Author's Note: If I even tried to explain the source of this idea, you would stare at me like I'd lapsed into Mandarin. Just let me know if this warrants continuation, it's better as a oneshot or if it's such a bucket of angst it should be rewritten entirely. I kind of want to go through a character-by-character reaction to the whole situation, but I fully understand this premise could turn into wangst in a heartbeat. I'm open to all criticism, comments and suggestions anyone has on this.

Jack stared at his only grandchild, frowning thoughtfully.

She stared back with silvery eyes, looking pained, curled up, her cries quiet and choked. It was like she didn't have the breath to form proper screams like other babies. Her skin was literally white as snow, and her chin length hair was pale gray. She was unearthly and unnatural. She barely ate, slept almost ceaselessly, and didn't have the strength to crawl yet despite being eleven months old. The doctors had more or less given up trying to understand her when Danny and Sam decided they didn't want a media circus around their only child. She had been born like this, ghostly, sickly and strange, and showed no signs of miraculously changing into a normal child overnight. Danny and Sam's fairytale romance had turned from a dream into a nightmare the day she came whimpering and shivering into the world.

And all of it was Jack's fault.

If he hadn't insisted on dragging Danny down to the lab, the ectoplasmic radiation would never have effected his DNA. If he hadn't constantly had Danny around the portal, his son would have produced normal children, and everything would be okay. If he only had thought to test it for leakage, make sure it was truly safe, this little girl wouldn't be laying there like a ragdoll struggling to cry out to him. No wonder Jazz hadn't had children of her own, no wonder Danny had always skipped periods of high school and seemed so sickly. He'd come home time after time looking like he'd been beaten up from the inside out, and Jack hadn't ever put it together. The ghosts running around might have a small ectoplasmic and radioactive signature, but Danny was living next to the world's biggest generator of both during puberty. Jazz had escaped the drain on her health by being fully developed, and he and Maddie were immune from their college age experiments in the field, but...

A soft cry interrupted his thoughts. Jack swallowed back a wave of emotions and gently picked her up. She weighed next to nothing, like a kitten. The Fenton Ghost Detector had been switched off long ago, as it went off like crazy whenever she was in the house. It didn't understand the difference between someone suffering the ghostly equivalent of radiation poisoning and an actual ghost. She laid her head against his chest, looking tired. He wasn't sure why she cried when she did, but it usually seemed to be out of pain, which was the same reason she didn't stand or try to crawl anymore. It hurt her unnaturally long legs and though she couldn't voice it, she would lay down and cry until she ran out of silent tears.

"It's alright, sweetie. I've got you," he told her, closing his eyes as the guilt hit him. I did this to you. You should be crawling and learning to say 'dada' or 'mama' and instead I did this to you...

She nuzzled into him, her hair soft and fluffy. It had the same strange volume to it Sam's did, despite being short. He wondered what she would look like if he hadn't been such an idiot. Her hair would be black, wouldn't it? Black and shiny. Maybe she'd have gotten Danny's blue eyes. The other day he'd heard Danny and Sam arguing, not over the eye color itself, exactly, but over what they were going to do about her eyes. Devoid of pigment, they were unable to absorb light correctly, and doctors were united in their opinion that she should by all rights be blind. How she wasn't already was a miracle, but not one they expected to be sustainable. If something wasn't done, she was going to be blind by kindergarten at the latest.

He carried her into the kitchen, where he could get her something to drink. She was always desperately thirsty, and when her parents were busy, it was up to Maddie to watch her. In theory. In reality she was even more aware than Jack of how much their fault this was (his, it was his, he'd been the one to purpose a second portal, what had he been thinking) and some days she just couldn't do it. She couldn't look at Lilith, couldn't even say her name without getting choked up. So Jack expertly filled a bottle with cool water, which Lilith could at least grasp with some initial help, and as she drank he watched her silver eyes. They seemed focused and sharp enough to him, taking in the details of the room, blinking at normal intervals, but some part of him waited for the day he stared at her and she was unable to stare back.

They could surgically change the color of her eyes. It was new technology, but it could be done. There was even an ability to pick the color, it would only take an hour, and it had a chance of saving her sight. It was mostly in use for people with other ocular defects, though the science was the same. The problem was Danny and Sam disagreed very strongly on implementing it. Danny was all for it. Sam thought he was insane to put their little girl through inhumane surgery before she was old enough to walk. They'd have to redo it repeatedly as Lilith grew, as well, but Danny didn't want her to go blind and - it was a nightmare. Their arguing over it had ended with Lilith in Jack's care while Sam went to stay with her parents and Danny went to a psychologist Jazz had recommended. He needed it; the strain of having a fragile baby like this out of the blue had taken its toll.

"Your Daddy will be back soon, Lilypants," Jack told her quietly, and smiled when her nose crinkled. She still didn't respond well to the nickname, but she did respond to stimulus in a way that doctors assured him meant she wasn't mentally impeded. "He just needs to work some things out. Guess you're stuck with Grandpa Jack in the meantime."

Truth be told, Jack had been contemplating therapy, himself. Night after night he'd stayed up, pacing, thinking about what he'd done. Day after day, he watched her try to get up, even though she knew it would hurt, because she was her mother's daughter and she didn't give up. She'd grip the bars of her crib and pull herself up, try to stay that way, knees locking and soft voice grunting. Some days he felt like breaking the barrier of media silence and telling the world how brave she was, how she was still going when they hadn't thought she'd last a month, how all the doctors were wrong and she was going to be okay. Sometimes he had nightmares she'd died in her sleep and he had to rush to check and make sure she was okay.

At the rate Danny and Sam were going it wasn't clear if their marriage was going to survive. Jack knew that was his fault, too. If he hadn't done this to their child...

He wondered if that was why they left her with him so often. Maybe it was a fitting punishment for someone who'd crippled a child like this. Danny hadn't ever addressed the issue, just telling Jack it wasn't his fault, telling him there was nothing to talk about, but he had to be aware it was his father's invention that had done this. He had to know his father was the reason his daughter had been spent the first two months of her life in intensive care. Maybe he hated him. Maybe, Jack thought as he took the empty bottle from Lilith, that was completely and utterly fair.

It wasn't her fault her parents yelled at each other more than they talked. It was his and he knew it. Surgeries, doctors, physical therapy, examinations - what was too much? What if it wasn't enough? Was she going to make it without Danny monitoring her every cough, or was she going to be alright if they treated her like a normal child as Sam insisted? What were they supposed to do? Even Jack didn't have a clear idea of the future. He feared the future, now. He took things one day, one hour at a time. He couldn't picture her possibly needing physical therapy when she was two because if he tried to figure out whether a survivor of ectoplasmic radiation could live to make it to two, he wanted to break down and cry. In trying to plan the future, Danny and Sam were driving themselves to madness, unable to even agree on things as simple as whether to get her on a schedule or not. It killed him. If he hadn't dragged Danny into the ghost hunting business, he wouldn't be miserable, wouldn't be sobbing it out in therapy every week for an hour. What have I done? My God, what have I done?

"I love you, Lil," he whispered, walking back to her room where the windows were covered to block out the harsh light. When he laid her down she grabbed at his shirt, and he had to gently detangle her long, thin fingers from the fabric. "I know. I'll stay until you fall asleep, just like always."

When he took his place in the chair beside her crib, she laid down, shifting her legs until she found a position that didn't hurt. Then they waited, quietly, for sleep to come. When it did, it found Jack first, exhausted and slumped in his chair. She watched him with her ghostly eyes for what, from her perspective, seemed like a long time. In as much as a baby could understand time or people, she understood he was the one there the most often. As she drifted off to the familiar sound of him snoring, she drew a deep breath, and said her first word.

"Gran... pa..."