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goodfish-bowl · 1 year ago

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Until Dawn Breaks

Ectoberhaunt 2023 Day 20: Danse Macabre

AO3 Link

Summary: "La danse macabre" by Camille Saint Saens was written in 1874, and depicts a legend where on Halloween at midnight, Death would play the fiddle, summoning the dead from their graves to dance with him until the rooster crows at dawn.

There’s someone playing the violin in the cemetery, and despite the six feet of earth separating Danny from the surface, he can hear them clearly.

Warnings: angst

Words: 2612

Danny awoke to the sound of the soft cries of a violin. The melody was winding and minor, clamoring up and down the scales, clearly audible despite the six feet of earth that separated his resting place from the surface. He wondered who the hell was playing the violin in a cemetery in the middle of the night. It was a bit of a stupid idea, but… they at least played quite well. You could win consolation prizes for that sort of skill. Danny slipped from his resting place, phasing through the earth and maintaining his invisibility. He didn’t want to scare the player off after all.

Rising from the surface, the first thing Danny did was note the location and shift of the stars from the last time he had been awake. It was autumn now, and at least 20 years since the last time he had woken up, and the arc of the moon put it just around midnight... That trio of ghost hunters must be adults now.

Danny found the player not too far from his grave, dressed darkly, in fashion that wouldn’t look out of place a century and a half ago if not for the spiders decorating the lace in her dress, and the careful, complex addition of layers. It looked heavy, but not nearly as heavy as clothing from that time period actually was. Despite the darkness of the night, she had a hat on her head, decorated with a matching spider-lace veil and rhinestone that glistened like raindrops caught in a web, carefully tucked away so as to not get in the way of the violin that was tucked gently under her chin. Danny thought she was lovely and matched quite nicely with the scenery she surrounded herself with.

On a small device Danny couldn’t name, a tinney replication of a piano played under her solo, adding chords and texture to the piece. He would’ve loved to hear it with an actual piano instead of a recording. He sat himself upon his own headstone, resting weightlessly on his knees as he watched her sway to her own song.

She finished on a chord that didn’t quite leave the piece feeling completed, but was satisfying all the same. Danny clapped without much thought to the action. The player startled nearly immediately, eyes wide as they snapped to him as he flickered into visibility. She took a quick step back, tripping over the hem of her dress. Danny was quick enough to catch both the violin that flew from her hands, and her own hand, stopping her from hitting the ground.

“Y-you! You’re… you’re-!” She stuttered, frozen in shock as Danny pulled her to her feet.

“A ghost, yes,” Danny smiled, handing her the instrument back.

She finally looked sheepish at her actions, glancing between her hand and his own, completely confused and unbearably nervous. “I’m… sorry if I… bothered you.”

Danny let out a light laugh, “Not at all, you play quite nicely.”

Her face flushed at the compliment.

“If anything, I’m glad I woke up to a violin this time. Last time someone woke me up, it was with the intent of actually bothering a ghost. I definitely prefer the music,” Danny joked. “I’m Danny by the way, but you might also know me as Phantom,” he said, gesturing to his own grave.

The girl’s eyes widened in recognition. “You’re a local myth, a legend even. I never thought they were real.”

“They’re a lot more merits to legends than you might think. After all, you’re the one playing a violin at midnight so close to Halloween.”

She flushed. “My name’s Sam, by the way. And I’m hardly fit for the role of Death in that legend.”

Danny took her hand and placed a soft kiss upon it through the smile on his lips. “You’re right, Miss Sam, you’re far lovelier.”

Sam clearly wasn’t used to compliments, the way she sputtered and her face flushed so deeply like she had eaten something spicy. Danny couldn’t help but laugh.

“What are you laughing at?!” Sam exclaimed, failing to puff up under the tension of her corset. Danny laughed harder.

Danny laughed long enough that he felt out of breath, despite not needing to breathe and his diaphragm hurt, and Sam had begun to pout.

“I’m sorry, you’re just tomato-colored. Clashes horribly with the rest of your outfit,” Danny apologized insincerely. Danny glanced around the cemetery, noticing the lack of a trail, animal or otherwise. “I can’t imagine it was easy to get to this overgrown spot in that dress.

Sam huffed. “I got here just fine,” and hiked up her dress just far enough to show off her combat boots.

“Hmm, practical,” Danny acknowledged. “Say, would you mind telling me about the current era? I don’t get out much,” Danny asked, sitting down on an old log.

Sam joined him after testing her weight, crossing her legs under her dress after setting the violin down in its case sitting just under another tree.

“Not exactly sure what you want to hear about. I’m sure you’ve probably seen more interesting things,” Sam dismissed.

“I wouldn't say that,” Danny countered. “For example, what’s that device you were using as an accompaniment?”

Sam held up the small, rectangular device. Its screen lit up brightly in the night. “Oh, this is a cell phone. Mostly just used to make and receive calls, but there are a whole bunch of other functions it can do too. Here.” Sam leaned in, and tapped on the small device's glass screen, interacting with it.

Sam went through the different “apps” on the phone, explaining them to him in general terms, then going on a tangent about something called “video games”, then around to a show she enjoyed, then back to games. Danny paid attention for the most part, listening to her voice even if he wasn’t always hearing the words. He was mostly enjoying the closeness of a living person, the warmth she radiated in the night, despite the layers of clothing. He felt it every time she shifted, throwing her arms about in passion, and in the heat of her breath. While he had been awake 20 years ago, it had been long since someone had allowed him to get this close. It reminded him of something long ago…

In the distance, an old church bell chimed five times, and the dawn tinted the horizon. Sam was startled at the sudden noise, and Danny let out a soft sigh of disappointment. He guessed it was about time. He got up from the log, and Sam followed his actions, stretching out her stiff limbs and brushing the forest litter off her clothes.

“Oh wow, it’s morning already,” Sam gasped, watching the colors of dawn slowly begin to bleed into the sky.

“Yeah… it is,” Danny added absently. “Sam, you should come play for me again.”

Sam looked back at him, and Danny glanced at his own translucent hands, knowing he was getting paler by the minute.

“You’ll still be here?” She asked.

“Danny laughed, “It’s the living that changes, not the dead. I’ll probably still be here for another century at this point.”

Sam smiled sadly. “Then sure. I’ll come play for you again.”

“Thank you,” Danny said honestly.

“Anyways, I’ve got to go before someone notices I’ve been gone all night. See you later, ghost boy.” Sam gave a light wave, picked up her case, and pushed her way through the undergrowth.

He waved back. “Bye, Sam.”

Danny floated back to his grave, and let his boot actually touch the earth. He could feel the cold ground calling to him, and his own sense of self fading as the sun rose higher. He thought about the warmth that Sam had emitted, feeling it through himself as their shoulders had brushed, despite hers passing clearly through his. It had been so nice.

With the break of dawn, Danny felt himself fade, and be pulled back into a deep slumber in his grave. Time passed quickly while asleep, and he quickly found himself waking to the sound of a violin once more. This tune was different, softer and kinder than the previous song had been. Lyrical and elegant, beckoning him from his sleep, Danny obliged.

Out of habit, Danny checked the sky to see how long it had been. Only a few days at most, the moon hadn’t even had time to move on from its current phase. Sam had come back much sooner than he would’ve expected.

Danny didn’t wait invisibly this time and caught Sam’s eyes as he passed through the earth, watching her play. She gave a small curtsey when she finished playing, and he politely clapped. She was dressed much more practically than last time, in black jeans with a collared shirt and a long coat covered in various patches and metal studs.

“Good evening, Miss Sam, nice of you to come to charm the dead once more,” Danny greeted.

“Hello again to you too, Mr. Ghost. I brought you something.” Sam reached into a bag she had brought with her this time and pulled out a bouquet of white lilies.

Danny watched in stunned awe as Sam gently placed the flowers on top of his grave. It… had been a long time since anyone had left him flowers and it honestly left him choked up.

“Thank you,” Danny just barely managed to get out.

“Of course,” Sam smiled back and then took her place on the log from the time before.

From her bag, Sam pulled out more new things to show him. Danny relished each one, both because of his curiosity and her passion for each thing. He asked her to explain each of the numerous patches on her jacket, and it ended in long rants about conservation and dietary topics that Danny had to admit he didn’t understand. He had known about space exploration before, but Sam had indulged him by reciprocating his question about his own passions and then using her cell phone to look up all of the new discoveries about space. He was stuck in wonder, and the topic didn’t stray away from the stars for the rest of the night. Sam left at dawn once more with a promise to come back and play for him again.

On the third night, Danny awoke to a quick and delightful dance, he couldn’t help but fly from his grave and spin around Sam in a mockery of the dances that nobles of long ago had once relished in. It had only been one night since she had visited him. She finished the song, and he dragged her into the dance with him, humming a complimentary melody of his own. It had been a song someone close to him had once loved, and he was filled with the desire to share it.

Sam was lost in her laughter, and once they finished with the dance, went through her bag, and showed him new things once more. She told him all about her current education, how irritating the people there were, and about her struggles with her parents, who she felt could never understand her. Danny ended up sharing bits and pieces of his own past and family, none of which he could linger on for long, both due to them being long since buried in the past, and his own memory blurring.

Sam couldn’t stay until dawn this time, she apparently had a test tomorrow morning and wanted to get a good night’s rest before it. Danny wished her luck, and yet again, she promised to come back. He was looking forward to it once more.

Since dawn was still a ways off, Danny let his feet leave the ground to go meet the stars. Amity was much larger and brighter than it used to be, nearly double the size of the small town he once knew. He remembered when it barely used to give off any light at all, and the stars once shone a lot brighter than they currently did.

It all hit Danny with the sudden force of a freight engine, now that he was both alone and awake. He could fall back into a deep sleep any day now, or Sam could simply not return. Time would continue to pass without him and he would be forgotten once more. With the way Amity Park kept expanding, they might as well demolish the park where the cemetery lay, and bury him even deeper beneath the earth than he already was, beneath concrete and buildings. If he was only a legend now, how much longer would it be before he wasn’t even that?

Danny let himself drift back down to the earth, lying on his back on the overgrown surface of his grave, right next to the flowers Sam had gifted him. He let out a humorless laugh and picked up the wilted bouquet and held it over his chest. He wondered how long Sam would remember him. He wondered if she would get tired of him, and forget to come back, and he would fade from her mind like he did from the rest of Amity Park. It filled him with dread.

It was getting harder to wake up too, and Danny hadn’t had the time to think about that in a long time either. It was a wonder Sam’s playing had been able to consistently wake him up, intentional or not. It likely had more to do with the timing and season than not. It had taken that trio of ghost hunters 20 minutes of “summonings”, loud rituals, and burning weird things before he groggily managed to climb out of his grave. Halloween was due to pass in a week, and Danny wondered if even Sam’s playing would be able to wake him after that. Her forgetting him was one thing, but Danny didn’t want to be the one to leave her behind. She was lovely, and kind, and told him about all sorts of things, and about her life, and how she wished she could live it. Danny wanted to be there to see it.

The dawn had begun to creep up on him, and he felt the flowers slowly drift through him from their place on his chest back to the surface of his resting place. It might become a more permanent rest soon, and Danny hated that more than anything. The thought of not waking up scared him more than anything. He could see clearly through his hands, and a panic he hadn’t felt in the time he had come to accept his nocturnal existence set in.

Danny recklessly dug deep within himself in a fit of passion, trying to find even a hint of that warmth he had come to associate with the living. The warmth he associated with Sam, sitting shoulder to shoulder, and holding her hand while they spun around the abandoned cemetery that lay beneath her skin and in her breath. He yearned desperately to feel it from himself once more. Danny yearned for life in a way he wasn’t sure he ever had.

Then Danny found it, deeply sleeping just at the base of his core, hidden by the familiar chill of death. He latched onto it, clinging to it in a desperate, silly hope fueled by an instinctual fear.

There was a burst of light as the sun finally broke over the horizon and painted the sky gold, and an equally bright burst of light within the cemetery. And for the first time in centuries, Danny felt the warmth of dawn hit his skin.

Ectoberhaunt 2023 Master Post

#ectoberhaunt23 #Day 20 #danse macabre #goodfish writes #danny phantom #immortal danny au #sam manson #amethyst ocean #me?? writing romance?? not without at lease SOME angst #all this because I couldn't draw a saxophone... damn

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