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Maddie’s wrists ached.
The ghost holding her arms behind her back jerked her to a stop, and the glowing rope tied around her hands chafed, pulling against raw, bloodied skin. She inhaled sharply at the pain, gaze falling to rest on her bare feet.
They’d taken her shoes soon after she’d arrived here—all for the sake of making her more uncomfortable.
The creature behind her rumbled with a laugh. It tugged at her rope once more, and she didn’t fight as she was shoved to the other side of the dull grey hallway. Another ghost strode through where Maddie had been standing before, with a key in one hand and a tired, bruised boy held by the neck in another. This ghost was the warden of this entire, God-forsaken facility. She had learned that its name was Walker.
The warden put the key into the lock of their cell, and opened the door. The ghost sneered down at the boy he held. As always, that stark white hair was like a plague upon her mind. The mere sight of it, as dirtied and unkempt as it was, sent a rush of conflicting emotions through her.
Hatred, because this was Danny Phantom. A ghost. Ghosts were evil, malevolent creatures at their core, and the ones who faked kindness and generosity? They were the worst of them all. Danny Phantom was one of them.
Then, there was the confusion. It broke through the hurricane of hatred like a breath of fresh air, and washed her clean with clarity. It was a ghost, wasn’t it? Yet, the ghost—the boy—cared for her. In the time she’d been here for, she’d learned that time after time again. This boy threw himself at the whims of their captors, all for her.
That was just one of the many things she’d realized, in the putrid bowels of this prison.
He should hate her.
(Why did she look at him, and see her son?)
The warden pulled Phantom up into the air. The boy choked for a moment, scratching and pulling uselessly at the fingers squeezing around his neck. Phantom wheezed and coughed, and Walker’s face twisted into a gruesome smile.
“You have no idea how satisfying this is, Danny Phantom. Seeing the worst thorn in my side, reduced to this? All for a mere human woman?”
Walker laughed, and tossed Phantom into their cell.
“It never grows old.”
The boy groaned as he hit the wall and dropped to the floor with a thud. He curled inwards, clutching at his side and pressing his forehead into his knees.
The need to stagger forward filled Maddie’s limbs. With a tensed jaw, she ignored it. Phantom would be fine, she told herself. She would not be, if she went to the boy’s side before she’d been released. Phantom was stubborn, just like her son Danny was. Stubborn and hearty and brave, though it sent a pang of disgust through her to admit so. Shameful, shameful disgust.
Danny Fenton and Danny Phantom were very similar, in those ways.
(Are you not ashamed of yourself?)
The ghost escorting Maddie did something to her rope, as the creature always did when it was time to return. The rope grew tight around her wrists, and hardened. One moment, it was a rope of glowing fibers keeping her bound—the next, it was a pair of ectoplasmic green shackles. Maddie stopped herself from testing them. Her wrists already hurt enough. She didn’t want to imagine the scars she would have from them, once she was…
Once she was saved. Because she would be saved. It had been two weeks since she had last seen Jack. Two weeks since she had last seen her darling children.
But of this, she was certain.
The ghost fisted a large, white hand around the back of her prison garb, and shoved. In short order, Maddie found herself toppling into the cell and landing on her knees. Quickly, she scrambled upright, arms still stuck behind her back. She moved over to the ghost boy’s side at the farthest end of the cell. The farther she was from those monsters, the better.
Warden Walker laughed, and she couldn’t help how her shoulders drew up tight. She glared down at a puddle of ectoplasm, slowly soaking into the dirty, scuffed-up stone floor.
Oh, how she hated that laugh.
“I should’ve done this months ago,” the warden crowed. It locked the door once more, and moved to peer in at them from the window. “You have other friends, son,” it stated. “You have family. People you care for. People you love. I know you do.”
At Maddie’s side, Phantom snarled. She shifted uneasily, but did not move away.
There was no reason to. He wouldn’t hurt her.
The boy shoved an elbow up underneath him, and glared up at the ghost. His eyes shone with a soulless, ectoplasmic light—a twisting green that seemed to draw up from within him, rather than without. Though the overhead fixtures bore down on his figure like a beacon, the fluorescent lighting of their cell did not catch in his eyes.
Uncanny valley, Maddie thought, swallowing dryly. A false imitation of humanity. There is something so human in you, yet behind the mask, your inhumanity begins to leak through. Your mask is… breaking. Phantom had never provoked this sensation so strongly in her, before now. Itching revulsion, and the inklings of blinding, animalistic fear collected thickly on her tongue, and dripped down her throat like sludge.
Phantom’s nails—talon-like and pitch black—scraped long and hard against the stone floor. Maddie shuddered at the terrible, shrieking noise they made.
“I have no one,” Phantom hissed. “I am alone. I have always been alone.”
Is that true? Maddie wondered. Or is he lying?
She thought back to the many times she’d seen Phantom, and found herself unable to answer her question. Time and time again, Phantom had battled ghosts with nothing but a Fenton Thermos and his own two hands.
Staring down at the boy, Maddie could not help but see her son in his place.
She swallowed, feeling sick.
Oh, Danny. What should I do?
Warden Walker wrapped his hands around the cell bars. Maddie’s head snapped up. “I don’t believe you,” the warden said slowly. “Why else would you care for this human woman? Why else would she so efficiently deter your poor behavior, when nothing else I’ve done to you would? Why else, Danny Phantom?”
Maddie’s breath hitched. The air around her felt heavier, all of a sudden, weighed down by something she couldn’t quite fit into her mind. It felt like fear, she thought. But it also felt like hatred, and outrage.
How was it possible for the air to feel like emotion?
She glanced down at Phantom, and a shiver went down her spine. She couldn’t see his eyes anymore, except for the unsettling glow of them through his bone-white hair. His hands were clenched into tight fists, and his shoulders shook. Painstakingly, he pushed himself up to his knees. Below him, frost spread out thickly from where he kneeled.
The boy looked up, and his eyes were a churning sea of ice.
There was death in that sea, and the depths held dangers of the like Maddie had never seen displayed in Danny Phantom before.
Warden Walker flinched back a step. The other ghost tripped over his own two feet, and fell onto his rear.
All this, her mind whispered, to protect me.
“If she dies,” Phantom whispered, “if you dare to touch any of my friends.” The ghost before her laughed, his lips turning up in a tremulous, wavering smile. “Nothing will stop me from ruining you. No walls, no chains, nothing you could do would ever stop me from finding you… and ensuring you never touch any of my people again.”
Phantom stood slowly and walked up to the bars of their cell. He stared at Walker and the other ghost for a moment, gaze dull and piercing and cold all at once, and they both stared back. Maddie wasn’t sure what she saw in Walker’s solid green eyes. There wasn’t an inch of emotion to be gleaned from their depths, and the eyes were such an instrumental part in human communication. There was a reason she and her husband thought these creatures were unfeeling, evil beings.
But the way Walker held himself, the extra tension she glimpsed in the line of his habitually rigid shoulders…
He was afraid of Phantom. Deathly so.
If Walker had eyes, would she see terror in them?
Phantom lifted a hand to brush against a bar, and Maddie’s eyes widened. A dreadful cold overcame the room. With just the barest touch of his finger, winter spilled forth from his skin. It was as if the bar had been doused in water that had froze instantly upon contact, and that water somehow reached inside, too.
Maddie startled as the pillar of metal bulged outward, and cracked.
Before she could even contemplate covering her head or turning away—before she could think to do anything at all—the bar exploded outwards.
A wall of ectoplasm appeared inches from her nose. Phantom’s hand was raised, facing towards herself. Shards of frozen metal collided with the shield, the wall, all clattering to the floor. Maddie barely stopped herself from shrieking. She recoiled backwards, and slid down against the wall.
The sound was thunderous in the jail’s relative quiet. The ringing silence it left behind felt just as deafening.
The shield faded into nothing. The metal indented in it clattered to the stone floor, which was similarly covered in bits of sharp metal.
All for me, Maddie’s brain said, quite uselessly. She licked her lips, and attempted to settle her pounding heart. She already knew that. Two weeks in captivity with Danny Phantom, and she knew that well. Briefly, Phantom’s ice-blue eyes flitted towards Maddie. He looked her over, before nodding and moving back towards the end of the room.
The ghost sat down a short distance from her on the floor. He propped an elbow up against his knee, and leaned forward almost expectantly, his chin resting atop his fist.
“You couldn’t stop me if I tried,” Phantom said.
Maddie swallowed at the cold look in his eyes. The warden and the ghost who had escorted her into this cell were speechless. Walker collected himself quickly, and with a wave of his hand, he motioned at the ghost beside him.
“Fix this mess,” he snapped, “or get someone who can.” The other ghost scrambled to his feet, and left down the hallway. Warden Walker turned back to their cell. For a moment, he stood there without saying a word. Phantom watched him placidly. “You cannot do as you have threatened, son. A ghostling cannot possibly—”
Phantom scoffed loudly. “You don’t know what I’m capable of, Walker. Don’t force me to show you.”
“You will call me ‘warden,’” Walker snapped.
“I’ll call you what I want to.”
Walker breathed in deeply, and rolled his shoulders. He turned away, hands folded behind his back. “And what if I did?” he said, suddenly. “What if you woke up tomorrow morning, and your loved ones were all here? What then?”
Phantom was silent for a moment.
“Then you’ll suffer,” he said, “and then you’ll die. If I have to kill to protect them… I will. If other souls have to fall to the wayside so I can keep them safe, then that’s fine by me!” Phantom exhaled shakily, and glanced down at his open left hand. He met Maddie’s eyes, and she blinked dazedly at the abrupt excess of vulnerability in them.
Thus far, the boy had been some combination of furious, enraged, or bitterly determined, at least, while eyes other than Maddie’s own were on him. Then he was simply exhausted, and fearful. He hadn’t spoken with her much, besides stiffly checking if Maddie was alright. She understood why. But now, there was a need for comfort in his eyes that set Maddie aback.
It wasn’t a conscious request, but… it was one she found herself obliging to, all the same. What would Jack think of her, being kind to a ghost? What would Jasmine and Danny say? As much as she hated to admit it, her children disliked ghost hunting. Jasmine thought it took time away from their family. Danny… she didn’t know what he thought of it, strangely enough. He’d been falling away from the family for so long now.
Jasmine was right, she thought. Maybe it was time to take a step back.
Maddie nodded, and smiled at Danny Phantom.
The boy’s eyes widened. “I…” he whispered. He clenched his hand shut. “Yes.”
“There are no lengths I won’t go to for my people, Walker. Know that well. More than that…” Phantom hesitated, before his lips twitched and he laughed lowly. “Think on Pariah Dark’s death,” he said darkly. “Remember my allies, my strength. That’s what would happen, if you tried.”
The warden’s hands tightened over the small of his back.
“I’m sure you understand,” said Phantom.
Walker didn’t respond. “A guard will be coming by in two hours with food, as per usual. Eat it, unless you wish to starve,” he said. “Or don’t. I don’t care either way.”
The warden turned, and took a step down the grey hallway.
“Goodbye,” he said, and sank out of sight entirely. Had he phased through the floor, instead of walking down the hallway like the guard from earlier had? Maddie frowned, and wished she could rub at her forehead. Instead, she sufficed with scratching her palms as best she could, with her wrists shackled together behind her back.
“What a loser,” the boy said.
Maddie sighed, and relaxed against the wall as best she could. Her wrists hurt. She missed her family. The warden was threatening to kill her to keep Danny Phantom in line, or so she guessed. What was next—her husband showing up here, a captive? Her son and daughter, too?
What terrible thoughts.
Jack would come and save her, soon. She knew it. She could only hope he didn’t stumble into becoming a prisoner of this jail in his attempt to do so.
“Yeah,” she said tiredly. “What a loser.”