Work Text:
Jack stared at the hulking mass of the portal in their basement's wall, the opening where a portal to the Ghost Zone should be yawning like the mouth of a cave, flickering dim blue with circuits.
The supposed culmination of their life's work, but instead a failure.
He still didn't know how it had failed to work, and Maddie didn't understand either. They checked and double-checked their equations, made certain the mistakes they made with their first portal didn't happen again. And yet, it had still failed, only providing sparks that sputtered and faded away in seconds.
It had been a failure.
Jack placed a hand on the rim of the portal, defeat weighing heavy on his heart. He and Maddie didn't want this to fail, wanted this to be their proof that their work wasn't a laughingstock, that they could prove ghosts and the Ghost Zone truly did exist. But it had, and now their theories nothing more than just theories backed up with rumours and supposed sightings. Their proof was gone.
And that meant that all their desperate years of getting loans from the bank and scrummaging in scrapyards and selling some of their non-ghost-hunting inventions to get the money for the portal was wasted. That the portal was now nothing more than a big hole.
That he and Maddie had to call it quits on the career they had for years.
Jack's shoulders slumped at the prospect, but he and Maddie both agreed that was what had to happen; the portal had been their way to prove their career was viable and hope to sell some of their ghost-specific inventions while proving they worked, and since it hadn't worked, they had to end things and find other careers, mostly in science, to be able to pay back the bank and keep a roof over theirs and their kids' heads and be able to pay for Jazz and Danny's education.
It was what had to be done.
As Jack pulled his hand away and made to walk away from what was supposed to be his and Mads' life achievement, his foot caught on something and he stumbled.
The large man managed to stabilise himself and he looked down to see that his foot had bene snared in a loop of wire, that other wires laid coiled about like sleeping snakes.
That's not safe, Jack thought; if he and Maddie were going to set to work on dismantling the portal and have their kids be in the lab, then wires couldn't be around to trip them up.
Jack stooped down and picked the wires up and put them to the sides, going into the portal and grabbing other wires lying about; he even unplugged the cord that was supposed to help power the portal up with electricity before it started running on ectoplasmic energy as well.
Once they were all cleared up, Jack gave one last, sad look at the portal, and walked out of the lab.
Not knowing the huge change he had done when he had shifted those wires away.