WHATS UP BITCHES!

Wow so I was having a bad week (month.. okay year lmao) and bc I'm a selfish potato seeking motivation and reassurance I thought it'd make me feel better to go read some old reviews from an story I had fun writing. IT SURE DID. I really love you guys honestly. This story reached a wider audience than it really had a right to and I'm surprised that it's still getting new readers and reviews. It goes without saying that you guys, the readers, make all this effort it takes to write a story pay off.

I'll take this moment to segue into why I'm actually here:

That little trip down memory lane totally reignited my passion for this story. It's been two years since I wrote it (AR E YOU KIDDING ME someone needs to be held accountable for this Father Time where you at bro) and BOY my writing skills have grown since then. In all honesty this story idea was much larger than I actually had time to tackle, and I had to simplify whole story arcs into single angst filled chapters, and so on. If I could do this story over it'd look SO different, and the cheese would've been utilized a lot more sparingly... But, alas, the world is not my oyster and I don't have time to rewrite all my fics as I grow as a writer—WISH THOUGH I MIGHT.

ANYWHO.

I may not have time for that but what I CAN give you is the LONG (I'm so sorry u guys I'm the literal worst) awaited epilogue to Candlelight.

It might be stylistically different and the characters might behave a tad bit differently, and this is only because I didn't truly hit my peak of understanding these characters until well after I'd written this story.

Thanks to everyone who stuck around this long. Love ya.

~HappyLeif

P.S. This went in such an sentimental direction but I just rolled with it because it felt right.

. . .

Epilogue

. . .

Danny woke slowly to the sound of sirens and the smell of singed hair.

"..anny. Danny. Danny. DANNY!"

He jerked upright, in the process slamming his forehead into Sam's and exploding a thousand supernovas between his brain and retinas. "Shit—what—"

With painstaking slowness Sam's face melted back into sight and her words surfaced in his stormy mind again. "—time to go," she was saying.

"But the ghost..." Danny nearly fell over as he stood and caught himself heavily on the wrought iron fence he'd been so recently slumped against.

"Done and done," Sam assured him. She cupped one hand firmly on his chin and lifted his face just high enough to see the all-important thermos slung haphazardly on its strap over her shoulder. Its lights flashed red. It was occupied.

Danny grinned sloppily. Slam fucking dunk. "I don't know whether to kiss you or high five you."

"You can do both, but first," and she punctuated her reply by nervously scanning the street, "can we bounce please? Are you okay to walk?"

Danny followed her anxious gaze and felt his stomach plunge a couple inches. The city street was full of people. And, now that the threat of the ghost was gone they were closing in fast. The haze of unconsciousness that last bone-shattering punch had knocked into him was finally dispersing and he remembered now only too well the events of the day...

The hour-long argument that sprouted up between he and Sam like a weed as soon as the Infi-Map revealed a large natural portal opening up right inside Salt Lake City.

Sam's unnecessary reminder that the GIW's second largest base was barely a twenty minute drive from the soon-to-be portal.

Danny insistence, "I know that and it doesn't matter."

Sam's insistence, "Nothing you could do in Salt Lake would be worth getting yourself caught over."

Danny's admission. "I know that too and it still doesn't matter."

Sam's admission. "I know you know it and I know you don't care, I just fucking wish you did!"

Danny's guilt grew now as he watched black dots growing into helicopters in the sky, and white dots swarming down the off ramp from the freeway. Now that the fight was over and innocent people were no longer in danger, his own life suddenly became much more important. A wound that never quite healed all the way opened up again now amidst the dawning realization that he was neck deep in Shit's Creek. The night of his arrest—his father throwing a stranger across the room, his mother frozen in horror, the image of Sam's gaunt face as military men dragged him into the street outside his own house, an image which haunted him every day until the day she found him. The blindness that overtook him as he went into self-defense mode and nearly leveled an entire city-block in his escape.

The sheer amount of danger he'd plunged himself and Sam into by bringing her here strangled him suddenly and viciously, and the beginnings of that blindness began to swallow him again.

He was Wide Awake now.

And Sam... was gently slapping his face. "Hey sleepy! Let's get the hell out of Dodge and then you can nap, okay?"

Without much warning the eager crowd was upon them, shouting out at them before they'd even closed the last thirty feet. "Phantom, where do you plan to go next—?" "—such a display of of ingenuity when you surprised him from behind and—" "—realize evading arrest is a federal—?"

"No comment," Sam shouted over the tumult, shoving away half a dozen extended pads of paper and microphones. "Trying to escape here." Together they flew intangibly through the crowd, fingers locked tight. He hoped she knew how sorry he was for how he acted this morning after they learned of the opening portal. If he could choose anywhere to be right now, anywhere in time and space, it would this morning.

It would be just as he woke up, the song of a bluebird in his ear and dried leaves tangled in his hair.

It would be the moment when he remembered where he was and whose arms were wrapped around his stomach. Whose ankles were tangled so tightly with his he could never hope to move an inch without waking her. The way he knew she could hear the bird in her sleep because she screwed her eyes closed more tightly and curled in closer to him, like being just a bit closer could drown out anything in the world.

She squeezed his hand tight now, as if to say "I know you're sorry and I already forgave you."

And he realized all at once that it wasn't the stillness of waking with her that he wanted—it was also the argument that followed. It was the danger that followed that. It was her hand to hold in the Lion's Den.

In the middle of the clear blue sky lightning flashed green and he knew the shield had begun to descend, sealing him into its borders.

They hadn't fled more than a couple houses away from the crowd's epicenter when Danny's intangibility and flight both faltered. He lowered Sam to the ground and stumbled after her as she regained her footing. That blow to the head had left more lasting damage than he gave it credit for. Sam pulled him along, but it was in vain. He felt he was trudging through snow, and the snowflakes had begun to rise up and obscure his vision as they fell into the sky.

Nevertheless, he managed to throw Sam behind him and conjure up two blazing handfuls of raw energy when a massive truck swerved in front of them, effectively cutting them off. He nearly unleashed the energy at the truck before realizing it was violet. Not white. And was covered in various decals of heavy metal cover bands, and bumper stickers he didn't have time to read printed with comic sans and exclamation marks.

He didn't lower his hand till the passenger threw the door open with a shout. "Don't just stand there, get in!"

Danny eyed them warily, but Sam had already begun to drag him into the passenger seat as the redheaded girl scooted over into the middle seat. The girl in the driver's seat peeled away before Danny had even managed to close the door behind him.

"Where to?" the driver demanded, leaning around her friend with wide-eyed anticipation.

Danny opened his mouth, trying to think, but Sam was already on top of it. "The portal we came through is on Milton and—shit it's, uhh—"

"Denver." As soon as he spoke Danny's head was thrown back into the headrest as their savior floored it.

"Sweet," she cried, banging on the steering wheel, honking mercilessly at onlookers to get out of the way. "That's gotta be inside the shield. It looks like the edge is coming down somewhere past Liberty Park."

None of that meant anything to him, but he understood enough to feel relieved.

The redhead girl squished between Sam and the driver rounded on them with stars in her eyes. "That was so flipping awesome. I can't believe you guys took down that ghost in five minutes. Five minutes! Like, wow! I can't breathe. And you!" She grabbed Sam by the arm with both hands and shook. "Talk about badass. I thought it was all over when Danny took that punch—"

"Erica would you can it for a sec?"

"It's alright," Danny soothed, though he got a glare from Sam for saying so.

"You realize you guys are accomplices now." Sam said it without a hint of question.

The driver spoke up again. "Please. If the GIW arrested everyone who helped you half the country would be in jail by now."

"Still, they like to make an example of people sometimes and we don't want—"

"Don't mention it," the girls replied in unison. Danny leaned past Sam to look at them questioningly and was hit by the realization that they were twins.

As they tore down Milton Avenue the portal loomed up in front of them, in the neighborhood's park under the jungle gym, exactly where it had opened this morning.

"Sam," Danny mumbled as yet another realization rocked him. "Our stuff..."

They'd left it hidden in an alley downtown, meaning to come back for it after the ghost fight before they split town. After a year of travelling they'd lost almost all of their personal belongings over various complications. Their clothes and their electronics, Danny's acoustic guitar, Sam's prized Polaroid camera, most of their money. And now as the twins drove up over the curb into the grass and they tumbled out of the car with a hasty Thank You And Goodbye, they were essentially ditching what was left of it. All that was left that tied them to Amity Park. To home.

"It's fine," Sam said under her breath. "We're fine."

Without hesitation he leapt after her as she dove into the portal, waving to their guardian angels as he vanished into the electrifying ether.

He found her hand again. They were drifting steadily away from the Salt Lake portal, on into the directionless void, toward the nearest of infinite doorways. They were likely home free, since the GIW had to-date never followed them into a portal, and to their knowledge were still largely ignorant of what lay beyond them and between them. Yet they didn't like to take unnecessary risks, and that's why they fell out of the first portal they reached—

—into the middle of a lake.

On the deserted shoreline they wrung their clothes out the best they could, soaking in the warm sun, grateful it was summer—and even more grateful of their apparent isolation as they threw their dripping clothes over some branches and hoped for the best.

"I've got some Orbit gum," Danny joked, pulling the soggy package from his jean pocket.

"I'll do you one better," Sam retorted, fishing through her own hanging pants. "Two, count them, two candy wrappers." She held them aloft with an absurdly negative amount of enthusiasm.

"I've still got that losing scratch card from Portland." Though it felt like processed pulp now.

"Well I've still got ten whole wet dollars, so I guess that makes me the breadwinner."

"Yeah, well I've got..." Danny dug around for another second before admitting defeat. "I've got nothing."

"I'm not even done yet, Fenton. I've also still got my—oh no..." Sam pulled her disposable cellphone gingerly from her back pocket, cradling it like a kitten. "Oh man. Man."

There was no use checking, but they did anyway. It was broken. That was it. Their last link to Tucker, to their families.

"We'll figure it out," Danny reassured her. They always did. Sam could only nod in silence and shove the broken phone back in its pocket.

The dirt road that led away from the lake eventually turned into an empty highway, which they walked down for three solid hours before coming up on a bite-sized town so small it didn't even have a sign proclaiming its name. The first building with its own parking lot looked to be a diner. They had misgivings, like they always did, but their stomachs got the better of them. The vinyl lettering on huge glass door read Laurie's House for Waffles and Coffee.

"Yes. Yes, please." Sam reached for the door but Danny was struck with uncertainty and caught her wrist before she reached it.

"Sam.. Are you sure you want to spend our last ten bucks on waffles?"

Sam's stomach grumbled audibly. "It's fine, Danny," she insisted, flashing him a warm smile, with a surprising lack of its usual snark. "We're fine."

Danny was almost convinced that no one recognized them until he tried to pay.

"Oh no. No, no." The man standing behind the bar top slid Sam's damp ten dollar bill back across the table. "You don't pay here."

Sam stumbled over her words before settling on indignance. "Uhm.. Thank you. But we don't like to accept charity.."

The server grunted and turned away, back to cutting lemon wedges next to the jug of tea. "'S'not charity, miss. Just doing my part." As he turned to make his way back into the kitchen a Danny caught the edge of a tattoo beneath his sleeve that looked suspiciously like DP.

Sam reached for the ten hesitantly and stuck it down her shirt before throwing a wry grin Danny's way. "See," she told him. "We'll be fine."

And they always were.