Chapter Text
Sam didn't believe in ghosts. The only ones in Amity Park who did were the Fentons, who had yet to prove anything except that some green liquid they claimed to be ectoplasm worked as a power source when frozen. That's nice and all, but fuel that freezes instead of burns isn't indicative of a ghost dimension. Her parents told her to stay away from them and she did, happily, Tucker joining her on the opposite end of any classroom Danny Fenton inhabited.
That said, she didn't think she'd meet a ghost, and she certainly didn't think she'd hit it with her car at night. Sam gritted her teeth, hearing the telltale thump of hitting an animal with no fleshy being in her line of sight. The glow of her headlights bounced weirdly, reflecting back at her with blinding intent, so she threw up her hands and slammed the brakes. Tucker looked over at her, wide-eyed in the passenger seat.
"What the hell did you do?"
"I don't know!"
"Is it, like, a kid?"
"I still don't know!" Sam fumbled with her seatbelt, opening her door to step into the snow. Amity Park loved to follow weird rules on the seasons, so as soon as Halloween leaves, they're frosted over in the mornings. It's only November first, and she's trying to keep the slush out of her boots. She rounded the car to see if this was something they can take to the vet, or a collar they'll have to send to some unfortunate family. "Holy fuck."
"What?" Tucker asked, leaning through his window and stopping with his eyes bugging out. He can probably see the tail snaking out of the body and down the edge of the street, although the bioluminescent tip looped toward her. "Is that a snake?"
"I think it's an alien." That was the best explanation she could come up with, anyway. She's not a nut who believes in ghosts, but Tucker's blabbered on about extraterrestrial life enough for her to accept it as a possibility. She couldn't tell if the frosty hairs covering the body in patches were feathers or fur, bleached on hackles and protecting the shoulders. She couldn't see the face with an arm slung over it defensively, green liquid coming from cracks in the flesh along one side. Each hand had white wisps stuck between fingers ending in sharp points, appearance too big with the fur abruptly ending around the elbow. The same occurred on the hind legs, where she couldn't see the actual shape of them other than that it stands on the balls of its feet and may not have any toes. A thin chest rattled in shallow breaths, green pulsing deep beneath the surface like distant stars in snowfall.
She leaned down enough to catch a closer look before the creature snapped its head up, eyes a blank green that glowed. It didn't have lips when it opened its mouth, more like a short, clamped beak that opened to show a mouth full of neon spines raising up into denticles. Sam isn't proud of screaming.
The eyes closed into dark slits in pearl skin, indistinguishable from identical marks like divots in the skull. She wasn't sure how the new eyes looked so human, the sclera behind emerald irises widening in fear as they leaned away from the sound. She clapped her hands over her mouth, falling back into a sitting position.
"Sam!" Tucker opened his door, the creature craning its neck to the side as if listening for something. It quickly twisted, a hind leg failing, so it had to crawl away from her. It leered at Tucker for blocking its escape before squeezing its enormous frame impossibly under their car.
"What—"
"Fentons." Tucker pointed behind them, where Fentonworks had a gaudy sign making the entire neighborhood an eyesore. Sam quickly stood and wiped the snow off the back of her pants, turning to the two jumpsuit clad adults running at full speed to them.
"Kids!" Maddie stopped, her hand hovering over a holster at her side. "Did you see a ghost?"
"Ghost?"
"We heard you screaming," Jack supplied quickly, "and we were chasing a ghost, so—"
"Ghosts aren't real," Sam cut him off with crossed arms, leaning back onto the hood of her car. The two options are that this is an alien they'll kill with their stupidity, or it's a ghost of something they killed in their crusade. Either way, she's not letting them leave with it. "And nothing happened."
"She got frustrated that she took the wrong turn on the same block three days in a row," Tucker added, resting his elbows on the cold car top. "Needed a good scream, and I didn't want to lose my hearing, so she got out."
"Yep. If the raccoon with rabies you're chasing went anywhere, it was nowhere near the car. No way it had that much of a death wish."
Maddie narrowed her eyes, but Jack only laughed and turned away. "Invisibility, it lets them go in any direction. Come on, it's a new one and there's no way it can hide for long. We'll catch it."
"Jack, we can't afford to go on a goose chase. We should check this area."
"They said no ghosts, didn't they? We'll have it strapped down and moved on in no time!" Jack slung Maddie over his shoulder, no further argument as he jogged off into the city night.
After they turned off the city block, Sam dropped to look under the car. "You'll be fine, dude. We're not sic'ing the Fentons on you." The air shuddered in response, the darkness opening two eyes with pale hair shining in the off glow. She could see the acidic green sticking to the snow where their wounds rubbed into it. "You need first aid?"
They crawled forward with a nod, staying with their belly to the ground as Sam tried to lead them to the car.
"Wait, we're taking them?" Tucker didn't say no to the plan, immediately opening the back seat for them to crawl up. "They're going to leak all over your upholstery."
"I'm driving Grandma Ida's hand-me-down that my mom has been trying to replace since I inherited it. She'll jump for joy if I tell her I spilled a slushie so I need the newest model. Preferably a hybrid." She slid into the driver's seat, twisting to make sure their new passenger didn't hurt themself climbing into the vehicle. "You know how to wear a seatbelt, right?"
"That is, like, the lowest priority of issue here. Let me list a few bigger ones." Tucker clicked both doors shut, then started counting on his fingers. "We don't know how to give an alien ghost thing first aid, we don't know how to sneak them into one of our houses, we probably shouldn't sneak them into one of our houses, they could be very dangerous and waiting to kill us—"
"They would've killed us as soon as they got in the car if that was the plan." Sam shrugged. "Also, our house is super fucking big. There's an entire floor my mom never touches. I hide all sorts of crap up there and she never finds it. They understand English, so they can probably help us figure out first aid. Right?" She leaned back for input. The creature looked up from wearing every seatbelt while lounging their skeletal frame across the back and nodded. "I'd tell you that's dangerous, but I don't know if you have a skull to break in a crash."
"Can we at least turn up the heat? They're freezing the car with their presence."
"They're not..." She drifted off as she looked to the windshield, then checked the windows. All of them had frost steadily climbing outwards from the backseat, making fern patterns in the glass. "Oh. That's not good."
"Yeah. Seat warmers, now."
"Alright." As she pulled away from the curb and gained more distance from Fentonworks, she could see the frost spirit relax deeper into the cushions. They rested their head on their elbow, slowly shutting their eyes. "We'll be there soon."
In a perfect life, Danny would've woken up to this all being a terrible dream. The morning sun would peek through the window, Mom would scold him for bailing on their portal test, still smiling somehow as she declared breakfast was ready. Her cooking was never that good, but Dad's was worse, so in his dream state he hopes that Jazz hasn't left for her weekend job with burnt-edge pancakes stacked on plates waiting for him. He and his dad want chocolate chips, while Jazz has strawberries, Mom has blueberries, and he's the only one who puts maple syrup on his pancakes because the rest are weirdos who insist on honey. He'll screw up his nose at the sight of that bear-shaped container, gag dramatically, and eventually laugh it off as he thanks his dad for pouring him some milk.
In a perfect world, it's a breakfast they're eating together. They haven't done that in a while, but maybe if he really wished...
Instead, he opened his eyes, and his reality was an attic with dust dancing in the moonlit air. He swallowed, looking down at his hands. They weren't human anymore, talons like a snow owl to rip into flesh until nothing remained. He reached up to where he once had a gas mask, pawing at the filter in disappointment when there was no latch. Just a maw that flared its nostrils when he breathed. He could smell so much more now, a new world opened to him just through tracking. For example, he knew a human who wore a lot of artificial smells was climbing the stairs with a dish smelling of smoke.
He hiked his shoulders up, ready to bolt, before remembering the twinge in his leg warning him to stay down. Well, ghosts can fly, can't they? It's not like he understands how to walk like this when his toes fused to his boots and he can't make his heel touch the ground.
"Tuck, I think they're awake!"
Tuck? Danny could remember the faces of the two he (literally) ran into, but he couldn't place if they were ever in his classes. Most kids just stay away en masse, so he never had to. Hearing someone call that name in the hall sounded vaguely familiar, along with...um...
"Sam, wait!" Tuck popped his head up from an open hatch in the floor, holding onto the top of a ladder. "Okay, uh, buddy. Before we try this, I need you to answer a question."
Danny blinked, staring blankly at him.
Tuck pointed at him with an accusatory finger. "Do you eat people?"
"Do I look like I eat people?"
"Holy—" Sam nearly shoved Tuck off the ladder in her excitement to get them both on the same floor, dropping her container filled with a food he's never seen in his life. "You can talk!"
Oh. If he pretended he couldn't talk, they wouldn't ask him questions, and then he could just coast through this interaction until he came up with a plan. That would've been smarter. Instead, he fucked it up for himself, as usual. Danny awkwardly raised the arm that cracked on impact with the asphalt. "Yeah, that's a thing I can do." He pointed to the bowl. "What's that?"
"Tzimmes. It's vegan and doesn't have a lot of allergy stuff in it if you can't, uh, digest human food." Sam moved it closer to him, producing a fork from her pocket. "It's good."
He took it, skewering one slice floating in a stew. When he bit into it, he tasted nothing, but he could still swallow. It's nice to pretend to eat, even when he doesn't know what it'll do to help him. "Thanks."
"No problem...you." Sam gave him finger guns with one edge of her lip quirked in an awkward smile. "Do you, um, have a name we can call you?"
He stared at the stew. After seeing his parents chase him down the street with guns, he's not sure how he's supposed to go back to being Danny Fenton. "No."
"Okay...and are you from another planet?"
"I'm a ghost." He stabbed a carrot with too much violence in the act, watching the juice leak from the holes. "I died today."
"Oh." Tuck's voice strained. "I see. So. Not an alien. And ghosts are real."
"I was really hoping you were right, not the Fentons."
"I was too." Danny sighed, surprised he can still do that. "Ghosts were always swamp gas and lead poisoning. Aliens had a chance of existing, and they were more fun to read about." He always argued that they were what his parents should try to find, not ghosts. Instead, he died and proved them right, being left behind as some creature that held the stars in its pelt. The irony would turn his stomach if he still had a stomach to turn.
"But you died today?" Tuck sat down at a safe distance, crossing his legs. "So you're new to the ghost thing?"
"Correct. In fact..." He chewed slowly, giving himself time to think through his next words. "The Fentons were correct about one thing. You can open a portal to a world of ghosts, and they accomplished that."
"Were you there?" Sam asked, settling in next to her friend. Danny felt even having them a few feet away was too close, shifting back and taking the bowl with him.
"No." Danny spoke too quickly, flicking his tail inward, then quickly slapping a claw over it so it'll stop moving. He does not want to make his panic obvious by knocking things over with an appendage he's not used to. "I-I sensed it. I woke up as a spirit, and I had this feeling that they were—eh—punching a wall between our worlds." He was quoting a sci-fi novel he read in seventh grade, but they nodded along, taking his words as gospel. "I didn't get there until after it was over, but there's a portal to the Ghost Zone now."
"So you woke up in the Ghost Zone? You've been there, through the portal?"
"I don't want to talk about it." If he wasn't discussing his own death, he was sure they'd see through that lie. Instead, Sam bit her lip sympathetically. He worked on his stew again before they could inch closer to something truthful.
"Well, my parents never bother with the attic, and I don't think dust can get in your lungs. You can hang around here until you feel better."
He nodded, avoiding speaking by chewing instead. His jaws don't move the same anymore, and he doesn't have lips to keep everything inside, so he keeps bowing his head so they don't see him getting crumbs on the outside of his mouth like a little kid. He should know better, sticking out his tongue to get the worst of it off. Sam noticeably froze at the flicker of green flesh leaving the muzzle, so he lifted his hand to keep it covered.
"So, we should probably come up with a name if you're not giving one." Tuck squeezed Sam's arm to keep her steady. "Would you want a guy's name? Girl's? A neutral one?"
"Guy. I'm a guy." Danny smiled a bit, hoping he had nothing in his retracting placoids. "I guess it's hard to tell now, isn't it?"
"Your voice is a bit...garbled," Tuck gave him a so-so gesture, then continued, "but we can pick something simple. Like, uh, Jackie, or Kenny, or Da—"
"I'm not planning on talking to other people, Tuck." Danny interrupted before he could hit too close to home. "You can call me Ghost for all I care."
"That's kind of. Sad." Sam tilted her head in a worried smile. "What about something cooler? Like Specter? Shadow?"
"Phantom?"
"That's a great idea!" Tuck grinned, standing with a pop to his back. "Look, Sam was supposed to get me home from that movie, like, three hours ago, so I really should be back before midnight. Can I see you tomorrow, Phantom?"
"Not like I have anywhere else to go." He offered the empty bowl to Sam. "Thank you for the food. I'll know if I can digest it after I find out if I can really sleep, I guess."
"I thought you were sleeping. We dragged you in here, and you're heavy!" Sam pointed to his long tail with a scowl.
"I think that was a rest, not a sleep. M—" He clamped his mouth shut. Now is not the time to spout off the Fenton theories he suffered through. "Ghosts have a half-awake thing to keep from destabilising called a rest. Sleep feels different."
"I see." Sam didn't sound like she understood at all, but she nodded all the same. "Night, Phantom."