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Kindred Spirits	By : RedelliaValentinos Category: +1 through F > Danny Phantom Views: 206 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I don't own Danny Phantom, I don't own any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from writing this story, I write this purely for the enjoyment of writing. It's just me and a keyboard and my wild brain.

Chapter List
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He tried to ignore it.
He tried to get through his days by burying his head in the sand because he didn't want to know what the feeling was.
He didn't want a label for it.
He just wanted it to go the hell away.
Passing the time by reading, studying ancient texts or knitting were proving pointless. Whatever it was, it wasn't interested in shutting up. When the first month had passed and he'd called Jasmine to follow up as he had promised, he had hoped that speaking with Danny afterwards might temper the niggling in his head. And while he conversed, the strange feeling had changed. It, or he, he wasn't sure which, had perked up hearing Danny's voice. The moment the call ended, it reverted back to an unhappy growling sensation. It wasn't right. It's not normal. At that point, he wanted to know what it was so he could silence it.
Peering into his own head had never yielded pleasant results. But that sensation that he's been trying to chase away for months seemed to stand apart in his brain. Not necessarily as another personality, but it was still separate. As if a piece of him had broken away but insisted on hanging around. So, he'd decided to take a peek, and settled in the library one rainy night. He sat before the fire, closed his eyes, and reached in.
...if Vlad's mind and its inner workings had a physical form, they'd manifest as a vast, twisted labyrinth of a library with numerous dark corners. Books would be all over dull carpets and in crooked stacks. There'd be countless doors between the shelves that lead into his memories. A grim and dingy basement would linger underneath, lined with misshapen prison cells housing different growling globs of shadow and darkness. Skeletons in varying states of decay and disarray scattered in halls, mounded in corners, reaching bony fingers out to grasp at nothing. If libraries pulled triple duty and additionally served as body farms and dungeons, that's his head. There's a main room to the library, with a fireplace burning in pink and red flames. The bookshelves are high, nearly infinite. And there's an easy chair in front of the fireplace. So he can meditate and review the knowledge he's gained over the years, or wallow in self-loathing if he's in a particularly sour mood.
Prying into his mindscape revealed his fundamentals in shreds and tatters. Books were torn apart at the spine and strewn carelessly about the room. Pages were mangled and scribbled all over. Some were just in pieces. The carpet was ripped and threads hung loose, with numerous holes that were just black voids leading to nothing. The shelves were burned black and ashen, and some were still burning. The easy chair is on its side and pushed out of the way, and the fabric of its upholstery is shredded. And where the chair should have been, something else was sitting in its place.
Having spent years carefully compartmentalizing his entire mind, Vlad knew where everything was in his head. He knew exactly what was in his head. And that which was blocking the fire and had torn his scape apart was not on the list.
It was shrouded in Plasmius' cloak. It bore the skin of Plasmius, and the hair, and horns, and its face. But this form of Plasmius was also strange to him. He guesses, upon further examination, that it is Plasmius, completed. It wore a pair of teal wings on its back. Its horns were slightly longer, sharper, and a second set of smaller horns jutted out just underneath. Its fangs were far more pronounced, practically tusks. Its nails were now claws. When it became aware of Vlad's presence, it stood up, turned, and towered over him by a good two feet. A hulking beast of a gargoyle. And it loomed over him, glaring through glowing red eyes, and seemed to be quite thoroughly annoyed by his presence.
''You don't belong here.'' He barely managed to get the words out, he was so frightened that something new had moved in.
It growled, it raised its arm up, and before Vlad had known it, he'd been backhanded out of his own head and woken up on his back on the real library floor. With a pounding headache, an aching back and aching legs. It shocked him, being knocked out of his own head. He's worked so hard to keep everything balanced and under control. He never once imagined that he'd lose that control.
When he went to bed that night, he fell back into his mindscape through a backdoor.
Pushing past the proverbial doors to the library, he found it in the same state. Torn apart and messy. With Plasmius perched high up on a shelf, glaring down at him and growling softly. And on its left ankle was a shackle, glowing in an ominously familiar pink. A chain ran down the length of the shelf and across the utter sty on the floor...and connected to a shackle on his own right ankle.
"Fan-fucking-tastic," he bit.
The gargoyle huffed from its position on the shelf.
Vlad glared. And started cleaning. Sort of. He gathered up all of the books and papers and shreds and dumped them at the base of the bookshelf Plasmius loomed off of. It watched him. Carefully. Following his movements. Vlad put out the fires on the shelves and mended the tears in the rug with threads of pink energy. But only for half of the room.
The mess is piling up on half of the library floor and Plasmius is starting to growl more loudly, looking down at the debris almost frantically. And Vlad just keeps working, even as the floor is eventually covered in ripped tomes and papers. When Vlad tosses a particularly heavy book his way, the resounding thud and flurry of shredded papers at the point of impact draw a full roar out of the gargoyle.
"Hey! You made the mess, you get to live with it!" He gives the chain a hard tug with his leg and Plasmius shudders on its perch, nearly falling down. But it manages to compose itself.
"Just because I'm stuck with you now doesn't mean I'm going to put up with your shit. You made the mess, you can clean it up."
Vlad continues working. It feels like several hours pass. He's just about to right the tattered chair when Plasmius jumps down from the shelf. It doesn't startle him. In fact, Vlad ignores him by standing the chair up and stitching its holes shut. And Plasmius glares through the flurry of paper upon landing.
"It wouldn't kill you to have some sense of decorum."
Plasmius stalks his way up behind him and grasps the chair with one hand, squeezes until the wood cracks, and chucks it into the fireplace. The flames burn hotter and brighter for several moments, engulfing the piece of furniture and swallowing it whole.
"Really?" Vlad quips.
The gargoyle huffs again and walks back over to the pile Vlad has made. It kicks the papers and books aside, shoving them back towards the invisible line Vlad has mentally drawn down the middle of the library. At first, it seems to be a tantrum, and Vlad is rearing to scream and yell at the chaos. But watching it, the pile begins to form a ragged outline. Very rough and imperfect. The tears and shreds are lined up very carefully as Plasmius works, sharpening the image. Every torn paper and book has a place and purpose in the frame. Plasmius stacks certain pieces, arranging them in a specific manor.
When it finishes, it opens its wings and flies up to its favored perch and settles on the edge of the bookshelf again, leering down at the counterpart it's bound to.
And Vlad is left speechless. The mess is reorganized. The scraps and tears have formed a jagged cutout, in depth, in full scale, of Plasmius' form.
"Your mess. You live with it."
-
He didn't know who else to turn to. It's not like there's a panel of experts on half ghosts. So, Vlad returns to the Ghost Zone, for the only entity to have any knowledge at all of his condition.
He's also slightly grateful that he isn't greeted at spearpoint this time. Instead, Frostbite almost seemed to be expecting him. He led him through the village calmly, back into the medlab. There's a teapot and two cups waiting on the table, with a few chairs made of sculpted ice. The yeti encourages him to sit.
"So, not only are you not handling the separation well, but your ghost half seems to have gained sentience," Frostbite says while he pours a cup of tea.
Vlad sighs from the cold while the snowbeast sets the teapot down. Tugging at his cloak to keep warm, he's finding some new levels of strength in his arms and very nearly tears the material. Nearly. And he still has that headache, and upon changing forms, he found two very small protrusions just under his horns, one on each side.
"I scanned my core after the last trip. It was fluctuating in temperature, but that's all. There wasn't anything to indicate that my form would be changing. Or that I'd be developing a secondary personality."
Frostbite laughs. "You don't have Multiple Personality Disorder."
"Then what is it?" Vlad grates through chattering teeth, "Because ever since that night, I've been hearing it in my head. It talks. It mostly growls at me, but it talks. I go to sleep and it pulls me back into my mind and it just glares at me. I don't even dream anymore. It pulls me in too quick."
Frostbite sips at his cup. "A second personality would imply an unsound mind. You've certainly been through a lot, but your mind is surprisingly durable. What's happened is you've cordoned off and isolated parts of yourself to the point of irreparability. If you'd care for a little honesty, my own scans of your core did show that something was off. But you were here for the boy, and I doubted that you'd be open to conversing at the time."
"Wonderful."
"I figured you'd make your way back here when you were ready. I'm just surprised it took this long. But, I suppose a slow burn is more fitting for...you."
Vlad scoffs.
The snowbeast hums. "You say it erupted from within your framework?"
Vlad thinks back to the pile of papers and books.
Frostbite takes the silence as his answer.
"It's indicative of your mental state. From the sounds of things, you've been suppressing a rather unhealthy amount of your emotions. Your rage, frustration, bitterness, anger, hatred, unrivalled anxiety, your outright denial... It all adds up after a while. For humans, the treatment would be medication, therapy, or both. But for ghosts, it's not so simple."
Vlad turns his cup back and pours himself another to warm up. For Frostbite, the tea is more of an informality. A way to ease the tension. For Vlad, it's a very real necessity.
"As ghosts, our presence bends the fabric of existence, giving us very unique and otherworldly abilities. We're able to tap into our memories and wander our minds. In a sense, we use more of our brains than even the most intelligent humans. Were we still human, it would be regarded as a gift. As we are now, it's extraordinarily ordinary."
"Your point?" Vlad grunts.
"My point is, that, due to the nature of our being, it is far easier to do damage. Both to yourself and the outside world. Your relentless suppression of your emotions and needs has literally created this proverbial elephant that you're now permanently chained to. It simply gained more sentience the longer you fought your own head. And from what you haven't told me, you've been restraining yourself for months. Stopping your feelings short is one thing. But to pack them away in a box and just keep adding to the pile is pure carelessness."
Vlad stares into his cup, taking the chastising tone without argument.
"Your Empty Nest Syndrome is merely, as the livings say, the icing on the cake. And was most likely the spark that breathed life into your unwanted guest. Had you faced your problems prior to the pup leaving, you would have been fine. The mass of repressed material would have simply remained a mass and dwindled over time. At this point, even if you face them now, it's too late. For better or worse, you're stuck with it."
Vlad finally looks up at the yeti. "Then what do you propose? Because I can't keep living with him. With it. Whatever. Whatever it's supposed to be."
Frostbite sighs. "My advice?"
Vlad nods.
"Face your problems anyway, and your feelings, accept it and make peace with it. Learn to live with it. Because it's not going anywhere. It will learn to move in sync with you, but it will always be. And...due to its awareness, it will have its own wants and desires. And those wants and desires might not line up with yours," 'Yet,' he thinks, "It already knows what it wants. You're just going to have to tell it to be patient."
"You can't be serious."
"Telling it 'no,' at least for now, will only make matters worse and increase the risk of it taking control."
Vlad groans and beats his head against the table.
Frostbite winces. "Don't do that. It can feel your pain."
Vlad's lip curls back in a snarl and he looks up to scowl at the yeti. "If it's stuck with me, it can suffer with me."
"Don't issue challenges to it, either. It may only be a piece of your psyche, but it's still sentient. It is aware of itself and you. Whether you like it or not, your ghost half has officially moved in, upstairs."
Vlad feels...worried. He already has an idea of what this is going to entail for his day-to-day living. "Will... Will Daniel have the same problem?"
"Well, that depends," Frostbite says softly and finishes his cup.
"On?"
"On whether or not he's capable of admitting and accepting his own feelings. The boy has grown up with loving friends, family and basic human interaction through his formative years."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
Frostbite huffs, but a smirk works its way onto his face.
"Unlike you, he's not emotionally constipated."
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Kindred Spirits