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“I just… I don’t understand it,” Valerie says. “We’re enemies. Right? Like we actually are. But I swear he took that hit for me. There’s nothing else he could have been doing.”
Danny, for his part, has adopted his usual strategy when Valerie starts talking about Phantom: say as little as possible. So instead, he just makes a small noise of acknowledgement.
“I just don’t know what to make of it, is all,” Valerie says. “I mean, I don’t know. Does it sound like him to you?”
Stopping you from getting hurt by one of my parents’ weapons? Yeah, that sounds like me, Danny doesn’t say. Instead, he adjusts the bandana that hides his hair over the sunglasses that hide his eyes and says, “I don’t know. Not from what you’ve said of him before.”
“I know,” Valerie groans, turning so her board flies into the alleyway in between the buildings ahead. Danny tightens his grip around her waist from behind so he doesn’t fly off.
“And he put himself in harm’s way too,” Valerie continues. “I don’t understand it.”
“I don’t either,” Danny says. And because he can’t help asking, “So uh, what are you gonna do about it?”
“Right now? Nothing,” Valerie says, taking them up over the next building. “But it was definitely weird. I want to know more. Maybe… maybe I’ll just pay closer attention, watch him for a little bit.”
Well, that doesn’t say anything about what he should do. He really doesn’t want to manipulate Valerie’s feelings in regards to him, even if her no longer actively hunting him sounds nice. But he can’t see any clear direction for ‘I’m going to watch to see what I can learn.’ Obviously he’s not going to suddenly start being nefarious. But if he does more good deeds than usual, that’s manipulative, right? But it’s not like he can just ignore it if people are in danger, and he can’t just stop fighting ghosts.
Honestly, there are times he wishes he hadn’t found out who Valerie is just because of the headache of trying to figure out how to act around her anymore.
“That sounds like an okay idea,” Danny says anyway, because he has to say something to that. “Just be safe, okay?”
“Aww, are you worried about me?” Valerie asks, and Danny can hear the tease in her voice even through her mask. “Don’t worry, Danny. I’ll still kick some ghost butt.”
Danny smiles a little. “I have no doubt about that.”
Valerie laughs, and flies them both down to an alleyway a little ways from the school. Danny hops off, and after making sure no one’s around, takes off his sunglasses and bandana.
“Thanks for the ride to school,” he says.
“No problem,” Valerie says, retracting her suit into her backpack. “Sure beats the bus, huh?”
Danny grins. “You said it.”
They walk the rest of the route to school, holding hands until they reach the parking lot, at which point they let go. Danny did manage to ignore his guilt at the idea long enough to tell Valerie he doesn’t want Sam and Tucker to know they’re dating. Valerie asked no questions, which Danny appreciated. But that means all their dates take place outside school, and inside, they act as they always have— or, as they always have since they became friends.
So as they part ways in the hallway, Valerie turns and gives him a bright smile, says “See you at lunch,” and that’s that.
Danny grabs his stuff from his locker and starts heading for his first class, when suddenly, as he’s walking past the janitor’s closet, he hears a very clear sob from the inside.
He startles and turns to face it. He doesn’t hear another sob, but there’s some very obvious muffled breathing.
“Uh you okay?” Danny calls. He knocks gently on the door, only for it to swing open, the person inside clearly not having shut it all the way.
The person inside whirls around, and Danny stares at her for a minute, stunned.
“S-Sam?” he asks, trying to process what he’s seeing. “Are you alright?”
Sam pulls in a shaky, horrible sounding breath, and gives him a terrible attempt at a glare.
“Leave— leave me alone,” she gasps, but it ends with her pressing her hand over her mouth in another sob.
“Hey,” Danny says, his hands and concern both shooting up as he takes a step into the closet. “Hey, what’s wrong, you—”
“I said leave me alone!” Sam screams, and reaches out and shoves him hard back into the shelves of the closet. Danny wheezes, the wind knocked out of him, but Sam runs out past him before he can say anything else. Danny runs out into the hall as soon as he gets his breath back, but Sam’s already gone.
…
After that, Danny doesn’t see Sam for the rest of the morning, which makes him even more concerned. He looks for a chance to talk to Tucker about it, but doesn’t manage to find one before lunch. So he meets up quickly with Valerie, tells her he’ll be right back, and heads quickly to the lunchroom to check on her.
Instead, he finds Tucker sitting alone at a lunch table. He looks up as he sees Danny approach, and looks away quickly after, but Danny can still see the nerves on his face.
“I haven’t seen Sam all day,” Tucker says anyway. “Do you think she’s sick?”
“She’s not,” Danny says, looking at Tucker until he draws his gaze. Tucker looks at him for a whole half a second before looking back down at the table, which has to be a record for lately.
“Actually,” Danny says, sitting down across from him. “I found her this morning crying in the janitor’s closet.”
Tucker’s head snaps up, and now he’s looking at Danny. “What?”
But before Danny can explain the little he knows, a box slams down on the table next to them, startling them both.
“We’re having a protest about Phantom,” Sam announces, glaring down at them both from over the box.
Danny and Tucker both exchange a brief glance before turning back to Sam. Her face hasn’t changed from the firm glare she’s wearing.
“Um, okay,” Danny says, carefully. “Sure.”
He doesn’t want to ask why, because while he doesn’t see any traces of that morning’s breakdown in her face, the fact that he hasn’t seen her since then can’t be a coincidence.
“You’re joking, right?” Tucker asks, looking at Sam in a way Danny can’t read.
“Absolutely not,” Sam says, with a harsh glare right at Tucker. “My permit’s in the box, we’re setting it up after school.”
“You and me?” Tucker asks.
“No, all three of us, obviously,” Sam says. She still hasn’t sat down. “I’m not just going to leave Danny out.”
Danny raises his eyebrows slightly but doesn’t say anything. It doesn’t feel like it would go over well to say much.
Tucker, however, does not seem to get this memo. “Sam—” he starts.
“Great,” Sam snaps instead of letting him finish. “I’ll meet you out front after school. Bye.”
With that, she picks up the box again and storms off again without sitting down.
“She’s joking, right?” Tucker says after she leaves, seeming to be directed more at the empty space than at Danny. Danny responds anyway.
“I don’t think she is,” he says slowly. “But really, she didn’t look great this morning. I don’t know if…” he trails off, not exactly sure what he’s trying to say.
Because what he’s thinking is I don’t know if I should take this too personally.
But he can’t say that to Tucker.
He looks after Sam for a moment, but though he can feel Tucker looking at him, when he turns Tucker just drops his gaze back to the table.
But after a second, he nods. “Okay,” he says. “After school, then.”
Danny nods. “Yeah,” he says. And that’s that.
…
Sam really goes all out. It isn’t that surprising, especially with how rich her family is, but it’s still rather impressive in the course of a single day.
There’s giant posters with his face— well, his face as Phantom— on them, inside a stereotypical red circle with a line through it. Sam hangs up a list of major grievances right next to the stage that’s already set up. There’s stuff like property damage, public disruptions, time taken to finish fights, and a list of every single person who’s ever gotten hurt during a ghost fight. Admittedly, the last part stings the most. Danny keeps away from the stage.
He personally is standing at the archway entrance, handing out rubber bracelets that read “Phantom Sucks,” which, well if anything he can laugh at the irony.
And for the most part, he’s succeeding in his “don’t take this personally” plan. Sure, it doesn’t feel great that so many people show up, many of whom he recognizes. There’s people who got caught in the line of fire and some whose cars got smashed or store windows got broken.
But for the most part, Danny’s able to keep his mind off it all. In part because he’s put himself technically out of the actual event, and in part because he’s thinking more about Sam’s slightly manic energy as they helped put everything up. This still feels like an aftereffect of the way he found her this morning. Which just makes it more worrying that he doesn’t know what’s wrong.
He’s interrupted while watching Sam up on the stage, making a speech that, thankfully, he can’t quite hear.
“You are kidding me, right?”
Danny turns to see Jazz standing behind him with her arms crossed.
“Okay look let me explain,” Danny says, holding his hands up.
Jazz turns her head to the sky in exasperation.
“Jazz, seriously,” Danny says.
“Fine,” Jazz says, waving a hand at him. “I’d love to hear it.”
“I found Sam having some kind of breakdown in the closet this morning,” Danny says, glancing briefly back at her. “I don’t know what’s going on, but I don’t think this is really about me.”
“And that means you have to show up why, exactly?”
Danny crosses his arms. “I’m worried,” he says.
“You can do that at home.”
“Yeah, okay Jazz, thanks,” he says, glaring at her a little bit. “I’m just waiting until I can get a chance to ask her what’s wrong. Then I’ll come home and you can lecture me.”
“Who said I was going to lecture you?” Jazz says. “You’re free to make your own terrible choices. Have a great time at the Danny Phantom protest.”
She turns and starts to walk away.
“I’m really not taking it personally,” Danny says before she’s too far away to hear.
Jazz glances back at him again. She looks him up and down for a couple seconds, obviously scrutinizing, before her glare fades just a little.
“Okay,” she says. “Good.” And then she leaves.
Danny sighs and leans back against the cardboard archway, shortly before realizing that’s not a great idea when the flimsy cardboard collapses and he falls on top of it on the ground.
“Cardboard, it’s cardboard,” he mutters to himself as he pushes himself back up, and pulls the arch with him.
“Danny?”
Danny squeezes his eyes shut. Oh, great.
“Valerie, hey,” he says, turning to face her with the best smile he can muster. “You here for the protest?”
Valerie, however, has a look of slight disgust on her face, which throws him off guard.
“Uh, no,” Valerie says, which doesn’t help in his confusion. “Are you?”
“Oh, nah, I’m just helping Sam out,” Danny says with a glance back at the stage that hopefully just screams “casual.”
Valerie steps up next to him, and when Danny looks over he sees her looking at the stage. He’s not sure how he feels about the look on her face.
Sam screams something about how dangerous Phantom is loud enough for the two of them to hear, and Valerie wrinkles her nose.
“Wow,” she mutters after a second. “I hope I haven’t ever sounded like that.”
Danny blinks. “Huh?”
Valerie turns to face him. “Let’s get out of here,” she says.
“Uh, I was actually waiting to talk to Sam,” Danny says, looking back at the stage. “She… I don’t think she’s alright.”
“Oh she’s definitely not,” Valerie says. “Let’s get out of here anyway.”
“What? I can’t just leave her if I know she’s not okay.”
“Sure you can,” Valerie says. “She’s been awful to you. I know that, and I don’t even know everything that’s happened between you guys. She also hasn’t asked for your help. You can’t be telling me you want to be here. You don’t look like you want to be here.”
Danny crosses his arms. “Of course I don’t want to be here,” he mutters.
“Then let’s go,” Valerie says. “Come on, I’ve had a date idea I’ve been meaning to take us on for a while.”
Danny hesitates. He looks up towards the stage one more time.
…He’s not getting Sam’s attention any time soon. And he can always ask her what was up tomorrow.
Danny takes a deep breath, pushes his guilt to the side, and turns to Valerie. “Okay,” he says. “Let’s go.”
…
Valerie takes them both a ways away from the protest before she pulls out her board. By the time she does, Danny’s been expecting it though, so he puts his bandana and sunglasses on and climbs on behind her. Then he wraps his arms around her so he doesn’t fly off as she takes off.
He wouldn’t be in any danger if he did fly off, but she doesn’t know that, and that’s not really how he wants her to find out.
Valerie doesn’t go nearly as fast as he can, but she still likes to go fast, and Danny can appreciate the rush of wind in his face as they both head upwards. For all the problems being half ghosts causes, he’ll never get sick of flying.
They both end up high in the air, high enough that Danny can see the clouds around them.
“Are you nervous being this far up?” Valerie asks as they stop. “We can go lower if you are.”
Danny shakes his head. “I trust you,” he says. It’s only a partial lie. He knows Valerie won’t let him fall.
Valerie smiles back at him, then hits a button on her board that locks it in place, and sits down, pulling her hood off. Danny pulls off his bandana and sunglasses and sits down next to her.
“We’re gonna be up here a while,” she says, leaning back on the board. “For the sunset for me, and then the stars for you.”
Danny grins. “Awesome,” he says. He doesn’t have to try too hard to get excitement in his voice. Even though it may not be his first time stargazing this high up in the air, it never gets old for him. And doing it with someone is new. He’s glad it gets to be Valerie.
Valerie grins back at him, and leans back on her board. There’s just enough space there for her to lean on her hands, and Danny marvels a minute at how calm she looks. She doesn’t have any natural abilities to rely on up here. If something goes wrong with that board, as far as she knows, they’re both in trouble. He wonders for a minute who she got it from. She said they were anonymous, but she must trust them for some reason.
“So hey,” Valerie says, bringing an end to his thoughts and drawing his gaze to her. “Can I ask you something?”
Danny nods. “Sure.”
“When you talked before about someone who makes you feel like you’re just around to vent to. Was that Sam? And the thing she vents about all the time, was that Phantom?”
Danny looks away. “Uh,” he says, “maybe.”
Valerie doesn’t say anything for a moment. When she speaks again, it’s definitely not what he expects to hear.
“Danny, why didn’t you tell me to stop talking about Phantom all the time?”
Danny looks over at her in surprise. “Huh?”
“You had to be sick of it. And you had to have not wanted to hear me go on about him too. Tell me to stop, dumbass. I will.”
“But you were angry about him because he ruined your entire life,” Danny protests. “It’s not fair of me to ask you to stop talking about all your problems.”
“Danny, that’s like, what our entire relationship is built on. We don’t ask about things the other person doesn’t want to talk about. Why shouldn’t that go the other way around too?”
“Because—” Danny starts, but he’s not sure where to go once he does. Because our not talking about anything made it so I never realized you were the Red Huntress? Because our not talking about anything means you still don’t know I’m Phantom? Because maybe sometimes we actually should talk about these things?
“Danny, I don't want you to make yourself miserable for me,” Valerie says.
“I’m not miserable,” Danny mutters.
Valerie snorts.
“Hey!”
“Well, come on. I’m not blaming myself entirely. But Danny.”
Danny looks down and starts fidgeting with his hands. “You weren’t supposed to notice that,” he mutters.
“I like you,” Valerie says. “We’re dating. I’m supposed to pay attention, aren’t I?”
Danny doesn’t say anything.
Valerie reaches out and takes one of his hands and squeezes it. “Hey,” she says. “Tell me what Sam and Tucker do that bothers you so much.”
“It’s not their fault.”
“Did I ask whose fault it was?”
Danny moves their hands so their fingers are interlaced and looks out at the sky. Partly because the sun is starting to set, and partly because it’s easier to talk when he’s not looking right at Valerie.
“We’ve been friends since we were little kids,” he says quietly. “They’re two of my favorite people in the entire world.”
“But?” Valerie prompts.
“I hate being around them now,” Danny says, wiping at his eyes with his free hand. “It’s never fun. It never feels like I can just enjoy the time. Sam is… angry. Constantly. And before, she— I mean she’s always been passionate about things, but this feels different. And Tucker never looks at me anymore. And he won’t tell me why or what’s wrong. And every single conversation we ever have is about Phantom. I mean, can’t they give the guy a break? He’s not perfect! And he shouldn’t have to be! Why does everyone expect him to get everything right all the time? It’s too much to put on one person— ghost, whatever,” he finishes with a mutter, stopping himself before he says something he shouldn’t.
Valerie’s quiet for a long moment, and Danny looks away and braces himself for some kind of comment about how he has to keep in mind that Phantom is dangerous, and it’s good that Sam and Tucker are wary of him, and god, he wants to go home and sleep.
Instead, however, Valerie turns him back to face her and pulls him into a tight hug.
“I’m sorry, Danny,” she murmurs.
Danny sniffs, and rests his head on her shoulder. “For what?”
“Making it harder for you,” Valerie says. “I mean, you still should have asked me to stop. And I’m not kidding about wanting you to do that from now on. But I am sorry.”
“You have a reason to be upset,” Danny manages.
“Yeah, I do,” Valerie agrees. “But there are things I have in my life now that I didn’t have before.” She squeezes Danny one more time and pulls back, smiling at him. “I’m closer with my dad now. And I wouldn’t trade that relationship for anything. And I’ve got you, and I wouldn’t trade that for anything either.”
“Those didn’t happen because of Phantom,” Danny says weakly. “You did that.”
“I know,” Valerie says. “But I’m starting to think… my life doesn’t have to be about him. I don’t have to define myself based on what happened with Phantom. And I mean, seeing that protest today, I…” Valerie shakes her head. “Maybe I’ve been a little hard on him.”
Danny sniffs, and wipes at his eyes again. “Sorry,” he says before Valerie can say anything. “I don’t know why I’m crying, ‘s stupid, I—”
“Oh shut up,” Valerie says. She pulls him back in for another hug, and doesn’t seem to mind when Danny takes the chance to shake in her arms.
“Hey,” she says after a while, and Danny pulls back to see her looking up. “The stars are out.”
He looks up and sees that she’s right. He sniffs again and blinks quickly to stop his eyes from blurring.
Valerie wraps her arm around Danny and points up at them with her free hand. “Which constellations can you find?”
Danny leans his head on her shoulder, and looks to find the stars that are visible. So high up, there’s less light pollution, and more to see.
“Aquarius,” he croaks, and neither of them mention how terrible his voice sounds. He points up at the constellation. “That star there is the supergiant Sadalmelik, and you can follow it down to Sadalsuud. But you can’t see the whole thing. We’d have to go further out in the country.”
“Next date, got it,” Valerie says with a smile in her voice.
“And that over there is the square of Pegasus,” Danny says. Valerie follows his point. “See it?”
“I think so,” Valerie says.
Danny sniffs one last time and drops his hand. “Sorry we talked all through the sunset,” he says.
“Oh yeah, I’m real pissed about it,” Valerie says in an obvious tease. “We have no choice but to do this again so you can make it up to me.”
Danny’s smile fades, and he doesn’t say anything. Valerie doesn’t say anything else, though, and for a long while they both sit there.
Rather than stargazing, Danny spends it trying to feel better about the decision he’s made.