#holiday truce 2020

[cyberbenb]

Russia’s history of violating ceasefire agreements in Ukraine

As U.S. President Donald Trump continues to push for a swift end to the war in Ukraine, fears are mounting that Kyiv could be forced to accept a peace deal on unfavorable terms, and that will leave it vulnerable to future Russian attacks.

The fears aren’t unfounded. After Russia invaded Ukraine’s east with the use of proxies and annexed Crimea in 2014, Moscow violated multiple ceasefire deals 25 times, President Volodymyr Zelensky said during a meeting with Trump in the Oval Office on Feb. 28.

“We will not agree to a ceasefire without security guarantees. A document is not enough. We need a strong army. Russian soldiers fear ours, but if we have empty stockpiles, we won’t have anything to defend ourselves with,” Zelensky said.

The Trump administration has ramped up the pressure on Ukraine to quickly negotiate an end to the war. But given Russia’s history of violating ceasefire agreements, Zelensky has continued to look for firm guarantees from both the U.S. and European partners to protect against any renewed Russian aggression.  

“If (Trump) can at least get a ceasefire, then he can claim credit, even if Russia violates it every day and no peace deal is ever agreed,” Jenny Mathers, senior lecturer in the department of international politics at Aberystwyth University, told the Kyiv Independent. But Russia is likely uninterested in a ceasefire, said Stephen Hall, assistant Professor in Russian and post-Soviet politics at the University of Bath. “(It) wants Ukrainian neutrality, ‘denazification,’ and ‘demilitarization,’ and all of these things that they’ve been saying for the last three years." If it were to agree to any ceasefire in Ukraine through negotiations with Trump, “it will only be to build up their forces and then carry the war on,” Hall said.

How many times has Russia violated ceasefires with Ukraine?

By launching the war in eastern Ukraine in 2014, Russia first and foremost violated the 1997 Russian-Ukrainian Treaty of Friendship, that “confirmed the inviolability of borders” between the two countries, and according to which Russia was obliged to respect the territorial integrity of Ukraine.

After the start of the war in 2014, the Trilateral Contact Group on Ukraine, which included representatives of Ukraine, Russia, and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, was formed. The Normandy Format, which Ukraine, Germany, Russia, and France chaired, was also created at this time.

Following the signing of the Minsk Protocol, also known as Minsk-1, a ceasefire began at 6 p.m. on Sept. 5, 2014. The next day, Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council announced that Russian troops had fired at Ukrainian positions at least 10 times after the ceasefire was declared.

Former Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma, Donetsk rebel leader Alexander Zakharchenko, OSCE envoy Heidi Tagliavini, Russian Ambassador Mikhail Zurabov, and Luhansk rebel leader Igor Plotnitsky announce a ceasefire agreement in Minsk, Belarus, on Sept. 5, 2014. (Vasily Maximov/AFP via Getty Images)

In February 2015, a document on the implementation of the Minsk agreements, also known as Minsk-2, was signed, which included a ceasefire starting Feb. 15. The agreement lasted only a few minutes, as Russian units fired on a Ukrainian checkpoint near Zolote in Luhansk Oblast, according to Ukraine’s military.

Since the signing of the Minsk Agreements, Russia violated the ceasefire several times a year from 2016 to 2022. The two sides tried to conclude truces on more than one Christmas and New Year holidays, the start of the school year, or the harvest. None of them lasted.

On July 21, 2019, a “harvest” truce came into effect. Following the start of the ceasefire, one violation occurred when Ukrainian positions were shelled.

A year later, a “full and comprehensive ceasefire” was declared in eastern Ukraine on July 27, 2020. Within 30 minutes, Russian forces attacked the 36th Separate Marine Brigade, according to Ukrainian military reports.

In October 2020, the number of Russian attacks increased, and an extraordinary meeting of the Trilateral Contact Group was convened. It agreed to extend the “full and comprehensive ceasefire.” The agreement again did not last long.

“I will be absolutely flabbergasted if the Russians (conclude a ceasefire) and they actually uphold it,” Hall told the Kyiv Independent.

Trump’s ‘peace efforts’

Trump has repeatedly claimed that he wants a swift end to the war between Ukraine and Russia. In the meantime, he has suspended military aid and U.S. intelligence to Ukraine, putting the war-torn country under even greater threat.

“The U.S. is taking steps to reduce Ukraine’s capacity to wage war in an effort to persuade Ukraine’s political and military leadership that they have no hope of victory — however that might be defined by Kyiv — and must instead agree to whatever terms are offered by Russia via Washington,” Mathers said.

According to Mathers, Trump is “showing blatant favoritism” to Russia by ruling out Ukraine’s ability to join NATO or revealing his eagerness to restore economic and diplomatic relations with Moscow.

“It is pretty clear that if Trump gets his way, Kyiv will feel that it has no choice except to agree to a ceasefire that would, in fact, be a surrender,” Mathers said.

Given the uncertainty over further U.S. assistance and potential security guarantees, the Ukrainian government has increasingly called on its European partners to invest in their defense and help Ukraine.

Russian President Vladimir Putin (L) looks at U.S. President Donald Trump during the welcoming ceremony before the G20 Summit’s Plenary Meeting in Buenos Aires, Argentina on Nov. 30, 2018. (Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images)

The Trump administration’s actions have also forced Europe to review its approach to defense funding. Ursula von der Leyen on March 4 presented the ReArm Europe plan to strengthen Europe’s defense capabilities. The EU agreed to mobilize up to 800 billion euros ($867 billion) for defense spending on March 7.

Mark Temnycky, a non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center, believes that sending European troops to Ukraine could provide the necessary defense against any future Russian attacks.

International support for Ukraine’s defense innovation and manufacturing capabilities would also act as a future deterrent, according to Temnycky.

Trump’s alignment with Russia derails Europe’s push for a peacekeeping force in Ukraine

European countries have intensified talks on sending peacekeepers to Ukraine to monitor and enforce a possible ceasefire. But the potential deployment of European peacekeepers to Ukraine faces a lot of challenges and uncertainties. There is no unity among European countries on the issue, with some…

The Kyiv IndependentOleg Sukhov

[fishyartist]

Holiday truce art for @ectopal, I REALLY liked the mysterious framing of you prompt “Danny Phantom disappears. There’s a phantom haunting Casper high” so I made a little one-page comic trying to capture that!

[spookberry]

Happy Holiday Truce to @sput-niik!! your prompts were all so cute and I had a Ton of fun making this!!! Hope you like it 😊

[phanny-dantom]

happy holiday truce to @itsalrightmeow !!

i absolutely love drawing wings so i was really excited to draw this and i wanted to go with some space aesthetic as well! :D very sorry for being a little late but  i hope you like it ^^

[reallydumbdannyphantomaus]

Science Fair

this is my holiday truce gift for @bee-lesbian who requested sam, danny, and tucker just hanging out and being friends! sorry for the lateness, but i had some fun with this just letting them be chaos children :)

“Are you sure this will work?” Danny said.

“It’ll work,” Tucker said.

“It will not,” Sam said, “but I don’t think it’ll kill you since you already died once.”

“Sam!”

“What? He did!”

“Guys, please stop talking about my untimely and exaggerated death.”

Sam rolled her eyes. “Only when you stop poorly paraphrasing Mark Twain.”

“Okay Danny, are you ready?”

“No.”

“Great!” Tucker handed him two cords, one red and one green, both with bits of exposed copper wire at the end. Both wires were connected to the charging port of Tucker’s laptop. “Operation: Halfa Battery is a go!”

“Sam, help?”

“Uh-uh, mister. You told Tucker a week ago that you’d help with his science fair project; you don’t get to back out now.”

“You’re just hoping something blows up, aren’t you.”

“Pretty much,” Sam said, stepping a safe distance away and pulling out her phone to record. “Now, smile for the camera! Just because I can’t put this on YouTube doesn’t mean I don’t want this recorded for myself.”

“Well, you better be prepared for my resounding success!” Tucker said, donning a pair of safety goggles as Sam and Danny did the same and hiding behind a tipped-over table. “Danny will be the new portable laptop charger!”

“My dream job.”

“Okay!” Tucker clapped his hands together. “Ready?”

“Ready!” Sam pointed her camera at the boys.

“Ready.” Danny sighed.

“Go!’

Danny grabbed both of the exposed ends of the wires and… nothing. No flash, no bang. A faint whirring sound came from Tucker’s computer as it began booting up, but that was all.

“Haha!” Tucker stuck his hand in the air in a V for Victory pose. “Eat that, Sam!”

“Aw,” Sam said, putting down her phone. “It works.”

Tucker crept out from his shelter and approached his laptop. Tapping in his password, his glasses reflected the light of the screen as he signed in and pulled up something that shone white on his glasses. Like a goddamn anime character.

“Hey Tuck,” Danny said, “how exactly were we supposed to show off the…”

“The Halfa Battery,” Tucker said.

“Yeah. How are we supposed to show that off without revealing my secret?”

“Uh, we… well, we can...” Tucker stopped typing. “Huh. I hadn’t thought about that.”

Danny smacked himself in the face, letting go of one of the wires. (Tucker yelled “Hey!” as the laptop quickly ran through the little power it had stored and shut back down.) “I said I’d help, but under no circumstance will I tell the school that I’m half ghost for your science fair project!”

“We could put you in a ski mask?”

“Tucker!”

“You could do it as Phantom!” Sam said, shouting from… even farther away it seemed, and behind another table. When had she moved back? At some point, she’d also put her phone back up and seemed to be recording again.

“You could do it as Phantom. No one would recognize you.”

Danny sighed. “I could do it as Phantom.”

“You should try it out now, though! Make sure it still works.”

“We should try it out now. We’ve changed a variable.”

Danny switched to his ghost form. “I guess we’re trying it out now.” The electricity of his ghost powers that always buzzed beneath his skin amplified by an order of magnitude. He looked again at Sam, who flashed him what looked like a thumbs up, though she was too far away to tell for sure.

Tucker looked back at his laptop and shrugged. “It’s an old model anyway,” he said, moving to hide behind his overturned table again. “Ready!”

“Ready!”

Danny grabbed the wire he’d dropped, avoiding the exposed bit, and prepared to turn intangible. “Ready!”

“And… go!”

Danny touched the exposed wire, completing the circuit once again. The whirring started up again, this time with a high-pitched whine. The laptop booted up. The whining crescendoed, loud and almost painful. Danny was the only one closed enough to the computer to feel the sudden excess of heat that it was giving off.

Danny turned intangible.

The laptop exploded.

There was less fire involved than any TV explosions he’d seen. The wreckage of the computer was smoldering, sure, but there was no huge fireball. No flames licking the ceiling of his parents’ lab. Instead, Danny got to watch as, in a flash of green light, Tucker’s old, shitty laptop flew apart into a dozen pieces. A piece of the screen had embedded itself into the wall behind his head, and another bit had reached Sam’s table in the back of the room. Several were sticking out of Tucker’s table too.

“That was so cool!” Tucker popped his head up from behind the table, glasses askew.

Sam appeared with a fire extinguisher, spraying it on the still-smoking remains. “You should absolutely do that for the science fair.”

Danny pinched the bridge of his nose. “I can’t believe I have to say this, but we cannot bring an exploding laptop to the science fair.”

“You can if you aren’t a coward.”

“Tuck. Please.”

“... What would you both say to helping me build a transparent protective bubble that can withstand, say, an exploding laptop?”

Danny groaned. His friends were the worst.

He loved them so much.

[lexiepiper]

Mortality salience

Happy Holidays, @ceciliaspen​!

I ran with your platonic Valerie/Danny prompt, with a (mortality-based) horror theme and a good dash of angst! I hope you like it!

Ao3 FF

“So.” Danny tried to smile despite the screaming pain that overwhelmed his entire lower body. His tongue was sharp with the taste of blood, and he hoped the sudden renewed bleeding of a split lip didn’t ruin the attempt at a friendly expression. “Come here often?”

Valerie glared and curled her legs closer to her chest, wrapping her arms around them. “Shut up,” she snapped, and the familiarity of the insult would have been almost comforting if not for the fact that her typical vitriol was absent. Without it, she sounded hollow, and far more vulnerable than he ever could have imagined.

“Hey.” His lip stung, and Danny tried to think of something comforting as he wiped away the blood and ectoplasm that trickled down his chin. It streaked the back of his glove in a grisly smear of red and green. “I know this seems hopeless, but I’m sure we’ll be fine.”

She huddled tighter in on herself, but otherwise didn’t even acknowledge that he’d spoken. He sighed, catching how her glare faltered as he dabbed at his mouth again.

Water dripped through the broken gaps in the ceiling, landing on Valerie’s arm. A tremor visibly ran across her shoulders.

“Oh.” Danny pawed at the zipper in the hollow of his throat. Her dark green eyes followed as he drew it down as low as he could before shimmying his shoulders out of the waterproof fabric.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

Danny pressed against the wooden beam that pinned his lower half to the ground despite the resulting spike in his pain, peeling the HAZMAT as low as it would go. “Suit’s waterproof,” he grunted. “I won’t get hypothermia, but you might.” It wouldn’t go past his waist, thwarted by the beam that sat smugly across his thighs and pressed into his pelvis with a weight that felt like a thousand tonnes. Pain throbbed through him, cutting breaths short and making every movement agony.

He threw out a freshly bare hand, ignoring the way her gaze lingered on the tendrilling feathers of the death scar that wrapped around his arms before disappearing beneath the colour-inverted NASA shirt that had been beneath his suit. “Knife,” he said in response to her questioning look.

When she made no movement he huffed and rolled his eyes. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

“Why?”

“So I can cut my suit for you.” Danny wriggled the fingers of his outstretched hand. “Cold. Hypothermia. I’d rather not have another ghost to deal with if you die, y’know?”

“Not that.” More water dripped onto her hair, and she shivered again and tried to move out of the way without closing the gap between them in the confined space. “Why won’t you hurt me?”

He groaned, curling his fingers in a gesture for her to hurry up and pass it over. “I’ve never hurt you, and do you really think I fight those ghosts at three in the morning for fun?”

Valerie’s frown grew deeper, and the faint lines in her forehead folded into creases. “You’re a ghost too. It doesn’t need to make sense.”

He flapped his hand. “Semantics. Just pass the knife, my arm’s getting tired.”

“Your arm can’t get tired.” She still didn't move. “You don’t have lactic acid, or even muscles.”

“Like I said, semantics.” He flapped his hand again and tried not to whine. “Come on.”

Valerie chewed her lip before scooting closer and swatting his hand out of the way. “Like I’m going to give you one,” she snapped, leaning across him and producing a pocket knife from her pocket. Danny leaned back against the broken ceiling that had collapsed around them, ignoring the screaming pain that lanced through his gut and hips, and positioning himself so that nothing dug too painfully into his back.

Valerie’s long curls hung in the space between them, brushing against his mouth. He raised a hand to push them out of the way.

She jerked back at the movement, knife up and immediately pointing at his throat. “What do you think you’re doing?!”

He froze, hand still halfway to his chin. “Your hair was in my face. I was just going to move it.” He made a show of wiping the back of his hand across his sluggishly bleeding mouth, holding it up so she could see how it was smeared with blood and ectoplasm. “Didn’t think you wanted this on you.”

More water dripped through the ruined ceiling, landing on Danny’s nose. He sneezed, then moaned as pain flared through him. Once it died down he rubbed his knuckles where the raindrop had hit, watching her out of the corner of his eye.

He didn’t miss the horror that crept into her expression, slackening her jaw and smoothing away the crinkles in her brow as her eyes grew impossibly wide. “You… you’re breathing,” she choked, “and… is that…?”

Her free hand grabbed his wrist, fingers like pincers against his skin. Danny winced as she twisted so that the back of his hand faced her again.

“Blood.” She stared for a moment longer, then dropped his wrist and jammed her fingers in the hollow where his ear met his jawline.

“Wait,” he gasped, trying to pull away, but she shoved the knife back into her pocket and used her other hand to hold his shoulders down, leaning heavily across his chest. Danny cried out, pushing weakly against her weight as fire licked through his lower half and wrapped around his torso. “V-Ahhh, stop!”

She drew back at his scream, fingers still pressed beneath his jaw as her eyes followed the movement of his heaving chest.

“What the hell?!” Danny gasped once the pain retreated back to his trapped lower half, lying in wait until the next opportunity to overwhelm him. “I’m pretty sure my pelvis is broken, y’know? I’m trying to save your life and you don’t think I’m hurt enough?”

Her fingernails dug deeper into his throat, and Danny whined and batted her away. She allowed him to, and they both sat in the gloom, their harsh breaths out of sync so that the empty spaces between hers were filled with the pained rasps of his.

“You’re alive.”

He couldn’t look at her anymore. Dread curled painfully beneath his lungs, or maybe it was just the pooling toxins finally leaking from his crushed flesh. He closed his eyes and tilted his head back until it leaned against the uneven rubble. “Yeah,” he whispered, and the confession bore the exhausting, undefeatable weight of a millstone around his neck. “For now.”

He listened to the rain in between their breaths. Several drops fell onto his bare face and arms before she moved with a rustle of cloth, and then a hand, far warmer than his skin but colder than it should be, gently closed over his shoulder. “What do you mean, for now? How can you be alive when you’re a ghost?”

Danny shrugged at her soft question and regretted it instantly as the movement tugged at lower muscles that rippled with white-hot pain. He winced, curling his hands into fists and taking a couple of grounding breaths before trusting his voice. “If I say semantics enough times will you drop it?”

Her grip tightened, her gentle tone disappeared under familiar sharpness. “Phantom. Tell me right now. What. Do. You. Mean?”

Danny laughed humorlessly, and it quickly dissolved into a whimper.

“I’ll shake you,” she threatened, and the grip on his shoulder became painful.

Danny cracked open an eye to give her his best unimpressed frown. “I’m dying, Val. Have some respect.”

The light was rapidly fading, sinking into twilight, and Danny could barely make out her expression. The only source of illumination was the glow of his own body, but it didn’t do much beyond making his own condition unflinchingly apparent. Her mouth worked, opening and closing as though she was trying to figure out what to say, and Danny pounced on the opportunity to derail the conversation. “Jumpsuit,” he reminded her, gesturing to his clothing with the smallest movement possible. “It’s no good both of us dying here.”

She took a sharp breath and drew back, shaking her head. “No, you… you’re so cold. You need it.”

Danny huffed, but it came out more as a pained whine. “I have an ice core. Hypothermia isn’t an issue for me.”

She leaned closer again, and her eyes shone green as they reflected his own spectral glow back at him. “You’re lying, aren’t you?”

He pursed his lips. “Come on, Val. You’ve seen me shoot ice out my hands. I can’t do that without an ice core.”

She regarded him for a few more breaths before something in his expression seemed to convince her, and then Valerie shifted to crouch right beside him. She tugged at his suit, far more gently than he’d anticipated, and Danny lay back and let her work.

It wasn’t long before she made an apologetic sound. “I need to reach around your back.”

He sucked in a breath through gritted teeth. His ribs were beginning to ache. “Alright. Just… give me a second.”

She obligingly leaned away, and Danny pressed his elbows into the hard, jagged chunks of what felt like roof tiles. He took another deep breath, screwed his eyes shut, and pushed.

The broken fragments of his pelvis ground together. He thought he might have screamed, but then her arm looped around his back and held him upright. Danny sagged against the support, gasping as tears blurred his vision and poured down his face, and pain pierced him with a million burning knives.

She tugged at his suit and Danny sobbed, his head lolling forward so that glowing tears dripped onto his shirt. “Hurry,” he begged, and the jerky one-armed sawing of the knife at his lower back melded with the pulsing anguish below his waist. It spread up, through his gut and chest, and engulfed him with burning and darkness.

The next time he registered any sensation, Danny’s ears resonated with ringing. He blinked, and sucked in a shaky breath.

“You back?”

Something sharp pressed into his scalp, and he shifted his pounding head. Right. Rubble. Soft fingers slipped beneath his skull, smoothing out the rough surface, and Danny tried to make an appreciative noise.

All that made it past his lips was a faint whine, and he heard her sigh as those same fingers brushed his overlong fringe away from where rainwater made it stick across his eyes. “Phantom?”

He blinked again, blearily, and her face finally came into focus. The shadows beneath her eyes and in the hollows of her cheeks were thrown into stark contrast by his ghostly glow, and he was startled by the realisation that she’d lost the round softness that had once been there. She probably didn’t mind the change, but he felt suddenly sad, as though something precious was gone.

“Sorry,” he rasped.

Her other hand rested on his chest, rising and falling with his breaths. “You scared me.”

He frowned. The water on her face caught his spectral light, but he had no way to know if it was tears or rain. “Never thought I’d… hear you say that,” he wheezed. Talking hurt, and the pain in his hips had crept higher, raking sharp fingers through his gut and clenching around his ribs. “Maybe sitting up… was a bad idea.”

The hand still on his forehead pressed heavier for a moment, and then she pulled back. With the staticy rustle of waterproof HAZMAT, she slid her arms into the sleeves of the top half of his jumpsuit. The zipper was still attached to half of its teeth, and after a few attempts, she managed to re-thread the other side and pull it up to her chin.

Danny used the moment to settle. He tried to relax as much of his body as he could, focusing on each muscle that wasn’t currently being crushed and forcing it to unclench. The effort was rewarded with a marked decrease in the pain that pressed against his ribs, but every breath still throbbed as his lower muscles protested any movement.

He looked over at Valerie, catching her staring at his face, and she quickly looked away.

He didn’t know why he asked his next question, except to fill the silence. “Why did I scare you?”

Any remnants of daylight were gone by now, but he could still make out her scowl in the unnatural light cast by his body. Instead of answering, Valerie scooted back so that she was sitting against the ruined wall. Their tiny clearing in the ruined building was no bigger than the interior of a car, but her new position moved her out of the way of the majority of the rainwater that dripped through the small gaps in the ruined ceiling. He thought she wasn’t going to answer him by the time she finally spoke. “What are you?”

The question wasn’t that surprising, but laughter clenched Danny’s lungs and forced its way out as yet another pained wheeze. “Who knows?” he choked, blinking past fresh tears that were brought on by the stabbing pain. “Damn it, Val… If I knew, then maybe… maybe we wouldn’t be here right now.” He sucked in a few more ragged breaths. “I mean, if I knew, like… ah, ouch… like really knew, then maybe I’d have told you… and… you wouldn’t have… have shot me into the ceiling.”

“Don’t blame this on me,” she snapped, and he held up a hand.

“I’m not… blaming you. Just… thought we might have been friends.”

“I don’t make friends with ghosts,” she snapped, and pulled his ruined suit tighter around herself.

Danny dropped his hand back to his side. He’d caught his breath a bit, but talking still hurt more now than it had before. “Y’know, Val… I think you might have… If I’d told you I was half human before… the whole thing with the ghost dog... which I swear was an accident.”

Water dripped in the darkness, and wind tugged at the trees somewhere beyond their cocoon of broken wood and plaster.

“You’re part human,” she whispered, the soft words almost lost in the weather.

Danny gave a slow blink with a gentle tilt of his head in an affirmative gesture. “Lab accident,” he clarified, struggling to speak above a wheeze himself. “I was full human before, so technically I’m half ghost. The jargon is that I’m a halfa.”

“Whose jargon?” she asked, and Danny thought he might have sensed a genuinely curious undertone. “It sounds stupid.”

“The other ghosts.” He shifted the hand on the side visible to her in a general so-so gesture instead of trying to shrug. “Most of them don’t really like me.”

She snorted. “What, because you fight them?”

“Nah.” He worked the words around his mouth slowly, trying not to seem like he was out of breath from their conversation. “The living dead thing kinda… kinda ruins it for them. I fight them... because they like trying world dominion.”

“Right.”

He watched as she looked down at her hands, fiddling with the jagged shreds where her new clothing abruptly cut off above her hips.

“Is that what the scar’s from?” she finally asked, and he thought her gaze might have fixed on the glowing Lichtenberg tendrils.

Danny let out a long, shaky breath. “It’s rude to ask.” He said it as gently as he could, trying to push down a pain that wasn’t entirely physical. The fine hairs on his skin fizzed for a moment, and he watched out of the corner of his eye as they burned out with the tiny sizzle of electrical sparks that quickly died in the night. His scars shone brighter too at the topic, and he heaved his thoughts away before he could properly revisit the trauma. “Don’t… don’t ask. Please.”

The plastic rustle of his suit told him that she was moving again, and Danny turned his head a bit more to see her better as she repositioned herself. Trees creaked in the storm, their tossing leaves providing a backdrop of static. Finally, she spoke. “Is that what’s going to happen?”

“What do you mean?” he asked, exhaustion and throbbing anguish weighing down the words.

“To us,” she said. “We’re never getting out of here, are we?”

Danny sighed, regretting the movement as his ribs twinged. “While I’m still baffled… why you chased me without your suit… that gun won’t stop my powers forever… So no, you won’t die here… I’ll phase us out, soon as… as my core’s back online.”

A sniffle broke past the storm’s noise. “You’re hurt though. And… if you’re still alive… you said it yourself, before. That you’re dying.”

“I know.” Danny squeezed his eyes shut. They burned with exhaustion. “It’s… a race against time, I guess… My core heals me really fast… so if it comes back in time… I should be okay.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

Danny didn’t answer what should have been an obvious question. Before, when he’d first been pinned and the abandoned building had collapsed around them, he’d thought it would all be fine. She’d screamed and cried as she fruitlessly clawed at the rubble, but he’d laid back to wait, thinking that it was just another Thursday.

Now, though? Now a cold emptiness that had nothing to do with cryokinesis leaked into his marrow.

If his core didn’t kick back in soon, this might actually be it.

Valerie finally whispered over the wind again. “If… if it comes to that, who should I tell?”

“What?” He opened his eyes again, trying to make out more than her outline. Her question filled him with dread.

She cleared her throat, and asked again, louder this time. “You said that you were… are… human. So if you do die here, who should I tell?”

He closed his eyes, tears slipping free. “Jazz.” His voice cracked, and he swallowed dryly and licked his lips before trying again. “Jazz Fenton. She’ll tell… Um, she’ll make sure that the right… the right people know.” The faltering words weren’t blocked by his pain, but by a tightening throat as he tried not to picture his loved ones learning that he was never coming home.

“Jazz Fenton?” He tone was just shy of disbelieving. “Really?”

“Just do it please,” he choked, and more tears trailed down his temples. One dripped into his ear while the other disappeared into his hair.

The ruins rattled as wind slammed into the building, and something shifted in their tiny cavern.

Valerie swore. “How didn’t I realise?” she choked, and it sounded like she tried to muffle a sob with her hands. “You… you look just… just like him.”

Danny sniffed, making his chest throb. He blinked a few times before looking at her shadowy form. The reflective collar of his jumpsuit directed his glow back at him, and he gave what felt like a truly pathetic smile. “Hi, Val.”

“Danny?” she whispered, his name tight with her tears.

“Yeah.”

She swore again, and pitched forward onto her hands and knees, crawling across the gap between them. Her hand wrapped around his, and he squeezed with what little strength he could give.

“What have I done?” Her proximity shed more of his glow onto her face, and tears caught the light as they dripped off her chin.

“It’s okay,” he breathed. The chill in his bones was spreading now, numbing whatever it touched. The tempering of his pain would have been a relief if it didn’t clench the cold hand of fear around his heart.

She lifted his hand to her cheek, and her skin was almost unbearably hot. “I’m sorry,” she wailed, and her tears flowed over his fingers. “I’m sorry, Danny, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…”

He closed his eyes again, trying to keep breathing as she chanted the apology over and over. The ice creaking through his veins drowned out all other senses, and Danny gasped as his chest seized in a sudden cramp.

Light flashed through his closed eyelids, and in an instant, power burst from his core. The weight of his human form settled over him like a shroud and Danny instinctively dissolved, opening his eyes in time to see the beam slip through his intangible lower half.

“Pull me out,” he gasped.

“What?!”

The familiar white rings were blinding after so long in the darkness. “Just pull!” he shouted, and then her hands found his shoulders and hauled, and Danny screamed as all of the pain from before came crashing back and the shattered bones in his hips and thighs ground together and stabbed sharp ends into what had to be every single nerve ending he had.

The lights disappeared, and his pulse beat through his ears before sinking into ringing silence.

His next thought was that something irregular and hard was digging into the space between his shoulder blades, and that he ached all over. Light brushed against his eyelids, not bright enough to be direct sunlight but still definitely natural, judging from the fresh air that filled his lungs. Danny swallowed, his mouth thick and fuzzy, and rolled onto his side with a groan.

Everything beneath his waist throbbed with the motion and he whined, curling an arm around his gut.

“Hey.”

It took a moment to place the casual greeting, and when foggy thoughts finally pushed past the pain in his hips and legs, Danny’s eyes shot open. “Val?” he croaked, squinting in the light.

“Thought you wouldn’t make it for a hot minute.” She carded her fingers through his hair.

“Great.” His tongue stuck in his mouth, and he swallowed again and let his eyes fall shut. “Got any water?”

“Not unless you drink the mud,” she said, and then pressed her hand against his shoulder. “Your shirt’s still damp, though. You could probably suck some water from that.”

In any other circumstance it would have been humiliating, but after the night he’d just had Danny figured that pride wasn’t really an issue here. He blindly groped for the hem of his shirt and pulled it up to his mouth, sucking the slightest amount of heavenly moisture from the fabric.

It wasn’t much, but still managed to clear away the majority of the stickiness.

He tugged his shirt back down before opening his eyes to look at her again. “What happened?”

She snorted. Beams of sunlight broke through the cracked ceiling, illuminating her flyaway curls from behind. “What do you think? Your core started working, I guess. It turned you into the human you, anyway. You went intangible or something. I pulled you out. You passed out, which is no surprise since you really should have died.” She gave a choked laugh that held an edge of hysteria. “I then sat next to you all night counting your breaths and heartbeats, and once the wind died down I listened to your bones grinding back into place.”

He sighed, and the pressure of such a deep inhalation nudged against healing flesh with the dull ache of a fresh bruise. “Thanks for pulling me out.”

She shrugged, and he realised that she no longer wore his jumpsuit. “It’s the least I could do.”

“I guess I am your ticket out of here,” he joked. “Have you heard any rescuers yet?”

“With the storm we had last night?” she scoffed. “I doubt their priority is an old collapsed building that they think is abandoned.”

She lapsed into silence, and Danny found himself picturing her sitting there, alone with his corpse still pinned down by the beam. He pushed the thought away. “My core’s still a bit fuzzy,” he confessed, “probably from the massive healing job. Give me a little longer before I try phasing us out. You wouldn’t want to get stuck halfway through a wall. Trust me, I’d know.”

She hummed. Wind wormed its way through the shattered structure, stirring the air with life. Danny laid his head back and listened as windswept leaves whispered in the spaces between soft bird calls somewhere beyond the walls.

“I don’t suppose you’ll keep my secret?” he finally asked.

She sighed, and hope leapt in his chest as she tapped a finger against her chin with an exaggeratedly thoughtful expression. “Well, it’s not like I didn’t just have an entire night to rethink everything I know about you.”

“And?” he pressed when she didn’t elaborate.

Her mouth curved, and he realised that he couldn’t remember the last time he’d witnessed her smile without malice. “I figured that I could use a bit of backup sometimes, y’know.” She held out a hand. “What do you say, Spooky? Partners?”

He took her hand and shook it with as much strength as he could. “Welcome to Team Phantom, Red.”

She broke their grip with a guffaw, her smile breaking into an outright grin. “Seriously? Team Phantom?”

He laughed too, even though it hurt, but then her words from a moment ago finally registered and the laughter died as quickly as it had come. “Wait a minute, did you just nickname me Spooky?”

She cackled, and as her eyes gleamed wickedly he almost wished he’d died after all. “Well, I guess I could always just call you Inviso-Bill!”

[lexosaurus]

Aurora

My Truce gift for @thelegendaryloaf! I was so pumped when I was assigned you, and I absolutely LOVED working with your prompts! Happy holidays, and I hope 2021 treats you well!

Characters: Danny and Valerie Genre: Friendship Word Count: 3523 Summary: Up close, Valerie could see him more clearly. The stars and planets that speckled throughout his face, the tiny bits of multicolored light that sparkled in his eyes, the way his aura seemed to ebb and flow as if it were the aurora in the northern sky. It was as if Phantom was someone else entirely.

Read on [ao3] [ffn]

---

“Ugh, where is that stupid ghost?” Valerie grumbled, gliding through the air on her hoverboard. She had been on her way home from Star’s house when her watch beeped to life, alerting her of an unwanted ghostly visitor. And, if the watch was correct, it was a rather powerful ghost too.

After all, very few ghosts could ping her from so far away.

But like the dutiful hunter she was, she suited up, trying to ignore the way her stomach knotted up with nerves. As much as she enjoyed sending ghosts back to the hell they came from, going up against a ghost of that much ectoplasmic power was sure to empty out her first aid kit.

She glanced down at her watch. She was getting close now. She should be able to hear screaming, see people fleeing in terror, but there was nothing to suggest a powerful ghost had breached the city.

Which meant that Phantom was likely the ghost responsible for cutting into Valerie’s precious sleep.

Valerie was going to kill him. Again. 

Her radar was leading her towards the outskirts of the city, which was odd for Phantom. When he wasn’t baiting ghosts and causing destruction to Amity, Valerie could find him at the park or on top of some tall building. 

But outside of the city? This wasn’t like him.

Maybe it wasn’t Phantom. Maybe it was some tall ghost hellbent on baiting ghost hunters far away from the populace, away from any emergency response, so they could be destroyed in peace. Maybe Valerie was walking straight to her own doom.

Oh well. It wouldn’t be the first time her career as a ghost hunter had gotten her into trouble.

“Ok, he’s definitely in there,” Valerie said, shifting between her radar and the large building in front of her.

She glanced down at her watch, then back up again. Was her watch leading her to...an observatory?

“Why the hell is he in there?” 

Valerie flew low to the ground, making sure to keep out of sight of the open roof. She was almost certain that Phantom was inside the round building, but she just couldn’t figure out why.

It didn’t make sense. He was a ghost. He didn’t care about space. What did he have to gain from traveling this far to the edge of Amity just for a stupid observatory?

She could turn back here. Just go home, leave Phantom to do whatever weird thing he was doing on his night off. And why wouldn’t she—it was Saturday! She could be in bed instead of keeping Phantom out of trouble.

But it was her responsibility. Her duty to Amity. Sure, maybe Phantom wasn’t a purely evil ghost hellbent on Amity’s destruction, maybe he was just a cocky asshole with a hero Obsession, but someone had to keep him in check. 

And that someone was about to send him back to the Ghost Zone.

“Alright, Phantom.” Valerie launched herself through the open roof and hovered above the room. “Very funny. Now, come on, it’s time to—”

“Valerie!” came a cheerful cry from below her. “You made it!”

“Phantom?” She looked down and nearly fell off her glider. Below her was Phantom, but he looked...different. 

His aura had changed, and instead of a bright white glow it swirled with violets, teals, and blues. His freckles had turned into stars and planets which shimmered across his skin, and his eyes positively sparkled.

Valerie regarded him with disgust. “What the hell? Why do you look like the Milky Way threw up on you?”

Then he did something Valerie never expected a ghost to do in a million years: he giggled. 

“I’m so glad you’re here! We have so much to talk about. Saturn and Jupiter are right next to each other, and through this telescope you can even see all of Saturn’s rings. The rings, Valerie! And oh my goddess, if you thought that was cool, wait till you see the Pleiades!” Phantom reached a hand out, and his swirling aura shot forward, wrapping itself around the telescope in front of him.

“Wait, don’t break it!” Valerie shouted, touching down on the floor. But, before she could so much as ready an ecto-gun, she stopped.

Because the telescope wasn’t breaking apart.

It was moving. 

Valerie watched in a mix of horror and fascination as the telescope in front of Phantom adjusted itself, shifting around and settling into place. The aura dimmed, leaving behind a telescope that didn’t look any more ghostly than before Phantom’s interference.

“Okay, what the fuck is going on right now?”

Phantom’s beamed. “Look! Take a look!”

“Oh hell no. I’m not going anywhere near that possessed thing!”

He laughed, and for a moment his aura brightened. “Just trust me, Val!”

“Don’t call me that,” Valerie muttered, but nonetheless stepped towards the telescope. She gave one last suspicious glance Phantom’s way before she leaned forward and looked through the stupid metal thing.

Saturn stared back at her, its rings preening like a peacock against the vast emptiness around it. She had never seen Saturn before, not outside of Google Images anyhow. It looked exactly like all the pictures showed, and yet seeing it in person was...really cool. 

“And wait!” Phantom’s childish voice bubbled from behind her. Cold swept over her and she flinched, her arm instinctively twitching for her gun, before she realized what was happening.

Phantom was wrapping his galaxy aura around the telescope and moving it again.

“Okay, look now!”

Valerie glanced quizzically back towards the ghost, searching for any signs of malevolence, but his innocent smile never wavered.

“Are you high or something?” she finally asked.

He giggled again. “Stop making jokes and look already!”

She rolled her eyes but relented once more. When she looked through the telescope this time, she was met with another tan colored planet. This one had brown stripes running through the sides, warping to show an unmistakable eye-like figure towards the middle of it.

“Is that...is that Jupiter?”

“Yeah!” Phantom clapped. “And if you look, there should be some of its moons in view too! Look around it, Val!”

“Don’t call me that,” she muttered without any real malice. Sure enough, a few tiny tan dots surrounded the planet. “How many moons does it have, anyway?”

“Seventy-nine!” Phantom said.

“Jesus, wonder what its tides are like.”

Phantom playfully nudged her. “Silly Val, it doesn’t have an ocean! I know you know that. But if you think that’s crazy, Saturn actually has more moons than Jupiter does! It has eighty two.”

She stepped away from the telescope, and once again Phantom’s aura took command, adjusting the lens to a new spot. Phantom immediately jumped to the telescope with a ferocity that Valerie had only seen him use in the heat of the moment when fighting other ghosts. Yet, she noticed the way he delicately touched the telescope, allowing his fingers to gently hold the metal shell as he peered into space with a fascination that seemed too ethereal to be real.

Phantom was destructive, he was a fighter, he was driven by his Obsession to fight and be a hero. He wasn’t...this. 

“Seriously, what the hell happened to you?”

“What do you mean?” Phantom asked in a singsong voice.

“I mean this,” Valerie emphasized, allowing her arms to sweep out around her. “All of this! What...Phantom, I know we’re not friends, but—”

“Of course we are!” 

Valerie blinked. “Huh?”

“We’re friends, Val!” Phantom repeated, detaching from the telescope momentarily to hover next to Valerie. 

She could feel his cold aura brushing against her arm, and she suppressed a shudder. “Are you messing with me?”

Phantom peered up at her, his glowing eyes seeming almost offended by her accusation.

Offended? Hurt? Phantom? 

“Val, why would you say that? Of course we’re friends! We’re hanging out right now, right? That’s what friends do!” 

Up close, Valerie could see him more clearly. The stars and planets that speckled throughout his face, the tiny bits of multicolored light that sparkled in his eyes, a shooting star that traveled across his cheek, the way his aura seemed to ebb and flow as if it were the aurora in the northern sky.

It was as if Phantom was someone else entirely. It was like another ghost had taken possession over him. Was controlling him from the inside out.

Valerie’s hand slowly moved down towards her belt, but it didn’t seem to matter. Phantom didn’t notice. In fact, he shot her a beaming smile and turned his attention back to the telescope, rambling about how astronomers believe that diamonds rain on Uranus and Neptune as if Valerie’s hand wasn’t slowly inching towards her gun.

“It’s just a hypothesis really,” Phantom said. “Scientists can’t really study inside the planets yet because they’re so far away. But I hope it’s true! It would be so cool! Imagine, you’re just an alien on these planets, and then suddenly you walk outside and there’s solid diamonds falling from the sky! They wouldn’t be that pretty probably because the diamonds wouldn’t be shaped nicely, also those planets aren’t habitable to any life so there’s no aliens, but it’s still cool to imagine! Oh, oh, but if you thought that was cool, there’s this other planet—not in our galaxy—that’s really really close to its sun so it’s super hot but guess what? Val, you’ll never guess! It’s solid ice! The gravity is so strong that it forced all the water on its planets into ice and—”

Valerie gripped the gun, raising it to eye level and clicking the safety off.

Phantom’s head snapped up. He looked to the gun, then to Valerie, and his aura faltered.

“Val?” Phantom said, the stars on his face dimming. “I...I don’t understand...why…?”

“You’re not Phantom.” Valerie’s voice was steady. “I don’t know who you are, but get out of him.”

“I don’t understand…” The colored flecks of light in Phantom’s eyes faded, leaving them back to their vibrant green. “I...just…I...” His aura fluctuated before turning back to its hauntingly white glow.

“...Valerie?” Phantom 's voice was cautious. He took stock of the gun once more before a hint of realization bled through his expression. He slowly raised his hands. “Wait! I know what this looks like, but I swear I wasn’t doing anything. Don’t—”

“Phantom! There’s a ghost inside you. It was possessing you! I need to take it out. I need to—”

“Wait, Val, stop! You don’t know what you’re doing!” 

“I think it’s trying to lead us to a trap. This will only sting for a moment!”

“No! You don’t know what you’re talking about!” Phantom glanced wildy around the room, his eyes locking onto the telescope once more.

Then, his aura flared, the aurora fought to return, his freckles sparkled like stars once more. A hint of childlike wonder hit his features and for a moment, he seemed lost in the fascination of the observatory.

It was the perfect opportunity to shoot.

But Valerie’s hands were shaking. They were unsteady, just like they were when she first started using the equipment. And in that split second of uncertainty, that moment of hesitation, Phantom gripped his hair and pulled himself out of his stupor.

“No!” he groaned. “Not now!”

“What the hell is going on?” Valerie shouted. 

“Don’t shoot! Just—ugh, gimmie a sec…” He squeezed his eyes shut and groaned. “I just godda...I just need a second.”

To Valerie’s surprise, she waited. Maybe it was the growing respect she’d begun to feel for Phantom over the past year, maybe it was her fading hatred as she learned more about ghosts, maybe it wasn’t anything deep and it was just that Valerie was confused. In any case, she followed his pleas and watched as he pulled himself together, drawing his shimmering aura inward and allowing the familiar homogenous white aura to wash over him.

He gave a final sigh of relief. “Okay. Okay, I’m good now. You can lower the gun.”

“Tell me first.” Her voice allowed for no arguments. “Tell me what the hell just happened, and then maybe I’ll think about it.”

“It’s complicated.”

Valerie noticed how he seemed to be making a visible effort to ignore all the astronomy equipment around them. His eyes were trained to her and her only.

“Then enlighten me.”

“I…” He hesitated.

“I’m giving you five seconds before I blast you unconscious.”

He blinked, and then his expression shifted into the cocky, shit-eating grin Phantom that Valerie had come to know over these months, “As if you could hit me.”

“Don’t change the subject, Phantom. I’m serious.”

He sobered. “Right. Sorry. I...listen, it’s personal, okay? I’m telling you because I trust you, but you can’t tell anyone. If any of my enemies find out…”

“Tell me.”

“Okay.” He sighed, running a hand through his hair. “What do you know of...of Obsessions?”

“Every ghost has one. It’s what controls their core, what gives them power. All ghosts are driven by their Obsession and if they manage to fulfill it or they’re somehow blocked from feeding into their Obsession for too long, they’ll cease to exist. Why? What does this have to do with anything?”

“I…” His face screwed up before he gave out a frustrated huff. “Oh, what the hell! I have two Obsessions.”

Valerie faltered, her gun lowering ever so slightly. 

She didn’t know what she expected, but this? 

“You what?”

Was this even possible? Better yet, how was it possible? Every ghost had an Obsession, but every ghost had one Obsession. It was impossible for a ghost to have two. It would be torment for the ghost, the two Obsessions constantly battling inside their core for dominance.

It would tear him apart from the inside out, wouldn’t it?

But Valerie watched as Phantom’s eyes strayed beside them to a small white telescope sitting off to the side of the room, and Valerie watched as his aura seemed to fluctuate again as the other side of him fought for control.

Once again, Phantom screwed his eyes shut and fought the aura down, allowing his natural white glow to pulsate over his form brighter than before. 

“Can we take this outside?” he asked, his voice tight. “This room is...distracting.”

Valerie allowed her arm to drop, her gun hanging loosely at her side. “Sure.”

“Ok, I need to...I need to slip back into it to close the observatory walls. I can’t access those powers in this form. I’m not dangerous in that state, so please don’t shoot me.”

She nodded, momentarily forgetting that he couldn’t see her with his eyes shut. But he seemed to hear the unspoken words regardless. The blues, greens, and purples of his aura swirled around him, overtaking his aura in a brilliant display of light. The stars and planets returned to his face, and when he finally opened his eyes, it was as if Valerie could see the entire Milky Way within his corneas.

He raised his arms, his face relaxed, and allowed his aura to seep out to the walls. The room glowed, and Valerie watched with an open mouth as the incandescent colors of the northern lights guided the observatory walls closed. They cascaded through the walls before finally dimming, leaving Phantom as the only remaining source of light.

“Okay,” he said, the childlike bubble to his voice echoing around the room. “Let’s go!”

Before she could blink, Phantom grabbed her arm and spread his aura out around her. She let out a yelp of protest before she could feel a familiar chill overtake her skin.

Phantom was...he was turning her intangible. 

“Ready?” He asked. His eyes seemed to glow brighter in the dark.

Valerie looked up at him, breathless.

He grinned and pulled her forward, shooting them both through the walls. They flew up for a moment before shooting back down towards a cluster of trees. 

Valerie had flown on her hoverboard many times, but this was incredible. It was as if gravity didn’t exist. Her body was weightless, flowing across the air with a precision that she’d never felt before.

But as soon as it started, it stopped. The duo landed on the ground, and Phantom broke contact with her. Warmth immediately filled her veins. She glanced back towards the observatory, but the trees blocked her view.

That was probably intentional, if Phantom’s earlier display of cognitive dissonance had anything to do with it.

Valerie waited once more, watching as Phantom’s aura seemed to waver, before settling back into white. When it seemed like he was more or less back to normal, she finally spoke. “Okay, explain. What do you mean you have two Obsessions? How is that possible?” 

“I don’t know.” Phantom’s gaze was downcast. “I mean, my, uh...death was rather, um, complicated. I think.”

She raised an eyebrow. 

Ghosts never talked about their death. According to Maddie Fenton, it was a taboo. Bringing the topic up would only result in angering the ghost.

So for Phantom to bring his own death up like this…

This was uncharted waters for any human.

This was serious.

Phantom pinched the bridge of his nose. “I can’t explain it, but it didn’t go right. I don’t—I can’t…” He huffed, his eyes turning up to her with an almost desperate look. “You must have noticed that I’m just different, right?”

Valerie nodded slowly. “I have, but you’re still just a ghost.”

Phantom’s eyes widened before turning back to the ground. “Right. I...no, you’re right. I’m just a ghost. But I…”

Valerie watched as his eyebrows pinched, his mouth thinning as something inside of him fought to surface. She wanted to speak, wanted to ask what did he mean when he said he was different, but she didn’t.

She couldn’t. 

She didn’t know what to say.

When he finally spoke again, his voice was quiet. “When I died, it went wrong. And my core couldn’t decide on what it wanted to be, so something inside of it fractured. One part of it focused on the people in the room with me, the people that I was worried about. I wanted to make sure they were safe. My friends. I wanted to protect them.”

Valerie held her breath.

According to studies, most ghosts didn’t remember their prior life, or the people in it. Memory loss was just a part of the process of transforming from human to ghost.

And yet…

Phantom clearly did.

“The other part of my core went to the thing I was doing just moments before. I was...I wanted to explore. I always loved space and astronomy. I wanted to work for NASA and see other worlds and...other dimensions. I know it sounds crazy, but it was just who I was. Who I still am.”

He looked up at her, and Valerie saw remnants of stars speckle in his eyes. “So my core settled on two modes. And depending on where I am or what I’m doing, it switches between them. My powers shift too. When I’m normal, I can project ectoblasts and control ice. But when I go into my space mode, I can’t do any of that. But I can control astronomy equipment, as you saw, and I can locate any star or planet in the sky.”

“So that’s how you knew where to move the telescope?” 

“Yeah.” He held out his hand, and a little ice Saturn formed in his palm. “I don’t know how I know where things are, but I just know. But it only happens when I let that part of my core take control of my body.”

“I see.” Valerie breathed out. “I get it. I get why you don’t want anyone to know. That’s kind of terrifying, knowing that you have a half of you that’s so defenseless.”

“Right…” Phantom set the planet down on the grass. “If word got out...if the government found out…”

Realization hit Valerie like a truck. “They could set up a trap, couldn’t they? Lure you into a place like this and take you out. It would be too easy.”

“Exactly,” Phantom said bitterly. “You can’t tell anyone.”

“I won’t. I swear.”

Phantom nodded, relief evident on his features. “Thank you, Valerie.”

Before she could stop herself, she stepped forward. And then again, approaching him slowly as if she were afraid he would disappear. 

But he didn’t move. He didn’t flinch.

He trusted her. Even after everything, he trusted her with one of his most vulnerable secrets.

She closed the gap between them, resting a hand on his shoulder and looking him square in the face. “I mean it, Phantom. I won’t tell anyone. Well, so long as you promise me one thing.”

“What is it?”

“Bring me back here sometime, alright?” She shot him a grin. “This place is pretty cool, and if I have some sort of space wizard with me, I bet we could find a lot of sweet stuff, yeah?”

His aura brightened, and the smile was evident on his face. “Sure thing, Val!”

---

Thanks for reading!

[friendzoned61]

Happy truce to @gordonsbf! I hope you like it :) Happy Holidays!

[bibliophilea]

The End - Ch. 1

Happy Holiday Truce, @mystyrust! Sorry to make you wait - I wanted to do something big, but I forgot to take into account two things: I am a slow writer, and this story became too big to handle as a oneshot. I do have big ideas for where I want this story to go, but we'll see how the story builds itself as I write! Happy Holidays!

If elements of this story seem familiar, that’s because they are! This is based on @lexosaurus‘s tags on @dannys-phucking-dead‘s post! I hope you enjoy!

ffn | ao3

>1< 2 3 4 ...

"Listen. I've met a lot of great asteroids. Really fantastic asteroids. And they've all told me themselves — they said that I was a great president. All of them said that — all one hundred thousand asteroids. I was there."

The camera switches to Tiffany Snow, sitting at the anchor desk.

"This is what President Drumpf had to say yesterday regarding NASA's claims that an unforeseen asteroid is approximately 21 days from hitting the Earth, creating an extinction-level event on par with what took out the dinosaurs," Snow states with a cheerful smile. "Polls suggest that approximately 48.2% of the population believe NASA's claims to be a hoax; 29.5% believe it's the end of the world; and 22.3% is undecided. Lance, can you tell us a bit about Amity Park's response to NASA's claims?"

The camera switches to a street view outside of Amity Park's capitol building. People crowd the streets, many of them yelling and holding signs. Some signs read "THE END IS NIGH". Others say "ASTEROID SHMASTEROID". A few say "DEFUND NASA". One sign says "[citation needed]".

"Certainly, Tiffany," Lance Thunder replies, nearly shouting over the crowd. "As you can see here, tensions are high in Amity Park. Citizens gather to make their voices heard amidst NASA's claims of doom and gloom. Hey, Bob, what do you think of NASA's statement?"

Thunder turns to a middle aged man beside him wearing a bright red cap. The man bends to put his face by the microphone Thunder is brandishing.

"It's fake news, is what it is! I mean, come on! How does a freaking asteroid come out of nowhere? It's a China conspiracy, I tell you!"

Bob nods, and Thunder takes back the microphone. "Well, you heard it here, folks. Amity Park's citizens think NASA's claims are a ho—"

"THE END IS NIGH!"

A woman wearing a sign with the same message butts in, snatching the microphone from Thunder.

"The Disasteroid cometh for us all! Soon it will be Judgement Day and all of you Non Believers will be found Wanting!"

Thunder squawks. "Hey! That is APN property! Give that back!"

The camera turns to focus on Thunder and the woman as they fight over the microphone, their squabbling barely audible over the feedback. Then the feed cuts back to Tiffany Snow.

"Wow Lance, looks like no one can break Amity Park's spirit," Snow says with a grin. "In other news, Congress has voted to defund NASA—"

The TV clicks off.

Danny carefully puts down the remote before he allows himself to shake. His fists clench, and he hides them under folded arms, lest they be seen bursting into ectoplasmic flame. His face feels taut, teeth clenched, eyes abnormally dry. Toxic green edges his vision, and he clamps his eyes shut, lest they be seen glowing green with his anger.

And oh, he is angry.

NASA is a world leader in space aviation and exploration, and Congress is defunding them. And for what? Because they told the truth? Because there's a humongous asteroid about to hit the Earth? They should be funneling emergency money towards NASA, not taking money away! The world needs NASA, now more than ever! Danny has seen the images NASA shared — the images the media doesn't dare share, lest the wrath of one President Drumpf befall them. He doesn't know how everyone missed it — it's huge and it's glowing green and no stars glow green like that — but now that everyone knows about it, there should be some sort of plan to stop it, right? Wrong! The president says it's fake news, and Congress follows suit, and the biggest space programs in the world can't agree on what to do about it when half the world doesn't even think it's real and oh god we're gonna die like actually 100% die and it's not ghosts it's not Pariah Dark it's a big fucking SPACE ROCK that's going to do us in for good and there'll be no more habitable Earth and no more Ghost Zone and we're all going to DIE—

A hand touches Danny's knee, and he gasps, eyes flying open, cringing away from the contact.

Through the green haze in his vision he sees bright orange and immediately shuts his eyes again. They can't see, can't see him freak out, can't see his powers freak out with him—

The hand touches his knee again, and he freezes at the touch, body tense, teeth clenched, eyes shut tight. Another hand touches his arm and he takes in a breath, shuddering as the hand slowly moves to his shoulder, and then to his back, rubbing large, soothing circles. Danny tries to time his breathing to the circles, like Jazz had taught him to, and slowly the blood rushing in his ears (when had that happened?) quiets to a dull roar.

"There we go Danny, see, just breathe. You're okay. You're at home, and Mom and Dad are out, and you don't have to hide."

Danny uncurls slightly at the sound of his sister's voice. He opens his eyes a crack — just enough to see past the green haze — and really looks this time. The orange isn't the same shade as his dad's jumpsuit — it's a lighter, more natural color, and it surrounds a face with concerned, green eyes. Jazz. Jazz is here, and she has her hand on his knee, and she's rubbing circles into his back, and he's kind of sort of getting the hang of breathing with the rhythm of those circles. He leans into her, and she bundles him into a hug, still rubbing circles into his back.

The front door opens, and Danny and Jazz both freeze. Jazz said Mom and Dad are out, but what if they're back? They can't see him like this, they'll find out!

Danny has half a mind to just turn invisible when their voices hit his ears.

"Man, dude, did you see what Congress did to NASA? That's so unfair!"

"It's totally unfair! They're just telling the truth! This whole administration is the absolute worst!"

Tucker. Sam. Danny relaxes slightly at their voices, but he doesn't turn around — doesn't want them to see him like this, either.

But it's too late.

"Woah, dude, you okay?"

"Danny!"

He hears them rush over to him — feels their worry and the warmth of their bodies as they get close — and tenses up again. He should be better than this, stronger than this! He shouldn't be freaking out about some dumb news report.

Not just a dumb news report, his brain helpfully supplies. We're all going to die. And there's nothing you can do about it.

All of a sudden, Jazz's embrace feels too tight. To constraining. Trapping him where he is.

He slips intangible and flees from Jazz, flees from his friends — flees upwards, up through the ceiling and through the roof and through the Ops Center, flees until there's no more house to flee from. He lands hard on the roof of the Ops Center, scraping his knees but it doesn't matter, hands scorching the metal but who cares, it's just the end of the world—

He pulls his knees to his chest and buries his head in them, his face screwing as he tries to get a hold of himself, tries to rein himself in, it's just the end of the world, just the end of Mom and Dad and Jazz and Sam and Tucker and school and movies and parks and people and everything and everyone he'd ever tried to protect—

"Bite this."

Danny feels something cool touch his lips, and he bites down — then coughs and spits as bitter rind and sour citrus burst in his mouth.

He looks up to see Tucker triumphantly brandishing a whole lemon with a chunk bitten out of it. Sam and Jazz stand to either side of him, varying levels of worry and amusement fighting for dominance in their faces. Danny spits again, and stares at the bits of rind and lemon pulp that vacate his mouth.

"What the hell?"

"Told you it'd work!" Tucker crows.

"A lemon?" Danny splutters.

"It's an... unorthodox grounding technique," Jazz responds, "and it normally isn't administered like that—"

"Point is, it works," Sam interjects. "How're you feeling?"

Danny stares at the three of them for a moment. Then he sighs and chuckles darkly. "The worlds going to end because too many people don't believe NASA about an asteroid hurtling towards Earth, and Tucker made me bite into a lemon. How am I supposed to feel?"

He sighs again, long, hard, and shuddering, and he lets himself fall backwards onto the warm metal of the Ops Center roof. Jazz lies down across from him, and Sam and Tucker lie to either side of him, all their heads nearly touching. The sky above them is bright blue, clear of clouds. Birds flit across Danny's vision, twittering as they chase each other before flying off to who knows where. Does it even matter? They'll all be dead in a few weeks.

"I don't want to die again."

The words slip from his mouth, and he feels his breath hitch, watches as his vision goes blurry. His hands begin to clench into fists — but then Sam and Tucker take his hands, massaging the tension from his fingers and palms, and Jazz runs her hand through his hair like she used to do when they were kids and he'd had a nightmare, and something in him breaks.

A sob wrenches itself from his throat, and he curls in on himself. His sister and friends move to hold him close, and he can't help but lean into their touch. They hold him as his eyes glow green, as his hands fist into the metal of the roof, as his sobs take on a ghostly tinge, nearly wailing his grief and his anger and his fear into the sky. He shudders as he cries, and feels as they shudder with him — feels as Sam and Tucker push their faces into his shirt, and as Jazz buries her face in his hair — feels as his shirt and his head where their faces lie become damp.

Crying. They're crying.

And it's his fault.

A wave of guilt washes over him, and he wants to pull away again, wants to force himself to stop crying, to be strong for them. But their grips on him tighten, and they speak to him, words warped by their own tears. "Just let it out," Tucker mutters into his back. "It's okay to cry," Sam whispers into his shoulder. "You don't have to hide," Jazz repeats into his hair.

But beneath their words, beneath their tight hold on him and the way they push their faces against him is a hidden plea: "Stay," they say.

Please stay.

So Danny stays.

Danny stays, and they cry together, and the sun shines down upon them from the clear blue sky.

*~*~*

Danny doesn't know how long it's been. Only that he's no longer crying, and that his friends and sister are no longer crying. They've melted into a cuddle pile of four, with Danny at the center, and the sun beats down on them from a different angle than before. Danny has wound up with his head in Jazz's lap, and she's playing with his hair. Sam and Tucker are on top of him, still holding his hands. Their weight is comforting.

Danny is exhausted. He just wants to fall asleep and deal with everything later. Crying in front of your friends and sister will do that, his brain helpfully supplies. So will the end of the world.

He sighs heavily and moves to sit up. Sam and Tucker get off him, still holding his hands, and Jazz helps him up, moving from playing with his hair to rubbing circles on his back. He smiles faintly at all of them.

"Thanks, guys," he whispers hoarsely. He really does have the best friends and best sister in the world.

Too bad they're all going to die in three weeks.

He frowns and sighs again, too tired to cry.

"It's heavy stuff, huh," Jazz says gently. Danny looks back at her, an eyebrow raised. She continues. "The thought of everything ending like that — it's really hard to think about. Hell, I'm having trouble processing it." She smiles gently at him. "It's okay to be scared and angry, and it's okay to be scared and angry in front of us. You don't have to hide."

"Okay, okay, I get it," Danny mutters. "No more running away."

"Good," Sam remarks. "Now, what are we going to do about everything?"

"What do you mean?" Danny asks.

"You know. The asteroid?" Sam raises an eyebrow.

"Oh yeah. That." Danny frowns down at the roof of the Ops Center. The metal is warped and singed where his hands had dug into it. "What are we supposed to do about that?" He looks back up at Sam. Her eyes bear into his, and her grip on his hand tightens.

"Look, I know this is hard for you. It's hard for me, too. But we can't just sit here and do nothing."

Danny frowns at her. He opens his mouth to respond, but Tucker gets there first.

"Look, I know we need to have this conversation, I really do. But can we have it inside? The metal's starting to get really hot." Tucker stands up, rubbing his free hand on his jeans from touching the roof.

Danny sighs and stands up, stretching the kinks from his back. Sam and Jazz stand up with him.

"On it," Danny says. "Everyone hold tight."

He feels Sam's and Tucker's grips tighten on his hands, and he feels Jazz grab his shoulder. With a poke at his core, he tugs them all intangible, slipping through the roof to the refreshingly cool interior of the Ops Center. He lets go of intangibility and lets gravity embrace them slowly, gently depositing them all on the floor of the Ops Center. Then he lets go of his friends' hands and steps forwards, turning so he's facing the three of them.

"So, what are we supposed to do, huh? Half the world thinks the asteroid's a hoax, and the other half either doesn't have the money to do anything, or is stuck in petty arguments about what to do and who's to blame and all that shit." Danny crosses his arms and frowns.

"Dude, you're the Ghost King," Tucker's quick to reply. "Doesn't that mean you can, like, do anything?"

Danny facepalms. "Oh my god, Tucker, I'm not the Ghost King. I told the Observants I don't want any part of it. And besides, even if I were, who's going to listen to me? Klemper? The Box Ghost? I'm sure they can convince the world to get its shit together!"

"Hey!" Sam interjects. "You can't just focus on what we can't do. We need to focus on what we can do, as a team."

"Oh, and what can we do, Sam? We're way out of our depth here! The four of us can't stop the asteroid from hitting Earth!"

"You're right, Danny," Jazz says. Sam and Tucker gape at her.

"But dude—"

"You can't just—"

"Hey, let me speak!" Jazz waits until Sam and Tucker close their mouths — Tucker with a perplexed look on his face, Sam with an expectant frown.

"We are out of our depth," Jazz states. "We don't have the resources or political pull here on Earth or in the Ghost Zone to make a significant difference." She pauses. "But we know someone who does."

It takes a moment, but Sam gets it first.

"Oh, ew, we are not asking him for help!"

"Wait." Tucker says. "Asking who for—" horror dawns on his face. "Oh, no. No no no. We can't! Why would you even think of that?"

"Think of what?" Danny asks, a little annoyed that he doesn't get it.

"Asking Vlad," Sam, Tucker, and Jazz reply.

"Oh, ew!" Danny says automatically.

Jazz rolls her eyes. "It's not like I want to talk to him either! I just think given the circumstances, we don't have much choice."

"There's always a choice, Jazz," Sam retorts. "He'll probably try and force Danny to stay with him in exchange for his help."

"Yeah, Jazz," Tucker adds. "He's a slimeball. Who knows how he'll try to play this to his advantage."

"But—"

"I think Jazz is right," Danny says.

Sam, Tucker, and Jazz stare at Danny, flabbergasted. Danny blushes.

"Well, it's like Jazz said — I don't want to, but I don't think we have a choice. We need his help. And besides," he says with a smirk, "the man is way too narcissistic. He doesn't want to die because half the world doesn't believe what's right in front of their faces."

"And we can use that to our advantage," Jazz adds. "He knows he'll need help with whatever scheme he's plotting, and there isn't enough time for him to be picky."

"So, what? We go to him for help, and threaten to walk if he tries to pull anything?" Sam raises an eyebrow.

"Exactly." Jazz and Danny grin at each other.

Tucker sighs and pulls out his PDA. "Alright, fine. One meeting with one seriously messed up frootloop coming right up."

Danny stares. "Dude, what are you doing?"

Tucker looks up. "Um, scheduling a meeting with our evil mayor?"

Sam shakes her head. "He's probably booked. We'll have better luck if we just show up."

Jazz nods. "He's probably expecting us anyways."

Tucker sighs and puts away his PDA. "Alright, fine. But can we take a moment to clean up? I don't know about you guys, but my face is crusty."

Danny looks at his friends and sister. Their hair is a mess, and their eyes are still rimmed red. Sam's mascara has dried after running down her face, and Tucker's glasses and Jazz's headband are askew. Danny figures he doesn't look much better.

He nods. "Alright. But after that, we have a meeting with one seriously messed up frootloop!"

[justalitlecreacher]

Happy Holiday Truce @ectolights !!!!!!! I was super into the winged danny au

hope you like!!!

[lesbianpegbar]

Happy holiday truce @friendzoned61! Sorry for getting it to you in literally the last hour of 2020, but I hope you like it!

[tsubaki94]

Here we are. Merry Christmas @aedelia.

Christmas truce 2020 Ch.1 Ch.2 Ch.3 Ch.4 Ch.5 Ch.6 Ch.7 Ch.8 Ch.9 Ch.10 Ch.11

The promots were:  Lost time. Fenton sibling bonding time Secret lives of the A-listers Fenton/Phantom unusual talent/Hobbies Danny reacting to Clockworks spare time pooppost/memer on social media

[artisticallygay]

Happy Truce to @spooky-the-owl! I had a lot of your fun with your superhero crossover prompt, hope you enjoy your gift and have a happy holiday!!!

[charcoalhawk]

Don’t listen to the sound || Christmas truce 2020

Hey yo @tidehopper I was your Christmas truce partner, so sorry for the delay! I ended up doing Ghost language, this was super fun to do!

—————————

It all starts in English, Dash’s favorite subject right behind Gym.

Now, don’t get Dash wrong, he holds no lost love for the boring hour and a half where he has to sit there while Mr. Lancer goes on and on about the intricacies of the color of drapes or why this particular book is more important than the ten other books he’s had to read in other English classes, but this is the one class where he sits right behind Fenton and that's at least entertaining enough that he almost never falls asleep.

The day starts off like any other, meet up with Quan for their Monday jog then speed home to shower so he can drive by and pick up Paulina before their second period. Walk into English just before Lancer calls Dash for attendance and he’s technically on time.

Falling gracelessly into his chair he sees that today is supposed to be a ‘silent partner activity’, meaning he should be able to pawn off most of the work to whoever gets assigned to him while he talks to Quan about the school’s upcoming football match that Friday.

As the class settles around him he can’t help but notice that two thirds of the loser trio is having a particularly heated argument right next to his desk just as Fenton slips into the classroom. He gingerly places a note on the teacher’s desk before shuffling silently to his own where he promptly collapses into his chair, hands curled around his head like he’s trying to block everyone out. After all the shit that happened their freshman year Dash had backed off a bit from harassing the other teen whenever he could, and the two had settled into a shaky stalemate, so he allows himself to feel the smallest bit of sympathy for the other teen.

From what he remembers from his study session the other night Jazz had been complaining that her parents had been messing with some weird ghost hunting equipment for the past few months and it had made the house practically uninhabitable. It had gotten so bad that both Fenton kids had been staying at friend’s houses and Jazz had joked that she might as well get an apartment for her and her brother because her parents had become well and truly obsessed.

With every appearance of Phantom the ghost hunters had become more and more adamant on catching him, not that they ever came close. There had been a particularly big battle last Friday with Phantom fighting against the ghost Technus, and no one had seen hide nor hair from the so called scientists since they had shown up at the end of the battle guns blazing like there was anything they could do. They had gotten one lucky shot in against Phantom with an unfamiliar weapon just as the superhero was capturing the other ghost, but it hadn’t seemed to have any affect on him.

Dash forces himself to focus when Lancer starts calling out names, and hides a wince when he’s paired up with Fenton. The twin death glares he receives from Manson and Foley tell him he’s not not going to be able to slack off today.

Lancer passes out sheets of paper to each row, but when it gets to Fenton he doesn’t even lift his head. Manson moves quickly to pass the paper along to Dash, but he can tell something’s up.

As everyone moves to turn desks to face each other Fenton has yet to move, which only serves to unnerve Dash more, Fenton is a notoriously antsy person and a light sleeper, even when he had fallen asleep in class no one had ever been able to sneak up to him and slam down a textbook to wake him up. Manson and Foley are whispering now, sending concerned glances Fenton's way every couple seconds, and Dash decides to bite the bullet.

Placing a hand on Fenton’s thin shoulders he shakes the other teen, growing more annoyed the longer he gets no reaction.

“Fenton?” He asked, trying to keep his tone light, “Hey Fenton! Get up so we can do this dumb assign-”

ᏇᏂᏗᏖ. ᎴᏗᏕᏂ Ꭵ’Ꮇ ᏁᎧᏖ ᎴᎧᎥᏁᎶ ᏗᏝᏝ ᏖᏂᏋ ᏇᎧᏒᏦ

Dash felt a chill go down his spine as the room went silent around him. Whatever sound Fenton had just made was not human. It wasn’t even inhuman, it just sounded wrong. Like every instinct Dash had was suddenly screaming at him to run, run run get away it’s not right wrong wrong wrong-!

In an instant Fenton was sitting ramrod straight as if someone had stuck a metal pole down his spine, glancing wildly around the room like a cornered animal. In a moment that seemed to last an eternity Dash caught a glimpse of Fenton’s eyes, and he instantly regretted it. Fenton’s eyes were glowing a bright acid green, reminding Dash eerily of Phantom's own bright green eyes. But while the ghostly superhero’s eyes seemed to be alight in joy and determination, Fenton’s were dead and cold. They made Dash want to put as much distance between himself and those empty eyes as possible.

The moment was broken when, with inhuman speed and grace, Fenton leapt from his chair and escaped the classroom before anyone could move. All eyes immediately moved to Manson and Foley, with some sparing a glance at Lancer in the vain hope that their teacher had any idea what was going on.

Manson is just opening her mouth when suddenly the door that Fenton fled through seconds ago was all but slammed open by the town’s resident ghost fnatics. They were in full ghost hunting regalia and brandishing their ecto-guns like they actually knew how to use them. The two scan the room as Lancer moves swiftly over to them and the three begin a frantic discussion just outside the classroom in voices too quiet for any of the students to hear.

All eyes snap back to Mason and Foley, hoping that the two of them could possibly shine some light on whatever the hell just happened, but they're gone. Gone. There one second gone the next gone. As panic starts to consume the class Dash feels a chill go up his spine and yanks his phone out of his pocket and sends a panicked text to Jazz.

He doesn’t think English is ever going to be his favorite subject again.

[a-flower-lover]

Aunt Alicia Didn’t Prevent The Apocalypse

Hello, @phandom-phriend! Here’s your Christmas Truce gift! I hope you like it :3

Word Count: 2680

Summary: When there is an explosion at the Nasty Burger, killing almost her entire family, Aunt Alicia handles it.

It took a good week for Alicia to hear the news. It took only one more for her bags to be packed, the plans laid out, and her trusty lawyer to be prepared for a call just in case. Then she was in Amity Park, for the first time in years and years, only it was not for any good reason. 

The first thing she did after checking into her hotel had been to drive herself to the funeral. 

There were so few people in attendance, it was… Stunning, to say the least. But Alicia hadn't known her sister to have many friends, and Jack even less… regardless she thought at least a few would arrive. Maybe even some family, from Jack's side of course. And the little she had talked to her nephew during the arrangement, made it seem he knew people that she hadn't, and that Jazz would have some people coming for her side of things. 

There was practically no one. No one there to comfort her nephew while she hadn't been there for him, no one to make sure he wasn't blaming himself for it all. Hell. His entire support network had been wiped out in one go. He needed people who cared. Who would share in his grief. 

Alicia was too busy during the service to do any of the comforting. She doubted she even could. She lacked the gentle touch her sister had learned when dealing with children, and she was a mite too rough to handle a kid who witnessed the death this one had. 

Poor kid. 

After the service, she made an attempt to talk to him about the custody matter. She doubted the courts would allow it, given her record, but she did want to keep an eye on him. She doubted he'd be happy in the woods she loved, but she'd be willing to move wherever he wanted within reason. She had the money. You marry a businessman, you get money. If you live off your own land, you get to keep it. She could afford whatever Danny needed, if he asked. 

She knew of a godfather existing. The dick hadn't shown up to the funeral, but she knew he existed. She was told he lived in Wisconsin, was a high n’ mighty CEO of multiple corporations. A single rich billionaire who lived in a mansion no one visited, who was more likely than not gonna be a terrible influence on a hurt kid. But he'd have more of a legal claim on Danny than her. 

She'd already lost a child, the courts were not likely to give her another. Even if she promised to move out from the woods.

But Danny's choice was all that mattered for her. If he wanted her to, she'd fight tooth and nail for him. She'd tear the world apart to help the last remaining family she had left, if he wanted her to. 

Alicia was not good at affection. She was not good at showing she cared. She was stubborn, aggressive, and she'd been hurt in her life. She was not the person Danny needed, who would be endlessly understanding and gentle. She was one of the only options he had. 

So after the service was over she asked him. Did he want to live with her, wherever he wanted to go, or did he want to go with his godfather. Originally he had been confused. He had a godfather? He had a choice? She explained what she knew, and he only seemed to grow more confused. Said he'd met the man, but hadn't known he was his godfather. Said he'd have to think on it more. 

Alicia knew it meant he wouldn't pick her. It wasn’t a surprise when she was proven right. (She was practically a stranger, to Danny. The few times they’d interacted she was sure didn’t leave any semblance of a good impression.)

The legal processes after a death were lengthy, at least when Alicia had to work with Masters. After the courts had said he'd get custody of Danny, he had "helpfully" decided to put his nose in the work Alicia was doing for the inheritance. Not that it was all too confusing for her to handle; everything was being left to Danny, if she had anything to say about it. One would think the man who'd be caring for the child would agree, but you'd be surprised. 

In addition, any time she wished to talk to her nephew she'd first have to undergo a sort of interrogation from Masters, about what she wanted to see her nephew for, or she was simply turned away from the door without another word. She had never seen the Fenton house so dark, and empty, and cold, as she had the month after their deaths. She couldn't imagine any reason Danny would want to stay cooped up in there, especially not on his own, but Masters kept her out and she had no standing if she decided she didn't like being kept out like she was. 

So if she wanted to ask if Danny wanted any of his inheritance readily accessible, or what if anything he wanted sold, or if he wanted the FentonWorks business to be given to Masters or if he wanted to shut it down, any of that sort of stuff was impossible for her to get answers for. Masters thought he could try to play a game of telephone with her, telling her what Danny wanted for Danny, often without asking, but Masters was a stupid bastard if he thought she'd let a businessman speak for her nephew. 

So between attempts to contact Danny before he moved to Wisconsin with Masters, Alicia instead focused on her own personal project. 

After learning the parents of Danny's late friends we're not planning on letting him attend their funerals, because the bastards blamed him for the deaths that day like immature pricks, Alicia had worked out a deal to allow him to attend without being harassed. If he wanted to, anyhow. That was another thing Alicia had yet to ask him. But giving him the choice was important to her. So she had agreed to the deal. 

She was going to foot the bill for a statue the Manson's had planned, to honor their dead daughter, and the Foley's were going to have their son part of the statue as well.

Of course, if they were getting their statue of their losses, Alicia was going to get a statue of hers. (She was not going to lie and say that adding the Fentons to the statue was one of the things she was doing for Danny. She was doing her best to make this loss easy on him, but she knew a lot of her best was neglecting her own grief. If she was going to be forced to commission a damn statue for his sake, she might as well kill two birds with one stone by adding in elements for her sake. The funerals were going to happen before even the statues pedestals were done, let alone the statues themselves, so if the assholes who blamed her nephew didn't like it they'd be too late to do anything about it.) 

So the project was the oversight of the clearing of the Nasty Burger explosion site, and the construction of the pedestal and base for the statues. Thanks to the richer Manson folk, and even Masters after Alicia told the bastard what she was doing the thing for, the statue's plans and location had been legally settled right in time for construction to begin. 

The first few days of it were normal. Just Alicia, the hired construction men, and the occasional terrible reminder of what they were cleaning up as a chunk of metal covered in dried brown markings passed by her eyes and was tossed into the dump truck. 

It was the eighth day, she thinks, when she started seeing the ghost. 

The ghost was familiar. She had chatted with Maddie about a ghost matching this one's description, the last anniversary of Alicia's divorce, between moments of frustration as she tried to tell her sister that leaving a man too stupid for her was a positive. (Alicia. Regretted, that. Not that Alicia was a woman who regretted many things, but. Her last memories of her sister were of getting a nice divorce anniversary party, after being what many would describe as an ass simply because Maddie loved her husband more than he was stupid. Not everything that works for Alicia works for others. Hadn't Maddie said that? At least something like it, surely.) 

Snowy white hair. Black suit. Green eyes, but she couldn't say they were glowing. If they had at one point, they didn't now. Looking incredibly familiar, a face she was reluctant to place because she didn't know what it could mean. But matching Maddie's description anyways. 

He sat, just far enough away from the site that he was out of the way, but close enough that Alicia could see the tremors wracking his body, and the slight shine on his cheeks. 

Ghost or no, that was first and foremost a kid. A kid who looked mighty like another kid Alicia knew. And even if the familiarity was only surface level and coincidental, she could use the practice. Practice comforting someone, she meant. But it took a few more days of the ghost appearing for her to actually approach, as caution overruled empathy. 

"You look a mite troubled, there." She said, hands in her pocket as she approached the figure. It didn't move, hardly acknowledging her. Perhaps it didn't think she was talking to it. "I'd ask what's wrong, but I reckon I already could guess." She crouched down, reaching out to touch the specter on the shoulder, but it was quick to scoot itself out of reach, though she took that to mean that now it acknowledged her. Good. A start. 

"Wh-?" It stopped before it could really start talking back. Alicia took that as her queue to keep going. 

"My apologies. Jus' saw a kid needin' help, but I can leave you be if you really want." She said, and the ghost started to shake it's head vigorously. "Then I'll be glad t' listen to your troubles, kiddo."

"Um, but why?" It said. "I'm not a kid. I'm a ghost."

"You sure don't look a day over twelve, ghost or no." Alicia pretended not to find the responding scowl humorous. Just another small thing, proof it was just a child.

"I'm fourteen." The ghost said. Alicia held back her response. This ghost really was familiar, wasn't it.

"Well, then. Fourteen. Certainly, much much older." Alicia snorted, shaking her head. "No, no, I wasn't here to rag on ya. What's the matter? I doubt your eyes we're shinin' cause the cleanup is so beautiful." The ghost, who had for a moment been distracted from the sight, immediately turned back to it, and a very dreary expression bloomed on its face. 

"'s my fault." The ghost mumbled, almost so quiet Alicia didn't hear. It pulled its tail up to its chest and wrapped its arms around it, resting its chin on them. Not once losing sight of the remains of the Nasty Burger. 

"Now I really doubt that." A week in the town had told Alicia that the Phantom ghostie Maddie so despised was revered as the town hero. While Alicia was of the opinion that most city folk were brainless sheep, she had never bought the idea Maddie got from Jack that all ghosts and similar sort were evil. If they were, then that meant all people were evil, because ghosts came from the dead. Alicia was pessimistic at the baseline, but she'd got nothing but kindness from the neighbors when the worst had happened to her and everyone else was blaming her for it. She couldn't believe they'd turn out any different had they died. So believing this ghost could be a town hero was nothing of a stretch. 

"I did, though." The ghost whined, a sound bordering on animalistic, a clear distress call. Alicia wondered if another ghost would come to answer. "I had a fight, here, days before the explosion. I was the one who damaged the vat, and caused it. I even-" The words broke off into another whine, louder and sadder than before. Tears ran down the ghosts face, tinted green and glowing. 

"Now you couldn't have known what would happen." Alicia said, but the ghost didn't react. "And I bet it wasn't a fight you started." The ghost still didn't respond. "Honestly, you and my nephew. Kids always blame themselves for things out of their control." She sighed, shaking her head. This got a reaction out of the ghost, a small flinch, that if Alicia hadn't been paying close attention to and trying to see she would have missed. 

"Danny’s a good kid. I don't know why he blames himself, but I know it wasn't his fault. I may not know you, but I feel it's the same for you." Alicia said, and she paused. Would it be bad to continue? The ghost was only looking more and more upset, especially now that she mentioned her nephew. 

"It's not the same for me." The ghost eventually said, after a minute of indecision. "If it's not… not your nephews fault, then it has to be mine." The ghost said. 

Alicia frowned. That was a stupid way to reason this. There was no one at fault for this, except maybe the people who decided a Nasty Burger must be prepped to self destruct at any moment. 

She would have said so, too, if the ghost hadn't've disappeared as soon as her mouth opened. 

After that, the ghost kept appearing. To watch the clearing process, and to watch Alicia. But any time she'd try to get close to talk to the other again, it'd disappear. It was a touch frustrating, but nothing to be done. She wasn't gonna go chasing ghosties. That was never and will never be her place. 

She was generally spending less time at the site after that, too, which was another factor in not talking to the ghost any more. Danny had finally started to answer the door instead of Masters, and Alicia was better able to talk to him. While he started to avoid questions any time it got around to how he was feeling, he didn't seem too off. Or, not really any more off than he would be after what happened. 

He attended his friends' funerals, and said that no one gave him a hard time. He worked out what he wanted to keep, and what he wanted to get rid of. He wanted to keep the building, and keep FentonWorks. Masters would keep track of it until Danny was older, of course, but Alicia was fine with Danny's decision. 

He came with her only once to watch the site clearing, to watch the last batch of shrapnel and debris be hauled away, leaving only the broken shell and sign of the old building. When Alicia explained that they weren't planning on rebuilding at the moment, Danny didn't seem to care. After that it was time for him to leave, to meet Masters at his new home. 

Masters had left a week before, looking troubled, but putting on a show of ease when Alicia approached to ask why he was leaving Danny behind. He had a lot to prepare, was his excuse. Bullshit. But Danny had been fine with it. Said he even asked the man to. So Alicia, though it made her unhappy a great deal, left it alone.

Alicia took one last month in Amity to settle affairs, to see the completion of the statue, and to rest flowers at each of her family's graves (yes, even Jacks). The time during which she didn't see the ghost again, to her disappointment. 

Then she left and went back to her home in Spittoon, Arkansas. Alone.

[shadowofaghost5]

Happy Holiday Truce to @justalitlecreacher !!! I went with Jazz and Danny bonding as the prompt because I love those two. Look at her, she is helping him study!!

Anyways, this is a lot different than I originally envisioned, and I overworked it half to death (HA!), but I’m still satisfied with the result. I hope you like it!!