In this au Danny and Phantom are separate people from the start, same as Vlad and Plasmius. Danny is in his normal family and Phantom is Vlad’s kid, and a halfa. They are childhood friends since the Fenton’s and the Master’s know each other. They get married at 20.

Phantom meets with Frostbite, who asks him to do something for the Yetis, this part is undecided, I have no idea what he would ask for, just that it’s a dangerous mission idk skdkfkhkhl. Danny asks him not to go, he’s scared Phantom won’t come back. They have an argument about this, which ended in Phantom agreeing that he won’t go, this is a lie and goes anyway

This ended up causing Phantom to be put in danger and can’t come back for like 10 years, I don’t have specifics, just that he can’t make his way back until then, I’ll explore ideas of that at some point

This causes a huge amount of strain on Danny, torn apart after losing his husband, Vlad and Plasmius blame him for Phantom leaving, Sam and Tucker are also both lost in grief and have their own lives to deal with, and Maddie and Jack are y’know, themselves who can’t really tell if their son is struggling. Jazz is away at college and tries the best to be there for him but being thousands of miles away is making it difficult.

Danny turns to something he never thought he’d do, he starts working on and inventing ghost tech. His parents are thrilled, and he’s liking being close to them for the first time in his life. Unfortunately after being so close with them for a long time, he starts adopting the way that they think, the way that they work. Over the years he stops eating as much, sleeping, and even gains a little bit of a vendetta against ghosts, after all it was a ghost that took away his husband. Which obviously doesn’t make sense, since he was married to a halfa, but he’s losing it after being overworked and refusing to deal with his grief.

He takes over Fentonworks as his parents are getting on in years, they just can’t work the way they used to. This scares him, because once he starts to get like that, what will he do? He cannot be left with any time for himself, because that’s time for him to be alone with his thoughts again, he doesn’t want that, he can’t have that. He doesn’t want to be alone again, even if it just his creations that keep him company.

His body starts to give out, after years of not sleeping, not eating properly, and being trapped in his lab. He comes up with an idea that could solve all his problems, what if he built himself a robot body that could work for him? That he can control from his lab, hidden away of course so nobody would know it wasn’t actually him. He may be losing it but he knows that his friends and family wouldn’t be fine with him doing this, but think about the efficiency this could bring! And he wouldn’t have to ever think about anything besides his tech, it was perfect!