Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Danny, go!”

Danny stared at his family, scared and afraid. They were holding back the GIW agents who were coming in streams. Jazz came running to him, blood from her temple and bleeding heavily. She pushed him back gently and smiled at him, full of love. Danny’s face fell, and tears were in his eyes. His eyes met his parents, and they only nodded to him, none of the looks of disgust they aimed at Phantom, only parental love for their child. Maddie was crying but continued to knock down the GIW agents, while his father was full-on sobbing but wouldn’t let any of the agents hurt his family.

Danny stumbled back to the portal. It was open and ready to be dived through. He couldn't see Sam or Tucker, but he knew they were somewhere in the fight. 

There was little use. This fight wasn’t one they could win. Not with the time they had.

A few weeks ago, the planet's satellites found a meteorite hurtling toward them. The meteorite trajectory headed straight for their planet, and they would collide soon. Danny noticed and wanted to see if he could make the meteorite intangible with his powers. Before he got close to touching the meteorite, he got sick, and it took all he got to fly back home. Danny didn’t know why it was so hard to get close to at the time, but with the scanners and other scientific equipment, the meteorite was found to be extremely radioactive to the entire population. That caused even more frenzy because even if people survived the initial collision, the entire population would be killed by radiation. 

Somehow the GIW got the information Danny, or Phantom in this case, was also susceptible to the radiation. Even if they were idiots, they could still connect the dots. Ghosts didn’t have any humanoid physiology. Ghosts were energy beings, not physical. 

Phantom shouldn't be affected by the radiation. 

They found that Phantom wasn’t just a ghost, he was a Halfa. A hybrid. 

And not one civilized being on this planet was a half-breed. And what people do not understand, they fear. 

The GIW somehow managed to convince the world council that capturing Phantom would allow them to figure out how to survive the collision. 

It was bullshit. 

There was no way to use the information of Halfas to survive. A halfa would still be killed by the collision too. The GIW just wanted Phantom gone and experimented on, no matter how much time they all had left.

Danny had told his parent about his identity a few months before this came to light, even before they found out they had a chopping block over their head. It took a while for them to understand everything, but they came around and said they loved him all the same. Danny waited for the other shoe to drop, but it never did. His mother and father still loved him and now excepted him for his status as a Halfa. Which was something he never dreamed of happening. He knew on this planet that a half-breed status was a death sentence, and he was already dead. 

With his parents knowing, Danny could finally explain what ghosts were without any bias. His parents' studies progressed by leaps and bounds, now not blocked by the harmful stereotypes ghosts held. They were helping to explain to the entire world that ghosts were sentient and not animals to be killed. It was an uphill battle, but they were getting to a point where ghosts weren’t immediately called evil. 

It was progress.

More than Danny ever dreamed of happening, and he could see the day off in the future when ghosts weren’t hunted down just for being "animated" ectoplasm. 

But now it was all gone, and Danny wanted to scream in frustration while crying green blood, his core breaking. 

He didn’t want to leave. 

He didn’t want to leave his planet to be destroyed. He didn’t want to leave all of the people he swore to protect. He didn’t want to leave his family and friends to die on a planet doomed to be destroyed. 

Danny had the beginnings of a plan started when the GIW came after him with the force of the World Council's influence. He planned to recruit the ghosts to help protect his planet with the promise of what they wanted, but now with the GIW coming for blood, there would only be a slaughter, and Danny couldn’t make a deal with the ghosts knowing they would be killed for the second time if the GIW got their hands on them. 

Danny would have tried anyway if he had more time, but everything happened too fast for him to keep track of. 

Danny was stuck between a meteorite and a dead place and couldn’t do anything. 

Danny couldn't do anything for his planet or his family. They would all die, and all Danny could do was run. 

Danny was the only one who could survive in the Ghost Zone, while others could only be in the Ghost Zone for a while before their material body started to rip apart at the seams. Vlad could have also survived, but Danny knew that wasn’t possible. 

The GIW got Vlad two weeks ago in a surprise attack. 

Danny couldn't even find a speck of his cape when he went to look, only a destroyed mansion with green ectoplasm on the walls. Danny knew Vlad was strong, but the amount of ectoplasm he found was fatal, even for a ghost as strong as Vlad. 

That was the day fear settled in this core because Danny knew it was now out of anyone’s control. 

His parents were the ones to tell Danny to retreat into the Ghost Zone. Danny fought and fought, but his parents didn’t retreat. They told him it was him or no one else. Their planet would die, and they wanted to at least save their son. 

They were crying. They knew their time was coming, and Jazz and his two best friends were the same. 

“Danny, I know this goes against your entire being, but please. Please save yourself. We all can die happily knowing you are safe. We don’t want our entire planet to die without anyone to tell the tale. We know we’re bad parents for pushing this onto you, but we don’t want you to die because of our mistakes again.”

“Mom, I don’t… Even if I do this, which I won’t, where would I even go? I don’t want to live in the Ghost Zone forever.”

His mom put her hand on his shoulder, eyes red, and brought out a hologram. She activated it and zoomed out. It was the galaxy, but Danny noticed a red blinking dot in a distant galaxy. She looked at Danny with a grin, the gleam of excitement dimmed because of the circumstances. 

“I found this a few weeks ago, and it would have been the day of the century since we found the existence that our home planets people still live. But I didn’t have the opportunity to share it with everyone.”

Danny and everyone in the room stared at his mother was disbelieving gaze, along with surprise. 

Their people didn’t originally belong on this planet. They were the descendant of an advanced race that could travel the stars. Their ancestors crashed on this planet and were lucky enough to survive, especially lucky they could survive in this atmosphere. It was the goal of the entire world population to go back to their original planet, to find where they came from. They only knew bare-bones information about the planet and the culture, most of which could only be learned in history class because it had been a very long time since their ancestors crashed on this planet. 

But they still wanted to go back. It was something they could do for their ancestors that died wishing to go back to their planet. 

To Krypton. 

And even if they were not born on Krypton, they still called themselves Kryptonians. This planet was called Amity, and it had been debated that they should call themselves Amitians, but it was always shot down. 

Maddie continued like she didn’t just prove there were more Kryptonians alive in the universe. They discovered ten years ago that Krypton was destroyed by their own sun’s collapse. Everyone that day mourned for the ancestral land and cried that they would never be able to see it in its entirety. Danny barely remembered that day, a six-year-old who could barely understand why everyone was sad. 

His love for the stars was derived from the stories of their original planet, Danny wanting to explore the stars and find new planets. It was his dream, like many other children. But unlike them, he never gave up the dream, not until he died. After his death, he knew he would never be able to pass all the health tests. No one would allow a borderline bradycardia disorder into the space program. His heart rate was too slow, and his internal temp would raise so many red flags it wouldn’t even be funny.  

“There is only one signal, but from the stories from our predecessors, the signal is from a knowledge bank. It is only possible to have one if a Kryptonian is there for its construction. This means that where this signal is, it is safe enough for you to go. You would be able to live there.”

“But-”

“No buts. I can program a map for you to follow in the Ghost Zone to find a door that leads you to this planet. And if that doesn’t work, you can use the Infiniti Map to get there. Danny, please don’t fight us.”

Danny looked into his mother’s eyes, and he saw how close she was to breaking, grief in her eyes and desperation in equal measure. He couldn’t bring himself to say no, not to his mother, who loved him so much. 

He breathed shakily, the air getting stuck in his throat. 

“Okay. Okay . I’ll… go.”   

Maddie smiled brilliantly, tears of relief escaping her purple eyes. 

“Good boy. You make your mother proud, son.”

Danny bowed his head and tried whipping away the tears because he essentially just promised to abandon his family. He was hugged from all sides, but all he felt was despair .

The day before he would leave, at the last moment he could, his parents came to him in his room. He was packing his things, taking pictures, and other things he couldn’t leave behind. He didn’t bother to bring clothes, it would only weigh him down.

His mom knocked on his door, and his dad was behind her, tears in his eyes like he had for the past couple of weeks. He was always emotional.

“We have something for you.”

Danny looked at his parents and nodded, gesturing for them to come in. He didn’t feel like talking. Maddie smiled sadly but set down a wrapped box on his bed. She looked at him, and Danny got up, grabbed it, and stared at it. She nodded, and Danny hesitated but opened the gift. He ripped the paper to see a rectangular box. He paused but opened it.

He froze when he saw what was in it. 

He looked at his parents with wide eyes, and his mom was nodding, hand over her mouth, and Danny knew she was trying not to cry again.

Danny touched the suit in the box, sitting back down at his desk. The box was on his knees, and he couldn’t stop staring at it.

Danny saw the diamond and what it contained. He saw the symbol in the middle, the same symbol he had on his suit for years. Danny’s hand floated over the diamond until he touched the symbol. It was the symbol for the dead, for Ghosts. Sam thought it would be funny if he had that call sign on his suit like it was a pretty obvious call sign to everyone. But Danny knew there was more to it by the way Sam smiled like she was getting away with something she wouldn’t be caught for. 

Danny never bothered to ask what the symbol really meant, and he didn’t want to. Not in these circumstances. 

The diamond and its occupant were white, while the rest of the suit was black. Danny bought it out of the box, and he saw the wrist and ankle area was pure white too. It was nothing like the flimsy hazmat suit he had on when he died in the portal, but the material was tougher and clearly not something his parents should have.

“Where… did you get this?”

Danny knew this material was rare because the material could only be made on their home planet, and it was so expensive and protected it wasn’t even possible to see it in museums. He didn’t know how his parents got this to make a suit for him, and he was sure if it wasn’t taken legally the World Council would have their heads. 

Not like they weren’t doing that anyway.    

His dad grinned, giving him a thumbs up, and it was clear he was putting on a front.

“Well, Danny-O, we had a few favors people owed us, and we cashed them in. Say how cool your parents are.”

Jack posed, and Danny choked up. It was like his throat didn’t want to work. It happened often these days.  

“You guys are very cool.”

Danny stared back down at the suit, and his mom smiled, a glimmer of excitement in her eyes that was drowned out by melancholy.

“Why don’t you try it on? We want to see the dashing young man we know you are.”

Danny nodded, still focused on the suit.

He couldn’t stop staring at it. 

Danny was staring at his reflection in the bathroom mirror. 

He looked the same, yet not, the same colors but different. The material was different on his skin, but it wasn’t irritating. His natural glow gave the suit more of a supernatural light, but he was used to it by now. His glowing green eyes roamed over his reflection, trying to understand if it was him. 

He had never changed the hazmat suit of his Ghost form. He wasn’t even sure he could. 

But he could. 

The minute he changed into his gifted suit, his old one seemed to fade, and it was gone before Danny could do anything. He was attached to it in some measure but he wasn’t going to cry about it. 

It was like his old suit knew it was past its time. 

His family was happy with his new outfit, and his mom looked at him with pride. Danny remembered his mom speaking and how it made Danny want to stay even more.

“That symbol is you , and I want you to wear it with pride. It doesn’t matter that you won’t wear our ancestors' House Crest. I think they would understand because of the circumstances.”  

Danny always looked forward to the day when he would be allowed to wear their House Crest. There was a time when he wasn’t sure if he would be able to with his parents' reaction to ghosts, but after Danny knew it was a useless worry. Now he could never wear the Crest that filled the family with pride.

It was like Danny finally understood that things were serious and that it wasn’t a joke. 

The day came before Danny was ready.

The GIW surrounded the house, guns blazing. His family and two best friends were holding back the agents, and Danny wanted to fight with them, but there would be no point. They’re there for him and him alone. Once Danny went through the portal, his family would destroy the portal, and Danny would have no way home. Not like he would be able to return to a healthy planet. The meteorite would be here in a few days, and the population was already uncontrollable in their fear.

Jazz pushed him back a little more, and Danny knew it was time to go, no matter how much he hated the premise. He could see his parents, and all he could feel was the love they had for their son. Danny wished he could see his friends again, but time was ticking away. 

His feet were stuck where they were, only shooting a few ectoblasts at some agents that were getting too close for comfort. He knew he was delaying the inevitable, but he just couldn’t bring himself to leave, to let his family die when he would survive(Even if you could call him alive in any matter of the word).

He inched back when he saw even more agents swarm the lab stairs, and started to see his parents get pushed back even with their combat training and experience. 

A wide shot sailed through the air, and Danny’s eyes widened and pushed Jazz out of the way and in turn, got hit in the shoulder with an ectoshot. Danny didn’t even flinch at the pain, having gotten used to the aches and pains when fighting ghosts. But he did feel the blood start to seep out from his shoulder. He grimaced, and Jazz yelled at Danny again. 

“Danny, run. Get out of here!! You have to survive!! You have to!!”

Danny felt tears run down his face, but all he felt was numbness. The core in his chest started to compress in on itself, and Danny knew even if he survived, he would be hurt. Hurt in the most horrible way a ghost could be. 

Because protection was part of his Obsession, and this goes against everything his being still existed to be.    

Danny bowed his head and turned his back. His shoulders were shaking from the silent sobs, and couldn’t bare to look at his family. Shame came to his chest, the repressed emotion coming up, and Danny couldn’t stop it. 

Danny ran into the portal, and even the comforting embrace of the Ghost Zone couldn’t calm him down. 

Danny flew into the Ghost Zone, and then he felt a shift in the fabric of the Ghost Zone. Danny whirled around, tears still coming from his eyes. His eyes focused on the shell of the portal, but it was no longer green and swirling, and Danny could only see the green sky of the Ghost Zone. The portal was no longer a gateway into the Living Realm, and Danny felt alone.  

His family and friends were gone. Danny would never see them again.

Danny could find a natural portal to his planet, but it would only happen again. 

Danny screamed in the Ghost Zone, but no one living heard a thing. 

Danny drifted through the green dimension, knowing he should be following the hologram on his wrist but too numb to care. 

Screw everything else, he deserved to mourn. 

Unconsciously, he appeared in front of Clockwork’s lair, his tower. Danny looked up at the structure and decided to fuck it, he had nothing better to do.

Danny landed on the doorstep of the lair, and before he could even knock, the doors opened with a grating sound. Danny scoffed with none of his usual humor, too emotionally drained to make a joke about how cliche it was.

Danny walked through the winding halls of the tower, hearing the clicks and dings of clocks that floated in the air and on the walls of the lair. Danny liked Clockworks lair, but today wasn’t the day to take his time and just look.

The young ghost made his way to the main part of the lair, and he saw the gears that held the future, seeing scenes that have played out or will. Danny saw the person he was looking for, and he knew Danny was there. The grandfather clock in the Ancient's chest clicked on, and Danny found it soothing in some measure of the word. That Clockwork wouldn’t die before him.  

Danny walked to the ghost and started to float again, curling in the air with arms around his knees. 

“Why? Why did they have to die, Clockwork?”

Clockwork stopped what he was doing and looked down at the ghost. His form changed to his young one, and this time Danny looked directly into the child Clockwork’s dark eyes. They still held the knowledge and age that came with Clockwork’s existence. Danny thought of it before, that Clockwork had seen too much because no one deserves to see the past and future forever and could never stop. It made his existence feel like heaven, and that was saying something. 

There was a heavy silence, and Danny put his head on his knees. 

Clockwork sighed and put a small hand on his shoulder. 

Danny looked up with more tears and found Clockwork in his grandfather form. Clockwork pulled Danny into a hug, and Danny unraveled. He sobbed into Clockwork’s void of a chest, but his hands were shaking where he held onto Clockwork’s robes, but he couldn’t stop. 

“I’m sorry, young one.”

Danny breathed shakily, grief still overpowering. Clockwork didn’t make excuses but allowed Danny to understand through his silence. 

The planet’s destruction wasn’t harmful to the time stream. It wouldn’t harm the Infinite Realms in any way. 

Clockwork didn’t move because he had no authority to. It was out of his hands and had no way of making it his problem without causing greater death and destruction. 

Danny knew that logically, but it didn’t make the feelings go away. He wanted to scream and yell at Clockwork, saying he could have done something. He had the power to save his family and friends with a snap of his fingers, and it was only his mind telling him it would be no use even if he did. 

It happened, and nothing he could do would bring them back.

Danny swallowed some of his tears, but his throat was still scratchy to use without voice cracks.

“Did they…?”

“Your family didn’t die in pain. It was instantaneous.” 

Danny covered his face in Clockwork’s purple robes, trying to hide how he was feeling. It was a losing battle, and Danny knew that. 

When Danny finally started to calm down, he felt the pain in his shoulder that was numbed for all of this time. The adrenaline finally started to leave his system, and he was crashing. Clockwork must have noticed or knew it would happen because nothing gets past the Ghost of Time, he ushered Danny to a side room, and Danny saw a simple bed, and he collapsed into it. He didn’t even question why Clockwork would have a bed before he passed out. 

The last thing he felt was a gentle hand brushing back his white hair, and he felt yet another heartbroken tear slip from his eye, wishing to see his family just one last time.  

Clockwork gazed at the young but powerful child ghost and smiled sadly. He fixed up the child’s hair was even more unruly than usual. Clockwork retracted his hand when he saw the young one cry in his sleep, a glowing green tear drip down his young face. 

Clockwork floated out of the room, knowing he was safe in his lair. No one would attack the halfa with Clockwork guarding him.

The Ancient floated in front of his visions of time. He swiped through them, and he saw the paths of the future, the information appearing in his head in a rush he had gotten used to in his eons of existence. He came to be knowing the overview of all time and the End, but he didn’t know the finer details until he looked specifically for it. It was no fun if he knew everything. But he decided this was a time when he would look specifically into the diverging paths of time.

Once he finished, he looked at the room he made for the halfa. He appeared in that room with a flash of green and gazed at the disturbed slumber of the ghost. His face was scrunched up, and noises of pain were coming from the sleeping child's mouth. Clockwork touched the boy's forehead, and the sleep became calmer. It was the least he could do for the boy. 

Clockwork made a green portal, the cold air coming from the other side burst through the room, but neither ghost even shivered. If anything, the halfa was relaxing in the cold.

Clockwork touched the young ghost and used his telekinesis he barely used, and moved the ghost into the portal gently. Clockwork shut the portal just as fast as it came, but now without the young halfa in the room. 

The Ancient looked away from where the portal was, but he could see halfa nevertheless. He saw the boy sleeping in a snow pile, and Clockwork smiled. 

“Rest, Young Prince. For you will be loved.”

Clockwork twirled around, the robe bellowing behind him even with no wind in his lair.

The Crown Prince of the Infinite Realms was too young to take the mantle of High King, but that was perfectly fine. Young Phantom would only need more experience and not worry about solely protecting everyone (And the young child needed time to heal from his recent wounds, mental and physical). That was too much for one person alone, especially a child, and Clockwork knew his choice was the right one. It may not be that way for the Prince immediately, but he will understand.  

In time. 

And time was something he had an overabundance of.