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Sam and Danny’s relationship was complicated. “Complicated” being an ambiguous phrase helpful only for social media updates, Dani knew, but there really were very few ways to define it. She herself didn’t fully understand their problems. Sometimes she felt like she was getting it, then one of them would say or do or imply something that didn’t make much sense to her at all. Sometimes it was clear they loved each other. Other times they didn’t even seem to be on the same plane of existence (err, well, you get the point).
Dani wanted to blame it on Sam. Maybe Dani wasn’t being fair. Maybe she was pushing too many of her own preferences on Sam (maybe she was just relieved there was a girl Danny crushed on that she didn’t). Whatever the reason, Dani couldn’t see how her brother could bear to… date?... her. It wasn’t that she was a bad person or anything. She was just a little… much.
“Free the pigs, free the pigs!” Was a pretty good example. Dani sighed and slouched with her hands in the pockets of her cargo pants as Sam and the other protesters waved their signs.
She had mistakenly confessed her confusion to Danny, who had then pushed her into spending a day with Sam so she could see what he apparently saw. So far all Dani had seen was the sidewalk in front of a pork processing plant and Sam’s angry scowl. She and Danny had had a fight about him intangibly going in and freeing the pigs that morning. It was obvious enough who was on what side.
Dani adjusted her sky print top, toggling a loose thread between visible and invisible just for kicks. They had been at this protest for six hours now, and it didn’t seem to her that the pigs were any closer to being freed… Though now she was really in the mood for a hotdog. Dani didn’t see how Danny stood being dragged to these things. Something about accommodating each other's interests, or something. Thank the ancients Valerie’s interests were ghost hunting and working out (and also occasionally shopping, but Dani was learning to like that one). They certainly didn’t include Dani standing out in the sun mid-July with her skin starting to take on a greenish sheen and the metallic smell of ectoplasm seeping through her shirt. She groaned and looked over at Sam, who honestly looked equally as uncomfortable.
Her dark purple hair was in an at-home pixie cut, so she didn’t have to worry about that, but her equally purple lipstick was smeared and faded when she pushed her mask to the side for a sip of water. Her white t-shirt (with a cute picture of a piglet on it that did make Dani feel a tiny bit guilty) was developing wet stains underneath her arms. It was tucked into a high-waisted black skirt and from the way Sam was shuffling, Dani assumed her thighs, tights or not, were not comfortable in the heat. She was also putting her weight off her right leg, which had a nasty-looking bite mark on it. Sam, having gone off to school in another state like Tucker, hadn’t been around to get bitten by anything ghostly, so Dani asked Danny about it, but he just said she got it from some other protest up north or something. Dani didn’t really understand, but whatever. The point was it seemed to her they’d be better off just going home and yet here they were. Still marching and yelling about something that was probably never actually going to be accomplished (and probably shouldn’t be. If she heard ‘meat is murder’ one more time…).
Sam stopped to lean against her sign for a moment, running a hand through her bangs to drag it away from her face. She reached into the side pocket of her backpack, grabbing her water bottle and lifting it towards Dani questioningly. Dani shook her head and closed her eyes. She cupped her hands together and took a steady breath before concentrating on condensing her energy. It took half a minute, but when she looked down she was clasping a snowball in her palm. Her ice powers would likely never be much stronger than this, but she was satisfied anyway. Dani smiled and took a bite while looking back up at Sam, who was shaking her head and laughing.
“Whatever suits you,” she conceded. It was a strange thing to say when one was on a quest to make the whole world vegan. Dani, not having much in the way of a filter, said so.
“Well, why don’t we leave the meat eaters to whatever suits them and go home?”
Sam furrowed her eyebrows and scowled.
“Because what suits them is wrong.”
Dani rolled her eyes.
“They’re just having a few hotdogs. Circle of life.”
“So because it’s normal it’s okay? Society normalizes some pretty shitty stuff, this is one of them and I’m not just going to accept it.” Sam dug in her stance and picked her sign back up, balancing it against her shoulder. Dani huffed and stood up straighter as well, dropping her hand from the loose thread.
“It’s really not that big of a deal. Humans need meat.”
“Humans don’t need meat. But that’s besides the point. You’ve lived in the ghost zone. Ever seen a ghost pig?”
“Ya, a ton, why?” Dani figured Sam must have known that, since she and Danny spent a fair amount of time in the zone. She had probably seen a few in her day. People tended to take notice of flying pigs.
“Don’t you wonder why? What possible trauma could an animal have gone through strong enough to make it a ghost?”
“Cujo—”
“Cujo had unfinished business,”
“Okay, are you trying to make the point that pigs become ghosts because they were eaten? Because I’m not buying it.”
“Not because they were eaten, because they were slaughtered.”
“What’s the difference supposed to be?”
Sam sighed, thought quietly for a moment, and then inclined her head towards the building they were protesting outside of. “Take a look.”
“What?”
“Go inside, take an invisible look around. You’ll see the difference.”
So Dani did.
Dani blanched.
Ten minutes and a few intangible walls later, the pigs ran free.
“Wanna go to the Nasty Burger!?” Sam shouted at her through the chaos of protesters avoiding both pigs and police (“not that there’s a distinction,” Sam snarked) as they fled through the city streets.
“Sure!” Dani answered, reaching out for Sam’s arm and turning them both intangible. “You’ll have to give me your recommendation for the vegetarian options.”
“My pleasure,” Sam assured as they flew off towards the other side of town, struck with the occasional giggle fit.
It wasn’t until they were seated with their orders that the adrenaline started to die down and Dani picked up a fry and chewed thoughtfully. Her brother was an incorrigible adrenaline junkie (“You really don’t feel it?” he asked, a manic look in his glowing eyes. Dani shrugged “I don’t know. I love a good adventure,” she answered, but Danny was already shaking his head. “No. It’s like… It’s the only time I really feel alive anymore.”), and there was currently a wild bright look on Sam’s face that matched his beyond what the distinctions between life and death should allow.
“You know, now I really don't get why you and my brother are so messy,” Dani mused aloud. Danny may have been the oblivious one, but no one accused Infinite Realms-raised (Vlad-raised one could argue, though they wouldn't if they knew what was good for them) Dani of having a good social filter. Luckily, Sam was similarly straightforward and opinionated, and Dani realized it was another thing she could appreciate about the older woman.
“Ya well me neither,” Sam scoffed as she unwrapped her salad. “Danny likes to get in his own way over nothing.”
Then again, brutal honesty had a tendency to be more brutal than honest.
Sam cringed.
“Don't tell him I said that.” Sam must have seen from Dani's expression that the plea only made Dani more likely to repeat what she'd heard, even if she didn't get what had Sam looking so shame-faced about it. “I'm serious. Not for my sake; it'll make him feel shitty…. Fine. At least if you're going to tell him, tell him I'm sorry and was just frustrated with myself.”
That was surprising.
“Are you frustrated with yourself?” Dani asked after swallowing another fry.
Sam hummed, gesturing at the air with her fork.
“Sometimes. But to be honest… it's like, I can only do my best, right? Not to say that I don't need improvement—I'm always trying to be better—but at some point it's Danny that has to accept that he is who he is, and that I'm comfortable with him the way he is… or any other way he wants to be.” She took a bite of her own food.
Dani was surprised to find out Danny still wasn't completely comfortable with being a halfa, even after all these years… even after more than Dani's entire lifetime.
“Him being… Er, his other half makes your relationship hard?” Dani asked, taking care of the semi-public space, though the overall din made it pretty discrete. She understood that maybe she couldn't grasp the violation of one day being human and then one day not, but it wasn't like Danny had ever given her any indication he disliked his ghost form. Not really.
Sam shook her head.
“It's like… I get that being like that helped him a lot when he was young. I was there; I saw how it made him feel to have that body to fall back on even if he was equally terrified of it, and Tucker and I were happy for him, when we weren’t terrified ourselves. I am happy for him. But it's a poisoned well at this point. It's making him worse and he refuses to see that.” She speared the next bite on her fork a little more aggressively.
Confused and a little irate, Dani gave Sam a disapproving look, thinking maybe she had been justified in finding Sam at fault for her and Danny's weirdness.
“You don't like his other half?”
“What? No!” Sam denied, a little too defensively. “I just don’t get—” she tapped her fork against the cardboard bowl her food was nestled in “—why he feels so much shame when he has nothing to feel ashamed about. It's everyone else who should be sorry! I get that his parents make him feel shitty sometimes—God, I really really get that—but that's even more of a reason to stand up and make sure everyone sees him as he is! Screw all of them, you know?” Sam's heated tirade mellowed and she clicked her tongue. “Not that he has to publicly come out to everyone in the world or anything if he doesn't want to, it's none of their business, but he could stand to at least not be so mortified.”
“Mortified of being human?” Even more than the inverse, Dani'd never seen any indication that Danny preferred being a ghost over being human. Why would he? He was born human. He had a whole human life in the Human Realm. He had everything. Dani clenched and unclenched her fist.
Outside, a truck passed by and a group of high schoolers made some noise in the corner. It contrasted Sam’s dead silence.
“He never told you?” She asked, but didn't need Dani's blank stare to get her answer. “Oh my god he hasn't told you. See!? This is exactly the kind of avoidant bullshit I'm talking about!” Sam steamed. “You of all people should know, for your own sake. But he's so stuck in his own head that he can't even tell his own clone why you turned out the way you did! It's selfish.” This time she stabbed her fork into the table.
“Well, he is a ghost,” Dani said, trying to unravel the rest of Sam’s statement. She thought back to her talk with Maddie Fenton many years ago now, how the woman had suggested asking Danny directly about Dani’s creation. She never had, though. Dani’d left again shortly after the encounter, and though her gender had always been a vague curiosity of hers, she’d forgotten it had even been implied that Danny might actually know the answer. That was partly because though she had never asked him directly, she’d never made it a secret that it ate at her a little. If Danny knew surely he would have told her already… right?
“He’s not a ghost.” In Sam’s surprise, she made an immediate counter to Dani’s words, but it was obvious all the wind had been taken out of herself by the lack of a rebuttal.
“Half of one, whatever,” Dani rolled her eyes and took a sip of her drink. Sam eyed her for a moment longer.
“Last time I said Danny was being self-centered, Tucker said I wasn’t being fair. He was pretty upset,” she said, almost pomptingly.
“Ghosts are self-absorbed. It’s the way we are, malicious or not. And to be honest, usually not. If Danny doesn’t always think about every possible reaction to his wants and needs, it just proves he has a strong core and a functioning obsession,” Dani answered. Selfishness was a virtue in the Infinite Realms, and while she had metaphorical duel citizenship, she was still figuring out a lot about the culture of the Living World.
“Fine. But that’s it then? I’m supposed to accept that? He’s a ghost so he gets to avoid difficult decisions?” Sam scoffed. “He’s human too, and he knows fully well how to be it.”
“You know what, you want me to be defensive? Fine!” Dani snapped, surprising even herself. “I can do that too. What are you even saying?” she demanded. “He's not human enough? He’s too selfish? Are you kidding me? I wish he was more selfish! He's so human, the most human. I wish…” I could be more like him, were the words Dani had never imagined she would ever even think to say. Was… was that what she wanted? To be more like Danny?
“Iwish he could trust people more!” Sam finished instead. “I wish he could trust me more when I tell him what I feel… or at the very least I wish that he could stand to be alive when he's with me.”
“Well what’s so great about being alive, being human, anyway?” Dani huffed, sitting back down and staring at her food.
“When I sleep with my boyfriend, I would like it to be warm at least from time to time,” Sam snarked. Maybe she was just hoping to put Dani off with the mention of sex and Danny in the same sentence, but Dani grew up in the Ghost Zone and at this point human sexuality could do nothing but fascinate her. Besides, there was a more important point.
“So then you're not okay with it,” Dani caught.
“What?”
“You said Danny needs to accept that you're ‘comfortable with him any way he wants to be’, but you just spent a lot of words saying you're not comfortable when Phantom is around you. So you're not comfortable with who he wants to be.”
Sam scowled.
“The problem isn't Phantom. It's that it isn't what he wants, not really.”
“How would you know?” Dani, who couldn't stand the idea of other people deciding things for her, asked bitterly.
“Because it's not about being Phantom! It's about doing everything he can not to be Danny… not to be…” She mulled the words over for a second. “It's about… he's hiding from being human and I… I hate it. I hate that he'll only give me his mask when I'm trying to be close to him. And the more I have to… the more I have to stare at that face, the more I… the more I hate it. I don't want to–Iknow it's still just Danny–but I'm really growing to… to hate looking at that side of him,” she realized, face growing horrified. “I hate touching that side of him.”
“So you don’t like his other half,” Dani pushed even as she acknowledged to herself that it was strange Danny would want to fall back on his ghost half of all things for matters of intimacy. She knew that it wasn’t… it wasn’t the same.
“I suppose I don’t,” Sam gathered herself and replied unapologetically to Dani’s accusation. “Not if it’s the only side he’s going to show me.”
“Well then tough luck! What do you even want him to do? He’s just as much a ghost as he is a human and that’s all there is to it. I still don’t even get what you’re saying. Phantom isn’t some mysterious different person, he’s just Danny. What does it even matter if that’s the skin Danny wants to wear around you? Would you be mad if he spent too much time being human?” If Dani was even more honest with herself, she knew that it wasn’t unreasonable for Sam to be wary around Danny’s other half. There was an uncanniness to ghosts in their proximity to death that made humans fundamentally uncomfortable in an irrevocable sort of way. Sam could love Phantom without being able to fully embrace him, and considering how Dani’s own ghost side’s emotions worked, the inverse was probably already equally true in how ‘Phantom’ felt about Sam.
“It’s not about him being a ghost. I don’t care about that. I’ve never cared about that!” Sam argued.
“Then what is it about! Because it seems to me like you’re just scared!”
“Maybe I am!” Sam replied, then paused, seeming much more surprised than Dani. Dani scoffed.
“That’s pathetic. Danny deserves better than someone who’s scared of him,” she crossed her arms defensively. Danny was going to kill her for saying all of this. He was definitely going to lecture her about intrinsic human fears.
Immediately, Sam’s surprise sharpened back into anger.
“I’m not scared of him,” she sneered incredulously. That surprised Dani much more than the admittance of any fear in the first place.
“Then what?” she challenged.
“I’m…” Sam struggled with her words, settling back down in her seat as she attempted to fish them out of her chest. “It’s that… It feels like…. He's so mortified and ashamed of his human body that he'd rather be dead than let anybody see it.” The silence sat for a moment as Sam fought further with her thoughts, letting that idea settle in Dani’s mind. “And that… that’s what scares me,” she finally understood, “I'm scared for him,” she whispered, looking both awed and worried.
Dani on the other hand was more lost than ever.
“His human body?”
Sam snapped out of it, pursing her lips and shaking her head.
“Nothing, ignore me… but maybe talk to Danny. And put your foot down.” Dani hummed in response. She wasn’t completely satisfied, but with the information she had now, she had nothing helpful to add to the conversation.
Finishing her food, Sam got up to recycle the cardboard bowl. Returning, she gave Dani a look that started off conflicted, but settled on uncharacteristically soft.
“I had a good time hanging out. I admire the hell out of your guts and I want you to know that if you ever need anything, I’m here just as much as Danny. Danny and Tucker and Jazz and Valerie are all my family, and I consider you to be as well.”
Dani waffled for a bit, but remembered the excitement of the pigs and the iron sure core of Sam’s belief. Very suddenly, she was hit with the epiphany that although Sam may not have completely understood Danny’s ghost half, she was primed to do so. Sam, after all, was very much like a ghost herself in conviction at the very least. And it was undeniable that she wanted better for people, and was willing to put her body on the line to provide it…. Her and Danny really weren’t dissimilar where it mattered, were they?
“I had fun too. You’re pretty cool and kinda right. Factory farms—”
“—Slaughterhouses.”
“Slaughterhouses, really do suck. Like a lot. Let me know if my stupid brother doesn’t agree to liberate any more of them. I’m always up for a good time.”
“Ha. Will do.” The two of them shared sharp smiles. “Now—” Sam looked at her phone. “I have a neighborhood vegetable garden initiative that I have to blackmail the mayor about. I’ll see you around.” She started to walk away, but turned back quickly. “And… thanks for the talk,” she added.
“Any time.” Dani finished her drink, watching Sam leave and thinking that just maybe she understood Danny a tiny bit better now.