absolute disaster

His mother hummed thoughtfully, but didn’t say anything. Neither did his dad, though he did frown.

“Of course not. Both other half-ghosts you refer to had to develop their own cores, growing them from scratch. You, on the other hand, absorbed yours from another ghost, thus stepping past the initial growing pains.”

Danny felt his heart stop. His core freeze. Thoughts grinding to a halt.

“Excuse me?” he blurted out, automatically, incredulously. “Are you telling me I killed another ghost?”

“No, no.” Frostbite lifted his hands, voice dropping into a soothing tone. “Although it is not unheard of for proper ghosts to fuse together into one, this sort of core-binding is only possible with blob ghosts.”

“And blob ghosts aren’t truly sentient, right?” Maddie hummed in thought, saving Danny the effort of trying to figure out what, exactly, Frostbite meant. “They’re barely more than free-floating ectoplasm, which is common here in the Ghost Zone.”

Frostbite nodded. “Indeed. A more developed ghost couldn’t have been absorbed in such a manner, so there is no need to worry, Great One.”

“That’s a relief.” Danny heaved a sigh. It still felt weird to imagine that his core wasn’t originally his, that it had developed separately, but, well. At least he hadn’t killed someone in the process.

“Although,” Frostbite suddenly started, interrupting Danny’s thoughts. “It is very unusual.”

“Oh?” Danny felt like slapping himself. Why did he ask for more information? He regretted asking in the first place. Knowing more wasn’t going to make himself feel better, was it?

But his parents would probably have asked if he hadn’t. Right? Yeah, definitely.

“Typically, ghosts require some form of connection to be present to bind together. Two fully-formed ghosts can fuse over shared goals or other such traits, but such a thing isn’t possible with a blob ghost. To absorb one of those, a more tangible connection is required.”

Frostbite eyed Danny, but he couldn’t quite read the emotion in his eyes. “Obviously the power of the Ghost Portal let you bypass the part where you weren’t a ghost yourself—” or perhaps he was dying and turning into a ghost anyway, “—but that connection would’ve still been necessary.”

But how. What? Who? The blob ghost must’ve come from somewhere, something, someone, but Danny couldn’t imagine, couldn’t think—

“Oh, that makes sense,” Maddie said, voice casual. “Danny absorbed his twin in the womb, so it makes sense for him to do the same thing with his twin’s ghost.”

“What?” Danny blurted out, turning to her in shock. “I had a twin? A twin I absorbed?!”

“Well, yes.” Maddie nodded, looking at him in confusion. “Of course, it happened fairly early on, so he wouldn’t have become a real ghost. But the impression of it, the potential of a twin gained and lost, that would’ve been enough form a blob ghost.” She turned to Frostbite. “Right?”

“Right.” Frostbite nodded back. “And yes, a connection like that would have worked quite well. A connection of blood and spirit, an action repeated. An echo between life and death.”

Danny shook his head. Well. Jerked his head side to side. “Are you serious? Why are you all acting like this is—this is normal, totally expected?”

“I thought you knew, honey.” Maddie was frowning at him now, confusion deepening. “Weren’t you the one who started using it as a cover?”

“What?” He blinked at her, then realized. Yes. Yes, he had been using that as an excuse for the resemblance between Danny Fenton and Phantom. A dead twin, a ghost which looked just like the living Danny. “I didn’t—I didn’t think it was real.”

“Oh.” She shot an uncertain look at Jack, then Frostbite, then turned to him. “Well. You know now?”

Danny stared at her, incredulous. Then shook his head. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess I do now.”

“No,” she admitted, slowly, drawing the word out. “I think that that might’ve been easier on both of us.”

“Figures.” Danny sighed, shook his head, then stepped aside to let her in. “Sit down, this sounds like it’s gonna be a long story.”

“Probably.” She grimaced, but slipped past him. God, had he really been this small at that age? Surely not. Clearly Dani wasn’t him, so he should stop comparing the two of them.

Danny followed her into the living room, where she had claimed one of the comfortable chairs. He rolled his eyes but followed her example, sitting down in a different chair. He probably should’ve invited her up to his room, but something about that felt… weird. Not to mention that she was a stranger, no matter how much she reminded him of, well, himself.

Besides, his parents were down in the lab. They probably wouldn’t surface for hours, if not days.

“Okay, so…” Dani trailed off, then fell silent. Licked her lips. “Um. I’m not sure what to say. Or, uh, how to say it?”

He groaned. “Just. Anything. Who are you and why do you look like me?”

“Well, that’s easy,” she said optimistically. “That’s because I’m your clone!” She paused, before tacking on. “Supposed to be, anyway.”

“My—What?!” Danny’s eyes darted over her again, taking in every detail of her appearance. How, from the moment he saw her, his first thought had been himself. “Who would even—” He felt himself pause. “No, stupid question. Vlad, of course.”

She nodded, grimacing. “Yeah. He was going to age me up further, I think to your age, but.” She gestured at herself, then the room. “I kind of ran away before he could get around to that.”

“Why?” Danny rubbed a hand over his face. “Not that I blame you, because I’m sure I would’ve done the same, but…”

“I… Spur of the moment decision, kinda.” She shrugged, eyes darting away and back again. Posture hunched. “He was… I guess I was always a failure, but he pretended I wasn’t. And I… I believed him.”

He waited for a moment for her to continue, but she stayed silent. “Well, you didn’t know any better, did you?” He shrugged awkwardly. Encouraging people wasn’t exactly his thing. “I can’t blame you for that.”

Dani huffed, but shot him a wry smile. “Thanks. Um. Anyway. I overheard him talking, or, uh, muttering? I wasn’t going to stay, but then I heard my name, and, well.” She shrugged, that same wry smile on her face. “So I stuck around, listening in. And I… he…”

She sighed, deep and rattling, her shoulders dropping down. “He was talking about what a failure I was, how I hadn’t turned out right at all. What a shame it was that I was the best clone so far, when I was so far off of the mark.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah.” She snorted, shaking her head. “At least there wasn’t much space for self-delusion that he didn’t really mean it.”

Danny snorted as well. “At least it got you away from him, huh?” Away from Vlad, and right into Danny’s hands. Well, his house, at least. Shit. What was he supposed to do now? Gaslight his parents that he had always had a little sister? He couldn’t exactly let an eight-year old run loose, even ignoring the fact that she looked exactly like a younger him.

“Ghost powers definitely helped.” She winked, coyly, then froze suddenly. It took Danny a moment to realize what she had heard. The metal door of the lab. In the kitchen. Uh oh.

Before he could decide what to do—get Dani away and into his room, probably—his mom appeared in the doorway to the kitchen. The light glinted off of the red goggles on her forehead, drawing his eye right to her furrowed brows.

“Danny, sweetheart, who’s this?”

Danny opened his mouth, ready to deliver some sort of perfect excuse. “My clone, apparently,” came out instead. He grimaced, but didn’t refute it. Stupid mouth. One day he should learn how to think before speaking.

“Your… clone,” Maddie repeated, slowly, eyes moving between him and Dani. She moved further into the room, clearly taking in the same similarities that Danny had immediately—instinctively—noticed. Jack appeared behind her, looming in the doorway, but stayed silent as Maddie moved. “So this would be…”

“Danielle,” Dani supplied quietly, when Maddie trailed off, clearly waiting for an answer. “Um. Dani with an I.”

Maddie nodded, stopping next to the couch. Still facing the chairs in which Danny and Dani were sitting. “I see. And where did you come from, Dani?”

Dani shot him an uncertain look, but Danny honestly didn’t have any great excuses either. He shrugged back, but took the lead when she stayed quiet. “Vlad’s, apparently.”

“Vlad.” Maddie frowned again, eyes locked onto Dani. “Vlad Masters?”

“Who else,” Dani muttered, shoulders hunched up again. Danny wasn’t sure if it was nerves, defensiveness, or something else.

“Vladdie?” Jack echoed, finally coming into the room, and clearly startling Dani with his loud voice, based on the way she jerked in her chair. “The V-man cloned Danny?”

Now how was he supposed to explain this without revealing his secret in the process? Well, here goes nothing. “Uh, yeah,” he agreed, shrugging again. “He’s been super weird pretty much since we met him during that reunion. I didn’t think it was this bad, though.” He nodded towards Dani. “No offense to you, Dani.”

“None taken.” She offered him a shaky grin. “It is pretty weird to clone someone without their permission. Or knowledge.”

“Or consent,” Maddie chimed in, voice dark and expression darker. “Danny, why didn’t you say anything before?”

Because he couldn’t really say anything without revealing he was half-ghost, or that Vlad was half-ghost, or both. “Well, he never really did anything.” Bold lie. Speed past it fast, Fenton, before she catches on. “Besides, what was I supposed to say? ‘Vlad gives me the creeps’? Nothing would be done.”

He shrugged loosely, trying to stamp down the fluttering in his stomach—and his core. He didn’t like lying to his parents, but if he could just get through this conversation with his secret intact…

“There was nothing specific?” Maddie was still frowning, but at least she was moving to sit down on the couch now. Jack was still looming near the doorway, uncharacteristically quiet, but Danny would take what he could get and worry about the rest later. “Nothing he did or said?”

“No. Well, actually…” He grimaced. “He keeps calling me Daniel even if I ask him to call me Danny. But I think that that’s just a smug ‘I know better than you’ thing, not a transphobic thing.”

On the other chair, Dani was now also frowning at him. What? What did he do?

“That’s not even your name.” Maddie huffed, shaking her head, frown finally lightening. “Ugh, that man.”

“What do you mean,” Dani finally cut in, having apparently lost her patience with waiting. “With, um. The transphobia thing? What does that mean?”

Oh. No, of course, that made sense. Who would’ve taught an eight year old clone about that stuff? Certainly not stuffy old Vlad.

“Danny-boy wasn’t always Danny-boy!” Jack appeared out of nowhere, enthusiastically clapping a hand on Danny’s shoulder. He startled, just barely tamping down the instinct to phase away. He hadn’t even noticed his dad move further into the room, distracted by his thoughts. Sloppy. “He used to be a girl! Or at least, we thought he was, until he told us otherwise! Right, Danny-o?”

“Yeah,” he grunted, rolling his shoulder with a grimace. “I changed my name to Danny years ago, and most people don’t even remember my old one, but people acting weird about calling me Danny is still a bit of a red flag.”

“Oh.” Dani blinked, clearly processing. “I guess that that makes sense.”

In what way? Was Dani also trans? Did cloning copy transgender-ism? “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” She nodded, expression clearing up. “Now I understand why I was the most stable clone. Vlad thought something went wrong with me because I turned out female, but clearly he was messing up the other clones by forcing them to be male from birth.”

“Other clones?” he repeated. Then processed the rest. “Wait. The most stable? What—”

“Uh, yeah.” She shrugged, face falling. “They. We… I guess cloning isn’t as easy as Vlad thought. So we’re all somewhere along the lines of ‘somewhat unstable’ to ‘very unstable’. And, um. We melt.”

“Melt.” He felt like a moron, just repeating her words. But. Well. What was he supposed to say?

Luckily his mom figured it out before him. “Danielle, sweetheart, what do you mean by melt?”

“We, so.” She frowned, clearly weighing her words. Shot him a quick glance, though he couldn’t figure out what the look in her eyes meant. “Vlad used ectoplasm in the cloning process. So, um. We—us clones—we’re all kind of… half-ghost? And if we use up too much energy, one way or another, we kind of… melt back into ectoplasm?”

Oh. So that is what that look meant.

Also, yikes.

“Well, that makes sense,” Maddie muttered, a thoughtful frown on her face. “Humans and ghosts are biologically entirely different. There is no overlap whatsoever. Or at least, that’s what we always assumed.”

“It must be more possible than we thought, though,” Jack pointed out, previous enthusiasm muted again. “Otherwise she couldn’t even exist, let alone be this stable.”

Maddie nodded, frown still in place. “Right. But how do we stabilize her further? We can’t exactly re-alive her, not if she has been part ghost since birth…”

Danny turned to shoot Dani a look, but she didn’t seem overly bothered by the conversation topic. On the other hand, if she was used to Vlad, he supposed that his parents weren’t that bad.

Wow, now that was a thought he hadn’t had before.

“Well, we can’t exactly make her less alive either, Jack.” Maddie’s dry voice cut through Danny’s thoughts, and he snapped back to the conversation. Right. The important conversation. About half-ghosts.

“Maybe there’s a perfect mid-point,” Jack suggested instead, while Danny tried to figure out where the conversation had gone while he wasn’t paying attention. “Where both ghost and human balance each other out?”

“But wouldn’t that still put too much strain on the body?” Maddie’s gaze had shifted to Dani, but it didn’t seem like she was really looking at her. “If her human and ghost halves are constantly battling for dominance, isn’t that why she’s unstable now? Unless balancing them somehow gets them to co-exist, which doesn’t make sense…”

Wait. Are they really… trying to help Dani? Not by making her ‘normal’, by making her fully human, but by finding some way she can exist as half-ghost?

Would that… also go for him? Or only for Dani because she was essentially born half-ghost?

Does it matter? He knows what a stable half-ghost looks like. If him staying quiet about his own secret makes it harder to help Dani… what kind of shitty brother would that make him?

“Actually,” he blurted out, interrupting his parents’ conversation and immediately drawing three pairs of eyes to him, “I’m also half-ghost?”

He licked his lips, stalling for a moment. “So. Um. That’s actually why Vlad is interested in me, and tried cloning me, I guess. Because I’ve been half-ghost since the accident with the Portal.” He paused, then hesitantly tacked on, “Sorry.”

“Oh, honey, no.” Maddie reached out a hand, then paused when he automatically shifted away. “We’re sorry you felt like you couldn’t tell us before.”

A massive hand landed on his head. This time, Danny couldn’t repress his automatic response, and he phased through the hand—and the chair—before he could stop himself.

Grimacing, he looked up from where he had landed on the floor, meeting Jack’s startled eyes. “Um. Sorry.”

“Don’t be, Danny-boy.” Jack held out a hand, and Danny cautiously took it. “My bad for startling you.”

Danny let himself be pulled to his feet, then suddenly found himself trapped in Jack’s arms. Oh. A hug. Right. It had been… a while.

He let himself sag against his dad, melting in the embrace. And then stiffened. Right. Melting. Dani. Focus, Danny. Priorities.

“Anyway, so.” He cleared his throat, and waited for his dad to release him again. “So, we can compare my stats to Dani’s and see why she’s unstable. Right?”

“Right,” his mom agreed. She was looking at him like he might flee any moment, but. But at least she wasn’t looking at him he was her dead son. Or a despicable ghost. This was just. Just normal emotions.

“So, um.” He gestured at the kitchen door, vaguely. “Let’s. Go do that?”