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The thunder rolls across the sky, rattling Tucker's teeth. Danny doesn't seem to mind- the lightning he hates, true, but he loves the thunder and the rain.
Tucker low-key wishes it was snowing instead- not that he'd say that aloud. Wishes were easy to twist. The old man uses his heel to rock in the bench swing he and Sam had installed.... 20 years ago? 30?
No, it was 20. Sam had died just a few years after- not that it slowed her down any.
Danny laughs at something Sam says, but Tucker can't hear it. That isn't new, either, his hearing started going downhill at 25. Now, at 89, he's completely deaf in his left ear and his hearing in his right isn't exactly great.
He coughs, winces, rubs his chest, and presses into the ice-cold hand on his forehead. "I'm okay," he says.
Danny, in all his perpetually 16-year-old glory, is frowning at him, bright green eyes glinting in the half-light from the lone porch lamp. "No you're not," his friend argues.
He's still so high-pitched in this form, still a young boy. He never grew up, though ironically it's helped separate the ghost of Danny Fenton and Phantom. Phantom looks like a ghost in his 30's now.
Fenton had stopped aging shortly after he died. Phantom kept aging for a few years after that, until a fight with Darkseid ended up with the villain dead- and Danny's human form dead as well.
"Danny," Tucker argues, "I'm okay. I don't feel sick."
"He's right," says Sam near his good ear. He's always been grateful her ghost form looks like she did before the cancer; maybe a little too much like she did under Undergrowth, but still healthy. Healthy-ish.
"See?" Says Tucker. "I'm fine."
"No," says Sam, "I mean Danny's right. You're sick. We should get you inside."
The Foley House is the most haunted house in Amity Park these days; Tucker lives with four people, but he's the only living one.
"Maybe this weather is a little too rough for you to be out here," says Jazz behind him, placing one too- cold hand on his shoulder. She'd died in a car accident just 8 years ago, but she looks in her prime again, bright-eyed at 40.
"Not you too," he gripes without heat. Then coughs again, dammit.
"Food's ready," calls Jazz's husband. The food is only for him and their living guests, really, but they'll all have their ectoplasmic versions at the table. Tucker's family may be dead, but he's hardly alone.
He's lucky. When Jason's not in his haunt in Gotham, he's an amazing cook. Much better than Danny or Jazz, and the less said about Tim's lack of skill, the better. Sam still tries to make him vegan. He refuses more on principle than anything, at this point. She's dealt with a carnivore since they were 9, she knew what she was getting into.
Danny offers his hand. Tucker tries to stand up once, twice, and takes the hand before the third attempt. He's successful this time, and grateful no one makes any mention of his... difficulties.
There's shouts and running down the stairs as the grandkids, grand-nieces, grand-nephews, and great-grandkids - so many of the little buggers, though he loves them all to death- rush to get first dibs, and the kids, nieces, and nephews, though they're hardly kids anymore, try to settle them down.
At this point, he, Jason, and Danny all get called Grandpa, Gramps, or Pops, even though Danny's only kid is Ellie, and even that's just a technicality seeing as she's his clone. Jazz and Sam both get called Grandma and Oma, respectively, regardless of whose kid or grandkid is talking to them.
They've all been wrapped up in each other's lives so long, it doesn't matter who has whose blood in their veins.
They're here for the family reunion, once a year, but this one is a little extra special. He's turning 90 tomorrow.
Tucker knows he's dying. He's a day away from 90, and with as much danger as he's been around in his long life, he was shocked to make it to 20. 40 was impossible. 89 is... something else.
They usually alternate yearly between Wayne Manor in Gotham and Tucker's home here, but for the last few years, it's been here. His body may be going but his mind is still sharp. Tucker knows the excuses are just that, but he pretends to buy them so his extended clan feels a little better about not allowing him to travel at his age.
Tucker walks into a wall of noise, is overwhelmed by insistence to look at this one's drawing, listen to what happened on that one's field trip, and so on.
He deals with it with patience and grace, doing his best to give them all equal attention, all equal time. He knows, now, that's what you remember. Not the events themselves, sometimes, but how the people there made you feel. And he has always been delighted to be a father, grandfather, and now great-grandfather.
One of his daughters who, at 47 looks so much like his mother it hurts some days, helps him to his recliner as Danny phases through the crowd to the back.
Perks of knowing a very powerful ice core ghost- if it's raining, he can make an ice bubble. Quite frankly, Tucker loves the way it looks, but would still rather it be snowing. The rain makes his lungs have to work just that much harder.
"Daddy, don't you want to sit down?"
"No, baby girl," though Khepri hadn't been a baby girl for a very long time. She was still his baby girl, his and Sam's youngest who looks like Tucker's mother but for Sam's purple eyes. "It'll take more work to get me back up. Tell me how work's going?"
Some of the older kids start going out the back door, following Danny to set up food. At Wayne Manor this is a catered event, with waiters paid handsomely to ignore the sheer number of dead people (though the undead are hardly the weirdest thing in Gotham). Here, it's more of a buffet style affair, though as the eldest living members, he and Damian will have their plates brought to them.
"All meat, just enough veggies to keep mom off your back?" Khepri asks with a smile.
He nods. "You sure know me, baby girl, I'm a creature of habit."
She laughs. "Uncle Damian, do you want any of the ribs, or is that too messy?"
Damian isn't technically her uncle- neither Sam nor Tucker are related by blood to Jazz, who married his older brother, or Danny who's currently courting another of Damian's brothers- neither of whom are actually related to him by blood either.
But as he'd thought before, at this point, it didn't matter.
Damian, who'd had a long time to grow out of the worst of his snotty behavior, though was still a neat freak at 73, considers it. "I think not, but thank you for the offer."
"I'll see if Pops made any of that goat stuff you like so much, or fish."
"If not, it's not a problem. Just don't load me down with as much ranch as your father."
She laughs. "Nobody eats as much ranch as Daddy, don't worry."
Dinner goes well. Suspiciously well, and judging by Damian's narrowed eyes, he's not the only one who finds it odd that no pranks were pulled, none of Gotham's newest generation of rogues decided to (attempt and miserably fail to) crash the party, none of Danny's rogues decided to show, and Dick and Starfire's granddaughter and her boyfriend weren't threatening to break up over something stupid.
"Something smell fishy to you, old man?" Tucker asks.
"Rich, coming from you," Damian shoots back, "but yes, and it's not the trout."
His eyes are focused on Tim, dead but still around, who treats them to a mischievous grin.
More people start filling in once the food is gone and the youngest start throwing away the paper plates and napkins. "Sammy!" Tucker shouts, knowing the fraid bond will carry his voice further than his mouth will.
Two cold elbows are propped on his shoulders and he looks up into a fang- filled grin. "What's wrong, Tuck?"
"I don't know, you tell me," he replies.
"Omar and Tammy were wanting to wait for sometime the family is all together," she explains, which isn't an explanation at all until the Rabbi walks up front and a wedding march sounded through a big set of speakers.
Sam's claws rake gently through his tight curls. The second part of her sentence, the one she doesn't say, is one he understands. Nobody knows who's going to make a ghost and who won't- and Omar wants his grandfather to be there for this.
Mar'i didn't get to have Dick at her wedding, sadly, even if they've been around ectoplasm. Nobody knows who's going to make a ghost.
His grandson is wearing a suit for once, the only time he's seen him in since Mar'i got married a few years back. He waves at Tucker, looking about two seconds from a panic attack. Tucker gives him a thumbs-up, fondly remembering his own nerves from so long ago.
The wedding is beautiful. He's glad they did this, but even though he's just sat here for a few hours, he's exhausted. He's having more breathing difficulties, wonders if he should've asked Danny to bribe Vortex for either a sunny day or snow, if there had to be precipitation.
Sam helps him up to their bedroom. He'd been terrified of sleeping alone, then six days after her death, she'd come and scolded him for two hours straight for not taking care of himself.
Aside from those six days and the rare times the Justice League needs her for more than a day, he's not slept alone since. Tonight's no different, even though the night is young and ghosts are nocturnal. As always, he tries to get her to go enjoy her afterlife.
"I'm reading right now," she says with a dismissive wave, eyes glowing green in the darkness.
"One of our grandkids just got married," he retorts dryly, "I know you don't want to miss that."
"Omar and Tammy will understand," she says firmly.
"Yeah, like we understood when your parents didn't show? Just give them a few hours," he cajoles, "then you can come back up here and I won't say a word."
He can't read her face in the dark. His eyes aren't as good as they once were. He's liminal, true, but cataracts are a bitch. Her hand cups his cheek, she presses a soft kiss to the corner of his mouth. "Danny will be up here in a minute."
"Sammy."
"I stay or Danny. Pick."
He sighs heavily, then regrets it, coughing miserably for a solid minute before trying to catch his breath with heavy wheezing. Sam shoves the inhaler into his hand, guides it to his mouth, one puff, two, and he can breathe just a little.
It's getting harder.
Tucker has never smoked, not a day in his life, but the sheer amount of radiation he's been around took its toll on his lungs. He has 50% lung function now, and the less said about his cardiac ejection fraction score the better.
His fangs cut into his tongue and cheek, iron in his mouth. He breathes deeply, greedily.
Tucker knows why Sam is doing this. It's why he hasn't once tonight snapped at his friends for babying him. In the weeks before Jason died, the sheer possessiveness Jazz showed as a halfa was nerve-wracking.
The month before Sam died, the longest time she was alone was to shower, and that was only because she and Tucker threatened to put up the ghost shields.
Jazz's human death had been sudden, unexpected.
Now, Tucker was getting the ghost guard treatment. Just because he was dying didn't mean he had to be alone during the process.
"Go tell Tim I'm stealing his ice pack. Too damn hot in here," he said softly.
She squeezed his hand. He pretends not to notice the teardrops fall on his arm. "Who knows, if Tim thinks he has competition, maybe he'll finally let Danny sweep him off his feet," she agrees, voice rough.
She doesn't beg, doesn't plead, not his Sammy. Too proud for that, and he loves her for it. She knows he'll break if she does, and he respects him enough not to manipulate him, and he loves her for that, too.
Danny glows in his ghost form, more than most besides Ember and Skulker. He walks through the door as Phantom, shuts it behind him, and sits on the bed in Sam's place.
He inherited Jack Fenton's height eventually, might actually be a little taller. Tucker wonders, not for the first time, what Danny would look like, if he hadn't died at 14, then again, far too young, at 18.
Danny reaches around him silently, letting Tucker use his massive shoulder as a pillow. It feels good against the heat in his chest. "You and Tim still trying to date?"
"I think I've given up on my terrible flirting skills," Danny replies. "Not that I don't still want him, I do, but I'm getting tired of chasing and not getting chased back, you know?"
"I get it. But man. You don't have forever- or maybe you do, actually. Point is, you gotta get your man."
Tim had his own little Happily Ever After with Bernard- at least, until a drive-by shooting made Tim a widower and dead on the same day.
Tim had been skittish, to put it mildly, when it came to love. So had Danny, after having lost Val to heart disease years ago. Neither had made ghosts, and now the two remaining were playing the world's most awkward game of chicken.
"Yeah," Danny said with a heavy sigh. "Yeah, I'm going to give him about a year of no chasing and see what he does. After that, well. I have time to find someone else."
"Sam's going to yell at him tonight."
"Shit. I'll go and-"
Tucker holds his friends hand. "Let her. He needs to get his head on straight, and I know you. You'll stop trying to romance him for a week, tops. You've always liked the mean ones."
"That's not true!"
"Paulina, Valerie, Mitch, Summer, that whole thing with Kitty and Johnny, now Tim- face it. You have a type."
Danny huffs out a laugh and rests his head on Tucker's own. "I think maybe you're right. Hot people who can kick my ass. And also I need to give people time to grieve and stop having unrealistic expectations."
"Jazz?"
"Jazz," Danny confirms.
Ellie comes in a little while later after Danny tries, and miserably fails, to get the topic off of his love life. He doesn't want Danny to go from hard crushing to genuinely obsessed with a ghost who can never love him back. They both have too much trauma with Vlad.
Which, maybe Tim can. It's only been a year since he and Bernard died, Danny's had 15 to grieve over his on and off thing with Val.
Ellie tells them all about the colony on Mars she's been haunting for the last year or so, and the subject successfully derails Danny's mind and tickles his space Obsession. He wouldn't be able to focus on the subject even if he wanted to.
Ellie leaves and Tim, awkwardly, comes in. Tucker gives them a little help by starting an engineering question, knowing both will jump on it. They do, awkwardly. He's going to laugh so hard about Danny acting like he was 14 with a crush again when Tim leaves.
Maybe if he makes a ghost, gets to see how this next year (or more likely, knowing Danny, week) plays out, maybe then he'll agree with Danny that if he just gives it a little more patience, gives Tim a little more time to mentally sort out a lifetime of grief from losing Bernard, they'll be good together.
As it is, he'll leave that to Sam, if she sticks around after he dies.
Tucker catches a nap, wakes to find Danny and Jason having an awkward conversation that he pretends to sleep through so he can catch the gossip.
The chismé, as his daughter-in-law Rosa would say.
It's good chismé. Although it makes him wheeze because he's laughing so hard, so maybe too good.
It took Vlad about three or so years to get over Maddie's death and to haunt the city or Green Bay like the true Fruitloop he was and still is. He isn't really hostile anymore, just very into the Green Bay Packers and cheese.
According to Jason, he'd be at the party, in fact, if it weren't for the fact the Packers were playing the Cowboys in the Superbowl tomorrow and he had a 257-step list of things to do to guarantee a win.
One of these days, he was going to figure out how to get around the Packers ghost shield and they were going to have trouble. Until then, if he wanted to hand-paint the names of every Packers player who had or was currently playing for the team on grains of rice and cast good luck charms on them, they'd let him.
His next visitor is Damian- they weren't very close in their younger years, but there's something special about being the last (non-immortal, non-alien) members of their generation of heroes. It binds them together, though without that shared trauma and joy, Tucker doesn't know if they'd ever have been more than coworkers.
The point is moot- they're friends now, and both are too stubborn to give up first.
He doesn't mean to, honest, but he falls asleep while he and Danny are griping about the new Batman. Terry doesn't believe in ghosts, despite the ghost of Bruce Wayne being his teacher. Bruce apparently finds this hilarious, and is trying to get Terry to be as stealthy as a ghost.
Danny is offended on principle. Damian is offended because the kid's now sneaker than him and he has a competitive streak 10 miles wide.
He wakes up.
He's surprised he wakes up, to be honest, sandwiched between Sam and Danny like they were kids hiding out in Tucker's bedroom again.
At some point, the celebration must've ended, because there's light coming through the curtains. He swallows when he realizes he can read the spines of the books from bed. Takes a deep breath, and it isn't labored.
Tucker holds up his hands, and they're new-ghost green, the minty color they all wore for the first few days or weeks before their forms settled and they could mimic their human forms.
"Guys, is it in bad taste for me to possess my corpse so I don't ruin a wedding and a family reunion? And a birthday party?"
"Only you, Tucker," Sam laughs. "Only you."
"Take it from me, bud, a new ghost doesn't have a ton of control. You're less likely to freak someone out if you come down a ghost," says Danny.
That's fair. "Well, I didn't get to congratulate Omar last night, so I suppose I should now."
"In an hour or two," Sam urges, "it's pretty early."
Later, in an hour or two, they go downstairs. Tammy and her folks are a little uncomfortable, understandably so- Tucker looks like some sort of cyber Pharoah, not the nice elderly man they'd met last night- but Tucker's grateful they raised their kids, grandkids, and the rest of the lot around ghosts.
There's no screaming or crying, while Jazz calls the funeral director to handle his remains. Instead, he talks with Omar for a while before Jason- Tim is still banned from the kitchen- and a few others shout that breakfast is ready.
There's shouts and running down the stairs as the grandkids, grand-nieces, grand-nephews, and great-grandkids - so many of the little buggers, though he loves them all to death- rush to get first dibs, and the kids, nieces, and nephews, though they're hardly kids anymore, try to settle them down.
Tucker walks into a wall of noise, is overwhelmed by questions about mummies, if he's going to be a superhero again, and birthday presents.
He deals with it with patience and grace, doing his best to give them all equal attention, all equal time. He knows, now, that's what you remember. Not the events themselves, sometimes, but how the people there made you feel. And he has always been delighted to be a father, grandfather, and now great-grandfather.
None of that has changed- he just has a little more time to give, now.