortable right now. Holding him underwater like that, it was… "C'mon, guys! This loser's just gonna run home crying to his Mommy. We'll get in trouble."

Dash did not look up. His face lit up with boyish glee as Danny continued to thrash underneath their hands like a dying fish, head desperately bobbing this way and that for oxygen. Kwan looked a little less sure of himself but he held fast, watching with detached curiosity as bubbles gurgled to the surface from Danny's hysteric squealing.

On the snowbank, the little girl watched, expression impassive. Tucker stared at her imploringly. "J-Jazz, I think….I think you should stop them! Get someone big! HELP!"

Yes. She should. She gazed at her dying little brother's frantic struggling in the wintry water of the creek, his wild splashes beginning to wane.

Soon he didn't seem to be moving much at all.

"JAZZ!"

Tucker's shout startled her, but though she glanced at him, she said nothing. The young girl rocked back and forth in her purple rubber boots, and an absolutely evil smile slowly began to bloom on her face.

This was it. She should have thought of it herself; shame she hadn't. She dug out her plastic Disney Princess camera that she recently used for a school Science project from her backpack, squinted in the little window, and took a shot. And another. This proof was dangerous to keep, to be certain, but if she hid it away, no one ever had to know. She'd wormed her way out of everything before—why not this?

And no one would take Mommy or Daddy's attention away from her ever again.

The little pig she so despised ever since it was brought home, moaning and sobbing in its crib, was going to go away. It writhed. She wished it wouldn't. She wished she had a knife to stick into its back. It would squeal and die and that would be best.

Tucker's hands dug into his hair and he hastily took a few steps away from Danny's sister, not at all liking the fixated gleam in her hungry teal eyes. This was wrong. This was wrong and there was snow on the ground and there were tracks. People would know, and even if kids probably didn't go to jail, you—

He blinked and looked up overhead.

"Guys…."

"Shut up," Dash barked, teeth gritting as he saw Danny's skin turn blue underneath the murky water.

He'd just planned to give the kid a good scare, was all. Reassert his natural place over Danny, watch him suffer. But Fentina would tell. He would bleat and people would wonder why he came home soaked and it was his fault, what would have to happen now, really, because he fought back and he shouldn't have done, not when his sole purpose for existing was to be an outlet for Dash's near-constant fury. Dash snarled and held tighter.

Die.

How dare you hit me, you rugrat.

I'll kill you. I'll kill you good. I'll bring you back from the dead and kill you again.

Kwan glanced up curiously. After a split second, he staggered to his feet, mouth dropping, finger pointing to the shadow plummeting straight towards them. Tucker and Jasmine's gaze soon followed, and even Dash looked up irritably to see what they were exclaiming at.

But they never had a chance.

~*oOo*~

You might want to skip this part. Look for the heart, and you'll know it's safe to read again. You might think you want to know. Trust me: You don't. You really, really don't.

After all, there are certain things a reader has a right not to know.

Three days later

It was a heartbreaking sort of business, seeing the school flags at half-mast like that. Officer Lancer sighed as he took in the photos in the paper (he was a traditionalist) at his desk. He peered outside the window at the flag, which was also lowered. There wasn't much of a wind today, and the flag fluttered dolefully.

With a sigh, the pot-bellied, middle-aged man turned back to the cover paper, frowning at the explosion of articles related to the case. Good Lord. This story was going to be all over the world in a matter of days. He was astounded it wasn't already; the entire town was as chaotic as an overturned beehive, and the officers could not go anywhere in town without hearing people buzzing over every rumor they'd heard concerning the incident which had taken place a little under two weeks ago.

He supposed he couldn't blame people for being alarmed; the old hamlet had always been a peaceable sort since its foundation over two hundred years ago. Certainly there was a lot of talk of suspected supernatural activity in Amity Park, which drew ghost hunters here from near and far, but the ridiculousness of it all was just part of the local charm. He'd never encountered a ghost, not here, nothing malevolent….

He himself had never drawn his gun on the job, and had joked with his colleagues that his main duties as police chief consisted of paperwork, coffee drinking and donut-sampling.

But now, a sadistic murderer had walked among them-perhaps walked among them still, though Lancer doubted that was the case. He frowned as he turned his paper over, rubbing the bristles of his goatee thoughtfully, mentally going over the details he and his crew had been able to scrape from the police report. He drew his fingertips to his throbbing temples, eyes narrowed.

February 15th, 2012. It would be remembered as the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, with the hearts scattered in snow. Three youngsters had been found, all mangled and distorted almost entirely; two boys, one girl. The boys were identified by the one survivor at the scene as his classmates, and the girl had been the sister of Danny Fenton, who was now missing. Lancer pinched the bridge of his nose with his fingertips.

There'd been a camera found on the girl; it'd been covered in gore. The last picture taken had been of the two little boys, Dash and Kwan. Tucker's story had matched up with the horrific image: The two boys had been gleefully holding the head of Danny Fenton underwater.

Needless to say, the parents of the five had been utterly devastated, especially when the photo was released to the general public. It was a bit of a heartless thing to do, Lancer knew, but he'd gotten Danny Fenton's backstory, and hadn't liked it one bit. Poor kid. He'd been bullied when he was the kid's age, though not nearly so brutally. Now that both Dash and Kwan were proved to be heartless little monsters, people were quite willing to step up with information: Dash called Danny-so-and-so, Kwan stole Danny's papers, Dash had given Danny many a bloody nose...

All useless, now that he was gone.

Danny hadn't had the happiest home life, either. His parents hardly knew their insignificant slip of a child, preferring instead to lavish their attention on their darling, genius little daughter...who, according to Folley, had loathed her little brother, and was quite willing to stand by and take pictures while he was being drowned.

It made the officer sad that people were only willing to offer their shock over the spawn of Satan's hideous behavior once the kid was dead. And the fact that sympathy only came to little Fenton once he was gone certainly made him roll his eyes as well. People.

It was highly suspected, with such a gruesome maniac at the scene, that Danny had been abducted and murdered almost immediately. No sign of the little child's body had been found anywhere, and Lancer wondered if it would ever turn up. Surely it would, eventually…

And Folley's account had not changed, regardless of how many psychologists gently inquired, how many pictures they'd asked him to draw, of how many hand puppets they used trying to squeeze the truth out. It was the same, each and every time:

Danny Fenton had been rescued by a dead man.

Or a bad angel, considering that it flew, had blue flesh, red eyes, hair like horns. Lancer closed his eyes.

Obviously impossible. The kid must have been senseless with terror or his imagination gave him a story he could cope with. An impossible fantasy was much easier to accept and explain then something that walked out of a gristly reality. Obviously Folley was out of his mind with fear.

But it was troubling all the same: The forensic tests revealed that the two boys had been decapitated at the same time, yet Folley claimed that there had only been one killer at the scene. Either the killer was extremely fast or happened to be carrying quite a long chainsaw.

There had been blood, blood absolutely everywhere, sprayed on the rocks in the pond, as if something had torn the youth's heads off at an extraordinary speed. As if the two bullies had their heads struck off by a blade rushing at them over 60 miles per hour or the heads had simply just….exploded. There were no blade marks on their necks-it was as if someone had simply, quite literally, ripped their heads off.

Folley claimed that the 'devil' had dragged Danny to the snowy bank, (the print of the boy's body in the snow HAD been there) plugged his nose, opened his mouth, and began to breathe in until Danny's blue body had started to tremble and jerk underneath the creature. Tucker had been immobilized underneath a tree from fright, and Jasmine had been staggering away, white with fear. According to Folley, the killer had looked up and had seen the Fenton girl attempting to flee the scene, so terrified that she kept tripping over her own two feet. And then…..

Lancer shivered. These details never failed to make him sick. It was too much.

All ludicrous. Completely ludicrous. The poor boy was so small; he couldn't possibly have known what he was really seeing. There had to be some sort of logical explanation for all of this, and he had no doubt that the FBI would find one.

Still….

The officer turned a page and sank his chin in his hand, scowling. There had been no snow prints from Dash and Kwan's bodies leading to Jasmine's. Absolutely none. It was as if someone had indeed hovered over the snow from the two boys and effortlessly slaughtered the girl. There was no way the culprit could have simply jumped over to the girl; the distance from the boys' bodies to Jasmine's had been at least thirteen feet.

Jasmine Fenton had been torn to pieces shortly after Dash and Kwan met their fate. The footprints in the snow indicated that she tried to backtrack. The perp had no footprints. Neither did Danny. Tucker couldn't have done these things himself.

Only one thing was confirmed after a case like this:

(He really needed to get out of here.)

And so, before the closure of this sordid and meaningless little tale, let's take a journey a year ahead in time. In a little Wisconsin town far, far away from Amity Park. It is here in Comity Cove that you will find another elementary school. It's the private, gated variety. A renowned institution, with most of its pupils eventually heading to Ivy League schools. There was a zero tolerance Bullying code.

Snow was drifting out sweetly outside St. Nicholas Academy, like cherry blossom. The frosted windowpanes were covered in large pink, red, and white hearts, paper Cupids, window decals.

If you looked through one of these windows, you'd see a Valentine's Day party just wrapping up for the day. Children were opening their lockers and putting on their cloaks, buzzed from sugar cookies, chocolate candy hearts, and punch.

A small boy hummed as he forced the zipper closed on his backpack; it was stuffed to the brim with paper hearts and candy. Smiling, he joined the queue of children at the door.

It was generally agreed that Danny Masters brought the coolest valentines that year—they were space-themed and played music, and there had been a chocolate sucker included. Danny shuffled nervously from foot to foot as they waited to be dismissed. He'd received a valentine from everyone and gave one to everyone in turn, though there was another one waiting inside his coat. He would've given it earlier during the party, but had been much too shy.

When the bell rang and everyone was dismissed outside, Danny scurried after a fuzzy purple beret which was steadily moving away from him. "Sam! Sam! Hey, Sam!"

Samantha Manson (whom would kick you if you called her anything but 'Sam') turned around in surprise. She was a pretty little girl, with long dark hair, a heart-shaped face, large eyes. Danny's mouth turned dry as she faced him, everyone spilling out around them to go home.

For a moment Danny's courage failed him again, and he slipped his hand inside his pocket to touch a new crane he'd received earlier that morning.

"Hi, Danny," she said softly, casting him a warm smile. "Happy Valentine's Day."

"Um, happy Valentine's Day," he returned awkwardly, blushing a little and rocking back and forth on the tips of his toes. "I...um...well...y'see...mmm..."

Sam stared at him curiously; Danny swallowed, wondering why he had become so warm all of a sudden. Ears turning pink, he at last drew out the small item he held in his coat, somewhat shyly. The little girl leaned forwards, and her eyes widened in wonder. Before he could completely lose his nerve, Danny explained:

"I, uh, made this for you. My Daddy taught me how to do it. I'm sorry; it's not as good as one of his, but I tried really hard. This one's my best."

A purple paper bird. Sam's eyes glowed as she gently touched one of the paper bird's wings. A small purple heart was tucked behind one of its wings, and she removed it as carefully as if she were turning over a robin's egg. Danny had managed to fit "Hi Sam I like you please my valentine." Instead of putting a "be" between "please" and "my," Danny opted to scribble a bumblebee instead. Sam scuffed the ground at her boot, smiling grudgingly.

"Okay. Sure. Um, will you be able to come play tomorrow?"

Danny turned and nodded merrily. Sam beamed at him.

"Good! Oh! Danny, wait, I forgot to give your valentine!"

Curious, the small boy paused as Sam approached him, pink-faced, still cradling her paper bird valentine. With a small, shy smile, she kissed Danny's cheek quickly, and ran off towards a nearby Mercedes, turning around to wave furiously at Danny before she swung the car door opened and disappeared.

For a moment, Danny just stood there, stunned. He turned his face to the sky, where flakes were still drifting down from the white, Wisconsin skyline. Children around him were laughing and cheering amongst him; some were even wishing him a Happy Valentine's before they ran off. He waved absentmindedly at them, hardly noticing.

Then, an enormous smile fell on his face, and he started laughing, going furiously red as he cupped his cheek, savoring his lovely valentine.

Suddenly, there was a loud, honking sound out of nowhere, making him jump.

And there was his first valentine standing outside the limo in a long black coat, hooded indigo eyes somehow warm. He was smiling from ear-to-ear (looking proud, Danny thought) and a moment later his arms opened.

Delighted, Danny tore across the parking lot, squealing, "Daddy! Daddy!"

He more or less collided into his father, whom "oomphed," and Danny laughed, and Daddy opened the car door for him as Danny scrambled inside to the warmth. As the car took off, Danny immediately launched into his holiday, which was looking far better than the last.

Moral of the story: This is a really horrid tale with NO moral inclination of any sort and it would be in your best interests to forget about it as soon as humanly possible.

Thank you!

-The Management