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You died that night.
You died that night, you can't ignore the facts. They're interwoven in your icy expirations and lethargic, laggard pulse, they're interspersed between every hair raised and haunt razed. Every time your eyes flash or the air cools, every time you want to cry or need to wail, every time you meet your parents' newest weapon or oldest joke—
…
…You need to start over.
Two weeks before high school began, your parents finished their greatest creation. It was their life's work: Thousands of hours, two PhDs, and one half-death.
Well, two half-deaths, but that second one hadn't happened yet.
Anyways—one week later, you entered the thing for your very first time. A misstep—you trip—and there's a click and a whir and a flash and a roar and you're floating you're falling you're flailing and you know what you feel, you know you're in pain, you know that it hurts and it hurts and it hurts and it—
Stop.
There's a question, one you're often asked. Never by the ghosts, always by the humans. You've heard some say that the ghosts can't ask it, or that asking it would be breaking some sort of ancient prohibition, but both of these rumors are rather blatantly untrue. The real answer is much simpler:
You're just never certain who's sensitive about their death, nor who's traumatized by it. It's therefore best to steer clear of the topic in its entirety.
That's one thing you've always liked about ghosts. They're creatures of black and white, beasts who always lurk inside their designated bounds—in a world like that, there's no room to tread over anyone else’s lines. They say what they’re thinking and think what they’re saying, it’s such a pleasant change of pace from the mind games you so frequently play.
But humans are different, humans are messy. They think for themselves, and so they have a tendency to pry, and so pry is exactly what they do. They pry, and they pry, and then they pry some more, until you're forced to reveal that it was a particularly nasty lightning storm that did you in. A natural accident, one that can't be linked back to your parents. There's nothing to see here, you say. You swear.
They usually pretend to be shocked, as if you haven't given that answer a thousand times before. They react with false pity, they occasionally apologize, and then they move on. But sometimes, they'll ask you a follow-up query.
You never answer that one.
Even if you wanted to, you don't know if you could.
That's when you bolt. Yet they never seem to learn their lesson—it's only a matter of time before you're asked it again.
You want to say that your friends are different. Sam and Tucker, they'd never ask you such things. But… Do you truly believe that?
For example—the other day, you tried telling them to please stop it with the Schrödinger's cat jokes.
At first, they were funny. Cute, even. But over time, 'cute' became 'fine' became 'painful', and you soon began to dread even seeing the two. It's not that the jokes were nonstop, or even regular, you swear they weren't, but something about them really rubbed you the wrong way.
It was how they made them, you think.
They liked to say that there wasn't uranium in there. There was instead a failed test, or week-old lunch meat, or some other silly, menial thing.
They occasionally asked you for input, presumably in an attempt to force participation. You never quite knew what to say.
What was there to say? Curiosity? Stupidity? Fear?
In the end, you gave up on the endeavor. They just weren't listening, it is what it is. In substitute, you later complained to Jazz about it, and although not a perfect solution, it helped well enough. So maybe your friends are different, but maybe…
Maybe they're exactly the same.
Jazz, on the other hand—you love her dearly, she means well, but…
Jazz, who says you have PTSD. Jazz, who says you dissociate often and dissociate hard. Jazz, who says that it's possible to grieve more than just the dead.
Jazz, ever the bright one, ever the smart one. Jazz, the picture-perfect Fenton child.
But you know her for the truth. Jazz too wants to ask the unasked, to know the unknown. You've seen the way she holds her tongue.
Jazz, who will never understand your point of view.
Jazz, the wonderful, pristine, naive sister that she is, she will never know you for the truth:
You died that night.
You died that night, yet the world kept on turning.
It's day in, it's day out. You sleep and wake, you fall and rise. Everyone's heard the definition of insanity, but it turns out that the common phrase is actually incorrect. Lancer gave you the correct version in class one day:
"Extreme foolishness or irrationality."
Despite your best efforts, you find yourself participating in this definition over and over again, hoping that you get a different result.
You never do.
It's day in, it's day out. You cower and fight, you walk and fly. What many people have not heard is the definition of dichotomy. Lancer said it once, in reference to… something. You don't remember the details, you weren't really listening. But the word was said, and you looked it up later, mostly out of boredom, somewhat out of curiosity.
"A division or contrast between two things that are, or are represented as being, opposed or entirely different."
Despite your best efforts, you find yourself participating in this definition over and over again, hoping that you have changed.
You never have.
You're not stupid, you're well aware that your life has spiraled into recursive folly and paradoxical madness. The problem is that anyone from your parents to your teachers to your peers have noticed it too. And next thing you know, it's again with the questions, it's always with the questions, you're so damn sick of the questions.
(There's even a handful of ghosts who won't shut up about it. You know, the ghosts that regularly try to maim you? Those ones.)
So, of course, you tell them you're fine, you really are. Would you ever lie to them?
(You totally would, you totally have, but this is different. This time, you're being sincere. You promise.)
And anyways, you are being sincere. You were fine before the accident, so why wouldn't you be fine now?
(It's because you died that night.)
(You died that night, and everyone knows that the dead don't change.)
(The dead don't change—so what makes you any different?)
In your best attempt at fun, you sometimes time how long it takes Clockwork to do mental arithmetic. This one took him less than fifteen seconds:
One healthy baby, average in every sense of the word, was born on February 2nd, 1956. He died 8,859 days later. 3,255 days passed from there, and on this new date, a second child was born.
He passed away 5,250 days later.
On what dates did those two die?
The answer to this question isn't very important. What matters is this:
Between Vlad's birth date and yours, 12,114 days passed. Between Vlad's death date and yours, 8,505 days passed.
33 years and 2 months between births.
23 years, 3 months, and 14 days between deaths.
Over 33 years, and nothing has changed.
Over 23 years, and the cycle continues.
This folly, this madness, this endless alternation of death and rebirth…
When will it end?
You died that night.
You died that night, but that doesn't make you special, nor does it make you unique.
It just makes you dead.
Yet here you remain, still living, still breathing, still buzzing with life and buzzing with death and buzzing with emotion and sentiment and sometimes, occasionally, even buzzing with hope, but there's something else there, too, something that lurks deep beneath heart, blood, and bone. And sometimes, it calls to you.
Sometimes, you even have the audacity to answer.
…
There's another question that you're not very fond of, but you've only been asked it once. Despite that, you don't think you'll ever forget it. You find yourself dwelling on it often, rolling it around in your head, wishing that you could be anything beyond the person that you are.
You're not sure if this torment is worth it, but you also think you might have an answer, now.
So here it is: What you wish you had told her, all those months ago:
You know what you are.
You know exactly what you are.
You're a taboo for those who live no longer, yet you remain a curio for those whom death has yet to toll.
But… When their judgment comes, will you be branded an anomaly, an insanity, a dichotomy?
Or will you remain an eccentricity, an oddity, naught much more than a creepy little freak with creepy little powers?
You're not a ghost, not a boy, and forever doomed to walk the line in between.
That's what you are. And as for what will happen to you, when the curtains finally fall…
…
This is where your imagined conversation normally ends.
You do this with other topics, too. Those questions from earlier, the ones you're so often asked… the "How did you die"s and the "Are you sure that you're fine"s, they're not as bad when you have something fluffy and fake to fill in the gaps with.
The other ones, though…
The "What are you"s and the "Who are you"s and the…
There's one more.
What do you even say to that?
…
Don't you remember it?
…
You do, of course you do. How could you forget? They just keep asking, after all.
…
What do you even say?
…
Well…
…
You say that it hurt.
It was electric agony and scorching glaciality, unraveling all that you knew and all that you were.
You say that you saw green stroked with red and flesh stoked with blood.
You witnessed the big bang and the final crunch, you watched your broken reality fuse with that endless singularity, and you beheld the creation of the place where it all became undone.
You say that…
It broke you, changed you, and remade you, that ouroboric torture and that ectoplasmic pain…
It hurt.
You still feel that fractal, freezing, lightning torching muscles, nerves, and veins.
…
There. Is that what they wanted?
No—
Is that what you wanted?
Yes.
You died that night.
You died that night, and you floated, you fell, and you flailed, and it was pain, it was hurt, it was snow-white hair and glowing green eyes…
Yet you're still here.
You’re still here, fighting your way through these flashes of facts…
Forcing your way through this fear of the future…
And asking yourself what they all want to hear, what they all need to know,
"Daniel Fenton, if that's who you claim to be…
"Danny Phantom, if that's who you really are…
…What does it feel like to die?"