Chapter Text
Vlad folded his hands behind his back as he walked. Each step caused ice to crunch underfoot.
Crunch. The sound crackled out into the empty void of the ghost zone. Crunch. Crunch. It was the only sound to be heard, besides that the air was as quiet as the grave.
That term was probably a little on the nose.
Vlad gazed out over the Zone, before turning his focus back to his reason for being here, or what was supposed to be his reason. The fact was he did not find what he had been looking for, instead, he found something else entirely.
Instead of a palace of stone, he found a palace of ice.
Pariah’s keep was frozen over. He shivered, his human form doing no favors against the chill here. The original structure, if it was still there, was completely obscured in the ice. Doors were replaced with solid blocks of frost, five feet thick, and windows were remade with thin sheets of glass.
It didn’t take a genius to realize that this had something to do with the Fright Knight no longer reporting in.
Vlad pressed his hand against the door and frowned when he didn’t phase through. The ice was obviously ectoplasmic in nature, but even as a human he couldn’t phase through it.
That had to have meant it also originated in from human world.
It wasn’t the first time he had seen something like this.
Vlad took a step back and looked up at the ice with new appreciation, studying it with a little more care than he had.
“Well, well, Daniel, color me impressed,” Vlad mused as he rubbed his chin.
The structure was larger than two of his homes combined back in the real world. While destroying the entire palace to find the Fright Knight was a possible option, it was one he didn’t care to spend time on. And while he didn't relish the idea of searching the place top to bottom, Daniel probably wasn’t stupid enough to leave the sword out in the Fright Knight’s chamber.
Unless he wanted to try to do something like leaving it in the one spot Vlad would never expect…
Ugh , he thought to himself as he let out a sigh, already knowing the answer. The boy does think he’s clever.
Vlad put his hand against the door and put his back into it. The door swung on its hinges with a surprising smoothness, the force causing it to slam against the walls of the entrance hall with an ominous bang. Vlad waited a moment for any enemies to appear, to no avail.
As the last of the sound receded into the echoes of the chamber, Vlad walked into the ice palace. He was able to see minor touches here and there that were obvious markings of Daniel’s personality.
The floor was covered in fractal patterns that evoked the stars and space, and frozen sheets of ice bore a coat of arms that depicted stellar phenomena.
It made Vlad uneasy.
Daniel wasn’t capable of this.
Oh, he certainly had the potential, Vlad couldn’t deny that. If Daniel took the time to hone his powers, if he had the wisdom to take Vlad’s guidance, he would be a right terror to face. He could face anything in the depths and live to tell about it. The two of them together would be unstoppable.
But as he was now? No, this was beyond him.
This reeked of obsession – or something worse.
Vlad tried to force the thought away, but it persisted. Building castles, places of accumulated power, wasn't like Daniel at all.
It didn’t take long for Vlad to walk through the main part of the castle, and sure enough, the Fright Knight was not left in the center of the throne room, waiting for his liege to release him.
Vlad would wait though, releasing the Fright Knight now would be beneficial in the short term. However, several of his long-term goals required he keep the Fright Knight happy, or else he might look for a new liege.
Said knight would prefer to miss as much of the calling as possible.
Vlad didn’t blame him at all for that.
Vlad spun on his heel and began to march outside of the castle. Everything was beginning to center around Amity Park. Jack and Maddie opened the portal, the zone was stabilizing and becoming quiet, and now…
Phantom had marked Pariah’s keep with his own power?
He looked down at the crown of ice on the steps outside. Vlad would not let anything else happen without him being there.
With a single step, he crushed it beneath his feet.
The world chanting her name? Ember thought she had wanted that once.
Now… now she didn’t know what to do with herself. She felt her core stirring, floating upwards in an updraft no one but her could feel. She wished others could, it was one of the best things she had felt in a very long time.
Being remembered ? That was everything she could have ever wanted.
But as wonderful as it was, she felt trapped. She couldn’t share this with anyone. The other ghosts wouldn’t understand, or maybe they’d even try to ruin this.
Kitty and Johnny definitely would.
Maybe she’d even thank them for it.
That’s why she couldn’t tell anyone. They would try and take this away from her. Take away the memory of her, her mark on the world.
Make them forget .
Something in her throat seized. It had been almost two weeks, and Kitty could have noticed something was wrong. What if to “save” Ember, Kitty and Johnny did something to Sam?
If the shoe was on the other foot? Ember wouldn’t have hesitated. She wouldn’t have let any of her friends die again.
Sam had to be okay. She had to remember her.
Ember sucked in a breath, and her lair was lit up by fire and smoke. In the same breath, she appeared on the edges of Amity Park. The leap across dimensions felt like it had torn her apart, and it took her a moment to remember how to fly. The use of her power made her core shudder and shake, and for a moment she felt disconnected from her body.
That might have very well been the case. She had never considered what it would be like to pass on. She never thought about death much in life, either.
As she recovered her breath, her soul , she looked out over Amity Park and realized she didn't recognize much from when she was alive. The only thing that had remained from her time here was the school.
But important things had popped up in their place.
Danny’s home, Fenton Works, was one of the most obvious locations and it was the source of the portal that brought her back into the real world. If it weren’t for that, she’d still be wandering the Ghost Zone wondering what happened to the world she left behind.
The mall, where Sam, Tucker, and Danny had taken her to show her the music that she had missed since she had died. They didn’t stop there though, they showed her the games that had come out, and other stuff they thought she’d enjoy.
And there, far away from either of those locations, was Sam’s house.
Ember turned intangible and invisible before she started flying through the air. Her hair whipped out behind her, looking almost like a rocket, and with no wind resistance, she flew like one. It only took her a few seconds to cross the distance from outside Amity Park to just outside Sam’s room.
Ember hesitated outside Sam’s window, staring at the closed black curtains. Her core seized inside her, and she chewed on her lip.
How did she know Sam was inside there?
The curtain opened, and Sam looked out her window. “Ember?” spilled past her lips, though there wasn’t the shock that Ember would have expected.
Somehow neither of them seemed that surprised.
Ember chuckled and scratched at her cheek. “Hey, sorry to just drop by…”
Sam opened the window, inviting her in. Ember phased through the wall, bypassing the need for the open window at all. Sam scoffed and then closed the window.
“It’s fine,” Sam said with a casual shrug, though there was an undercurrent of something there that made Ember raise an eyebrow, discontentment perhaps or frustration. “I imagine it gets kind of boring in the Ghost Zone.”
“Nothing ever really changes there,” Ember admitted. “It’s… all the same.” Ember looked around the room and saw that Sam had set up her nail polish. Four of her nails were painted black, neat and perfect. The fifth had a black mark, paint smeared messily across the nail and cuticle.
Sam sat down in the middle of her floor and started doing her nails again, wiping away the paint that had gone astray with no comment. She reached over and tapped a button on her laptop, and music started playing, discordant tones began to ring, setting a stage for the song. A few beats later, it came crashing down into a riff on the guitar, followed by breathy singing.
“This is pretty cool,” Ember began, doing her best to focus on the music for a while. She tried to hold her core in her chest. “Who is it?”
“They’re a pretty new band,” Sam answered, smiling and looking up from the work on her nails. She waved the brush around in the air, painting out a name. “They’re called Existain't, and they’re a goth band from Illinois. They’ve been doing a lot of shows lately to drum up some charity money, helping inner-city women.” She frowned, suddenly cutting off her explanation before letting out a sigh. “I wish I could go see them though.”
Ember gently grabbed the brush out of Sam’s hand and grasped the bare-nailed hand in hers. Sam acquiesced without comment, comfortably, as if they’d performed this ritual countless times before.
“Why can’t you?” Ember asked, swiping the brush across Sam’s thumbnail.
“Well,” Sam began after a moment, “usually the answer to that would be because they don’t do shows here. When I say new band, I mean, like… really new. They haven’t gotten any big gigs. Only small-time stuff that I heard about from some forums. I did manage to find some of their music online, but in order to get a CD, I think I ordered directly from one of their homes.”
Sam shrugged, and Ember shot her a look as the resulting movement made Ember’s brush slide off a little. Sam gave an apologetic smile before it fell into a frown. “But the real answer to that is because they are playing at a local club tonight, but it’s a 21 plus club. And well… I’m just fourteen. You know that.”
Ember let out a hum. "Yeah, but you turn 15 in a month or two, right?"
"Still not 21," Sam countered. She sighed and looked away. “It sucks too, I really wanted to see them, but of course they had to get a gig at a place I can’t go.” She shook her head and groaned. “It’d have been a night to remember.”
That word sent a shiver down Ember’s spine, a tingle of warmth and glow that she should never feel, as a ghost. A sign of what was happening to her.
“So?” Ember said. She tried to keep her voice as casual as possible, and not let any of the fondness and longing she was feeling at the idea of being remembered come through her voice. It was easier than it should be, she was a master at controlling her voice.
It was also almost impossible.
Sam raised an eyebrow at Ember, either Ember didn’t succeed in hiding everything, or she was a little too used to Danny being well… Baby-Pop. Ember didn’t explain herself, she could still feel her core doing flips and circling upwards inside her. Instead, she focused on finishing off the coat of black on Sam’s nails, releasing her. Sam shook her hand in the air, trying to aid the drying process. Ember summoned a guitar pick and scraped off the smeared black nail polish from when Sam moved her hands.
Once finished Sam looked her fingers over.
“Thanks,” she muttered. The statement was automatic, but her thoughts were distracted by what Ember was trying to imply. Tearing her eyes away from her nails, she looked back up at Ember. “Look, I know you’re like, a cool rock star or whatever, but I’m not going to use a fake ID, if that’s what you mean. Nobody would buy it, anyways.”
Ember rolled her eyes and brought two of her fingers together. Fire sprung from them, casting an eerie glow about the room as it created new shadows that danced and flickered along the walls.
“Sam…” She began slowly, “You are friends with not just one, but two ghosts who can walk through walls, or make you invisible.”
Ember stood up and walked over to Sam’s desk. She grabbed one of the other bottles of nail polish, a pale light blue one that Sam’s mother probably had bought for her at one point, and then grabbed a mechanical pencil.
Her idea was put aside rather quickly as Sam jumped up and dashed towards her closet. “The shows in an hour! I gotta change!”
Ember reached out and snatched Sam’s wrist, dragging her back toward the floor. “Did you forget I can teleport?”
Sam’s face lit up. “So I have time to pick out, like, a really cool outfit?”
Ember smiled, soaking in the adoration. The fire in her heart stirred. From the joy on her face, Ember knew that Sam would remember this for a long, long time.