Second of the phanniemay ficlets. More to come.

The Success in the Failure

There were two things that Vlad wanted most in all the worlds: the Green Bay Packers, and Maddie.

And then he'd learned of Jack's other spectral creation, and two became three: the Packers, Maddie, and now Daniel.

By all rights, of the three, the Packers was the most unattainable, and was more kept out of hobby than anything else. Maddie and Daniel, however, was a need. There was no other way to describe it, but as a need that eclipsed anything and everything else. And from that need came...

Danielle.

The Maddie hologram was created as an attempt to soothe his desire for her, but it was... not satisfying. She was empty and cold, and Vlad could not touch her, feel her in his arms, smell her delicious scent...

And the same was said of Daniel. No hologram could ever, never compare to the real thing. So Vlad instead turned towards cloning. Except... They were imperfect, tests of creation that fell apart. The ectoplasm would not bind itself to the amino acids, causing complete degradation of the cell body and, on a much smaller level, the DNA itself.

Until the Prime Clone. As a ghost, it was completely stable; as a human, equally so. The only issue was, neither could coexist as one. There was nothing there binding the ectoplasm to the DNA; and Vlad had tested until he learned that it was only present mid-transformation. So the perfect Daniel was set aside, placed in cryosleep in Vlad's Colorado cabin until he could get Daniel's DNA mid-transformation.

And with that done, Vlad set about recreating his Madeleine. Only... He didn't have enough DNA of her to make cloning a viable option.

So he tested, using DNA from Jazz and Daniel (and once, to bad effect, Maddie's sister). More and more clones were created and died, until... Danielle. She was... almost. Danielle, for all that she was Madeleine, was so much more Daniel. So she was inadequate. Was more of a daughter than a potential lover. He felt no such feelings for her, could never harbor such feelings towards Danielle; which was why she was named after Daniel, to remind him how much of a failure she was. Everything about her, was a failure.

Except... she didn't fall apart. Had held together far longer than any of the other clones. It was ironic, that Vlad's greatest failure be his greatest success. Danielle was the closest any of the clones had come to being stable; which was why, when his spybugs had come across her, Vlad had immediately sent out for Valerie. He needed her; without Danielle, without melting her and studying everything about her, he could never perfect the bonding agent and have a Daniel of his very own.

Danielle was nothing more than Vlad's greatest failure, and by that regard, was his greatest success.