Chapter Text
"Hello, Phantom. "
Phantom has become a mere name, tied to no soul, for that soul has become a husk.
Small and feeble, a child looked towards the pair of scientists in tosca and orange tunic. His frame is lithe, emaciated and gaunt — more like the ghosts they believe in than the boy he once was.
"Are you turning fifteen today? " Madeline Fenton approached with tweezers and more bubbling vials of ectoplasm, of which the child tilted his head up and accepted gratefully as she refilled the near empty ones on the side of his nailed in mask; an ugly heavy grey metal plate. Phantom answered her with a soft, obedient nod.
She tucks a strand of white behind his ear. "Oh, if only you would return our son to us. " She told him sadly. "It would be the best Christmas gift we could have ever received… Hm? Wouldn't it? "
The boy's eyes crinkled with his mother, who looked down at him like one with a pet would. It didn't quite matter, her joy was real, and so was his. He was her pet and she was his mother, both were names that should inspire joy, should it not?
"Jazz has worried terribly for our missing boy… " Jack Fenton, a large, stocky man twice Maddie's height and thrice his son's. That man rubbed his chin, looking up at the basement door above the steep steps. "It kills me to see her so down. "
"Well, that just means we need to work faster, if we want to find out how to separate Phantom from Danny. " She mumbled to her hands. "If nothing else… At least, retrieve his body. "
She reached out a hand, and a verdant pearl lands on her palm. It is cracked, nearly split in half and filled with many fissures she was yet to be satisfied with. With a bioluminescent, verdant blade sticking out of the shaft of a scalpel, she sliced a portion out of Phantom's core like an apple slice. She returned it, and with shaking hands did Phantom cradle that core again before letting it sink against his chest.
"You are so much more pleasant, quiet like this. " Maddie Fenton ruffled his hair and stood up. With her husband, they left.
Phantom stares and stares, wide eyes dark with horrors yet bright with the color that casted him aside from humankind. He stared, but yet, that door at the top of the steps did not close.
Gingerly, he took a curious step. Then more.
Then he was at the open door, staring at the empty living room. He tilted his head to the right; a habit long forgotten but served its purpose, as it brought his attention to the front door.
When he twisted the knob, astoundingly, it opened so freely it was like a jest. No machines or contraptions sought to trap him.
But the grass blades were real under his foot, and so, he ventured out.
To explore this exciting, wide world.