Chapter Text
Vlad Masters was never a good person.
If choosing between his own self interest and helping someone else, he’d always choose himself. It was the way he’d always been and the way he liked things to be, not having to worry about anyone else. He’d been able to effectively manipulate his own parents by the time he was in elementary school and he hated other children from the moment he’d been forced to interact with them. He was always smarter than them, but skinny and awkward so no one took him seriously.
Attending college had been the beginning of the rest of his life, his chance to be around like minded individuals and prove his intelligence. His roommate was a giant oaf who was shockingly brilliant as well as stupid. They bonded over a passion for ghost hunting and theorized about another plane of existence, and they didn’t care that everyone thought they were crazy.
They put up a flier for a ghost discussion group and the only person to show was a redhead named Maddie. She had a crazy in her eyes that made Vlad breathless, and a smile that promised chaos. She was insanely smart, able to do complex calculations in her head and tweak the designs they’d been stuck on, and their trio was complete.
They did everything together, forcing Vlad to interact with other people. They liked to dance and laugh, pulling him along into their adventures. They hunted for campus legends and built guns that got confiscated, and Vlad for once understood what it meant to enjoy the company of others.
He only got discontent when he started to fall in love with Madeline. In his nineteen years, Vlad had never loved another person romantically. He’d thought of it as a lesser thing, unnecessary, but then there was her. Her with her lilac eyes and laugh that had an edge of danger, her who insisted on teaching him self defense only to flip him on the mat each time and leave him breathless for more than one reason, her with wild curly hair and too large goggles. She corrected his equations and instead of distain he felt a rush.
But her eyes didn’t linger on him. It was survivable when he thought of her as a free spirit, like a flame that danced alone, but seeing her eyes linger instead on Jack crushed him. Why Jack of all people? He loved Jack, for all his stupid quirks and the genuine way he lived, but how was Jack better than him?
Vlad had never considered another his equal until Maddie, but if she liked Jack, was he the superior choice?
Life had been easier before he cared about this stuff.
He told himself that if he confessed first everything would be okay, that he’d get the girl and then he’d have everything.
And then Jack, in the way he messed everything up, something that had once been almost endearing, killed him.
It was only a few seconds of the portal going off in his face, of ectoplasm seeping into his eyes and nose and throat, soaking through his skin and burning through his bones, of the feeling of his heart stopping and liquid that tasted like how death felt filling his lungs, and then he was on the ground. His face had been disfigured and his hair had turned silver and something was deeply wrong in his body and he couldn’t figure out what it was.
Then it was all hospitals and tests, of bewildered doctors poking him and prodding him like some specimen, all talks of new diseases and timelines. He kept getting worse and worse, falling apart while still alive. People smiled at him with a pity that made his skin itch, like they knew something he didn’t.
It got harder to move, to see, to breathe. They threw around words like radiation poisoning, words like terminal.
Jack and Maddie didn’t visit and he started ignoring Jacks calls. He had done this! He had caused this! He was the reason Vlad was dying, rotting from the outside in.
Something was wrong something was wrong something was under his skin.
Vlad Masters finally passed away in a hospital a year after the accident. There was a moment of relief that spread through the hospital staff, at least that young man wasn’t in agony anymore.
Nobody expected him to wake back up, so sit up and stare at the mortuary tech that had been preparing to slice him open now that they could finally study him.
They called it a miracle, the way he started to improve after that. He was still rail thin and his face was scarred, but he was alive. He wanted to leave, but they wouldn’t let him. They needed to know more, they said.
Only Vlad knew that something was very wrong with him now.
it was under his skin it was under his skin-
He woke up to shredded sheets. The electrical equipment around him failed continuously. A year passed. Fires started to appear near him, they called him a pyro, they sent him to a ward. The fires kept happening, the air tasted like smoke, he had red eyes in the mirror. Why were his eyes red? Get out get out get out!
He discovered what he had become locked in his white room, the camera never working and the broken television only serving to reflect his monstrous face back at him. Inverted colors, his lab coat was black, it felt like funeral attire. He was dead, he had to be dead.
(He later learned that was mostly true, he wasn’t fully dead, but he wasn’t fully alive either, and he never would be again)
Time wasn’t real in hospitals. They played football games on the tv, he watched a lot of football. He decided he liked the Packers. He decided he hated jello.
One day he decided to just leave. He walked out through the wall and went home. He discovered his parents had passed away while he was in the hospital. He’d missed their funerals.
Perhaps out of curiosity, perhaps out of hatred, Vlad looked up his old friends.
They had just gotten married. Maddie looked just as beautiful in her wedding dress as he’d known she would.
They consumed his waking moments and haunted his dreams even when he tried to focus on building an empire. He committed crimes and established himself as a person that mattered, but they haunted him. Jack’s stupid smile, Maddie’s laugh, their disgusted faces at seeing what he’d become. He forgave Maddie, it hadn’t been her fault, but Jack. Jack was his murderer.
Jack found his new number and started calling him about every little thing. He’d picked up once, but hearing Jack light up like the idiot he was and call out his name had made him so nauseous he’d had to choke back bile. He changed his number a few times before he gave up and just deleted the voicemails as they came in. He always listened to each message first, just to know his enemy better. He taped a few, only because Maddie said a few things as well.
They had kids now.
Vlad didn’t care that they were living the life he wanted, he didn’t! He overshadowed more people, told more lies, and clawed his way up the societal ladder. He forced the world to recognize he mattered.
He didn’t care, Dalv co was established and that took up his time. He’d committed crimes so easily with the powers he was slowly starting to gain control over.
He trained his ghost half until Plasmius barely resembled him. His skin had turned blue and his teeth had grown long and sharp, so inhuman he wondered if the split truly was half and half. He learned to change from the clothes he died in and chose his own. He practiced his powers until he was sick and built his own portal that didn’t explode. He hid behind a table when it came to life, but it worked. He met the first ghost that wasn’t himself and won that fight pretty easily.
He learned to see ghosts the same way he saw people, as tools to exploit.
He bought a castle and finally left the house he’d grown up in.
It had almost been ten years.
The phone rang.
-
The call came at exactly 7:56 on a Tuesday night. He had been cooking an Italian dish, a tape of Packers highlights playing on the television as he puttered around the kitchen. It was large and empty, decorated to the bare minimum. He’d only just moved in recently to the castle and he hadn’t had time to settle in fully yet. He liked the lack of stuff though, the empty space that was his alone to fill. It smelled dusty and ancient in a way the hospital never did, full of history and echoes of the past. It also had a ghost, but they’d worked out an agreement, or more Vlad had threatened the ghost not to bother him. He did learn how to home make cheese however, that was an interesting experience.
The shrill ring of the landline startled him, the pan he was holding clattering onto the burner as the handle phased through his hand. He cursed as he turned down the heat and walked briskly towards the phone to see what idiot he had to deal with. Even almost ten years after the accident he still had mishaps, small losses of control that bothered him to no end.
He picked up the phone, slipping into a mask of polite indifference as he prepared for what drivel an investor or cold caller would dump on him.
“Is this Vlad Masters?” The woman on the other end asked.
“Speaking.” He boredly watched flames roll over his knuckles, winding it through his fingers.
“You were an associate of Jack and Madeline Fenton, correct?” The flame flared out of control before dying with a hiss, the plastic of the phone creaking in his hand as he tried to not crush it to dust. Even after escaping their shadows he wasn’t free, haunted by scars and an obsession he couldn’t control.
“Yes.” He bit out, wondering what trouble they would cause in his life now. He had forgiven Maddie in the first few years, she’d realized the error, it was Jack that had stolen his humanity, killed him where he stood and scarred his face.
“I regret to inform you that earlier this week Jack and Maddie Fenton were caught up in a lab accident in their basement and did not survive. According to their wills-“ She kept talking, but it faded out into static. Something in Vlad’s chest pulsed, something deep inside splintering with a shockwave that traveled down his arms and legs. He wheezed in pain, bracing himself against the wall as his legs shook and threatened to go out from beneath him.
Pain, that was the only way he could describe it. Pain and grief and loss. Maddie, his dear beloved Maddie, and Jack, a bafoon he had once considered his closest friend and had swore to one day take revenge on. They were gone. Dead. Did they have ghosts? Should he go looking? Did he want to?
“Sir?” The staticky voice crackled loudly in his ear. “Did you hear me?”
He forced himself to rein in his powers even as he slid to the floor, cradling the phone to his ear.
“Bad connection.” He grit out as his lungs seized and his heart beat sluggishly before finally giving up and stopping, forcing the change that washed over his skin like icy water. “What was that?”
“We need to talk regarding the children, Daniel and Jasmine Fenton. They’re currently still in the hospital undergoing treatment, but you’re now their legal guardian. Could you make the trip down to Amity so we can discuss in person?”
He responded on autopilot, making a plan to make the trip down to Amity.
He’d known the Fentons had children. Jack had called him the night Jazz was born, and while he’d ignored every single call since the accident he still listened to each voicemail. It often fueled the hate in his chest, but other times he just liked to close his eyes and pretend they were back in the lab, working on projects no one believed in.
Jack had excitedly told him about his baby Jazz, how she had hair like her mother and was six pounds, four ounces. He could hear her crying in the background and Maddie’s dulcet voice cooing to her. It sang of other lives he’d never get to live, a life where he’d been a father instead of Jack, or where he’d stayed human and been there for the birth. Jack expressed that he wanted Vlad to meet her.
He taped it onto a cassette to listen to in moments of weakness, but he never reached out. He couldn’t face the product of their love.
He instead threw himself into building a company, relying on petty thievery and lies to build his throne. He tried so hard to make it his obsession, but his core still called out for Maddie, for revenge.
He hadn’t realized a son had been born until he had fed his obsession by viewing the Fentons gaudy website and had seen the portrait of a toddler with Jacks features. Daniel Fenton. Had Jack not called him about this birth? Did he care?
(He did and it drove him insane.)
He resolved to not think about their children, about what would never be his. He cheated and lied and stole, and he definitely didn’t comb through his answering machine until he heard Jack’s grating voice excitedly telling him about his newborn son. Four pounds and eight ounces, stayed in the NICU briefly. “He’s got that Fenton spirit!” Jack loudly proclaimed, Maddie shushing him as he apparently woke the baby. A young Jazz was asking questions loudly in the background, the toddler stumbling over her words. “But not the ghost kind of spirit!” Jack added on just as loudly. “No, that wouldn’t do at all!”
He taped it and put it with the other tapes of shame, knowing it would become background noise to his lowest moments ahead.
He spent the night of the call replaying the tapes over and over, still in unbelievable pain even worse than his death. He cried despite having tried so hard to train himself out of human weaknesses, mourning his love and the past. Did he care that he’d never get his revenge on Jack? Did he miss him anyway? Curse human emotion! Curse death!
The flight to Amity was one spent in a haze, reliving memories like a movie he couldn’t stop. He was a prisoner in his own mind, forced to relive each detail of the past. He caught himself slipping several times, forcing himself to remember how to breathe and force his heart to beat. His grip on his humanity had grown weaker in the wake of his obsession break, yet his ghost half also had become harder to shift into. It was as if both halves of him were dying. Trying to use his powers wielded poor results, often just flashes of smoke or a spitting flame that quickly died out.
He leaned heavily on his cane as he made his way through the quaint town of amity, the place where Jack and Maddie had chosen to settle down.
Legal talks were boring, laying out what he already had pieced together even if it didn’t make sense. He stared at the will in front of him, reading the statement over and over that he, Vlad Masters, would be entrusted with Danny and Jazz in the event of the parents death.
They brought him to the hospital after that, leading him up to a room and stepping aside.
He opened the door slowly, bracing himself as he met two pairs of eyes.
Jasmine looked just like her mother, a sharp jab of pain shooting though his the aching core in his chest. She had the same fiery orange hair, but she had Jack’s piercing blue eyes. She regarded him with open distrust, bag held tightly to her chest.
His eyes shifted over the the boy on the bed, hooked up to machines. Static rippled across the displays as Vlad fought to control his aura as the sight. Daniel was small for his age, tiny against the bed with deathly pale skin and stark black hair. He had the same piercing eyes, but his were round with curiosity.
A case worker stood from her seat in the corner to greet him, but Jazz cut her off.
“So you’re Uncle Vlad?” She sounded unimpressed, eyes narrowed.
“I- Yes, I suppose I am.” Vlad stuttered, entirely caught off guard. He was completely unprepared for this situation, but he was also sure that no amount of preparation would have been enough.
“You’re gonna take us away?” Daniel’s squeaky young voice drew his attention back to the boy. “Now that mom and dad are dead?”
Jazz flinched, pain rolling off her in waves as she kicked the base of the hospital bed.
“Sorry.” The boy apologized, but his eyes were on Vlad still, waiting for an answer.
“Uh, yes. I’ll be taking you two to Wisconsin with me.” It was the first time he’d said it out loud, or really made the decision at all. He hadn’t made up his mind before coming, but he knew the only choice the second his eyes landed on the two children. His core called out for them, needed them safe. They were Jack and Maddie’s, their greatest inventions, he couldn’t spend the rest of his life worrying about them and not knowing if they were safe.
He was wholly unprepared for fatherhood, but he’d always dreamed of meeting Maddie’s children, of caring for them. This was a situation he never could have predicted, but life was unpredictable like that.
The Fenton house was in shambles, both kids left with a garbage bag each of their belongings.
They stayed in the hospital another night as Vlad bought them each suitcases and arranged travel and ironed out legal matters. There was a lot less involved that he thought with taking over custody of two children. His hearing even picked up the case worker lamenting to another about how lucky those children were to have a well off uncle that their parents trusted to take them in.
He picked them up as Daniel was discharged, the doctors still baffled by his recovery from complete organ failure but not questioning whatever higher power they believed responsible. Jazz held her brothers hand as they walked towards Vlad and the open door of the rented car, a worker placing their suitcases in the trunk.
“Jazz dear, you forgot your bear!” One of the nurses ran out holding a brown teddy bear with a white mustache and crazy hair.
“I don’t need it!” Jazz snapped, helping her brother into his car seat. “Those are for babies and I’m not a baby!” She slammed the car door hard in the nurse’s face.
“I’ll take it.” Vlad carefully took the well loved bear. They had warned him that Jazz was trying to shoulder all the responsibility for Daniel and be strong. They’d heavily pushed the idea of putting both children into therapy as soon as possible, which he would take them up on. While he’d never sought therapy for himself, seeing it as a sign of weakness, these children needed any stability he could give them. Despite his complicated relationship with his parents he had cared about them deeply, and their deaths had hit him hard. These were children.
Daniel’s spirit was still bright despite the tragedy, asking questions the whole trip through the airport and staring in amazement out the window of the plane as they settled in first class. Jazz was silent, on edge and watching for danger. She squeaked in alarm as food was placed in front of her mid trip, both children reeling back in their seats and staring at the meat as if it would attack them.
He had the stewardess bring them the vegetarian meals instead, which they hesitantly picked at.
They landed in Wisconsin as the sun was setting, both clearly exhausted children stumbling through the airport as he herded them towards baggage claim.
Vlad stopped walking as Daniel began to tug furiously at his pants. The boy stared at him before throwing his hands up and waving the insistently.
“He wants you to pick him up.” Jazz folded her arms in annoyance, clearly bothered by the action.
“Oh.” Vlad stared at the child, hesitantly placing his hands under his armpits and picking him up, holding him out at arms length.
“You’re not doing it right! Arm around his back, there, put him on your hip.” Jazz coached him until he had Daniel on his hip, the boy’s legs wrapped around his waist and arms around his chest as he snugged in. Vlad had an arm around his back to hold him and a steadying hand on his leg.
“Good.” Jazz nodded her head, picking her bag back up and marching towards the baggage claim.
“Would either of you like a snack from the kiosk?” He was pretty sure children were supposed to snack frequently. Daniel was dozing on his chest and didn’t respond, but Jazz marched into the small store and began browsing through the shelves of overpriced goods. She picked out two bags of peanuts and a bag of veggie straws, bringing them to the register. Vlad paid for them, weakly returning the cashiers customer service smile and following Jazz as she left.
“Do you know where you’re going?”
“I can read!” She snapped, pointing at the sign ahead that said baggage claim.
“My apologies.”
He somehow managed to haul Daniel’s car seat and the luggage to the car while carrying Daniel, Jazz dragging her blue suitcase behind her with determination. It wasn’t until he was pulling and and starting the long drive home that he realized he’d forgot his cane on the plane.
Vlad Masters was never a good person, and he never wanted to be one either. He broke everything he loved and killed what he touched, but these children? He’d do anything to keep them from harm.