Work Text:
Danny remembers that when he was little, his parents were more involved in their lives. He can remember his father swinging him around and his mother holding his hand as they walked through the park. He can remember going to the playground and playing hide and seek with Jazz and their parents. He remembers family meals and playing board games. He remembers hugs and kisses and being tucked into bed. He remembers bedtime stories and his mother singing while she cooked, and his dad telling terrible jokes. He remembers being loved.
But he also remembers Jazz standing on a step stool as she tried to cook mac ’n cheese. He remembers walking to school in the snow with Jazz. They are already late, they waited too long for their parents. He remembers being hungry when there wasn’t food in the house. He remembers not seeing his parents all day. He remembers sneaking down the basement stairs to ask his mom to read him a bedtime story. He remembers how she scowled at him and told him to go to his room, that they were busy. He remembers Jazz telling him bedtime stories and tucking him in. He remembers Jazz taking him to the park, and doing odd chores for neighbors so she could buy some groceries so they’d have food to eat. He remembers her hugs and how she’d hold him close and kiss his forehead and tell him that she loved him.
He remembers being loved. He remembers being lonely. He remembers wishing his parents would pay him more attention. He remembers feeling selfish that he wished for their attention when they told him they were doing important work that will help the whole world.
He remembers growing up not knowing if today he would be loved or ignored. He remembers Jazz’s steadfastness.
But he remembers when his parents spent more time downstairs than upstairs except to sleep. Things changed then. His parents were no longer geniuses who were trying to save the world. He remembers when he stopped fighting his classmates who said his parents were crazy. He remembers bitterly thinking that they might be.
He remembers his parents forgetting to pick him up from school or from friends’ houses. He remembers them accidentally locking him and Jazz out of the house, and they were too afraid of what would happen if they broke a window so they slept outside.
He remembers that he ran away once. He took his backpack stuffed with clothes and a few granola bars and his stuffed rabbit. Instead of walking to school he went into the small woods near Amity, thinking that he could live with the animals like the characters in his stories.
He remembers getting lost, being cold, being hungry, being scared of every little noise. He remembers crying out for his parents, hoping that they’d rescue him. He remembers finally stumbling out of the woods and making his way home. It was dark already, and when he stumbled inside Jazz was there, crying and pulling him into her arms. His parents hadn’t noticed.
And then the portal opened. And everything changed but nothing really did.
His parents were obsessed, they had been right, ghosts were real.
There was never food in the house now. Not unless he or jazz brought it in. When his parents noticed they complaid and said he and Jazz had to start ‘pulling their own weight.’ They didn’t realize that jazz worked hard to try and pay the bills that accumulated and that Danny had started taking care of neighbors’ yards when he could to try and help put food on the table. It wasn’t consistent. It couldn’t be, not with ghost fights and escaping his parents.
And it was hard, but a year went by and he was getting the hang of it.
Then they found out and everything spiraled.
He tries not to remember the looks on their faces. He tries not to remember the cold metal table and scalpels laced with ectoranium. He tries not to remember them shoving Jazz when she tried to free him, then locking her in a cage ‘for her own good.’ He tries not to remember Sam and Tucker bursting in and fighting his parents. He tries not to remember them stitching him back up after they’d knocked his parents out. He tries not to remember Sam shoving a credit card into his hand and telling him and Jazz to run.
He remembers so many things. He wishes he could forget so many more.