Chapter Text
Life was never created to be fair - never meant to be.
Not to him, not to his friends or family, not to a lot of people.
His accident was a great example of this.
It seemed cool at first, the sweet powers and stuff, being a real life superhero. At least until the fights became more deadly - the everyday hurts became more painful - the people of Amity started hating him - his parents wanted to rip him apart - the utter realization that he was half dead began to haunt his body and mind.
He was half dead.
Dead.
How was one supposed to cope with that?
Danny could feel it in everything he did. When he was Phantom his hunger would be practically non-existence - as Fenton he was ravenous. Like his human body was making up for all the power he’d use as Phantom.
It was easy to forgo sleep too. After all, the normal ghost never slept. He’d spend an entire night out, flying around patrolling and fighting. His energy didn’t wane easily (unless the fight required the use of more powers) but he didn’t particularly feel tired as Phantom. The dead don’t sleep. But the living needed rest. Whiplash from the transformation would sometimes throw him on his ass. Especially the first couple times he had to get used to it.
He would feel normal, energetic even, until he transformed back into his human counterpart. Then the exhaustion would hit him like a train and he’d remember that he was running on the 27th hour of no sleep.
Sometimes if he lied very still in his bed he could swear he didn’t even need to breath.
Everything felt colder than before - more hollow.
But his friends didn’t know these things.
Least of all his family.
It was sad that he couldn’t find it in him to truly confide in any of them. They wouldn’t get it - wouldn’t understand. And of course the only one in the would who would was a fuckin’ psychopathic fruit loop who wanted to kill his dad, marry his mom and adopt him.
This cold and hollowing feeling only got worse when the weight of protecting the town began to trample on him. When Vlad, Phariah, Undergrowth, Frightmare, Skulker… Dan… everyone and everything came rushing in, seemingly at once. How fast he had to become accustomed to such long nights followed by needles, surgical thread, and ice packs. Yet besides that, he’s always known what he needed to do.
Protect the town.
Now… He doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing.
He’s not even in Amity.
He doesn’t know where he is.
Anybody could be threatening his town at that very second, yet he was stuck here, in this white abyss, freezing his ass off.
What kind of sick joke was his life?
He took another step, twitching when his hazmat boots hit the snow with a loud crunch.
He had been in the middle of a fight with Skulker; about to finish the fight when he felt a disorientating tingle rise up from his toes and travel up his body. In a blink of an eye he went from looking down on the hunter to gazing across a large expanse of snow. That was hours ago.
At first, he thought the bucket head hunter got a new toy from Plasmius that sent him away to the Far Frozen. But after wondering for ten minutes that was clearly not the case. There was a distinct shortage of yetis and a large lack of ectoplasmic energy. If he was in the Far Frozen, he’d be able to feel the renewing energy of the ghost zone.
He grunted.
‘Definitely not feeling renewed right now.’
Skulker was able to get in a couple good hits before he found himself here. A particularly good one got him on the left side of his torso. He could feel a large fisted bruise forming there. Maybe he even had a couple cracked ribs.
It was hard to tell because of the mind numbing cold.
The only thing he had to be grateful for was the fact that it wasn’t entirely ‘storming’ out. It was actually quite peaceful. Slow descents of snow drooping down on top of the ice, the sun barely setting in the distance with a golden hue.
…
But it was still freezing.
He stopped and stared in the distance for a while. Then he sighed and sat down in an exaggerated heap.
His body was aching. With a huff he fell onto his back and slammed a fist into the snow. “God damnit!”
The hero furrowed his eyebrows and glared up at the sky. He was so confused. Where was he and how’d he get here? Was it Skulker that did this?
For a long moment, he just laid there, staring at the stark sky. The snow above him lazily falling onto his face, annoyingly reminding him where he was yet also oddly soothing his temper.
He took a deep breath and sat up.
‘It won’t do any good to just lie here and wait to freeze.’