#dissembled

-----

Disparaged

While out on patrol one night, Danny is apprehended in ghost form by his mother, who disables his powers using an injected solution of her creation. He manages to escape, but not without feeling very shaken by the ordeal. He tries to suppress the memory and ignore what it made him feel, but he is terrible at hiding it. Maddie at first believes he is struggling with a painkiller and narcotic addiction arising from severe depression and anxiety and tries to get him help, including therapy. Danny goes along with this story, hoping it'll prevent her from figuring out what is actually troubling him, especially as he notices her obsession with capturing Phantom has reached unhealthy levels. Maddie shortly realizes that there is something else more serious going on with Danny, but when she tries to force him to talk to her in the middle of the night, he runs out of the house. Maddie goes out to look for him but ends up finding him in ghost form. Not recognizing him, she proceeds to disable his powers again, chase him down, and corner him with no escape. Danny surrenders and allows her to capture him at last.

-----

Dissembled

Maddie imprisons Danny in a private lab belonging to Vlad far outside of town. Still unaware that her son is Phantom, Maddie searches for Danny during the day and sneaks out to experiment on her secret ghost specimen for a few hours each night. Maddie is frustrated with how the police are handling Danny's disappearance, as they seem to believe he is just a runaway and will come home on his own. She subjects Danny to several torturous procedures, including cutting open his eye, breaking his leg, and forcing him to play a sadistic game of "would you rather."

Vlad discovers Danny in the lab and offers to rescue him under the condition that Danny leave his family and submit to him, but Danny chooses to remain in the lab instead. Danny challenges Maddie to a fair fight for his freedom and she agrees, but he is unable to hurt her and must accept that the scientist torturing him is in fact his mother. Maddie is tormented by Phantom's human display of emotion when he starts crying during the fight. As she attempts to discover exactly who or what he is through more procedures that include surgically removing his spleen, she also begins confiding in him, sharing her darkest secrets about the way she treated her son, such as unintentionally giving him an eating disorder.

The police grow suspicious of Maddie's involvement in Danny's disappearance and ask her to come in for what she suspects is a custodial interrogation. Maddie then discovers that Phantom's DNA report reveals that he is somehow human. Distraught by the possibility that she's been committing a horrible crime and worried that the police will arrest her and turn Phantom over to the Guys in White, Maddie frees him. Danny flies as far away as he can until his energy is completely exhausted and he is forced to return to human form for the first time in weeks. He then weighs his options and makes the difficult decision to return home.

-----

Disillusioned

Danny returns home and Maddie realizes that her own son was the specimen she had been torturing for three and a half weeks. Ashamed of what has happened to him, Danny insists on covering up the truth. Detective Calhoun is suspicious of Maddie's involvement in the disappearance of her son, but Vlad overshadows him to keep him under control. Jack wonders if Maddie was having an affair with Phantom, creating a tense rift between them as Maddie tries to hide what she did to Danny.

Danny returns to school but exhibits obvious signs of PTSD, and he struggles to use his ghost powers and cannot find the strength to transform at all. Due to his drastic change in behavior, Maddie begins to doubt that Danny is really her son and worries that he is actually Phantom trying to trick her. She secretly collects hair and other samples from Danny to conduct experiments at the same lab where she held Danny captive. Jack is also deeply concerned about Danny's behavior and insists on finding him a new therapist. Maddie reluctantly allows Vlad to overshadow Jack in order to control his suspicions, which only furthers fuels Danny's distrust in her.

Jazz, Sam, and Tucker recognize that Danny is hiding something from them and finally force him to confess what Maddie did to him. Danny insists that they must tell no one, and they grudgingly agree. The cover-up is rocky but seems to be holding up until Jazz's high school graduation when Dash tells Danny that two Guys in White operatives asked him direct questions about Danny himself. Hoping to create confusion for the Guys in White and slow their investigation into the possibility of Danny being Phantom, Maddie tells the town she had an affair with Phantom. Jack is completely devastated and kicks her out of the house before breaking his sobriety and getting drunk. He lashes out at Danny in his despair, and Danny is troubled by how broken his family has become.

Operatives K and O of the Guys in White ambush Maddie at her motel room and attempt to get her to sign a statement confirming that Danny is Phantom in exchange for full immunity for her crimes against her son. Maddie refuses to accept the deal, and Vlad takes her to his mansion for her protection. At the police station, Danny discovers that the police just finished interviewing the cashier from the first town he went to after Maddie set him free. He confronts Vlad about why he did not overshadow the detective during this interview. Vlad's attention has been split between keeping the police investigation under control and trying to stop the Guys in White from closing in. Danny demands to know the location of the lab where Maddie held him prisoner. He manages to transform and fly to the lab, where he discovers that Maddie has been conducting experiments on him without his knowledge, including maternity and DNA tests on his human form. Maddie shows up and Danny reveals that Vlad knew Maddie was holding him captive and even visited him in the lab while he was missing. They destroy all of the evidence in the lab, but Maddie secretly keeps the maternity and DNA test results. She does not tell Danny about the deal the Guys in White tried to make with her. At Vlad's mansion, she slaps Vlad and tells him off for not rescuing Danny when he had the chance.

Danny sees the detective and his old therapist having coffee together in town and discovers that the police have found a couple of the devices that Maddie used on him in the woods near the gas station the cashier worked at. Panicked about his mother's imminent arrest, Danny asks Maddie to return home. Down in the Fenton Works lab, Maddie promises to protect Danny as he falls asleep in her arms. The following morning, the police knock on the door. Maddie emerges and allows herself to be arrested, but the Guys in White show up and apprehend Danny, revealing that they have canceled Maddie's arrest warrant. Maddie insists that the Guys in White cannot take Danny because he is not a ghost. In front of everyone gathered with dozens of cameras on her, Maddie confesses to holding Danny hostage and conducting horrific experiments on him.

-----

Disaffected

While I was writing Disparaged, I read a "Maddie experiments on Phantom" fic and I don't remember much about it except that Danny observes that Maddie is cold and clinical with him, detached, nothing at all like his mother who is warm and loving and nurturing. And that intrigued me because I thought, well, what if she were more warm and nurturing even during experiments? What if she were intimate with him during these experiments instead of detached? What if the woman who tortured Phantom really was the same woman who loved Danny? Would that add to the trauma, the torture? That inability to separate the scientist from his mother?

And then it evolved from there, Maddie being very affectionate with Phantom during experiments, feeling straight up arousal during their time together because her work really does turn her on, achieving the results she wants is better than any orgasm. And seeing someone as powerful as Phantom submitting to her will, also better than sex.

I also saw a comic here on Tumblr where Maddie and Jack had successfully captured Phantom and locked him up in a cell and Maddie was conflicted because he was acting so much like a child, like Danny would, and the author commented that they didn't believe Maddie could actually experiment on Phantom because her motherly side would kick in, she'd have too much sympathy. And I thought but what if Maddie sees Phantom acting like a child as just a trick? What if she learned to ignore ghosts trying to act like humans? What if she saw these ghosts trying to play on her motherly sympathies and chose to continue with the torture anyway? Because she is just that convinced that ghosts only imitate human emotion and can't genuinely experience it?