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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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The very idea of it...
The thought that he could have children...
Never once has Danny ever put thought into having a family. Much less, being the one on the hook for the nine months of grunt work. The want was never there. The desire to have that kind of craziness in his life... If the feeling had existed even briefly, even if it were within his subconscious, his childhood ensured that whatever spark may have flickered was snuffed out with extreme prejudice. Not wanting to carry on the Fenton tradition of going crazy and leaving your relatives behind seems like a solid reason, now that he's thinking about it.
His aunt had disappeared into the woods, away from family and society. Done with her husband, done with her sister's choice of a husband, and done with the apparent genetic insanity. Roughing it in the forest had done his aunt well. And despite all of the improvements made at home, Danny had begun to notice, in the last year or so, how often his parents were leaving the house. Leaving him and Jasmine alone. It felt like they were eager to leave. And Danny had wondered if their leaving was a response to Vlad's warning. If they were leaving under the guise of "If we're not here to fuck it up, then we can't fuck it up." It would certainly make sense. To him, anyway.
But as a result of their behaviors, the idea of having children is spawning several new anxieties...
What if he turns out just like his parents?
What if Vlad turns out like his parents?
What if they both turn out like his parents?
What if they have a family, and they decide they can't take it?
What if they aren't meant for it?
Worst of all, he and Vlad are the only half-ghosts in existence. Is their species even compatible with normal ghosts? Not knowing the answer, wouldn't it be unfair to their child, being born an eternal being and unable to share the joy of a family with anyone else? All because of the accident of their birth?
All around, it seems more and more like a bad idea. The fears and anxieties and possibilities and potential impossibilities just seem to make it more and more pointless. It just stresses Danny out. Ultimately, Danny wraps the journal in an old t-shirt for protection and buries it in the bottom of his closet. It's not the healthiest solution. He finds himself laying awake at night for several hours, staring in the direction of where he knows he's put it. It bothers him. He doesn't want to deal with it.
Danny rolls over after a while, every night, crying out his frustration and stress into his pillow before dreaming nightmares of leaving theoretical offspring behind while he loses his mind or goes galavanting off to who knows where. He dreams himself into his parents' shoes, reliving memories from a parody of their perspective.
He knows he should talk to someone. He just doesn't know who. After a few weeks of wallowing in his own insecurities, which followed the last two, almost three years of headache-inducing anxiety, the decision is made for him.
He crawls into bed one night, and drifts off to sleep a little too easily. Slipping and falling... Down... Down... Down.
The sensation of something looming over him comes with frightening clarity and his eyes snap open abruptly. To face, not his ceiling or the stars scattered about it, but a mask cast entirely of ice. And a pair of blue and white voids for eyes. Long strands of white drape downward while a few frayed ends faintly brush his cheek. And for a moment, he thinks he's gone ghost and looking in a mirror.
"Well, that's it," he breathes, "I've officially gone insane."
The imp floating above him in silence tilts its head before reaching an icy tallon down and taps at his chest. A string of light begins to glow, seemingly already there. A thread, thin and bright, is tied around the imp's finger. Danny follows its path with his eyes to find the other end is tied to his own.
Holding his hand up to look, there seems to be no knot. It simply exists, aglow in a strange shade of blue.
Danny looks up at the creature floating above him, "Please don't tell me I'm gonna spend the next four years arguing with you in the world's most one sided conversation."
It shakes its head silently and turns, floating off in the direction of the hallway. Danny sighs, grateful, until he feels a tug on his finger.
"What the..." He sits up to look and feels another pull on his hand.
"Okay, I'm coming," he takes his time detangling himself from his blankets.
Looking around, he realizes it's not his room in Amity Park, but his room in Wisconsin. And it appeared normal, on the surface. When he went past his door, he found familiar stone lining the walls. Ice coats the floor and snow is piled along the way, shoved up against the stone. He follows the path and finds a familiar turn, into the foyer he misses so much. At least, it looks like the foyer in Wisconsin. But there's a few changes.
First and foremost, it's at least three times the size of what he knows the foyer to be. Second, it's all in that supernatural blue the thread on his finger glows in. And third, there's sculptures of ice scattered about, capturing his most significant moments in time. Save for a few from his childhood, they predominantly cover time after the accident.
Danny skirts around himself in a hospital bed. Avoids himself in the bed Vlad had provided. He tiptoes around himself waking up and flatly ignores his first meal in the kitchen with Vlad and his sister. There's his first flight suspended in the air, his first wobbling steps after waking, the first time he transformed, his conversation with Dash on the park bench, the day he reunited with his friends at Polter Heights, the one year anniversary of his death that had him falling out of his bed and fighting for movement... There's no apparent order to the array.
The imp is circling one in particular, however. Danny approaches with caution as an overwhelming and familiar sense of bitterness clutches his heart. His mother, seated on a couch, while he sits on the floor holding onto a pillow.
"I still hate that moment," he voices softly, "She tried to get out of it."
The creature chitters at him before flying over to another sculpture. Danny follows, to see himself curled up on his bed while his father knocks on his door, holding a bowl in his hand.
"Kind of feels like he tried harder than mom did in that moment."
The imp leads him over to the stairwell, and he ascends it slowly.
"Is there a point to this?" He asks.
A strange keen echoes from up ahead and he sighs, following the sound. Where he expects to turn down another hall, there's actually a door in the way. He recognizes it as the front door to his house. When he pushes it open, he's surrounded by more ice sculptures. Each one depicting an unhappy memory. The first time he was punched in kindergarten. The spelling test he got an 'F' on because the teacher was convinced he'd allowed another student to copy off of him. Every single time he was shoved into a locker by a bully. Every single day he came home with a bruise from a bully and was grounded for getting into a fight. Hundreds of ice carvings featuring him waking up suddenly and violently to an explosion in the basement or his bedroom door being kicked in. Dozens more of him in bed and ducking from a misfire. In the back, the portal. With him and his hand on a panel, mid shock.
Each and every birthday. From as far back as he could remember, up until his sixteenth. More than half of those sculptures simply depicted him sitting at a table with the word 'LATE' carved into the would-be wood. The others showed him holding gifts he really didn't want, and a jagged etching of what he had asked for scratched over his heart.
4 years old: a book about dinosaurs, but there's some sort of home-built radar equipment in his hands.
5 years old: the same book of dinosaurs, but a miniature blaster in his hands.
6 years old: 'LATE' is gouged into the table's surface. The gift is blurry, as is the etching over his heart.
7 years old: Treasure Planet on VHS, but he's holding a book on paranormal research.
8 years old: 'LATE.' He asked for a CD player and headphones. He got clothing.
9 years old: 'LATE,' but a telescope, as depicted on his chest, and a telescope is being handed to him by his aunt.
10 years old: 'LATE' is gouged into the table, and his actual birthday is over his heart. There is no gift.
11 years old: 'LATE,' and 'Gave up asking' is carved over whatever the desired gift was..
12 years old: 'LATE,' but Jasmine is handing him a CD player and headphones. There's nothing etched over his heart.
13 years old: 'LATE.' His chest is blank, anyway.
14 years old: 'LATE.' His chest is blank, anyway.
15 and 16 years old? Two separate sculptures of him and a large, ugly 'X' drawn over his heart. Nothing else.
Above, the moment he transformed into what he knows his ghost form to be hangs midair. Above everything.
Danny bites his tongue to stifle the tears, "Okay, look," he calls out, "Is there actually a reason you're dredging up all of this wondrous joy? Because I stuffed this shit away for a reason."
The imp appears in front of him, standing as straight as its legs will allow. It crosses its arms as it towers over him.
"I don't know what point you're trying to make. This whole room is full of my worst memories. I mean," he looks around, "No kid should ever have to go through this stuff."
The creature perks up a little and unfolds one arm, motioning for Danny to continue.
"No kid should..."
And then it clicks.
"I wouldn't want any kid to go through this. This is fucking insane. No kid should ever go through what I did. Which means the only way to be sure they don't is to make sure they don't. This won't happen again because I won't let it. Even if it all falls apart and Vlad leaves, or fucks up, or decides he can't take it, I will. I can't repeat my parents' mistakes. I won't repeat their mistakes."
The imp excitedly scoops him up and spins him around, trilling all too happily. Danny laughs in the whirl, before being put down.
"But... What about..."
His ice based counterpart tilts its head.
"What if they can't have a family of their own?"
A slow clicking emanates.
"I can be the best parent in the world and give them everything they could ever need. But Vlad and I are it for half-ghosts. I don't want to watch them struggle to have a family if they can't."
The ghost pauses for a moment, tapping its knuckles together before it gets an idea. In front of Danny, it proceeds to sculpt a coin out of ice. It then passes the token to him eagerly.
"That's nice, but Vlad and I are a fluke."
In response, it holds up two talons, as if counting.
"Except," he eyes the two presented appendages, "a fluke only happens once... That's why it's called a fluke... It's not supposed to happen...again..."
Another motion for him to keep going.
"This could happen again? Like, again again?"
When the only response he gets is a simple shoulder shrug, his face lights up.
"This could happen again," he smiles, "This can happen again!"
The imp nods quickly.
"This will happen again! It might not be now, it might not be for another fifty or a hundred or a thousand years, but we won't be the only ones!"
Overjoyed, he flips the coin in his hand. Once, twice, thrice, again and again and again, before throwing his arms around his counterpart and holding on for dear life.
A soft chitter slips out and the embrace is returned. The thread around their fingers glows even brighter before Danny feels it start to pull back in to his chest. They separate to look at the thread that is shortening with haste.
"Thanks."
A hand of talons ruffles his hair and the teen watches as the imp's body slowly begins to fade.
"Hey, before you go, why can't I fly as a ghost? I haven't really had the time, I know, but even when I do and I try, I can't get off the ground."
It visibly slumps before it clicks a hoof against the floor twice and the stone turns clear, like glass. Beneath it, an oversized chain is connected to an equally absurdly sized anchor. The creature waves an arm out towards the whole room and all of its memories, then turns to him and taps on its own chest, and then taps on his, over his heart. Just once.
"Oh. Yeah, that would probably do it."
The imp promptly kicks him in the shin, earning a shout.
"I deserve that, yup," he rubs at his leg.
His other half gives an indignant huff before fading into the thread that binds them, and the thread withdraws back into his chest. Danny straightens with a smile as the room whites out. He's feeling lighter, already.
-
Danny tells Vlad about the experience the next day, but leaves out a few parts. Specifically, his micro-crisis of having children and the coin tossing. He decides Vlad doesn't need to hear about that stuff. While those parts are pretty major, just like shifting dirty dishes out of the way, Danny chooses to set them aside for later. He's not burying them. He just feels that its too soon to approach at least half of that pile.
Meanwhile, Vlad glares at him from across the kitchen table.
Danny swallows nervously.
"You didn't tell me you were struggling to fly," he grits.
The teen gulps again, "I didn't really know how or when to bring it up. And I figured I'd ask it since I was talking to it."
"And?" The man drums his fingers against his own bicep.
"Well, it turns out that burying bad memories instead of facing them and repeatedly wallowing in bitterness, anxiety, dread, hate and anger and refusing to just accept what's happened and what you are is actually bad for you."
Vlad's left eye twitches as his head fills with laughter like an echo-chamber.
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Kindred Spirits