Simulacrum
Jazz is crying again. Phantom can hear it through the walls, her sobs muffled as she tries to keep from alerting anyone in the house. But Phantom can hear them. Even across the hallway, through his doorway, across his room and through the closed window he can hear it— her hitched breathing, her quiet sobs, the soft shifting of sheets as she curls in on herself barely reaching his ears.
He wants to comfort her, to fly through the barriers between them and hold her and tell her everything will be alright. Except that's a lie. The one person she needs is the one person he can't be, no matter how hard he tries, no matter how easily he can fool everyone else. And that is the greatest barrier of all.
She needs her little brother. She needs Danny Fenton. He is only Danny Phantom.
*~*~*
The first time he realized something was off, he was coming home from school, and he felt like he was being followed. This wasn't unusual in and of itself— but what was strange was that his ghost sense hadn't gone off. He abruptly turned down an alley, catching a flash of red hair from the corner of his eye as his pursuer hurried to follow him. Wes again. Sighing, he marched to the end of the alley, dodging dumpsters and trash bags and a stained mattress before turning around again. "For the last time, Wes, I'm not— Jazz?"
And indeed, there she was, her hair aflame, but her eyes as hard and as cold as ice. Her lips quirked, but they did nothing to soften her eyes.
"I know you're not me," she stated wryly. And then her mouth hardened, and her eyes went from liquid nitrogen to absolute zero. She pulled an ectogun from her jacket and trained it on him. The whine of its activation echoed across the alley.
"But who are you? And where is my brother?"
*~*~*
The first time he caught Jazz crying, he had to fight the instinct to phase through her bedroom wall. Instead he flew to her door, only just remembering to put his feet on the floor as he knocked, tentatively asking, "Jazz? Can I come in?"
Her sobbing stopped. He waited a full minute, about to knock again when she mumbled, voice choked, "Go away!"
He frowned. "Jazz, you're always bugging me about not sharing what's wrong. I can help."
"No you can't!" she exclaimed, her voice high pitched, and another round of sobs burst through. "Not you...."
His frown deepened. "Alright, I'm coming in there in thirty seconds, so you have time to get dressed or whatever if you need to. One, two," he counted, all the way up to thirty. He was disconcerted by the lack of a response from Jazz— only the shifting of covers and her ragged breathing revealed her presence.
"Thirty! Alright, I'm phasing through the door! My eyes are closed so I don't see anything, let me know when I can open my eyes or whatev—"
Something soft smacked into his head. He opened his eyes, startled, and glanced down to see Bearbert on the floor at his feet.
"Seriously, Jazz? Real mature of y—"
"Go away!"
He looked up, annoyed, but that was dashed away when he took in the state Jazz was in. Her hair was a mess, as if she'd been burying her head into her pillow, and her glaring eyes were puffy and red. Her whole body was tense, fists clenched in the covers, balls of her feet digging into the floor as she forced herself to sit on the bed.
"Jazz," he tried, "if you'd just tell me what's wrong—"
"What's wrong?" And suddenly she sprang from the bed, fists white by her sides, eyes as hard as the day she'd followed him into that alley, but this time burning with rage, crackling with grief.
"You're what's wrong!" She snarled. "You being here when he's— and I told you to go away!"
"But Jazz," he pleaded, "you don't get it. I can be—"
"You're not him!" she cried, voice cracking. "You're a simulacrum of him!"
"What does that even mean?!"
Glaring daggers at him through her tears, she reached out, pulled her heaviest dictionary from her bookshelf, and threw it at him. The force of her throw surprised him, and he stumbled back, reflexively going intangible as his back hit the door, tumbling to the floor outside her room, dictionary clutched clumsily in his hands. Through the door, he heard the thump as Jazz fell to her knees.
"It means he's gone," she whispered, voice hoarse.
"And all that's left is you."
*~*~*
The first time Danny Fenton entered the ghost portal, he died.
He died screaming in pain as white hot electricity burned through him, setting his nerves aflame.
He died listening to his screams buzz with the screams of his friends, the crackling whine of the machine, even the cool rush of the ectoplasm as the portal opened behind him, opened before him, opened through him, until he heard nothing at all.
He died feeling the cold war for space with the heat of the electricity as ectoplasm fused with him, fixing his body, replacing pieces of him with ectoplasm even as the electricity destroyed it.
He died, leaving behind an empty body, complete with bits of personality and swathes of memory stored in the patterns of his brain.
He died, and someone else took his place.
*~*~*
Phantom remembers.
He remembers green and purple and red and black and floating, always floating, ever floating, waves of ectoplasm washing over him, washing through him, pushing and pulling him to and fro long before he had the words for to or fro or floating or color.
He remembers suddenly knowing those words, the same way he knew which greens to absorb and which reds to avoid. He remembers knowing that this was the Ghost Zone, the Infinite Realms; that there were nigh uncountable ghosts within, all connected to the Zone through the ectoplasm they absorbed and expelled and the electrochemical signals they shared; that he was a ghost, that he had a lair, that his name was— was—
He remembers defending his lair.
He remembers the contentment he felt fighting foe after foe— some leaving him battered, but all of them leaving as they found they had bitten off more than they could chew. He remembers the sense of calm and peace he felt as malevolent ghosts fled his territory, as he patrolled this small patch of the Ghost Zone, as he established that this place, however small, was his.
And he remembers the portal. It formed as he was reveling in sweet satisfaction as a Tatzelwurm turned tail and fled, the graceful undulations of its body marred by the kinks he had put there. He remembers his surprise and curiosity as it appeared next to him and began to grow, a swirling speck of brighter green than he'd ever seen before, spiraling like a galaxy— the word came to him unbidden, though he had no clue what it meant.
He remembers how his curiosity turned to fear as the galaxy suddenly grew to encompass him— sucking him in; pulling him through; tearing him apart. He remembers pain as he fought with everything he was to not be torn asunder, sought out structure in the whirling chaos, sought out something, anything he could hide behind, hide in, hide from the terrible swirling ectoplasm that threatened to destroy what little form he had left—
And then he remembers a different kind of pain— one that felt all too hot and all too cold, though he had experienced neither before; one that froze his bones and scorched his muscles and flayed his skin, though he had never had bones to freeze nor muscles to scorch nor skin to flay; one that felt far too real, in a way he had never felt real before.
He remembers other pain, too— a burning in his middle (chest) that briefly lifted when he spasmed (breathed); a cold, tingling pain as his aperture (mouth) opened to suck in the surrounding ectoplasm (air), it's cool, coppery taste rendered unfamiliar by a mix of molecules he'd never encountered before (but he could remember their flavor on his tongue); a soreness in his limbs (legs arms feet hands fingers toes) as they spasmed too, as he tried to direct that spasming to leave, to reach the figures blurred by ectoplasm coursing through his veins (Sam Tucker were they alright were they hurt?), trying to remember how to move his muscles (like that QWOP game he and his friends laughed at) (not so funny anymore) to escape the portal, to get out, get OUT, GET OUT—
He also remembers being human.
He remembers learning how to count ghosts with mom, and learning to write the word spook with dad before learning to write his own name.
He remembers stealing Bearbert from his sister, cackling maniacally as he ran around the house, Jazz chasing furiously behind him.
He remembers meeting Tucker in the sandbox and bonding with the boy over the cool technology used in the space program; and he remembers meeting Sam that same day, after she'd hiked up her pink dress to beat up the boys who had stolen Danny's rocket ship and Tucker's remote-control car.
He remembers talking with them, and playing with them, and thinking he could be friends with them forever.
He remembers loving space.
He remembers hugging his sister when she got him the telescope he'd longed for for months on his birthday, and excitedly showing her the Orion nebula when they first tested it out.
He remembers driving for hours with his mom to get away from the city lights, and he remembers staring in wonder at the stars and pointing out to his mom the constellations and the Milky Way.
He remembers dragging his friends to the planetarium, and the way their demeanors changed as Sam learned about dark matter, and Tucker learned about Voyager 1, and Danny learned about the problems and solutions to keeping a human alive in the vacuum of space.
He remembers living with some skepticism, but mostly with wonder; with some sadness, but mostly with happiness; with some selfishness, but mostly with selflessness; with some anger, but mostly with love. Always with love.
He remembers loving all of them— Sam and Tucker and Mom and Dad and Jazz— just as clearly as if the memories were his own.
But it's like Jazz had said— Danny Fenton is dead. He's just the ghost that wears his body and carries his memories.
Jazz is crying again.
Phantom turns from his window and leaves.
*~*~*
Simulacrum:
1: image, representation
2: an insubstantial form or semblance of something : trace
*~*~*
