The Story Within

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25. It was an accident. That’s what the football team says when his friends find him stuffed in a gym locker with their dirty clothes, left to rot over the weekend. That’s what the school tells the paper. Jazz does not attend the memorial. 42. Jazz fights the monsters at the lake for him. The ghosts, the witches, the cryptids—all of them. When the coast is clear, she finds him face down in the water anyways. 68. A truck hits him.

*~*~*

Heat snaps against Jazz’s skin. She holds her brother close.

“Jazz, it hurts.” His voice crackles like the fire she’d pulled him from, like his broken skin rasping against her shirt.

“It’ll be alright, Danny—stay awake, you’ll be okay—”

She whips her head up, neck aching. “Help! Please, somebody, anybody, please!”

But she can’t see anyone past the flames and rubble.

Danny whimpers. “I—I don’t—”

“Shhh, it’s okay, it’s gonna be okay—Somebody, please! P-Please…” She swallows a sob. She has to be strong for Danny, he needs her, he needs help, he needs her to stay together and get them through this. She ignores the warmth soaking her clothes.

“Jazz…”

She looks at him, trying to smile. “It’s going to be okay, Danny, I promise.” It has to be okay. It has to.

Then he shudders, and she watches his head loll—feels him go limp in her arms.

“No, Danny, wake up, it’s okay, please wake up—no, no, no—”

The fire billows and reflects in the whites of her brother’s dead eyes.

Danny’s dead eyes.

Danny’s dead.

Jazz wails into her brother’s bloody chest.

*~*~*

89. The A-Listers did it. His friends did it. Even some of the nerds did it. So why is it, when he tries to snowboard down the school steps on his backpack, he’s the one who cracks his head open on a block of ice? 111. His best friend dared him. He eats five ecto-infused hotdogs before they kill him. 136. Where did the black bear come from? Illinois doesn’t have black bears.

*~*~*

“Let’s get this over with. What do you want?”

Jazz crosses her arms as Spectra circles her, smoky form trailing in the darkness.

Spectra tuts. “Oh, don’t be so curt. Is that any way to treat a friend?”

“You’re not my friend.”

Spectra’s chuckle echoes through the lair, and Jazz suppresses a flinch when her cold voice caresses Jazz’s ear. “Oh honey, I’m the only friend you’ve got.”

Jazz turns to face Spectra—but she isn’t there. Of course. She glares at the darkness before her—it’s as much a part of Spectra as everything else here is.

“You killed my brother.” Her voice is sharp.

“And he’s alive now, right?” Spectra reappears in her periphery, just out of reach of her scythe—Jazz feels it in the tug on the emotion she’d let slip like chum in the water.

Jazz doesn’t let herself react, and Spectra lazily circles again. “He’s probably out watching a movie, or playing one of those silly little videogames with his silly little friends.”

“Get to the point.”

Spectra pouts. “You’re no fun.”

“This isn’t about fun.”

“No, of course not,” Spectra tuts. “It’s about your silly, childish, Sisyphean quest to avoid the inevitable.”

“One must imagine Sisyphus happy,” Jazz retorts.

“So you like watching your brother die over and over again?” Spectra grins. “Or perhaps there’s comfort in the pattern. The sweet relief that you can start over, once you’ve let the boulder slip and run the poor kid down.”

Jazz doesn’t know when she summoned her scythe, swinging it at the shadows where Spectra’s voice emanates—but there’s nothing there. Spectra’s cackles echo in her head.

“Touched a nerve, have I?” The voice swirls around her. “Or maybe a truth?”

“Nothing you say is true,” Jazz says, holding back the mist and shadows closing in.

“Oh Jasmine,” Spectra coos, her voice suddenly intimate, her claws caressing Jazz’s cheek and neck. “You’re the one who said it.”

Spectra’s words worm into her head—then split and divide and echo, morphing into Jazz’s voice, repeating and crying and cackling until all she can hear is “imagine Sisyphus happy” and “over and over and over and over and—”

Jazz slams her scythe into the ground. Blue lightning swirls around her, turning everything it touches to dust.

“I won’t let him die.” She breathes harshly. “I’ll go as far as it takes.”

Spectra smirks as she disintegrates.

“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

*~*~*

149. A piano falls on him. 179. The Fenton Family Ghost Assault Vehicle skids to a stop a foot from Jazz’s face. Her dad bounds from the front seat, completely oblivious. “Hey, Jazzipants! Did you see where that ghost went? I swear I was right on its tail!” He doesn’t notice his son beneath the vehicle’s oversized tires. Jazz doesn’t tell him. 201. Rubble from the latest ghost attack falls on him.

*~*~*

“I can help.”

The voice rings clear despite the fire and blood roaring in Jazz’s ears. She blinks tears from her eyes, clutching her brother’s body.

There—just a few feet from her, balancing on a bit of metal.

It’s not a cat, although it sits like one—paws together and bushy tail turned up, little triangle ears attentive. But it has two long, furry tendrils descending from its ears, a little gold loop around each, swaying gently in the harsh, hot wind. Its face looks like a stuffed animal, but its wide red eyes stare up at her, alive.

“What are you?” Jazz rasps.

“I am Kyubey.” Its mouth doesn’t move. “I have the power to grant wishes. You could use a wish right now.”

Jazz hugs her brother tighter to her chest. “You’re not a ghost.”

“Correct! I can help. If you form a contract with me and become a magia, I will grant you a wish. I sense the potential within you to become a powerful magia—your wish could unleash that potential!”

Kyubey hops down and approaches Jazz. She scampers back, dragging her brother’s body with her. “Don’t—don’t touch him!”

The creature stops, glancing down from Jazz to the corpse of her brother. “It’s a shame he died. He also had potential.”

Heart clenching, her vision goes cloudy. She buries her face in her brother’s chest.

“I’ll give you time to think about it.”

Sirens sound in the distance. Jazz jerks her head up.

The creature is gone.

*~*~*

223. A girl he doesn’t know asks him to go to a ball he hasn’t heard of. Of course he says no. Why would he expect her to turn into a ghost dragon and swallow him whole? 247. Amity Park has never had gators in the sewers. That’s a New York City myth. When he falls down the manhole, she can only listen as the ghost gators rip him apart. 264. A winter evening, she comes home late from the library, after fighting ghosts and witches. Making sure they can’t hurt anyone—let alone her little brother. She finds him locked out, frozen and alone on the porch.

*~*~*

“Your hope is sickening.”

Jazz laughs and spins, flicking Spectra on the nose, blue power giving it wrinkles. She smirks at Spectra’s disgust and cartwheels away. “It wouldn’t kill you to be more hopeful.”

They both know this is a lie—witches are made of despair.

But this is the longest Jazz has kept Danny alive. Maybe this time she doesn’t have to reset the cycle. And if she can hope for a timeline where Danny doesn’t die a horrible death, she can hope for anything.

“I don’t know why you’re getting your hopes up.” Spectra pats the wrinkles from her nose. “He’s going to die anyway.”

“Not listening!” Jazz sings, slicing through the next attack.

Spectra grins and steps back into the shadows, letting her voice fill the void. “Honey, you don’t have to listen. You just have to look.”

The shadows and mist close in. Jazz twirls and blue light erupts from her, arcing around her, cutting through the lair’s cloying darkness.

Spectra’s voice rings out from everywhere all at once.

“You twist the web of time in knots every time you use your pretty little powers, Magical Girl. Look around you.”

And now Jazz can see it—how her powers have been pushing against time—not against a wall like she’d thought, but along intersecting lines and waves and curves—patterns carving themselves along every axis of space, changing along the arcs of her blue power—changing because of her power.

She tugs experimentally on the heart of her power—shaping it inwards and forwards, rather than just shoving it out—and the blue arcs wrap themselves through Spectra’s shadows, crackling as they shrink them down to nothing.

Spectra snorts. “Impressive. If you were a beginner.”

But Jazz can’t pay attention to Spectra—the patterns of time itself twist around each other—swirl through her—spin from her in paths that wind closer together, driving into a single, blue path that leads to—no, no, no—

“Ah, there it is! The recognition! The horror! The frustration! The crushing despair! There’s the Jasmine Fenton I know!” Spectra claps and cackles her glee, even as Jazz throws her scythe, even as it cuts the witch in half.

Black smoke spills from the wound, whispering in Jazz’s voice.

“You can’t stop it. You’re the reason he keeps dying.”

*~*~*

289. He tries to help, and Jazz lets him. After all, it’s Johnny and Kitty—they’re harmless. Then Kitty’s kiss makes him disappear. 305. He wasn’t allergic to them before. The flowers in mom’s garden are strange and thorny, but the most they can do is prick fingers. He’s been avoiding the garden, though; it’s only after their mom sneaks blood blossoms into his lunch that she understands, too late, why. 333. She isn’t surprised when the ghost of a bull shark gets him. Just disappointed. And so, so tired.

*~*~*

The smell of smoke and blood lingers in Jazz’s hair. It mingles with the sharp, cloying scent of antiseptic. She asks the nurse to open the window—just a crack, just to let the air flow a little.

She looks down at her hands—she doesn’t need to see the nurse smile sadly at her as he opens the window the full three inches.

The hospital machines and Fenton tech surrounding her beep and whine discordantly—out of time and tune with each other and with her whirring mind. She can’t sleep even if she wanted to.

It’s for the better. When she tried to sleep earlier, she could only see her brother’s dead eyes.

The ghost detectors don’t register Kyubey’s arrival. But Jazz feels its presence, sitting at the windowsill, its red eyes boring into her soul.

She hates the heart monitor’s beeping, and she tries to school her breathing. It’s just a physiological reaction to an understandable amount of stress and emotion. But she feels vulnerable.

“Have you thought about it?” Kyubey’s gentle voice cuts through the noise like a knife.

“What does ‘magia’ entail?” Jazz asks.

“It means you will become magical! A Magical Girl, with the power to fight the terrible creatures of darkness and despair—creatures known as witches!”

“And if I do this, will it save him? Save Danny?” Her voice is small. The heart monitor races.

“That depends on you, Jasmine Fenton. Your power to save your brother is as strong as your wish.”

“So how do I know this isn’t a scam? What’s the catch?” Jazz forces herself to stare into the creature’s red eyes. She’ll be damned if she just lets it manipulate her, just like that.

“Does it matter? You’ve already decided.”

Jazz blinks first. She takes a shuddering breath. Damned heart monitor. Damned Kyubey.

But, if there’s a chance she can save her brother, she guesses she’s damned, too.

*~*~*

358. Human bodies shouldn’t be phased into walls. His torso is suspended in the corner of a building. His mouth and nose are full of brick. 371. One moment, he’s walking next to her, on their way to school; the next, his body’s collapsed on the ground, a green, smoking hole in his head where the meteorite hit him. 402. He’s hit by the Fenton Peeler. It shouldn’t work—Fenton tech doesn’t hurt humans—but he screams, his skin cracking and peeling to reveal something dead, glowing, impossible— But she knows it was only a matter of time. He’s died horrifically more than enough. It was inevitable he’d form a ghost.

*~*~*

403.

“I was wondering when I’d see your pretty little face again.”

Jazz doesn’t say anything. She sits on a coil of mist and looks away from Spectra, tracing the way time eddies and flows below her.

“How’s your brother?” Spectra steps in front of Jazz. “He didn’t look well after your parents flayed him alive in front of you.”

Jazz feels her hands ball into fists—watches time ripple blue with her potential—and loosens her fingers. Lets the potential dissipate.

“Well.” Spectra chuckles. “That’s a loose term for the poor kid, isn’t it. Alive.”

She circles, running her claws along Jazz’s back—almost a caress, but Jazz knows they want to rend and tear. Maybe she should let them.

“It’s never going to end.” The words leave Jazz’s mouth before she can stop them.

“What is?” Spectra asks, hand on Jazz’s shoulder.

“This.” Jazz flings her hand out, and time eddies down darker and darker currents. “All of this. This cycling. This song and dance. And Danny—”

Her breath hitches and her heart aches, and she feels the prick of Spectra’s claws in her shoulder, siphoning energy from her despair.

“Danny dies. He keeps dying. No matter what I do—no, because of what I do.” Jazz buries her face in her hands. Her chest hurts. “Because of me.”

“Oh, honey.” Spectra’s voice drips with false sympathy. “It doesn’t have to be this way.”

Jazz groans. “Danny deserves better. He deserves a sister who can keep him safe—but I can’t—I’ve failed him. I keep failing him! I don’t want to become a witch, but if I keep going, he’ll keep dying—but what can I do? If I can’t protect him, what can I do?”

“Does it matter?” Spectra grips Jazz’s chin, tilting it up. Her eyes glow red, and her voice echoes around them in the turbulent darkness. “You’ve already decided.”

Jazz tries and fails to hold back a sob. Her chest burns.

“Leave her alone!”

Green light—green like ectoplasm, green like death—tears through the darkness, ripping Spectra away, and suddenly Jazz can breathe again. She collapses to the concrete—not mist not darkness but real, hard concrete—and recoils as cold hands grab her arms, flinching at the pain where Spectra’s claws had torn from her. Channeling power to her hand, she looks up and—

It’s Danny.

His hand bleeds green smoke, and his face shows fear and worry and all the things he shouldn’t show in a witch’s lair.

Her ears ring with the absence of Spectra’s voice, and it takes a moment to catch the words spilling from Danny’s lips.

“—hey! Jazz! I—it’s okay, Jazz, it—it’s gonna be okay, but we have to get out of here—”

“Danny.” The whisper leaves her lips unbidden. She lets her power dissipate.

“Yeah, Jazz! It’s me!” He smiles weakly. “It’s me. And we gotta get out of here.”

“You shouldn’t be here.”

“Jazz, no one should be here—”

“No, you need to leave! I can’t—” her eyes blur. She imagines Danny’s dead eyes. “I can’t save you, and it’s all my fault—I failed you. I failed you! You deserve better than a monster for a sister—”

Danny hugs her. His fluffy hair gets in her face. His face buries itself in her neck.

She tentatively hugs him back—then clings to him like he’s the last bit of hope she has.

In a way, he is. When’s the last time she’s actually hugged her brother, and not his corpse?

“Jazz, it’s okay. It’s okay. You’re okay.”

He mumbles into her shoulder, and she shifts to look him over. He’s covered in bruises and scrapes; his eyes are teary, dark with exhaustion. He offers a grin to her—one that barely reaches his eyes.

He’s alive.

He’ll die if he stays here.

“Danny, you—”

“I know, Jazz.”

Jazz freezes.

“I don’t know how long you’ve been trying to save me.” Danny huffs. “You’re dealing with all of this—just for me. I love you, Jazz, I love you so much, but… you’ve gotta stop.”

“I can’t stop, Danny—you’ll die if I do!” Jazz blinks tears from her eyes and looks away. “I need to save you—but it all ends in your death, and it’s my fault—I’m so sorry, Danny, it’s always my fault—”

“Hey.” Danny bends down to catch her eye. “Hey Jazz, just—come on, listen to me!”

Jazz looks up at him, eyes wide. He stares back with determination.

“None of this is your fault. You’re my sister, and you’re trying your best, but sometimes that isn’t enough! And that’s okay!”

“It’s not okay! If I don’t save you, you’ll die—”

“Then let me die!”

Danny’s breath echoes in the darkness.

Then Jazz hears a slow clap. Spectra emerges from the mist.

“Aw, what a touching reunion!” Spectra coos. “It’s too bad we have to end it.” She flexes her claws.

Danny grabs Jazz’s hand and squeezes. He gives her a gentle smile, full of love and life. “It’ll be okay, Jazz. I promise. This time, it’s my choice.”

Then he leaps into the air, and in a sweeping, blinding flash of green and white, he invites death itself into his very being. His hair turns blinding white, and his skin darkens and cracks like fire had kissed it. He shoots energy at Spectra, who screeches as the darkness surrounding her dissolves.

Danny’s eyes are green as death—yet still, somehow, alive. “Didn’t know I could do that, huh!” He grins cheekily.

Jazz chuckles and wipes the tears from her face. Dead, alive, or something in between, he’s still her little brother.

She stands, summoning her scythe. “Let’s finish this.”

Jazz unleashes the floodgates on her emotions. Her anger and frustration. Her sadness. Her despair. But also her love. Her happiness. Her hope. Her yearning for a future she could share with her brother, and her determination to grasp that future.

She opens her eyes to time, as well—letting the blue power flow through her, stronger than ever, powered by the emotions she’s unleashed. Before, she had refused to look beyond Danny’s death; but now that Danny has chosen his own fate, she can see the timelines open to endless possibilities.

“No!” Spectra screams, and the mist and darkness writhe. Jazz can feel Spectra’s emotions well up—her anger and hatred, her despair—but beneath that, her yearning: to fill herself with power, to break free of this warehouse and this world and time itself—but also to fill the void within her with something, someone, that could truly understand—

And her terror of it all being stripped away.

The shadows lunge. Danny blasts some of them away, and Jazz dodges the rest—not too slow, but not too fast, either—darting forward to take Danny’s hand.

Danny grins and grabs her, then spins in the air—his free hand blasting shadows to ash, her scythe slicing them to dust—until all that’s left is the shattered shadow of Spectra herself.

Danny goes to destroy Spectra, but Jazz grabs his arm.

“Wait.”

She approaches the weakened witch—a literal shadow of what Spectra once was, curling in on itself in its despair.

“I could have been like you,” Jazz says. “I came close. Too close.”

She crouches next to the shadow. “But then we’d both be drowning in our despair.”

The words pulse faintly in her mind. Like you. Despair.

Jazz reaches out her hands, blue with power, gently cupping the shadow as it churns. She stares at the remnants of Spectra, noting the contours of its shapes, the whirls of its emotions—then blows, gently, as if to blow out a candle—shaping her blue power along those contours and whirls, molding time itself to her own emotions—scattering the shadow into small, blue motes of dust that slowly fade to nothing.

Farewell.

After a moment, Jazz stands.

Danny stares at her. “What did you do?”

“I gave her what she wanted,” Jazz states.

The warehouse is empty except for the two of them, morning light shining through the broken windows to alight upon them.

No.

The light shines on Jazz—but it shines through Danny.

She can see through him, to the dusty floor below.

She reaches for Danny’s hand—but her hand goes through it as well.

He’s fading.

“Danny—Danny, no—”

Danny shushes her. His finger can’t touch her, but its aura is cold against her lips. “I won’t be gone forever—just for a bit. I promise.”

He floats upwards, gazing at something she can’t see. Dust floats through his grin.

“Go make friends, Jazz! Seriously, being a shut in isn’t good for you.”

Then Danny fades completely. Jazz is left alone on the warehouse floor.

But somehow, she doesn’t feel as lonely.

*~*~*