Dredging this up from the depths of my hard drive. Apparently, I wrote it in February 2011 during a snow day (what? I don't even remember this…) and haven't touched it since because I really don't want to rewrite the whole thing to fix all the problems I see in it now. So, um, sorry for this, I guess, and how cliché it is and everything. But it's been written, so I figured I might as well post and let you like it if you want.

Because I Had Promised

August 28, 2013

It was a beautiful day.

And if you dare point out to anyone that I am a Goth and just used the word 'beautiful' to describe something as bright and sunny as that day was, I will track you down and show you the true meaning of pain. It has something to do with reinforced soles of black combat boots and you will not be happy.

Danny and I planned to spend the afternoon together. And that made it beautiful.

It just happened to also be a typical spring day that any ordinary person with no imagination whatsoever would call beautiful.

It was a Tuesday and Danny and I had slipped off to the park after school.

Tucker had been home with strep throat for the past week and he was still in the highly contagious stage, so we had resigned ourselves to living without him for a while. It kind of stunk, because I had to act as the only sidekick during our ghost-hunting rounds, which was harder than I expected. Given all the complaining Tucker did about never being in enough shape to actually help out, I thought that I always carried the bulk of the work, and that his absence wouldn't mean much, but I guess his actions speak louder than words. Which is saying a lot. I actually had a hard time keeping up the responsibilities that fell to the human portion of Team Phantom. Tucker did a lot more than I had ever realized. And I did sort of miss his crazy comments about my lunch and his beloved PDA.

On the flipside, however, I got time alone with Danny, and that was all I wanted anyway.

The two of us were determined to forget the science test we had next week. We left our backpacks and flashcards behind and had just sat together on the hill.

For a while we watched the clouds and I was finding peace in the solitude, listening to the birds calling and relishing in the fact that I was sitting next to my… well, what Danny was to me… that was complicated. Danny wasn't my boyfriend; we'd never actually gone on a date and had only kissed a couple times, and those were fake-out make-outs. And we still denied our relationship status whenever someone called us lovebirds.

But Danny was definitely not a crush. I gave up thinking with that term a long time ago. Goths girls do not demean themselves by getting all silly and giggly over 'crushes'. I had wrestled with my feelings for a long time, but had finally come to terms with the situation. Danny was much more than a 'crush'.

I loved Danny. It was truly that simple for me. I wasn't going to deny it. I just got annoyed when Tucker kept on my case when Danny was around. Tucker assured me that the feeling was mutual, but I wasn't going to initiate anything. Not because I felt that girls couldn't start a relationship— I thought America got over that decades ago— but because I didn't want to disrupt the balance we had. Our friendship was something special, and I wasn't going to give it up because I was too dumb to see that Danny needed more time to move to that stage. And for the same reason, I didn't want Tucker pushing things and teasing Danny to Kingdom Come.

He was stubborn. It was one of the things I loved about him. But I knew he would come around to admitting he loved me back… eventually. I just had to wait until then.

So I was enjoying our few minutes together on the hill. I could at least pretend that all was right with the world. Of course, it wasn't to last. Moments like that never can, I've found. I sometimes think that, just like Danny has a built-in ghost detector, the ghosts have built-in 'Danny's-having-a-good-time-so-let's-interrupt-him ' detector. Or something close to that, anyway. There's almost no other explanation for how often they come right when things were going so beautifully for us.

I didn't notice the blue mist escape his mouth at first, so when Danny rolled over with a groan, I thought something was sick or something he had eaten had been bad. I was actually surprised that that hadn't happened before considering how many mighty melts he and Tucker wolfed down from the Nasty Burger.

"Danny?" I asked concerned, sitting up quickly.

"No, it's ok, it's just a ghost— go figure" he said, getting to his feet. "This should only take a minute."

He sighed. "Got a thermos?"

I sighed too. "Yeah."

Would there ever come a day when I didn't need the hideous soup vessel? I was beginning to doubt it very much…

Danny ran over to a clump of bushes and a bright flash of light told me he had transformed. I got up, grabbed the thermos, and started to look for the new ghost myself. I hoped that it would just be some nameless specter or the box ghost, or something that wouldn't take more than a couple minutes to take care of.

A scream on the other side of the park from some startled bystanders— not that they should be startled to see a ghost by this point; the town has only been plagued by them for four or five years— told me where I should be headed, and Danny was already engaged with the ghoul by the time I arrived.

It was indeed a nameless ghost, just some green humanoid figure that was not a character that I was familiar with. That 'humanoid' bit meant that it was shaped like a human and was far more clever than the green gobs of goo that sometimes came out of the portal. I assumed that it could talk, and I had already gathered that it could plan out its own offense and defence from the way it was fighting Danny.

It seemed to favor sudden drops in altitude to throw Phantom off, and he would send out green blasts whenever an opportunity presented itself. He hadn't gotten a direct hit on Danny yet, but he had landed several attacks on the ghost-boy's extremities.

Most of the people were sensible enough to get out of the way. Many were just scared of the ghost, or both ghosts, but others were smart enough to realize that most of these fights brought collateral damage. Getting far away from it quickly was a smart option.

Of course, most of the damage during a fight was not Danny's fault, but good luck trying to explain that to anyone in charge of publicity. Percentage-wise, most of the damage from ghost-related incidents was not caused during a battle and was not even caused by ghosts. The real problems would start after Danny had already captured his opponent and then the Fentons or the Guys In White showed up to catch him.

The GIW were starting to come more quickly to the 'scene of the crime' now that they had officially set up residence in Amity Park, but they were still far too dense to do any good whenever they actually did show up. After twenty-seven counts, they still had to pull up in their immaculate white coats while the ghost was still at-large. Well, that's government efficiency for you…

Inviso-Bill was always their primary target, and they took after him like lightning if he still happened to be capping off a thermos when they arrived. Years of positive public opinion did nothing to stop their stubborn insistence that the boy I loved was more of a danger to the populace than Skulker or Fright Night.

Yeah, I know, they still called him 'Inviso-Bill' when he wasn't 'Specter alpha h-49242' or whatever code it was that they had assigned to him. And this was years after Danny had clearly shouted to the news cameras that his name was Danny Phantom. Can you really get any clearer than that? He spelled it out for everyone and you cannot try to tell me that the GIW never saw that news clip because I know for a fact that they had every single news reel in which his name was mentioned.

Nobody in Amity had referred to him as Inviso-Bill in a long time, not even the Fentons, though why anyone did in the first place is still beyond me. Really, people? Inviso-Bill? Why would anyone in their right mind call themselves that? Especially when they had to come up with a name by which they would be known by for their entire afterlife.

Some people just don't think anymore. But, in the case of a certain governmental agency, you really have to wonder if anyone over there ever thought at all.

Anyway, enough of my rant, and back to the point…

Danny was fighting the ghost, slowly but surely moving them further away from any people. I followed them, making sure to stay close enough to the action that I could help if given the opportunity. I tried to stay as far out of sight as possible while still maintaining a clear shot. I wasn't stupid. I prided myself on that fact. There was, however, such a thing as inviting trouble, and I figured that Danny and I already attracted enough, so I didn't have to stand in a clearing and practically shout for it to blast me.

I kept the Fenton ecto-lipstick in my backpack case I really needed it, but that had been abandoned with our schoolbooks. It didn't really matter, since Danny could cover for both of us and my real asset was the Fenton Thermos anyway.

We had our routine down pat. Danny would pound the ghost for a couple more minutes until a solid punch would send it for a loop. That would be my cue to step in and press the magic button. The ghost would vanish into the thermos and we would be on our merry way. We had performed this choreography a thousand times before. It wasn't anything new. And this ghost was certainly nothing Danny couldn't handle. He had gotten quite good over the past few years and you could see it.

Not only was his body now used to the vigorous training he was put through every day, Danny was learning how to fight. It was no longer a hit here and a punch there when he could take them. He knew how to gauge his enemy and react to it; he could start planning ahead. His style was graceful and strong. He was confident, not cocky, but confident, and it showed in his ability to overcome every obstacle. He took pride in his abilities and he had every reason to, because he was good.

That's not to say that he could take down every ghost with a single punch, far from it. But he was getting better and I knew that I didn't really have to worry with the ghost he was facing now.

But that didn't stop me from flinching whenever I saw the specter land a hit on Danny. A quick cut across the jaw sent Danny reeling backwards. I started a little, but stayed where I was. Danny recovered quickly and retaliated in kind. A few more hits like that one, and we could go back to watching the clouds on the hill.

That, of course, was when things started to go wrong.

Somehow, we had drifted back toward people, or the people had gathered around us. That always threw a kink into plans because Danny not only had to worry about protecting every person in the crowd, but he always worried about the ghosts keeping their big mouths closed and not revealing his secret to an audience. There was, too, always the possibility of a hostage situation, although we hadn't had to deal with anything like that in quite a long time.

But, yes, crowds were bad. It just gave Danny more things to worry about. And you really don't ever want to worry about something other than the punches and blasts being directed at you from an already dead enemy. That was plenty to worry about without adding a stupid crowd into the mix.

I never understood why people would gather around a ghost fight to gawk. I'm a Goth, and even my morbid tendencies don't extend quite that far. I have no particular wish to see anyone get killed in a fight, and I certainly don't want to get killed myself from the fall-out. Yet here was an entire crowd—many of the people in it little kids and their moms.

Did these people have no common sense?

Well, Gramma always said that you don't want people to have common sense; you wanted them to have good sense. Most of the time those were two different things. Obviously, I realized, when none of the people looked like they were going to go away.

I told the people around me to leave, to get the little kids out of there, but nobody wanted to listen to a teenage girl dressed in black tell them to not watch the front page story unfold. Rarely had I wanted the attention of a crowd so much, but between nobody caring about what I had to say and needing to keep one eye on the fight, I wasn't really able to make a dent in the problem.

And that annoyed me.

Because it annoyed Danny.

A single blast could kill an innocent bystander and Danny knew it.

That was why he tried moving away again, but the other ghost started using the distractions to his own advantage, bobbing up and down and getting more hits on Danny now than he had during the entire fight.

I was so frustrated that I wanted to kick something, but the only options available were the tree in front of me—and I would never, ever kick a defenceless tree—or the people in the crowd. It was seriously tempting since some of them could use a good dose of reality brought to them via combat boot, but Danny wouldn't have approved, so I stomped my foot and let out a low growl.

I was getting tired of this whole thing.

I turned around when I heard a heavy car door slamming. Here come the news crews. Just what we needed, another controversial TV segment…

Turning around to see if it was Channel 2 or one of the special sets, I was stricken to the bone with a feeling I had never had before nor had since. I couldn't believe it. It took a while for my brain to process what I saw, and during that time, I don't think I was able to breathe. I know I couldn't move my feet an inch.

But there, on the curb, was a large white government van. The Guys in White, for once in their miserable lives, had come in the middle of a fight. Not only a fight, but a populated one and one that Danny wasn't going to be able to end in time to get out here before things took a very bad turn.

This was bad.

This was very bad.

I really shouldn't have been too troubled. Danny had gotten away from the Guys In White many times before and he would do it again. There was no reason to panic. They were still dim-wits with silly uniforms that couldn't lay a hand on the blasted ghost-boy… right?

As a few of the agents mounted their flying mopeds, I began to worry, no matter how logically I could explain to myself all the reasons why I shouldn't be anxious.

"Danny?" I called, uneasily.

He grunted in response, too preoccupied with the ghost he was fighting to answer me more fully.

I really wished that I had the ecto-lipstick so I could do something. If there was one thing I absolutely hated (other than seeing defenceless animals being mis-treated), it was feeling useless. But there was no way I could run to get anything before the GIW got involved.

So I did the only thing I could think of and called out again. "Danny, Guys in White! You might want to hurry things up."

He tore his eyes from the fight to look at the agents revving up their vehicles and looked panicked for a moment. Before returning to his opponent, who was proving to be smarter than it looked, he yelled back to me.

"Remember, Sam! Remember what I told you!"

I froze.

"Sam," Danny faltered. "I need to ask something really important…"

No. I forced the image of Danny sitting on his bed and nervously fiddling with his hands far, far away. That was not what I needed right now. It wasn't what he needed of me. It wasn't going to help.

I remembered, of course I remembered. How could anyone not remember a conversation so… out of character for both of us? I remembered, but I didn't want to. I wanted to push that entire episode out of my mind. It didn't matter. It was never going to matter. So I refused to listen, refused to play it back in my head.

I paid attention to the situation in front of us instead. I was still waiting around doing nothing; Danny still hadn't given me a clear shot to the ghost. He was still fighting and now the GIW agents were airborne and headed his way.

He could have made a run for it.

That was probably the best option just then, and I could tell that Danny was considering it. But there was no guarantee that the ghost would follow him if the protector of the town left an entire crowd below him to terrorize. The ghost knew it had nothing to fear from the Guys In White; as long as Phantom was around, they ignored any other threats. So Danny stayed put, opting to fight everyone at once.

Stupid hero complex.

Only two agents entered the fray, but they each carried enough gadgets to outfit an entire squad. One held an ecto-cannon that was far too large for me to lift, let alone use, while the other pressed a series of buttons that activated a series of pop-out laser guns on his vehicle.

They trained on Danny, lighting him up with little red pinpricks of light.

My warning came at the same time the blasts did.

He tumbled forward, somersaulting over the ghost and finally righting himself to face all his foes at the same time. Looking back and forth between them, he figured that the ghost was still the biggest threat and lunged forward to tackle it. The maneuver meant that the agent's cannon blast went wide.

The people around me began to murmur and offer commentary on the fight as if they were merely watching a match or game on TV. No one left.

They saw both of the GIW fire at the same time. Everyone seemed to hold their breath, letting it out as one when they saw Phantom turn invisible and intangible to avoid the blasts. The green ghost, however, played the situation to its benefit with what I almost thought was glee. It darted around Danny, taunting him with intangibility whenever he threw a punch and getting him lined up marvelously for shots from the GIW.

By this point, Danny had been hit several times by their upgraded weapons systems. The agents look pleased, almost smug, as if they knew what was coming.

They had certainly been training. They were much better than they had been last time they encountered Danny. Of course, that had been several months ago. Since then, they had shown up too late to engage in combat.

Tucker, Danny, and I had just assumed that they were the same as always. They were beginning to prove us wrong on that score. Apparently, they had been wanting to test out their new formations and weapons on Phantom pretty badly.

It was then that I began to realize how serious the situation was.

"Don't even say things like that, Danny!"

"I know you don't want to talk about it, but I have to say this, just once, and then, I'll never speak of it again, I swear. But you have to hear me out…"

Danny really had to get out of there before things got any worse. He was beginning to look tired, his punches were becoming sloppier and he was hesitant to use blasts because of the people. The agents were still jubilantly fresh and had no such qualms.

Unless he ended this quickly, things were going to get bad for him.

With a push, he made another rush for the ghost, finally knocking it far away from him and the crowd that I was able to pull it into the vacuum of the thermos. I capped the device, ignoring the looks I was getting from the people around me. They could stare all they wanted.

But a yell quickly pulled my attention back to the sky. The fight was far from over, even though the ghost was gone. Danny still had to deal with the two government agents.

After dodging one and punching another, he tried to make a dash for it, turning invisible and shooting up into the sky.

Their equipment could still trace him when he was invisible though, and using it to guide them, the agents were able to get a clean hit, knocking him out of the sky and he turned visible again as he began to plummet toward the ground.

My world seemed to slow down as he fell. I gasped in horror as bright rings began to transform him mid-air in front of the government's men, but he caught himself and Phantom pulled up out of the dive a few moments later.

I thought, then, that I might have to listen to that conversation, so many years ago, when the GIW were first coming on the scene.

"Promise me, Sammy?"

No. I choked. No. That couldn't happen. It couldn't happen to Danny. He was invincible. I would never need to listen to his request. He couldn't make me do it. I would die first. Nothing would make me…

Then I heard his scream of frustration. I looked on, unbelieving, as the GIW shot out a net and it caught the halfa midair as he had tried again to get away. I didn't know how they knew to make the net with real-world properties, but they did. Danny couldn't phase out and I saw his eyes grow wide in panic when his attempts to do so failed.

"NO!" my scream tore through the air and I ran toward them.

"Sam!" Danny struggled against the rope, trying to blast his way out or turn intangible to escape, but nothing was helping. Even his ice powers failed him.

My mind was blank. All I knew was that I had to get Danny out somehow. I slipped through the crowd that looked on at the scene, gaping.

"Sam! Help!" Danny cried out again, the desperation in his voice evident.

Running behind an agent, I put a black boot mark on the back of his white coat and somehow wrested a gun away from him.

I turned around, mind in a whirl, trying to get back to Danny with an angry agent now on my tail. I stopped up short when the GIW were dragging the struggling Phantom back to their ghost-proof van. They had a ways to go, but the hardest part of their mission was over. They had captured Phantom and he wasn't able to escape.

They had done the impossible.

They had done exactly what Danny had feared for so long. He had feared it years ago. And that was what led to the conversation in the first place…

"Promise me?"

No. Tears were now streaming down my face. I couldn't. He couldn't have made me promise. He couldn't have… I couldn't have…

There was only one thing I could do. Kneeling, I hefted the gun to my shoulder and pointed it at the group still in the air.

My chest was heaving too hard for me to keep my aim steady. Cursing myself for my own inability and stupidity, I choked back my tears and tried to ready myself for what I was about to do.

Danny spared a valuable second from his struggling to look over at me. For a moment, our eyes met. His bright green eyes were blazing with the effort of making his last stand, my own amethyst were ringed with trails of smeared mascara. I tried to force every single emotion I was feeling into my eyes, hoping that he somehow caught them all in that split second. I wanted him to know. I wanted him to know what I was going to do. I wanted him to know everything that I had ever wanted to tell him. I needed him to know that I loved him.

I think he understood. Danny had stopped struggling against the agents, keeping himself facing me.

All of my emotions faded away after I sent them his way. It was as if my next movements were robotic, not my own. It was like I didn't care about what I was about to do or what was going to happen because of it. There were no tears—regrets weren't attacking me or forcing me to still my hands as I aimed the gun I had taken. This needed to be done.

I lined it up until the sight was trained on the symbol of my own creation, the dazzlingly bright ghostly P in a D. I aimed straight at his heart and did not risk another glance at his face. I knew I would falter if I did.

And then, before the agents had time to stop me, I pulled the trigger…

I threw the gun aside and am sure that I was screaming before the blast even hit him. His cry joined mine as twin rings that he was unable to stop this time transformed him and his human body plunged to the ground, cracking against the pavement with a sickening thud.

I was hyperventilating when the agents finally arrived behind me.

One roughly grabbed my shoulder and pinned my arms behind me while another was saying something in a formal but oh-so-distant voice. They were going to take me into custody for interfering with government agents in their line of duty and destroying government property.

I pushed them away, my tears blinding me. Who did they think they were? Didn't they even know what they had just forced me to do? What pain they had caused? What fate I had just doomed Amity Park to?

How dare they refer to Danny—the boy I loved and the hero of our city—as a thing, nothing but government property, a ghost lab rat whose body they would dissect and experiment on?

He was the best person to ever have lived. He had seen through my rough Goth exterior and thought I was worthwhile. He was my first friend. He had been my first kiss. He had been my only love.

Now he was gone. I knew it for certain. He was fully human when he hurtled to the ground. The impact would have shattered every bone in his body instantly. There was no way he could have lived through that even with his ghost powers.

And I had felt something inside of me break and disappear forever when the force of his landing shook the pavement. Danny was dead. He was gone. He was no more. He wasn't even a full ghost—he was gone. And it was all my fault.

I fell to the ground and I stayed there. Tears were streaming down my face and falling to the ground. I wasn't hysterical. I wasn't loud. But it hurt so much. My throat was aching and my eyes stung. It was nothing in comparison to the pain in my chest.

After one of the guys in white pulled me to my feet, I let the agents direct me wherever they were going. They couldn't do anything worse to me than I had done myself.

I wanted to get away from this place. I loathed everyone and everything around me at that moment.

I hated the crowd of awestruck people for standing there and continuing to stare, switching their attention from the body of the ghost boy to the girl who had turned on him.

I hated the Guys In White for ever going after Danny and causing the whole chain of events in the first place.

I hated Danny for having gotten himself in that situation and not running when he had had the chance. I hated our conversation and making me promise to get him out the only way he could think of if such a thing should ever happen.

I even hated Tucker for having strep, for not being there for us when we needed him most.

But, really, I hated myself.

Most of all, I hated myself…

…because I had promised.