Chapter Text
Danny was tired. And angry. And scared. And confused.
Danny was a lot of things right now, but most of all, he was over it.
What is it, you may ask? Everything. The ghost fights. The being hunted. The slipping grades. The bullying. The contempt of the town and now the world at large. And heck, considering that the Green Lanterns work with the Justice League, maybe even the universe. He wonders if the Guardian Green Lanterns have been informed of the villain Phantom yet and if they will be informed at all.
Before Danny had fully processed this information and everything it implied for him going forward, he was still in shock that Red Huntress, the ghost hunter, who spewed bias and hatred like it was her native language, was the hero here.
"Never before have I seen someone so young, and without so much as a mentor or friends to help out, be so courageous and strong." That was what Wonder Woman said during her part of the Please join us speech that they had to have prepared and practiced beforehand.
Red Huntress, who chased ghosts not to catch and return them to the Ghost Zone, like Phantom, or even to research(experiment) on, like the Fentons and the Guys in White, but to destroy, was the hero.
Not murder, not even kill, as far as the press and public were concerned. But destroy. Crush. Like ghosts were overpowered insects and not sentient and sapient individuals.
Danny didn't even know what to think or say about the Justice League yet, so he tried not to think or say anything. At least, not until it fully sunk in that the heroes whom he'd admired for their strength and bravery, who Danny, even before becoming a hero, of a kind, himself, understood were flawed and had their issues and weaknesses, thought him to be an evil, unfeeling thing. Danny, who had looked up to those heroes despite knowing that no one, not even the strongest or smartest of them, was truly indomitable, truly untouchable, was something malicious to those same heroes who had fought so hard for Meta rights and protections.
And Danny was tired. The kinda tired that took hold in your soul and didn't release until you were well and buried and truly gone. Except Danny would never be gone, now. The stupid portal incident made sure of that.
If there had been even a small chance Danny would one day die and stay gone forever, not even coming back as a shade or blob ghost, it was dashed the moment Danny made the amazing mistake of stepping into his parents' the Fentons' faulty portal.
Danny, for 2 years now, had been made to protect the town from rampaging ghosts, and after the first year and into the second, the ghosts from humans.
Danny had sacrificed as much of himself as possible to protect. To guard. To keep people safe. To keep the peace.
He'd sacrificed his grades, his mental health, his physical health, and the high regard of family and connection he'd placed on the Dr. Fentons his entire life. He'd sacrificed his body, his safety, his self-respect and most of all, his self-image, to protect a town full of people who'd made it clear his whole life that they didn't care if he lived or died.
As Phantom, that much was obvious. As Fenton? It was subtle, yet somehow even more insidious.
He was the weirdo Fentons' son, having committed the grave sin of being born to the town freaks.
Except Jazz wasn't treated anything like he was, despite being their daughter. No, she was too perfect, too smart, too academic, too well-rounded and well-adjusted to be treated like the inconvenience he was.
Jazz started walking at 8 months. Started talking at 17 months. She was never a problem. Never complained or threw tantrums, no matter what. She used her words, and she used them wisely. Jazz was an aspiring psychologist, someone who would make a real difference in the world! Jasmine Fenton was born to succeed!
Danny?
Danny was forgotten.
Danny was the kid who was mediocre and overlooked. Even when he was good at something, he was left to the side. He was the kid who threw tantrums, not to be a nuisance on purpose, but because he wasn't being listened to and didn't know how to express himself.
At school, he'd always been treated as other. And the otherness got worse in high school, after the accident Freshman year.
Danny could always hear whispers and snickering behind his back from the students. Could hear the disappointed sighs and the lamentations about how different he was, compared to his sister, from the teachers and other staff.
Sam and Tucker were his only saving graces, and their friendship had been put to the test again and again the past two years; their relationships with him were shaky, as much as it pained him to admit that. After the incident, their shared feelings had begun to bud into something more, something new, and it scared the three of them.
Danny was the kid who was bullied and ostracized, even by the other nerds and outcasts. He's the kid everyone makes light of, passing around jokes about the bliss that would follow him disappearing into the night and never being heard from again.
His teachers would 'quietly' ponder the high possibility of him dropping out of school and off the face of the Earth two weeks later.
And here Danny was, writing all of this down in the journal he'd kept since he was six years old and already being written off by his family and the town. He remembers hearing Jazz, in all her 8-year-old glory, mention something about how journaling was therapeutic and recommending it to some random lady she decided to help out of nowhere, despite no one asking her for help.
She'd gotten praise from the surrounding adults and parents about how mature and smart she was.
And yet.
When the random lady, later on, when it was just them kids without the Dr. Fentons around, tried to offer Jazz pills covered in some kinda of leathery candy, and Danny slapped them out of her hands, he'd been labelled as a jealous petty ingrate, who couldn't handle his shortcomings and took it out on his sister.
Jazz tried so hard to deny being anything like their parents, and she seemed to think her point was proven purely because she wasn't interested in ghosts, much less hunting them, yet she was just as obsessed with psychology and medicine as the Dr. Fentons were with ghosts, and no amount of willful ignorance would erase that.
He sighed heavily, leaning back and stretching his arms. He let himself fall until his back hit the mattress, and Danny was staring up at his ceiling.
This was all so hard to wrap his head around. So difficult to swallow and pretend it didn't burn on its way down.
Danny, for two whole years, had given his literal blood, sweat, and tears to protect this town. He'd given up sleep, studying, and eating regularly. He'd given up his safety and more to keep ghosts from tearing this place apart and the government from tearing the universe apart by destorying the Infitite Realms or angering the ghost gods, and all he got for it was colourful ghost slurs and contempt.
Danny had to give up everything. He had to. He protected this town, this world, not because he wanted to or because he was bored or even simply because he was able to, but because he had to.
He didn't realize what that truly meant for him until Freakshow happened.
Every loss had to be a minor setback.
Every weakness had to be a temporary obstacle.
Every mistake had to be a one-time problem.
And yet the mistakes were all the people ever saw.
The only current upside to this was that the Justice League was looking to repeal the Anti-Ecto Acts.
Not out of concern for ghosts. Of course not.
But because the definition of 'ecto entity' is vague and probably wouldn't hold water if challenged with actual facts and logic. That was what they claimed.
Though it was more likely because some of the magic people working with the Justice League use death magic, which messes with their bodies and the way they survive, and this could apply to them. Convenient for the Justice League, if you asked Danny, but no one would.
It could also be because the Guys in White ripped through the town regularly when on the hunt for Phantom, and Danny meant that literally, the amount of property damage and general hazard they caused and contributed to would have anyone, even the ghost hating town of Amity Park, wanting them gone.
But that didn't matter right now. What did was that Danny couldn't stay in this town. He may not be the smartest or the most socially aware, but he knew that much.
Just existing was dangerous for him. With all the new ghost tracking technology and the magic used to peel away glamour and disguise, he knew it was only a matter of time before he was found out and 'brought to justice'.
People were already shocked Danny Fenton managed to last this long without running away and never looking back. The town was irritated that no amount of hate speech and 'support' from ghost hunters had driven away Phantom yet.
And truth be told, the only reason he hadn't left right before high school started was because he'd planned to be an astronaut. He'd planned to graduate with the best grades he could, get into a good astrophysics program at Gotham U or Metropolis U, and finally be out of this stupid town and never have to look back.
But Danny's hopes and dreams died alongside him in that lab accident.
The only reason he didn't leave immediately after becoming half ghost was because of the ghost attacks.
Now he was wondering if staying would be worth the danger.
Probably not. And Red Huntress wouldn't need his help anymore; she had the Justice League working with her now. Which was still crazy to think about, her needing support he means, because the ghosts were always after him, Phantom.
That much was clear from day one. It was part of why he always got flak for the attacks and property damage, even when said property damage was caused by the Fentons, the Guys in White, and Red Huntress herself.
The ghost hunters of Amity Park, and technically the government, didn't even ping on most ghosts' radars except as a small rock in their shoe. Gum stuck to their sleeve, even.
The only reason the GIW were avoided at all was because ghosts understood what experimentation meant and they wanted no part of it, even if the GIW's successful catch rate was less than one percent and comprised entirely of blob ghosts.
And all of those guys, all the ghost hunters of this stupid backwater town, have stormtrooper aim! And they didn't spare a single thought for the safety of the public/surrounding citizens!
And every fight they, especially Red, got involved in was always on their terms!
They didn't have to wake up after 30 minutes of sweet, blissful rest to go fight Technus in his new and improved battle suit and get pummelled into the ground.
They didn't have to run away in the middle of a test because their ghost sense went off, and they didn't want whatever ghost was out and about busting through the window or ceiling and endangering a bunch of innocents.
They didn't have to miss the retake date(s) for those tests because some other ghosts had impeccable timing.
They didn't have to ask themselves multiple times a day if they'd eaten enough because ghosts kept interrupting their attempts at meals.
They didn't get chewed out and scolded for missing homework, not completing chores, being late to school, and always making a mess of the house.
He huffed to himself. Whatever. It's not that important. He shoved the journal into the pocket dimension of his torso before he forgot and Dash came over for tutoring and snooped around for blackmail material. Or something.
Danny got to his feet and intangibly pulled the bag out of the wall. The bag his friends had insisted he pack in case his house got raided by the GIW or he revealed himself to his parents and they didn't take it well.
Thankfully, he didn't have to worry about Ellie, since she was already staying in the GZ. Her obsession was Freedom, and a large part of that, to her, was travel. It was safer for her. From the GIW, and Vlad, for her to be in the Infinite Realms, where she could travel across the ever-expanding universe and landscapes for the rest of time and never go with her obsession unfulfilled.
He pulled out his phone, the one Sam bought him, and Tucker encrypted to hell and back. He shot them a quick message, just what he was planning and why. He didn't expect an immediate response from them, but that was what he got.
They wanted to come with him; that wasn't surprising. But it was heartbreaking. Or would it be core cracking, since he's a ghost?
Unfortunately for all three of them, that couldn't happen. Because people would notice if they left.
The world's elite, and even the police, and the world's greatest detectives, like Batman, would notice if the heiress to the Manson fortune was suddenly gone from her home without a trace.
The engineering world, the town, the hacking and coding communities, they would notice if the genius innovator and aspiring billionaire Tucker Foley dropped off the face of the Earth.
But Danny?
People would be more relieved by the fact that Phantom is missing, and he doubted his parents would even file a missing person's report. Jazz was a different story, but there would be no one to find anyway. Not in the mortal realm, at least.
So, here he was. Standing in front of the very thing that killed him and started him down this awful path in the first place. The only artificial and stable portal to the Infinite Realms. He was about to step through that portal for a second (or would it be third?) time, and he wasn't going to step back into this side of the veil for as long as possible.
He wished he could destroy the stupid thing, but he had tried before, even pleaded with Clockwork for knowledge on how and bribed him with two whole trays of homemade fudge for any kind of help, even bad news.
He'd been told that the portal could be dismantled, but to avoid a worse future, he would have to destroy all the pieces and the blueprints and research related to it, and run away from home anyway, since his parents would become convinced he was taken over or influenced by a ghost.
The only difference would be that he'd be stuck in the mortal realm, where half of him is considered a villain and functionally illegal. And he wasn't willing to risk himself like that, not after almost three years of risking himself day and night for people who couldn't care less.
Danny was going to miss Sam and Tucker. He'd hoped he could spend the rest of his life with them, back when he still had dreams for the future.
All he could do now was thank his lucky stars that they understood why he had to leave alone. Sam had started a three-way call to tell him that, and to say their goodbyes.
The phones they had for this situation would work in the Infinite Realms, thanks to Danny's tweaking, but Danny couldn't risk calling at an inconvenient time and exposing this whole thing, so communication would have to be kept to a minimum, no matter how much his core protested that, he knew it was safer for all three of them.
Danny sighed again, took a deep, steadying breath, let his transformation wash over him, and stepped through the portal, leaving everything he knew what what little he had left to love and love him, behind.