Chapter Text
He knew he needed to be paying attention. But his back was killing him…
He was lucky; today had been blissfully quiet in terms of the otherworldly ghost attacks that had begun just a few weeks before. He shuddered at the inkling of a thought of what else had occurred.
A lot of things had changed since he had made the stupid decision to enter his parents’ magnum opus, the Fenton Ghost Portal.
Before that fiasco, he had been a boringly average person in a family of prodigies. He had also been the first in several generations to inherit magpie wings, in contrast to a multitude of owl and woodpecker wings in his family’s ancestry.
His sister Jazz had the mottled brown and white wings of a tawny owl, while his had turned out half black and half white with an odd green sheen to the black feathers. His mother had the white and brown wings of a barn owl, and his father had black wings with white spots like that of a downy woodpecker. His parents had said that his wings were a blessing, but they were just another thing that made him feel inferior and different.
Besides, he didn’t want to be reminded of his wings. He shuddered as he remembered the burning pain of thousands of volts of electricity running through him. Afterwards, he surprisingly ended up mostly physically fine, minus the faint branching scars running down his body.
He unfortunately couldn’t say the same about his wings. They had taken the brunt of the damage, if the immense pain and the burnt feathers littering the ground afterwards were anything to go by.
It was believed by many that one’s wings were the embodiment of the soul. To lose your wings was to lose your humanity. Ghosts didn’t have wings, after all. Maybe that was why his parents and other ghost hunters were so adamantly prejudiced against them. No matter how much pain and itchiness it would cause him to keep them hidden indefinitely, so be it.
He didn’t want anyone, much less him, to see what remained of his soul.
The teacher’s droning was like background noise as he stared down at his mostly blank paper, with only a few useless notes scribbled in. All he could feel was the pulsating pain.
After what felt like hours, the final bell rang. Chatter filled the room as students began packing up, wings fluttering in anticipation of their afterschool plans.
“I thought this week would never end,” he heard Tucker groan next to him. Behind him, cheery yellow canary wings with a modified metallic wingspan twitched in anticipation. It was the equivalent of an electric scooter, speeding up flight and especially popular amongst the youth.
Sam wasn’t far behind him, sending disdainful looks at the A-listers as they gossiped loudly. Her dragonfly wings were put away, which was probably for the best in a constrained classroom. Though wings couldn’t be hurt or damaged by normal means, it could still be uncomfortable to bump them into things, and that was especially true for those with delicate insect wings.
They left the classroom together, Danny silent as he listened to his friends’ lighthearted bickering.
“Are you okay?” Sam asked once they had emerged into the crisp fall air, startling him out of his thoughts and making him flinch.
He bit back a grimace at the pain flaring in his back. “Not any less okay than usual.” By the looks of the raised eyebrows he got in response, he still needed to work on his lying skills. Danny sighed. “It’s nothing.”
“Doesn’t look like nothing,” Tucker said gently, before sharing another signature look with Sam. They had been doing that a lot for the past few weeks. One of Tucker’s yellow wings absentmindedly draped around Danny in a pseudo-hug.
He shot an annoyed look at the other two in response. They were right, but he would just have to deal with it. He could never show his stupid wings to anyone again, no matter how much they hurt. He elected not to think about what that would mean for him once the health segment of gym class wrapped up.
“Come on, there’s way better food at my place,” Sam urged, leading them away from their usual path to the Nasty Burger. Danny was secretly grateful to escape the loud environment after the chaos of school.
“Hard disagree,” Tucker pouted good naturedly at the thought of vegan only food options, but followed along anyway. Danny was too tired and in pain to argue, trailing behind them in a daze.
All around them, students and townsfolk flew through the air to their next destination, chattering amongst each other. Danny felt a pang of jealousy. He had loved to fly. Floating as a ghost just wasn’t the same as feeling the wind rushing through his feathers, muscles straining as he pushed himself beyond the pull of gravity.
In no time they were relaxing in Sam’s large basement, video games starting up and all three claiming a cozy spot on one of the many couches. They made it through a few matches of their favorite fighting game before the pain had returned into his awareness.
“How?” Tucker whined as Sam killed his character once again. “Come on, you have to be cheating! I practiced so much yesterday!”
“Maybe you just suck,” Sam said with a grin. Behind her, her four translucent wings buzzed in celebration, lifting her slightly off the couch. “Have you tried gettin’ good?”
“Shut up Sam. I am good. I’m silver rank,” the geek grumbled, though his relaxed wings betrayed his feigned annoyance. “Soon to be gold.”
“Keep telling yourself that,” the girl stuck out her tongue before looking towards Danny, who was lying on his stomach and watching absentmindedly. “You look tired Danny.”
“Mmf,” Danny responded.
“Come on, it’s Friday! Sleeping isn’t allowed until tomorrow,” Tucker teased. “We still have that Doom event tonight. We have to be on top of our game.”
“Maybe Sam can finally make it to number one on the leaderboards,” Danny commented, resting his chin on his hands.
“It should be impossible for a girl to be this good at video games,” Tucker joked, causing Sam to elbow him.
“Danny,” Sam started, her tone of voice sounding more serious than before. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Define ‘okay’,” the boy muttered in response. “I need to know if being fried in your parents’ wackjob invention and releasing spirits of the undead to ravage your hometown should apply or not.”
Sam flinched in the corner of his eye, going silent. Tucker frowned, looking between the two cautiously. “Fair point. But at least-“
“Don’t say it,” Danny interrupted. “You know how our luck is.”
Tucker shut his mouth with an audible click. “Right. I’m starting to believe that jinxes are actually real like Sam keeps ranting about.”
“Because they are, Tucker,” the girl responded with an eye roll. “But that’s besides the point. Danny, it’s been… what, almost a month?”
“Hm?”
“I mean…” Sam looked worriedly at Tucker before daring to continue. “It’s… got to hurt a lot to put your wings away for so long…”
Silence enveloped the room, contrasting the playful environment it had previously been. Danny elected not to respond. She was right, but there was nothing they could do about it. He knew they had seen just how bad it had been when…
“She’s right,” Tucker said, uncharacteristically quiet for once. “One time I had to hide them for like three hours and it was the worst-“
“Shut up, Tucker, you’re just a wuss,” Sam said dryly, causing the other two to giggle. “Most people can keep them away for a few days at least.”
A few days was laughable. The discomfort back then didn’t remotely compare to now.
His distress must have shown on his face, because Sam’s expression softened and she shifted closer to him. “Please Danny, we don’t want you to be in pain. You’re going to need to let them out eventually.”
“You know I can’t, Sam,” Danny finally responded, his voice breaking. Dammit, it was getting harder to shove down his emotions on the topic. “Just drop it. I’m fine.”
“We’re not going to drop it,” Tucker piped in stubbornly. “This is officially an intervention.”
“And you’re not fine,” Sam corrected, rolling her eyes again but failing to hide the real concern on her face. “It’s just us here. I know it can’t be easy…”
“We’ll even close our eyes if you want,” Tucker proposed. “Or I could take off my glasses and I’d be so blind I can’t even take a step without tripping on something. Perfect solution.”
“And we’ll lock the door and be on lookout in case my parents bother us,” the girl added. “That’s like three layers of defense. No one else could find out.”
Danny sat up from his laid down position and tried to quell his shaking. He hated that he was actually considering this. “I don’t like this.”
“I know,” Sam empathized. Her eyes looked almost as haunted as he felt.
“What if…” his voice broke. “I just… I don’t want to look.”
“You don’t have to. Sam, time to break out the blindfold.”
“Shut up, Tucker.” She paused. “Unless that would actually help…”
Their joking did nothing to calm him. He had spent the last several weeks vowing to never release his wings ever again, even if it killed him. Surely having a visibly broken soul was worse than death. Right?
But the pain… oh, the pain…
His hands quivered as he gathered his nerve. He took several breaths, each as shaky as the last. “Okay… okay… I can do this.”
Abruptly, he stood up. His two friends backed up to give him room. Already, he was regretting this. It was fine. It was just Sam and Tucker. They already knew and didn’t hate him any more than they did before.
He glanced behind him to make sure there was plenty of open space before squeezing his eyes shut and finally letting go of the tension he had been holding onto for so long. It took a few seconds to push past the stiff hold he had on forcing his wings away, but soon enough he lost control like a broken dam.
He felt the large appendages spring out behind him, suddenly not restrained anymore. The aching pain ceased for a second, and then was replaced by intense burning and prodding of damaged feathers. As his wings shifted, a peculiar crumbling noise made his skin prickle. Nauseatingly, it reminded him of stepping on charred wood while camping. It had disintegrated into ash from barely a touch…
He flinched, eyes squeezed shut so tight he saw stars. He could barely register his fists clenching and fingernails digging into his skin. Slowly, horror filled him. He had had a slim hope that perhaps everything had magically fixed itself. But the sensations he now felt disproved that notion with certainty. It was bad. It was really bad.
Apparently, it didn’t just feel bad. A faint gasp made him jump. “Oh, shit…”
“Tucker,” Sam hushed in a whisper.
Well, there was nothing to lose now. Feeling a sort of morbid curiosity past the earth shattering despair. Danny experimentally moved one wing. More crumbling noises followed, along with a burst of pain.
“Ow,” he muttered. His thoughts shifted to hysteria. This couldn’t be real, right? This had to be some twisted dream.
“Shit, what do we do?” A nauseated voice asked softly.
“I… I don’t know… your mom’s a doctor… maybe she can-”
“No one can know, Sam,” Tucker said miserably. “We promised. Plus this is…”
“…Unheard of,” Sam whispered. The floor creaked with her slow step around him.
She was right. Wings, being partially an ethereal and spiritual aspect of humanity, were never in need of healing or fixing. Until perhaps now…
Now that the pain had lessened, his exhaustion was quickly catching up to him. He swayed on his feet, and was quickly caught by a pair of hands. He barely registered that it was Sam who had caught him.
“Ahh,” he groaned again as one wing thumped against something. It was an odd sensation, somewhere in between a limb falling asleep and all of his feathers being used as sparklers.
“Come on, sit down,” Sam urged. “Tucker, you’re the one with feathers, I need some help here.”
“You really think it’s a good idea to-”
“We can’t leave him like this,” Sam pled, sounding more upset than Danny had ever heard before.
As his friends continued to argue back and forth, the world seemed to dim. His head was now resting against a couch cushion, and he faintly wondered when that had happened. The horror that had previously filled his every nerve was slowly morphing into numbness. He felt his eyes drooping more and more against his will. Maybe he could close his eyes for just a few seconds… and hopefully wake up from this nightmare.
He was briefly startled awake by a pinch in one wing. A quiet voice muttered an apology before daring to rustle a few more feathers. As much as it hurt, it almost felt nice finally being preened again after weeks of misery. He let his eyes flutter closed as the horrible itching feeling began to lessen. Not fully, probably never again would he be fully comfortable… but a little bit. And that was enough for now.
Soft voices morphed into unintelligible sound. As he began to doze off, the gentle hands of his flock took care of him. He was safe…
Then nothing.