Chapter Text
"You won't be getting out anytime soon. That's a new anti ghost-power design."
Danny struggled in the luminous green net for a few seconds more before ultimately resigning with a sigh.
"I thought things were going well! You haven't tried to capture me for months."
His mother seemed surprised at his remark. She probably hadn't thought he'd paid much attention to their truce, thanks to her prejudices about ghosts not having emotions all together. However, she composed herself quickly as usual.
"A deal is a deal, I don't plan to harm you this time."
"This time?"
She ignored him. "I need to ask you some questions?"
"Then just ask me! No need for the stupid net." He retorted, pushing against the strings once more.
"The net is a precaution. I can't have you running away before you can answer."
"Geez what kinda question is this?"
"It's about your origins. How you died to be more precise"
"Oh… oh! My er-" He settled uncomfortably onto the ground in a cross legged position, despite the glowing mesh in his face. This would be interesting. "Why do you need to know about that anyway?"
"We've recently been trying to make connections between ghosts, their obsessions, and their deaths. Majority we have solid hypotheses, and a couple we've even confirmed." Now that, Danny was curious about. They actually managed to track down who some of his enemies were before death?
"Go on."
She seemed surprised but pleased by his will to listen, walking around the space like this wasn't a hostage situation. "Ghosts come from a range of eras which comes across in their mannerisms, and their passion at time of death is their obsession, which becomes more warped overtime. Whether it be passion as in love or their career, or more down the vein of passion for revenge or desperate desires."
Maddie paused her pacing and glanced over to see if he was still listening. He just stared, so she pressed on.
"You are one of the very few anomalies we found."
"How so?" He could guess.
"You have no indicators of how you died. Not only do you use modern speech and even slang, you wear a modern hazmat suit, that looks strikingly like ours at that."
That's cause it is.
"So that leaves me two questions. When did you die, and what's your obsession?"
Danny wasn't sure if she was waiting for an answer or not by that phrasing. The pause was likely her way of testing his cooperativeness, but he had a question of his own.
"I appreciate your curiosity but this doesn't seem like the kind of thing you'd go through the trouble of trapping me for. Why do you really want to know this?"
Maddie approached the net, her calm pace and lack of a weapon in hand showing the gain of trust the two had gotten over the months, even if it wasn't perfect.
"That's pretty simple: I'm a scientist. I do research. And while I can't do physical tests on you as I originally wanted, I can at least do as much research as I can into how ghosts work without that. And your obsessions are extremely important to this." She leaned down towards him as he was still on the floor and pointed a finger upwards like a teacher about to reprimand him. Danny bit back an amused smirk. "You seem to break the rules that have lined up perfectly fine so far, so what I need to know is why."
"You didn't say anything about me breaking any rules."
Maddie stood back up and crossed her arms, Danny clumsily stood up to join her as she explained.
"You've broken a few. The main being that you seem to have no obsession. My first assumption was that your heroics where just that. It would explain your desperate need to help people and likely meant your last moments involved saving someone, or wishing to be saved yourself."
That actually did make Danny wonder. He'd assumed he wouldn't learn too much from this since a lot of his differences came from being a halfa which she hadn't even considered as a possibility, however there was the chance he did follow rules of ghost behaviour to some degree. Had he wished someone could save him back during the accident? It was a pretty likely reaction considering how much it had freaking hurt, but he'd never considered it actually altering his perception or feelings.
"But, I ruled that out." She continued and he raised his eyebrows curiously, "In most cases ghosts will stop at nothing to satiate their obsessions, including contradicting other aspects of their personalities, or making unlikely alliances, excetera. But while I've observed carefully, every time I've encountered you over the last three weeks, you will often go on unusual, well, tangents."
Tangents...?
~~~
Based on the thoughtful look in the ghosts eyes he didn't know what she meant. He likely just hadn't recognised that his own behaviour was unusual. Not surprising, but she couldn't make any judgements until this mystery was resolved.
"In short, you seem to want to help people, but will sometimes chase the enemy before you check on those you were saving, you've paused battles to chat or tease your opponent, are frequently late to the scene and disappear after or even during encounters even though you've surely got little else to do. Whatever the reasons for each of those, a ghost typically should follow their obsession above all else. In other words, you seem to get distracted, which isn't right."
Not right for ghosts at least. It was definitely a rather human trait, but she left that out.
"So what's your next theory? Or do you have some explanation in mind for why I'm different?" Maddie studied Phantom to find an incredibly intent expression that was rare on the young spirit. He was invested in this topic, but she couldn't tell why. Perhaps he knew something she didn't that had an impact on her theories, but she had no right to start prying when he was cooperating so well. She crouched down to unpin the net, standing and carefully slinging it off of him, confident he wouldn't leave at this point. He watched it fall and smiled gratefully, but didn't try to move.
"I had a couple other hypotheses for your obsession that fell through for basically the same reasons. That's why I decided to ask you personally. Though I wasn't sure it'd be something you were willing to talk about."
"Why, because it supposedly involved my death?" He promoted without hesitation. Her gaze harshened. She hadn't expected him to be so blunt about it but,
"Yes, mostly. Do you actually have any memory of it? If you don't mind me asking?" Honestly that was the question she had wanted to start with. Phantom merely looked away in thought. Not as if he was avoiding it or struggling to remember, more like he was planning his words based on how he was subtly mouthing something. Perhaps he was deciding how to explain without his ghostly instincts making him angry or upset at the memory.
"I… I remember having a family and friends." He finally responded. She didn't fill the silence with more questions, a trick she liked using to make someone keep talking. "I was just, erm, 14, and there was… an accident. It involved an explosion. Of sorts."
"An explosion?" That was awfully dramatic for just a child's death. He looked a little older than 14, but that part was believable enough.
"It was um, not a big one. A device in our home malfunctioned and I just happened to be around it at the time. It was a mistake." He was definitely leaving out some details but she couldn't bring herself to prod him. This was very likely a delicate subject.
"So you do remember." He seemed to be startled back into reality and he looked back up at her. She hadn't noticed that the glow of his eyes had faded until it returned suddenly in that moment. Curious.
"Yeah- sort of. It's a little fuzzy."
"Does anything about what you remember give us any clues to what your obsession is?" In other words, what had he thought about right before death. That part of the question didn't need saying for him to seemingly pick up on it.
"I don't know exactly, no. Sorry. I'm as curious as you are to be honest."
"What about? Your obsession or your death?"
"Both?" Phantom answered vaguely with a shrug.
Maddie had also been digging for any strange circumstances around his death that stood out. If they couldn't find an obsession, maybe she needed to listen for the reason he didn't have one instead. But his description sounded pretty normal. A household accident, an electrical glitch most likely. While it wasn't a common cause of death it also wasn't as erratic as getting mauled on an illegal hunt, or burning to death in a house fire started by your ex. There was nothing to go off there, except...
Maybe she'd have to pry a little after all.
~~~
"You said it was a mistake, but also an accident. How is does that work?" Danny pouted at the tricky question. He'd spun his freak portal accident into a more believable and un-linkable tale. She'd managed to catch his little slip up after he had dazed off into the memory, but at this point he'd stick to his half-truth story. He wasn't a very good liar after all, he was just lucky everyone in this town was often oblivious.
"It was a bit of both, but it was mostly my fault really. I wanted to show my friends something cool and there was some bad timing involved, but we shouldn't have been there at all. At least it wasn't either of them that got hurt because of me."
He could tell she was a little frustrated at how vague he was being, but any further would be too much. He locked patient eye contact to show that he was done.
"Maybe regret has something to do with it." After a moment to consider the info, Maddie went back to her theories. "Regret that... you went somewhere you shouldn't, or more likely, regret that you died young."
Danny was a little startled by her shift in tone, and by the conclusion itself. She'd said that last couple words so clearly, like she'd reached some revelation; she was sure of this.
~~~
Phantom's startled reaction only made her feel more strongly that this was the one. It actually explained so much. He acted like a teenager: he was up to date on what kids are into and how they talk, plus he acts pretty childish at times but mature at others. Getting distracted all the time actually complimented this obsession instead of disproving it. His whole heroics act wasn't really that much of an act, because that was just his innocent moral compass, that he miraculously maintained in death thanks to desperately wanting to continue living out his teenage years like his friends could. It's why he seemed so human. He practically still was one because his obsession was to remain a kid, and making the most of his second chance at existing. It wasn't a flawless answer but it was too clear now to argue with.
Maddie turned to the ghostly teenager, trying to see him in a slightly different light now that it was plausible his drive really wasn't secretly malicious after all. Not that she'd truly believed that recently anyway.
"You do seem pretty human sometimes, Phantom" she commented, smiling.
Phantom eyes widened slowly as what she said set in. He stared at her for a short while, almost seeming frozen in worry. After a moment, he blinked in quick succession and the expression was wiped away, but his shoulders were still tensed.
"Really?"
"Really. I think that has something to do with your obsession. It's the only good explanation for your otherwise unexplainable behaviour ironically." Maddie admitted.
“Ah.” Phantom’s nerves eased a little and he looked down at the floor. He seemed tired... He didn't look relieved, more… disheartened? Had he been expecting something else? And neither reaction had been positive so was this good or bad for him to hear? As much as she'd known this would be a touchy conversation, she hadn't really considered how strange it's feel to see him so vulnerable. She resorted to asking a question she never thought she'd be asking a ghost. Let alone one she spent most of a year trying to catch and examine.
~~~
"Are you okay?" Danny heard Maddie ask, her most motherly tone shining through clearly all of a sudden. It eased the heaviness in his chest, and he had to remind himself who he was right now. He looked past her, afraid that if he saw her concerned expression he'd just break character completely.
"I'm alright, thanks. It's just been a slightly different conversation than I expected. I'm glad I could help."
"Alright. I suppose this topic is hard on you. I know you might not think you can trust me but I'm here to talk if you need it okay?"
Danny smiled. She'd said this to him a million times before, even if he rarely took her up on the offer. "I know mom. Thanks."