#trying to stop the apocalypse
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Death Is My Gift
Summary: When Danny becomes the personification of Death, his new powers are the least of his problems. Summoned as the fourth horseman of the apocalypse, Danny tries to sabotage it from the inside while also contending with the other three horsemen, the one who summoned him, and the knowledge that if he fails, he may have to help bring about the end of the world.
AO3: Link
Chapter 1: Still Dead - Thanks for Checking
“What the hell is that on your phone?” Sam asked, her tone dripping with derision.
Danny looked up from his screen and cocked his eyebrow. “What?” How could she see what was on his screen when she was on the other side of the table? Not that he had anything embarrassing on there, but look it wasn’t his fault that he messed up his Insta algorithm because he watched one video about large superheated copper balls melting through a telescope lens and now he couldn’t stop watching more of them. But still, how could she see it?
She gestured toward the back of his phone. “That sticker - what the hell is it?”
Understanding dawned on the usually clueless boy and his face brightened. “Oh, it’s my new sticker! Isn’t it great?” he preened as he moved his hand to the side so they could see the sticker in its full glory. He had been waiting for them to notice it, and somehow it took all the way until lunch for them to comment on it.
Tucker craned his neck around to see the purple coffin-shaped sticker plastered onto the back of Danny’s phone case. In white letters it read: “Still Dead. Thanks for checking.” Tucker snorted before he devolved into cackles. “Dude, that’s great!”
Danny grinned even wider. “Right? I thought it was too funny.”
“No, it’s stupid,” Sam argued, and her harsh attitude completely ruined the mood. “Danny, the less people associate you with death, the better.”
“Oh come on Sam, if they haven’t figured out that Danny Phantom and Danny Fenton are the same person by now when they have the exact same hairstyle, then a sticker is not going to phase anyone,” Tucker argued, ever in defense of his friend.
“Exactly!” Danny seconded.
“Or it’s exactly the last piece that helps people make that connection because there’s already so little separating you!” Sam exclaimed, though she did try to keep her voice down so no one else would overhear.
“Or maybe they’ll just think I’m a moody Gen Z kid that says this kind of dramatic stuff all the time. Which is why you should have let me keep that shirt.” He still thought that “Dead Inside” shirt was ironic and iconic, but Sam conveniently spilled black ink from her fancy new quill set on it and refused to give it back for this very same reason.
“Yeah, he could just make it his brand,” Tucker agreed. The two of them always seemed to be on the same page.
Sam reached out like she was about to rip the sticker off his phone, but decided against it and shook her head. “Fine. You want to keep the sticker on your phone? Fine, but don’t cry to me when people start putting the pieces together,” she huffed.
“Well since that’s not gonna happen, you’re gonna be waiting a long time,” Danny grinned. He struck an overly exaggerated victory pose with his neck cocked slightly to the side while he tilted his chin up to the sky.
Sam jerked back as the color drained from her face. “Danny what the—“ she cried out, so loudly and so suddenly that it caught the attention of other people in the lunchroom.
Danny immediately looked behind him, assuming that whatever caused Sam’s sudden reaction had to be behind him. His need to protect his friends from whatever threat caused such a startled response rose up and hammered in his throat as his mind spun with the possible horrors he would see behind him.
But he saw…nothing. Well, not nothing. He saw other students eating their lunches at other tables throughout the room. Students drifted in and out of the cafeteria as they finished their lunches. No ghost. No threat. Nothing that should cause Sam to turn as white as she did.
He turned back to face Sam, concern etched deep into his brow as he studied her face. “Sam? What’s wrong?” he asked in quiet urgency. If she truly saw some danger that he couldn’t, then he needed to know.
Sam studied Danny for a long moment, far too long for Danny’s liking. She wasn’t looking past him, she was looking at…him. “...Nothing. Nothing. It’s nothing. I think I’m just seeing things. I thought I saw…nevermind. It’s nothing,” she assured them.
Danny raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure? Because something freaked you out.”
She shook her head and plastered a forced smile on her face. “Yeah, I’m sure. Too little sleep and too much caffeine has just got me jumpy. I’m fine, really. Besides, we need to act like we’re having a normal conversation: too many people are watching.”
“Well yeah, you practically jumped out of your seat,” Danny pointed out.
She narrowed her eyes and gave him a half smile before she reached across the table and grabbed his abandoned phone. “It did let me get your phone though.”
“Wait hey!” Danny protested as he reached across the table to recover his phone from her clutches, but she deftly moved around his grasping hands.
“Now let’s see about that sticker,” she teased. Danny immediately doubled his efforts to retrieve his phone. Not being able to rely on ghost powers made it a little more difficult than it should have been to win it back (was he maybe relying on those too much? That felt like too much of a Jazz question for him to think about it too long), but he did save the phone and his ironic sticker. He was so preoccupied saving his sticker that he didn’t notice that Tucker had gone quiet and regarded Sam with a very significant and curious stare.
Lunch wrapped up shortly after the scuffle over the phone, and the three of them rushed off to their lockers and then off to class. Just outside the door to the classroom, Tucker held a hand out to stop Sam and waited for Danny to get a few feet inside before he spoke up in a whisper.
“Did you see the skull?”
Sam blinked and her face grew pale again, just like it had in the lunchroom. “The what?” she asked with a slightly shaky voice.
“The skull? Over Danny’s face?”
“What? Yes! Yes I thought I was going insane!” she exclaimed, though still in a whisper to not catch any more attention. The briefest moment of relief washed over her, but it immediately washed away into even more worry.
“No, I saw it this morning,” Tucker admitted. “Thought it was just some trick of the light or something. It was there one moment and then–”
“--Gone the next,” Sam finished. “And when I saw it I just felt…off. Like this moment of dread. Like I was–”
“--Looking at something I shouldn’t have seen,” Tucker validated as he nodded his head. “Yeah, same here. It was a weird feeling to have looking at my best friend.”
“What does it mean?”
“No idea,” Tucker sighed as he looked towards Danny pouring over his textbook in the hope that he’d be able to at least pretend that he did the reading before class. “But knowing Danny, it’s probably nothing good.”
Danny noticed odd glances from his friends a few more times that day. He worried maybe he had something on his face, but then again Sam would have said something. Tucker would have stayed quiet to have a good laugh about it later, but he’d have clued him into the joke by now. Maybe he was doing something ghostly without knowing it? But if that was the case they would have definitely let him know. In the end, he chalked it up to his friends being weird and went about his strangely quiet day.
There weren’t any ghost attacks. He couldn’t remember the last time he went through a school day without being interrupted by ghosts. It felt…nice, but unnerving at the same time, like he missed something. Like he was supposed to clue into something happening in the Ghost Zone. But in the end he decided not to worry about that either, especially once school ended and he could just hang out with his best friends ghost free.
By the time they hit up the game store (Tucker was still trying to get them into tabletop games) and the record store (Sam wanted to browse the LPs), Danny had forgotten all about his previous warnings…until he hit the Boba shop. Second up to bat, he placed his order with the barista, a smiling young woman who wore fun earrings that looked like watermelon slices. He paid for his drink and left a decent tip, but when he looked back up from the pin pad, her haunted expression caught him by surprise.
No longer kind and smiling, her unfocused gaze stared beyond him with eyes opened so wide her eyelids disappeared. Her pale, gaunt face looked hollow and lifeless. Her mouth fell open unnaturally.
“Fifty-seven years, one hundred and thirteen days, seven hours.”
Her flat, emotionless voice echoed within the sudden silence of the rest of the room. Chills shot along his body as the hair on his arms stood on end. His gut twisted uncomfortably as the presence of something…wrong and haunting fell over him. The silence of the world pressed in around him and left him only with that eerie voice thrumming though the void.
“What?” he finally stammered out.
“Do you want a receipt?” she repeated in her normal voice. Suddenly the whole world came back around him. The noise and the commotion of the busy Boba shop almost felt overwhelming after the sheer absolute silence.
“Oh uh…no,” he answered lamely.
“He’s good,” Sam spoke up quickly from behind. She pushed him to the side and took over the situation, but concern etched deep lines into her forehead. “But I’ll have a…”
What Sam ordered was lost on him as Tucker pulled him over to the drink pick-up counter. “Dude, what happened?” he asked in an urgent whisper. “You just froze.”
“I don’t…I don’t know. I heard something totally different…” The eerie tone of her voice, the chill that shot like livewire up his spine (like the accident, but he really didn’t want to think about that), it all stuck with him and wouldn’t leave him. His memory was absolute trash at the best of times, but he could still remember every number she quoted to him like it had been etched into his very core.
“What did you hear?” Tucker asked as Sam joined them. Those concerned lines across her brow still made him feel like something more was going on here, because Sam usually only worried when there was actually something to worry about.
“Just…some numbers, like years and months,” he shrugged, trying to pass it off as normal, even if it couldn’t be further from the truth.
“Like a countdown?” Sam pressed.
Danny’s eyes grew wide. Exactly like a countdown. Down to the hour.
He didn’t need to say anything for Sam to know she was on to something. “So what was she counting down to?”
“You think I know?” Danny rebuffed as he pointed at himself. “But you guys heard it right? How…creepy she sounded? How hollow?”
“No, we didn’t man,” Tucker responded, strangely serious. “We heard her ask if you wanted a receipt and then you just froze.”
He looked between both of his friends, hoping for some kind of alternate answer or for someone to say they were pulling his leg, but they weren’t. “So you…you didn’t hear it?” he implored, desperate for someone to agree with him.
“No Danny, we didn’t,” Sam confirmed. “But Danny, we need to–”
“Pomegranate boba,” another barista announced. Danny automatically turned towards her, only to see the same lifeless stare directed his way.
“Twenty years, two hundred and twelve days, two hours.”
He shook his head and closed his eyes as the pressure of the void threatened to swallow him again, but then like before, everything opened up and the noise of the world rushed back to him.
“Danny?” Sam fretted as she stepped closer to him.
He opened his eyes and looked out on the brightly lit boba shop. “Sorry I…it happened again,” he admitted.
Tucker and Sam exchanged significant glances behind Danny’s back before making an executive decision. Tucker grabbed their drink orders while Sam gently placed a hand on Danny’s back. “I think we should get out of here,” Sam suggested.
Danny could see the sense in that. The last thing they needed was to make a scene, and he could feel the eyes of both the people behind the counter and the ones standing in line. Best to beat a hasty retreat and figure this out somewhere a little quieter.
He scooted around the line of customers, hoping he could make a quiet exit. He caught the gaze of a young boy in line, but he only saw the vacant stare on his young face.
“Eighty three years, three hundred and two days, eleven hours.”
Danny spun quickly away from the boy and placed his hands over his ears, but it didn’t help as he locked eyes with a college student at a table who happened to look up from her laptop.
“Three years, thirty days, seven hours.”
And then the gaze of a well-dressed woman striding through the door.
“Forty years, eighty-eight days, nineteen hours.”
And the older man sitting with his grandchildren at a table.
“Ten years, one hundred and fifty days, three hours.”
Macabre countdowns from various shop patrons echoed around him. Anyone who met his gaze morphed their faces into the gaunt masks and intoned their countdown in that same hollow voice.
“Stop! Stop!” Danny cried as he curled in on himself. Tucker and Sam immediately pushed him through the doors and outside of the shop full of curious onlookers, but if they thought ushering him outside of the shop would be better, they were terribly wrong as Danny confronted more people on the street. The constant chorus of lifeless laments descended upon him in a deafening whirlwind.
“Ninety-eight days, twenty hours.”
“Sixty-eight years, two days, one hour.”
“Seventeen years, two hundred and ninety days, eight hours.”
Until they finally culminated in a chilling “Thirteen seconds.”
A morbid curiosity came over him as his gaze lingered on the older man who intoned the foreboding knell, just before the man clutched at his chest and dropped to the ground. Everyone around him rushed to his side and barked out orders to call an ambulance, but Danny knew deep, deep down in his core that it wouldn’t do any good.
The man was dead.
Dead, exactly thirteen seconds later.
Realizing this area was about to get a lot more attention, Tucker and Sam pushed Danny into a nearby alley and shrouded him from view. “Danny what the hell is happening?” Sam practically yelled.
Danny dropped to the ground as he clutched at his core that ached with the pain of what he just witnessed, and the horror of what he’d come to realize. He didn’t want to admit it to himself or to the world as a whole, but he had a horrifying feeling he knew what the times meant.
They were a countdown to death.
“I don’t…I don’t know why, but people keep telling me how long…how long they have…left,” Danny squeaked out between shallow breaths. The world swam around him and he clenched his jaw to try not to be sick.
“Left to what?” Tucker asked.
“To live you idiot!” Sam chastised. “Danny, are you sure?”
“What else could it be?” he exclaimed as he gripped at the hair on the sides of his head. “Someone said thirteen seconds, and then thirteen seconds later he…he…” His breath quickened in his chest. His heart thrummed too fast against his ribs. Sweat beaded on his brow as he shivered. This…this was a panic attack. Oh god, he was having a panic attack. But could anyone really blame him? He heard a man was going to die and just…just…watched it happen and couldn’t do anything. He couldn’t do anything!
“Danny…Danny just look at me,” Sam pressed delicately as she knelt next to him and placed a gentle hand on his arm.
His eyes reached her chin before he remembered - as soon as he met someone’s gaze, even from afar, they told him how long they had. He couldn’t know that about his best friend. He couldn’t. What if it was a small number? What would he even consider to be a small number? Would any number ever be large enough?
He slapped her away in a panic and retreated into himself as he buried his head into his arms. “No!” he screamed. “No, any time I look at someone they tell me how much time they have left and I can’t…I don’t want to know that. I can’t know that!” he practically screeched.
Sam and Tucker exchanged worried but uncertain looks. They’d dealt with a lot since the accident, but this was certainly a new complication where their very presence seemed to add more stress.
“Okay Danny, okay. We don’t know if that’s what’s happening.” She paused as she felt him tense beside her. “But if you think that’s what’s happening, then we won’t look at you.”
Danny grabbed his hair tight in his hands as he shook in a huddle on the floor. How was he going to do this? Never look at anyone he ever cared about again? Make sure they never looked at him? What kind of life would that be? He couldn’t live like that, with that paranoia that some day one of them would mess up and they’d meet his gaze and then he would know how much longer he had left to spend with them. His breathing quickened again as he found himself spiraling further down into his panic, down into a depth of foreboding terror that he didn’t know if he could climb out of again.
“Okay but Danny, even if you aren’t looking at anyone, I need you to breathe okay?” Sam pleaded. “Just breathe with me. In and out slowly. In and out.”
He did as he was told because he didn’t really have it in him to argue. In and out, in and out. He took deep breaths in through his nose and out through his mouth like Jazz taught him. It probably didn’t help that he was still curled up in a ball and didn’t have great air circulation, but he didn’t dare uncurl.
“Okay, good,” Sam praised as she finished sending an urgent text. “Now let’s figure out what’s going on, because we will figure it out.”
“You mean figure out why I can tell when people are going to die?” Danny snapped.
“Yes,” Sam replied, voice calm despite Danny’s barbed tone.
“...I don’t know if this is the right time, but there probably isn’t a right time so I’m just gonna say it,” Tucker sighed. “Danny, we noticed something weird earlier. It would only happen for a second, but it was like your face was covered by…like a translucent skull.”
Danny looked up but immediately thought better of it and ducked his head back down again. “A what?!”
“A skull. We didn’t know what it meant at the time–”
“We still don’t know what it means,” Sam added.
“--but it has to be related,” Tucker finished.
“This has to be more than a new ghost power,” Sam brainstormed. “This feels like something more significant.”
“More significant? What the hell does that mean?” Danny rebuked. He knew they were just trying to help, but honestly without an answer it was just making him feel more anxious and overwhelmed. He didn’t know if he could handle something more significant than being a half-dead, ghost-fighting freak.
“We don’t know,” Sam said, controlled and patient. “But we’ll figure this out Danny, we promise, just like we’ve figured out everything else.”
Everything else. Because there was always something. There was always some other side effect of the accident that all of them had to keep dealing with. Ghost powers, ghost fighting, his parents, new powers, a secret identity, ice powers, and now this. When was he done? When would he finally stop having more and more piled on top of his already overflowing mind? How much was a teenager expected to shoulder before he finally just buckled under the crushing weight of it all?
Apparently it would be one more thing.
He gasped as the cold breath escaped from his throat. He deflated a bit into his self hug. He knew the quiet afternoon was too good to be true. He knew it.
“Danny, you don’t have to go,” Sam mentioned, almost pleading.
“You know I have to,” he sighed with hollow defeat.
“No, you don’t. Let your parents get it, or Valerie. It doesn’t have to be you right now,” she begged.
“They never handle it well,” Danny argued as he stood but kept his gaze on the floor.
Sam shook her head, prepared to put her foot down. “But Danny, you literally just stopped having a panic attack, do you think now is the right time to do this? Maybe you just need to think about yourself for a bit!”
“When do I ever get to think about myself?” he barbed as he transformed. “Besides, a ghost can’t tell me how long they have to live, right? Sounds like I’m safer with one of them.”
Before they could argue with him he shot off into the sky, leaving a cloud of dread behind him. Tucker and Sam exchanged meaningful glances.
“Follow him?” Tucker checked.
“Absolutely follow him.”
~*~
As yet another ectoblast grazed Danny’s side, he realized Tucker and Sam had maybe been right about letting someone else handle this. His head was not in the game. He couldn’t shake the feeling of dread that swirled around him and it made the fight against the ghostly crow that much harder to focus on. His newfound popularity also proved to be a complication as it led to more onlookers watching the fight. He couldn’t help but meet the eyes of people in the crowd, and every time he listened to their own voices toll their own death knell, he found himself wide open to a hit from the annoying ghost that honestly wouldn’t have been that much of a challenge otherwise.
"Three hundred and twenty-one days, thirteen hours.”
He squeezed his eyes tight as he tried not to internalize how little time the concerned woman who looked his way had left, but closing his eyes during a fight was never a good idea.
“Danny!” he heard Sam yell, her voice distant but urgent.
He opened his eyes and saw the crow barreling in to charge with glowing talons ready to claw out his eyes. He immediately acted on instinct and threw out his hands to maybe summon a shield or take the talons to his arms or something.
He felt something cold and heavy fall into his hands, and he swung it without even looking at it too closely. A thin line of green slashed across the ghost and then it vanished. His overzealous slash continued through the brick of a nearby building that weathered and aged as decay seeped out from the fine line in the brick. When the arc of his swing stopped, he finally looked at what he held in his hands.
A scythe. Long and slender, the curved blade made a full crescent as it tapered into a neat, sharp point. The edge of the blade glowed with a faint green light, but it almost hurt to register: like its presence cut through the very existence of what his mind could accept as real. It looked so simple in his arms, and yet it felt dangerous. Deadly.
He stared dumbfounded at the blade in his hands. It felt heavy in his arms, but not because of its actual weight. It actually felt too easy and natural to swing. His fingers gripped around the shaft like he was meant to hold it. It felt so right and natural in his arms, and that scared him even more.
He immediately dropped it, but instead of hearing it clatter to the ground, it vanished into shadows as the absolute black swallowed it.
With panic etched all over his face, he looked desperately towards Sam’s voice, but only after he remembered that he didn’t dare look towards his friends. He dropped his gaze, but they understood his intent and rushed over to him.
“Danny, Danny are you okay?” Sam asked as she grabbed her friend’s arm.
“No…no I don’t think so,” he admitted. As hard as it felt to admit, he wasn’t well. He had no idea what the hell was happening, but he just knew none of this could be good. A sense of dread lingered around him that he couldn’t shake. A whisper of an answer tickled at the edges of his mind, but it was so cloaked in fear and terror that he didn’t dare even acknowledge its presence.
Sam nodded morosely and squeezed his arm. “That’s okay. We’ve got this Danny. C’mon, let’s get to my house. I think I know what’s going on.”
~*~
Danny sat in his favorite chair in the Manson library. Most of the room felt like something out of a middle-aged woman’s Pinterest page: a million shades of beige accented by a few plants or vines. Some books even had their spines facing the wall because their binding was too colorful. Sam managed to carve out a corner for herself. She separated this corner out with deep red curtains and inside its sanctuary she kept all her books (spines proudly out, thank you very much) on black shelves. Gothic sconces of wrought iron glowed with just enough mood lighting to read by and plush wine red chairs provided the perfect getaway to crawl into with a book.
One of those chairs sucked him up inside its cushions and he let the weight of the fabric surround him. Sitting here with the dark mood lighting while Sam read aloud some new book or poem always felt like a comfortable space. Maybe Sam hoped the familiarity would bring some comfort to him right now, but even its power couldn’t counteract the horrible twisting in the pit of his stomach.
His friends swore they wouldn’t look at his face and would focus on his chest instead, but he still didn’t feel comfortable looking anywhere but at his wringing hands in his lap, just in case. He’d heard about too much death already today: too many times that seemed far too short for the nice faces that seemed burned into his mind. He had no idea who these people were and probably would never see them again, but he would forever remember their faces and would never be free of the knowledge of their death.
Would it be quick? Slow? Painful? Could he stop it? Could he save them? If he remembered their faces could he hunt them down and try to save them? Maybe not the ones in decades, but the ones who would be dying in the next few months? Could he help them so they didn’t end up like the old man on the street who died before his eyes while he was powerless to stop it?
The thump of a large book on a table shook him out of his thoughts as Sam stood near the small round table. “You’re not gonna like this, but I think I found the answer.”
That certainly caught his attention and he looked towards the book. Whether he’d like the answer or not, he needed to know. The heavy old tome looked like every Victorian book that Sam loved to collect, with a dark binding, embossed edges, and thick block lettering for the title.
The Tome of Record for the Myths and Legends of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
No.
No, that couldn’t be the right book. That was not the answer.
He shook his head and backed up in his chair as far away from the book as he could physically get. “No. That’s not the right book.”
Sam approached both Danny and the book gently, like any sudden movement would spook him. “I know this isn’t what you want to hear, but I know I’m right about this.”
Tucker leaned in from his chair and his eyes grew wide. “Wait, apocalypse? Sam you’re serious?”
“No, she’s not serious because she’s wrong!” Danny insisted.
Sam slowly opened the book and turned to a page marked with a dark black ribbon. “Just look at it Danny. It explains a lot.”
Against his better judgment he peeked at the new chapter: “The Fourth Horseman: Death.” He didn’t let himself read any more, but the haunting image of a black-cloaked figure atop a skeletal horse with a skull for a face and a very familiar looking scythe froze him in his seat.
The death knells. The skull. The scythe.
No, just because it made sense, that didn’t mean anything. Lots of things in this world made sense without actually being right, and this was just another one of those things. It didn’t mean that he– He couldn’t possibly be–
Tucker trailed a finger along the text of the book as he read, his mouth and eyes falling agape. “Wait Sam are you…are you trying to say that Danny is…Death? Like the Death?”
He felt an irrational anger towards Tucker for putting into physical words what his mind refused to acknowledge. Because it was crazy…right? Some crazy, wacky theory. This couldn’t be reality, it just…it couldn’t be.
Sam nodded solemnly. “I am. I don’t know why, but Danny has somehow become the personification of Death.”
For some reason the finality in Sam’s voice forced him to really hear it. As much as he wanted to deny it, the nagging whisper always there on the periphery of his mind had been trying to tell him the whole time. He knew it from the first countdown, but refused to see it. He knew what the symbolism of the scythe meant, but he refused to connect it. And he knew that all of these pieces only added up to one possible explanation. Just like Sam, he’d already reached the same conclusion, but he just refused to see it. He couldn’t avoid it anymore.
He was Death.
He needed to get away from the book, the picture, the proof. He didn’t want to see it anymore. He fell through the chair, momentarily grateful to have some kind of physical barrier between him and the book, but the piercing, empty eyes of the skull on the page followed him even through the chair. He scrambled back along the floor until he hit the bookcase behind him.
“No no no I don’t want this! I don’t want this!” he screamed in ever increasing levels of panic. He looked at his shaking hands, almost expecting to see bony hands stretching out instead of his normal skin. He grabbed at his face, his arms, anything to make sure that he hadn’t turned into some skeleton. “I can’t–I don’t want to be Death!”
Sam and Tucker rushed over to his side and pulled his trembling body into a hug. They tried to bestow him with whatever comfort they could, but they knew it wouldn’t be enough. Just like they did when Danny first emerged from the portal, they were at a loss for what they could do and they just tried to be a physical support for him.
Danny grabbed onto his friends desperately as he shook in their arms. He didn’t know how much he needed their reassuring strength and strong hug until he found himself in their arms. Maybe he relied on them too much for emotional stability, but something about their presence served as a grounding force for him and he needed that now more than ever.
“We’ll figure it out Danny,” Sam tried to assure him. “We always do.”
They did always figure it out. The accident, the ghost powers, the ghost fighting, the secret identity, Pariah Dark, Vlad, his horrifying potential future - they’d found a way to make it through everything that his strange life had thrown at him. It stood to reason they could make it through this too, but for some reason this seemed so much more imposing than all those other obstacles.
The personification of death. What did that even mean? Did he have to reap souls? Was he actually the one responsible for killing people? Was he now to blame for everyone’s deaths? Did he have to help people cross over or find peace or meaning in their lives? Could he still live his normal human life? He’d already been neglecting it so much because of ghost fighting, but would this completely eclipse everything else? It felt like such a huge burden to throw onto his already overburdened shoulders, and he didn’t know if he had the strength to keep it all up.
But even more than a burden, being Death pushed him even closer to the dark stench of death that always seemed to swirl around him. He already straddled a very fine line between life and death, and while he didn’t always know where he found himself on either side of it, he cherished the balance. He liked being reminded that he was still alive. He died, and he was a ghost, but he was so much more than that too. His heart beat, he kept growing - he still had a life. He needed those reminders to stay sane. But being Death…it pushed him so much further towards that darker side. It disrupted that balance that he held onto so desperately. Those reminders of life seemed so much further away, like they could be snatched away from him at any moment, and he didn’t want to think where that constant focus on death and loss would take him.
He couldn’t keep dwelling on this. He was a boy of action, and he never did well just thinking through things. Maybe that helped Jazz, but he needed to do something. Figure this out, get rid of it, something. So he pulled away from the hug slightly, enough of a signal for his friends to release the warm group hug. He missed that comfort immediately, but he couldn’t stay huddled up against the bookshelf forever.
“How did this happen?” he croaked. Trying to find a reason meant that he had to accept it as the truth, and that hurt, but he’d already accepted it. Now he just had to get rid of it.
“I don’t know,” Sam admitted. “But Danny, we have a much more pressing issue than how.”
“More pressing than this?” Danny questioned, almost hurt that his internal turmoil and need to solve this wasn’t considered a pressing issue.
“Yeah, because it gets worse.”
Panic clenched around his heart again. How could it possibly get worse? This already seemed like a destitute situation with no possible solution on the horizon.
“Worse than Danny having death powers?” Tucker inquired. Well at least Tucker was on the same wavelength.
She nodded morosely. She took a deep breath, but as she slowly breathed out she straightened up, her brow resolute. “The summoning of the fourth horseman…it’s the final sign. The apocalypse is coming, and Danny’s going to be forced to make it happen.”
~*~
I hope you all enjoyed this! It's a little late of a submission for Ectober's Day 17 Gothic Horror prompt, but apparently world-building a multi-chapter longfic took a lot longer than I expected. But I'm excited to share some of my lore behind this ghostly version of the four horsemen over the next two chapters!
#danny phantom#danny phantom fanfiction#danny fenton#sam manson#tucker foley#ghost zone lore#ghost zone culture#ghost zone politics#four horsemen of the apocalypse#danny fenton is death#apocalypse#trying to stop the apocalypse#angst#angst with happy ending#multi chapter#longfic#cw panic attack#ectoberhaunt24#ectober 2024#new powers
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Part 2 finally! Part 3 to come soonish,,,
You can find part 1 here!
#my art#rottmnt#tmnt#rise of the tmnt#rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles#rottmnt leo#rottmnt casey jones#casey jr#casey jones jr#casey jones#rottmnt casey jr#rottmnt future leo#future leo#oh my god i had so much fun with this#made lizzie scream#anyway some hard truths are laid out!#because leo NEEDS his kid to understand#and the only way leo can PROTECT him is to PREPARE him#theres no soft hits in the apocalypse#also consistent art style?#whos she i dont know her#she doesnt go to this school sorry#i will TRY to keep proportions acurate but PLEASE dont pay attention to it otherwise#playing the rules hard and fast here we dont stop for even consistency#anyway#dont think about F!leo thinking about his kids death#dont do it dont do it dont do it
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i love the tower princes. i love that there’s absolutely no way in hell that this friendship is even remotely good for either of them. love that they assuredly are making each other SO much worse with every second they spend together.
#tlt#the locked tomb#ntn spoilers#my art#anyway ever think about how the empire of the nine houses is pretty much singlehandedly being run by ianthe#and not only are the 2 people who are supposed to outrank her no help at all#they're actually actively detrimental to the empire's functioning as they are both deep in their depression spirals#and won't stop trying to start the apocalypse like they wanna start the apocalypse so BAD!! and ianthe doesn't even want to#be saving the world. girl wants to be villainous. she's stopping the apocalypse with an air of 'UGH i have to do EVERYTHING around here'#you really can't blame her for needing a chew toy. luckily kiriona is right there and she's basically a professional chew toy.#she's used to it. who knows what she'd even do with herself if no one was chomping on her. so it works out!! (not)
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charles and erik with each other: oh dear, oh dear. gorgeous 🥺👐 charles and erik with the villain of the week/the x-men: K1LL YOURSELF 🔥🔥🔥
X-Men: First Class (2011) | X-Men Apocalypse (2016)
#charles is soo insane for looking at a god in the face and telling him to fuck off bc he was hurting his best friend. most normal guy.#cherik#mine*#x-men#xmenedit#parallelsedit#filmedit#charles xavier#erik lehnsherr#otp: i want you by my side#god charles' entire demeanor towards apocalypse in xma has always been SOO funny to me. he literally looks ANNOYED every time#apocalypse speaks in the movie. he doesn't even look intimidated or worried that he's trying to possess CHARLES'S BODY or anything#mind you charles wrote his thesis about mutation and here he has THE FIRST MUTANT ever in front of him. who's also a god threatening#to destroy the world. and charles' only reaction is:#'whatever. MOVE OUT OF THE WAY LOSER i CANNOT see erik from where you are standing and i'm worried about him'#and i do think it's very sweet that after this raven tells erik he has to fight for what he has left - and he thinks about charles#(the man that stood on the balcony all those years ago and that cared enough about him to tell him there is more to him#and the same man that STILL CARES ENOUGH to look at A GOD in the face and telling him to go fuck off and die and stop manipulating erik)#charles loves him so much you don't get it........... i'm foaming at the mouth i'm so normal about them
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Vecna is a mean girl
#stop trying to make the apocalypse happen#it’s not going to happen#yes this is a botched mean girls quote#my art#stranger things#stranger things season 4#eleven#eleven hopper#jane hopper#001#001 stranger things#vecna#I drew these in two separate files so I totally got the colours wrong in the second one lmaooo
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Hello, I'm not sure if you're aware, but tumblr is going to start helping midjourney gather data for their AI. You're one of the artists I follow here pretty actively and I wanted to warn you to maybe start nighshading your art before posting it here so it doesn't get swept up!
I've seen a couple of posts about it. Feeling disappointed but not that surprised. Also not excited about having to start nightshading/glazing my pieces but if there isn't going to be any serious regulations regarding data scraping and ai "art", there aren't a lot of choices.
Thank you for taking the time to warn me just in case, it was very thoughtful of you!
#from what I've seen the effectiveness of nightshade/glaze has been debated and I don't even pretend to understand how it works#but like watermarks it's at least some kind of preventive measure a token effort to stop your art from being stolen and misused#but I fear that if someone is determined to do it anyway chances are they will find a way unfortunately#this shouldn't be the reality of trying to share art online#it's a pretty dismal situation when this responsibility falls on the artists themselves#I've been here since 2011 I've lived through multiple tumblr apocalypses I'm not leaving unless they make this place wholly unlivable#and I don't think there are truly good alternatives with similar sense of community and as varied posting and customization options#it seems like every other major social media platform is doing this exact same thing if not worse#answered#ohdeergood#I'm tired we're all tired of this
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Hey remember when the tua s4 finale essentially told us that the Hargeeves would never escape the cycle of their abuse and the world was literally better off with them dead lol crazy
#tua#tua s4#remember how they told us that no matter what the siblings did and no matter how much they tried to grow and move on#they would always be sucked back into their trauma (apocalypse) and they should just stop trying to escape it#remember how the onus of “fixing it” was entirely on the siblings even though it was reggie and his wife that caused the apocalypse#anyway :)#ellis posts
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We are in a world where I (a French queer neurodivergent teenager (am I still a teenager?)) is watching an almost unknown Scottish show from the 90's.
All of that because of some actor.
#takin' over the asylum#takin over the asylum#campbell bain#david tennant#the guy who plays a 900y old alien who travels because he's bored#an edgy scottish police inspector#a total physopath who is also a wizard who shape shifted into an old guy#a demon chaser who thinks he's cool but isn't (idk I've never saw Fright Night)#that scary guy in Jessica Jones#a demon who is trying to stop the apocalypse because he loves queen and his bentley#and ofc my boy campbell: a young scottish guy who is in a psychiatric hospital and who loves music#its my first post on tumblr don't judge
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Gonna go to bed but my Final Message. I do think abt cyborg!bf in the rgbfverse a lot (lets call him Cyber in this context) and honestly it would be hard to write anything until I 100% iron out his Deal but the idea of him latching onto YS as a big brother figure makes me. Very happy. For both of them LMAO
#he would probably be Very freaked out by the others i mostly imagine him spending time alone w ys#idk i guess i Do know what the deal would be it would just depend entirely on when YS intrudes on the timeline#bc if its early enough. bf would still be Violent idk if it would even be worth it for Herself to give him mirrorwalking#just bc like. even if he Likes ys he'd still be a risk to other people#but like. later in the timeline after he starts to regain some memories and the Human part of him starts to fight through the robot#hes really just like. a scared little kid. hes 14 but hes pretty regressed socially due to Insane amounts of trauma#maturity of a 14 year old. hides behind YS like a shy 6 year old when other bfs are over#cyborg bf is like. pre-apocalyptic. 'something very bad is Going to happen so we need to stop it'#and maybe ys cant help with the Actual Apocalyptic Threat but he can help these children recover from their own personal post-apocalypse#probably had a decent amount of angst about that not being Enough but when doesnt he#the fact that this kid trusts him and feels safe around him despite everything is enough to convince him to keep trying#....... anywayNDNQBSKQHSJ#BEDTIME. GN#💛#rgbfverse#cyborg bf au
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i napped the entire day away and my dreams included, but were not limited to: big earthquake that, as it was happening, i was like "oh this is a bad one" and my stepdad went "its not that bad" - our house slid down a ravine into water / very vivid evening apocalypse that - after the blast hit and i died - swirled into sleep paralysis that occurred While I Was Dreaming (and i do mean swirled. i got whipped around like an inflatable tube man) / rich people sitcom where everyone was unbearable but i had my dear cat Letti with me / sound-based monster shaped like my mom that i kept from killing me via a funny joke (i didnt even get to finish my microwaved macaroni smh)
#it was dream after dream after dream#man that apocalypse one tho. slotting that one into one of my favorite death dreams it was so pretty and peaceful#everyone was just meandering to the beach but for some reason my legs were really weak and i couldnt walk#i tried! but i wound up just collapsing on the crosswalk. but a nice lady stopped and helped me up#and she helped me to the beach where everyone was gathering to watch the oncoming blast#oh man it was gorgeous. it was the only source of light so the ocean was glimmering with it and a low golden hue was cast over everything#no one was screaming or panicking! no one was scared. there were people on picnic blankets or just standing and watching#it was gorgeous and calming in a morbid sort of way. we were all in it together <3#absolutely unprompted#a great break from the irritating other dreams!#the earthquake one was Incredibly realistic - foreshocks and accurate ground movement and everything!#house shook right off of its foundation#that sleep paralysis Within a dream one tho. fuck that one lmao#i woke up and was So confused for a second bc i couldve sworn i had already woken up#good to know even my subconscious is done with The Demons trying to get me#i love clawing my way tooth and nail out of sleep paralysis and not humoring The Paralysis Horrors#if i ever see my sleep paralysis demon im biting it so fucking hard. we have beef
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honestly kinda funny to hear people on here b like 'that's it I'm LEAVING tumblr because of the whole ai thing' and like look I respect ur decision but if u think I'm not gonna be on this hellsite at the very end scrabbling to add my thoughts in the tags then u really don't know me at all lol
#personal#it will take a literal apocalypse for me to stop using tumblr lol#what's happening on here is shitty ofc#but this is my home and has been for nearly 12 years lol#tumblr staff qill have to drag me kicking and screaming from the site as they try and close it down lol
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prussia would do really good in a zombie apocalypse, he was waiting for that time to come because then he can make himself useful post-retirement
#i want to go indepth but it's kinda... gorey#maybe next time#but the point is#he's gonna die trying if it comes to it#infection is not gonna stop him#kumamooko daily#hetalia#apocalypse au#hws prussia
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@yxkanna // continued.
The fluttering of Nick’s heart is overwhelming. For a moment, pressed against him, it’s all that he can hear — like wingbeats of a panicked bird trapped within the cage of his chest, the tang of fear rising on damp skin. Vasile hates to be the one to do that; if he’d had time to be more gentle, he would have, but it isn’t his top priority right now. Because there’s a group of people outside the abandoned store they’ve been searching, and in a few moments? They’re coming in.
Before he can think better of it, he’s reached back. Ensnared Nick with fingers around one wrist, guiding him through the carnage of fallen shelves and skeletal remains. There’s a back door somewhere — leads to the loading dock he’d spotted before coming inside — and it doesn’t sound like anyone’s there yet ( or else they’re being impossibly quiet ). If they can sneak out, unnoticed, and wait until everyone else came in — well. It’s a lot easier than Plan B, at least. Although Plan B does benefit from being simple: he just kills everyone in sight.
#I kept trying to stop myself from writing this#because I BOMBARD YOU ENOUGH!#but consider: you don’t have to answer it <3#thread: vasile#yxkanna#verse: post apocalypse
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Ghost Train may be my favourite Torchwood audio to date. Jack's pure and utter bafflement when Rhys saves him on the train added years to my life
#i'm a simple person#and watching rhys go about his day while torchwood screams around in the background trying to stop the apocalypse#and therefore also mildly inconveniencing everyone around them#is the FUNNIEST possible thing#torchwood#rhys williams#jack harkness#captain jack harkness#ghost train#my art
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i understand why they made the changes to cassidy's backstory in the preacher tv show, and for the most part i'm on board with a lot of the changes to his character in general - my impression is that his original storyline was kind of influenced by ennis's run on hellblazer and getting sick of the constantine character who would use his friends up, get them killed, and get to keep going being beloved by fans because comics just Go in perpetuity like that - because the original storyline really lays into addicts and people who relapse, it's shockingly unsympathetic and hard to swallow at least for me. so while i like a lot of his story changes overall, making him a more sympathetic character it's easier to root for, still keeping a manipulative, lying edge to him but with more nuance to it, i can't say i'm too fond of the change for him pre-vampiring from idiot younger brother being dragged around by protective older brother to putting him in that older brother figure sort of role. as much as i think it tracks with the story they're telling i find that it sort of flattens his character out or makes it a bit more generic. i miss when he used to be a little twit.
#ignore me#preacher#proinsias cassidy#there was going to be more in here and then i realized i was drifting madly away from my Original Point#but i just want to say in tags god i love that fight scene with tulip while trying to stop the apocalypse#i've let you hit me a lot because i love you but if you hit me one more time i'm gonna fuckin kill you.#and asking her if she still thinks he's funny now he's got her at gunpoint. and she says Yes. and it's like. thank god#bc it was kind of a test. kind of. if you see the violent vampire side of me and i'm not just doing whatever you want do you still like me#am i just a sidekick to you. a rebound when jesse's not around. and if i step out of that role will you stop liking me.#and she said nah. nope. i still like you dude. you're more than that to me.#IT'S IMPORTANT............................ IT MEANS SO MUCH
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One time after a guy got done explaining, unprompted, that he'd survive any apocalypse, I sipped my drink and very mildly said, "Good for you, if that's your ambition, but I'll be killing myself at the first sign of an apocalypse, like as soon as work gets cancelled and all of the news networks go dark, I'm out." And this man laughed until he realized I wasn't joking and then proceeded to threaten me by saying he'd show up at my apt and force me to live through the apocalypse at his side. At the time, I didn't have the wherewithal to point out that was the exact kind of shit I didn't want to live through, but goddamn if that isn't the exact thing I was hoping to avoid, like homie please what do you mean you would simply drag me out of my home and into the world and keep me like a stray cat while law and order falls apart all around us. Nightmare behavior
#me and an apocalypse will never exist in the same timeline#he was dead serious tho#was even strategizing how to keep me from offing myself while he sleeps in the wilderness#looking back there were many reasons why I stopped talking to him after that first date#one of which being that I had a slight fear of ever telling him where I live in case the world went to shit and then I'd have GI Joe at my#door trying to pick me up and drag me through his lil dystopian fantasy
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