Chapter Text
Screaming.
It’s the first thing he’s aware of as things begin to come into a sharp focus. Vivid green light, a deep, burning sensation across his skin and screaming. With how much his body aches, it takes him a few moments to realize he’s on his hands and knees, steam rising from his white fingertips as his chest heaves with some sort of lingering panic.
“Danny!”
A name that sounds so familiar. His name? Is that his name that’s being screamed at him? His head feels like it’s underwater, the echo of screaming so distant yet so close that he can’t even begin to understand where it’s coming from. He, Danny? He grabs at his chest and does his best to steady his breathing.
“Danny, can you hear me?”
Danny looks around the room hearing his name called again. He wants to respond, but his chest aches so terribly that he can’t find it in him to speak. He can barely breathe with the pressure holding him to the floor. The voices, where are they coming from? Where is he? What’s going on? What happened to him? Danny’s head is buzzing with a million questions, running at a mile a minute.
“Oh God…. Oh my God…”
Finally, Danny can locate the source of the voices echoing his head. Tilting his head in the direction of the sounds assaulting his ears, more thoughts crash into his mindscape and overtake every other thought running through his mind prior. In the direction of the voices, Danny can see three people. Again, the thought of something familiar rolls through him, and his memories bring names into the front of his consciousness.
Sam.
Tucker.
These two he knows. The memories that swirl in his mind are ones of happiness, enjoyment, gossip and friendship. Danny remembers fearing for their safety not long ago. Some part of him is relieved that they’re safe. Though, the thought of their safety is disconcertingly not Danny’s main priority right now.
Why?
Well… he’s not exactly sure how, but he thinks that there’s two of him in the room right now.
Laying in Sam’s arms, is another him. The same steam that rises from his white gloves seems to leak off of the doppelganger in waves. Except, the doppelganger has black gloves. It’s hard to tell with Sam’s body blocking most of the other body, but Danny can tell something is wrong with his double.
Oh… wait. He remembers now.
The portal.
Danny remembers going into the portal. A game? An adventure. Curiosity. The words circle in his head as he thinks of the moments leading up to the present. He’d gone inside the portal, the broken portal, that doesn’t work. It was supposed to be for fun. It wasn’t very fun, though. Because the portal isn’t broken. He can hear the humming of the device, whirring, and humming and turning, a sensation that leaks into the core of his very being, and he just knows that it’s open behind him.
Does that mean he’s….
It would make sense. The form in Sam’s arms is limp, smoldering with energy. If Danny was standing where he thought he was, there’s no way he would have survived that. So… Sam must be cradling his dead body, then. Not a doppelganger. The thought puts his entire being on pause.
So he’s dead.
Huh.
He thought it would be worse.
True, his body is burning and steaming, and his friends are cradling his dead body and all, and the news that his life is over majorly sucks, but hey, at least he still… exists? Sure, his parents said all those things about ghosts before, but he doesn’t feel any malicious intent yet… Can he avoid that part? Is he allowed to choose-
The corpse is looking at him.
Danny sits up a bit straighter, looking his body in the eye.
The corpse is looking at him.
Does that mean it’s not dead? But, if it’s not dead then, what does that make him? Isn’t he supposed to be the ghost of that body? That… that’s him right? It should be, why is it staring at him like that. Its eyes are moving up and down him, how are they moving? He should be dead!
Sam shakes the corpse a few more times and it seems to jolt back to reality.
“Danny? DANNY? Oh God, come on, wake up, you’re going to be okay,” Sam shouts at the body, and its eyes move to her instead. “Tucker’s calling an ambulance right now, okay? Just hang on, please, oh god, please don’t die on us….”
“Sam….?”
Danny and the corpse speak at the same time, causing the word to echo around the dimly lit laboratory. Both Sam and Tucker turn to the corpse and help it sit up. Fingers wearing black gloves twitch as both bodies surround the limp thing and hide it from Danny’s view as they begin to dote over it.
Danny struggles to his feet. No, wait, this can’t be happening! Despite the pain in his limbs, Danny forces himself to get up. Gripping the frame of the portal for support, ignoring the jolt in his bones from the painful familiarity of how he ended up in this situation, Danny gets off the ground and begins stumbling toward the trio in the middle of the lab.
“Hey, guys… what’s going-” Danny attempts to say, reaching for Tucker’s shoulder. Though his hand passes through instead, Tucker ends up shivering. Danny reaches his hand out again, and again it goes through. Tucker flinches.
“Let’s get him out of here, this place is starting to give me chills,” Tucker whimpers.
“Oh, now that this is going on you’re getting chills?” Sam snaps.
“Hey! This wasn’t my idea!” Tucker bickers.
“Look, we don’t have time to play the blame game, let’s just get Danny to a hospital,” Sam growls, gathering Danny’s body into her arms. The form shifts slightly to lean closer to Sam’s chest as she begins stomping toward the exit. Tucker nods numbly and follows after Sam.
“Hey-!” Danny shouts, stumbling a bit in an attempt to go after them. The faint sound of sirens can be heard wailing from further up the stairs, meaning the ambulance is on the way at least. Though Sam and Tucker leaving him behind isn’t very cool, so Danny keeps stumbling his way toward them. “Come back! Hey, I’m still here!”
With a few wobbly steps that turn into a jog, Danny runs in front of Sam and Tucker, waving his arms. “Guys, stop! Come on!”
Sam and Tucker don’t stop. Instead, the pair walk through him and head up the stairs with the corpse still in their arms. Danny can only stare at their retreating forms, dumbfounded as they leave him behind.
….the corpse is still looking at him.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Sharp lights, loud beeping and pain. The sound of hushed voices and the vague impressions of concerned looks meet Danny as he opens his eyes.
The hospital room is quaint; flowers lie on the desk beside him with get-well-soon cards. There’s something strapped to his wrist as the doctors rush around his bedside, asking him questions he can’t really hear yet and looking him over for anything else. Amongst the hustle and bustle, the cold sensation of someone watching him chills his consciousness to the bones.
Looking around the room, Danny can’t help feeling more and more tense. The heart monitor at his bedside echoed his paranoia, calling a nurse to rush over and grasp Danny’s right hand, telling him with hushed whispers that everything is going to be okay. This doesn’t reassure him in the slightest, as the nightmares of green and hot and pain flare in his mind’s eye as he looks past the nurse, toward the window.
Something green blinks back at him. Staring at him.
Danny feels the terrible, chilling sensation as it becomes colder. He stares out the window at the green eyed thing, green, green like the blinding green light that had blinded him before everything went black. The figure haunts him from beyond the window, as no one else seems to see it but Danny.
Danny tilts his head at the figure. The green eyed thing tilts its own head back at him. One of the doctors walks in front of Danny and starts asking him questions, cutting off his view of the figure in the window. Danny looks up at the doctor, struggling to speak with how raw his throat feels.
When the doctor moves again, the figure in the window is gone.
The sensation of being watched still has yet to leave him, though. A nurse helps lean Danny back into bed, telling him to rest, and that he’d get to see his family in the morning when he wakes up. Though a bit reluctantly, Danny does eventually settle down to sleep, leaning into the pillows of the hospital bed and slowly drifting off.
He dreams of the green eyed figure. It stands silhouetted against something big, bright and glowing the same shade of green as the figure’s eyes. The rest of the area around the figure is metal and sparking, eerie silence surrounding both Danny and the shadow before him.
The light flares, and the figure starts to scream. High pitched, painful wailing that has Danny buckling onto his knees and covering his ears. The sound gets so intense that Danny himself starts screaming too, until he’s left jolting awake in his hospital bed, the scream from his dream dying in his throat.
He grabs at his chest, a sense of deja vu overtaking him as he attempts to steady his breathing. Back in the hospital, in a bed, panting heavily. He looks around, a bit winded as he takes in the hospital room, still with the same white walls and vases full of flowers. The door slams open, and the bulky, orange frame of his father quickly appears in the doorway.
Danny’s never seen his dad look so shaken and worried before. Jack rushes to his bedside, looking him over. “Danny! What happened kiddo, where’s the ghost??”
Before Danny can answer, he’s cut off by his sister walking in the doorway. “Seriously, dad? Danny was electrocuted nearly half to death, and all you can talk about is ghosts? The both of you are unbelievable.”
“But-” Danny starts, only to be cut off by his mother rushing into the room, taking away his opportunity to speak. She takes his hand gently and strokes his hair.
“Oh my poor baby boy, I’m so sorry…” Maddie whimpers, continuing to look Danny over. “That portal turning on is not worth whatever it did to you dear, I was so worried when I got the call from the hospital.”
As his family dotes over him, Danny leans back in his bed, comfortable and safe now that he knows he’s going to be okay. Strange dreams about green eyed monsters aside, once he can go home and recover, he should just be able to put this behind him-
The figure is inside his hospital room now.
Danny looks past his family at the monochrome silhouette now standing in the doorway, freezing in place in his mother’s hug.
Green eyes stare back at him across the room.
In between the warm bodies he’s embracing, Danny finds himself screaming again.
“Ghost!!”
“Where?!” Jack shouts, sitting up and looking around the room.
“Oh great, your insanity is rubbing off on him,” Jazz groans. “Danny, it’s probably just your trauma messing with you, there’s no ghost.”
“But there is a ghost! In the doorway! It’s got snow white hair, and glowing green eyes!” Danny shouts, lifting his free hand to point insistently at the doorway. Both his parents and his sister whip their heads around to the doorway, but when they do, the figure vanishes from sight.
“What did I tell you?” Jazz huffs. “No such thing as ghosts. You should try to get some rest, little brother. I’ll see if I can’t find you a therapist to help you work through your trauma. That portal might have given you PTSD.”
“Shut up! I saw it! I saw a ghost in the doorway! It was in the window earlier, and I saw it in my nightmares!!” Danny shouts. He looks to his parents. “You guys believe me, right?”
Jack and Maddie share a glance, before Jack pounds his fist against his chest. “Don’t you worry, Danny-boy! Your old man Jack Fenton won’t let some ghost mess with you. If there is one, I’ll catch it for you and blast it to bits!”
“Leave some of it behind for me to study, would you dear?” Maddie tugs her husband’s arm in order to gesture to him to slow down a bit.
“Why couldn’t I have grown up with a normal family?” Jazz groans.
Danny feels the cold chill begin to leave, the figure in the doorway is visible again, but they appear to slowly be retreating. He looks at his white gloved hands and back at Danny, scared, before vanishing entirely.
Danny lies back down in the hospital bed, staring at the ceiling. Was it just an illusion? A dream? Something his mind made up to cope with whatever happened in that portal? Danny doesn’t know. Still, he’s very sore after everything, so it might be good to get some rest. But he can’t help but wonder…
If he really did see a ghost, why did it look so… scared?