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The week leading up to Danny's Death-day anniversary was always uncomfortable. His skin felt uncomfortable, like it was a size too small, and would rip if he moved wrong. It itched and burned, the lichtenburg scarring usually invisible in his living form becoming visible again approaching the actual day.
The worst part was knowing what was happening.
The first time, of course, they hadn't known, and they had been lucky that Danny and Sam had been staying at Tucker's that day, and that it had been the weekend. Lucky that his friends could slip him out of the house when he started sweating feverishly and the scar began glowing. Lucky that they knew places just outside town that were far enough away from houses that no one could hear Danny scream as he re-lived his death.
That luck didn't help as much when, shaking and weak, Phantom rose out of his body like a... well, like a ghost, leaving the lifeless corpse of Danny Fenton behind.
To say that the trio had panicked would be an understatement. Attempts to overshadow his own body proved fruitless, as the body was, at this point, definitively and absolutely dead.
It was only when Danny calmed down enough to try and shift back to his human form, and succeeded, that they all settled into the mindset of figuring out what to do next.
Burying his body in the woods wasn't a great option. There were too many people who used the trails to walk their dogs, and if someone found it... Yeah, not a good option.
They couldn't hide his body somewhere else, either. If this was going to be a yearly affair, hiding himself in a freezer would eventually run out of space.
Tucker suggested making a chemical vat, and that was their best idea until Sam provided her solution. They could compost his body. She would get some corpse-eating beetles, ostensibly to freak her parents out as a "gruesome pet," and they could put his body at the bottom of the compost pile for her greenhouse.
It wasn't a foolproof plan by any means, but it was the best idea the group of 15-year-olds came up with at the time.
Five years later, Danny's Death-day had become something of a tradition for the three. They had invited Jazz, who was unequivocally grossed out but glad they had a way to cope, and eventually Valerie, who had blanched and thrown up instead of replying, so it had remained just the three of them laying Danny to yet another rest.
They all took the day off from school and work, and spent the time leading up just hanging out together, Sam and Tucker staying by Danny's side as he grew increasingly uncomfortable, until just before the event itself, they made their way to the pile behind the greenhouse.
Sam always prepared the soil before-hand so it would be soft, without sticks or slime. Almost as good as a mattress on its own as Danny lay down, feeling his ghost-self relax with some instinct of resting in soil.
He breathed, the smell of dirt familiar and comforting, and gave his friends' hands a soft squeeze before he closed his eyes and let himself feel. He had learned his third anniversary that it came and went faster if he just let it. If he rode the pain, pain, burning and seizing and frying and screaming screaming screaming pain through instead of fighting it, until the sensation of his body was distant and separate, leaving him floating and light.
He could feel, distantly, the dirt that was pushed over his body, entombing it. It was cool, soothing on nerves that no longer fired. Weighty on skin that no longer felt far too much. He didn't need to breathe, the dirt covering his face and his shoulders, his arms and legs and torso, packing down into the dark nothingness of a grave.
It was comfortable, and Phantom found himself loathe to leave it. They had discussed, after all, his coming back, and his friends knew he would return. But... really, life was so busy and loud and uncomfortable, he just wanted to be dead for awhile. Just a little.
Time didn't matter under the dirt as his blood cooled. The only indication of gravity was the slight un-felt heaviness of it on one side as it no longer coursed through his veins, settling down where nothing was expected of it. If he even needed his muscles, he wouldn't be able to use them anymore as his sinews and tendons tightened, but he couldn't feel them seizing up anyway, so it didn't bother him as he simply floated, resting.
The looseness that followed didn't bother him, cells lysing and releasing fluid as they individually succumbed to the breakdown. It was moist and dark here, creatures moving and going about their lives without observation or expectation. If he could feel, he would feel them testing the give of his skin, finding the easy passages in through his mouth and nose, the soft tissue of his eyes, the passages of his ears. Seeking sustenance and safety and a place for their young to burrow and thrive.
His body, if it were still his, was becoming a metropolis. A whale-fall leviathan hosting a sanctuary for crawling and devouring life. He couldn't feel it, but he was aware of them, in as much as a planet is aware of its forest, or a god of its devotees. Miniscule lives who knew nothing of him other than that he was home, he was safe, he was protection.
Phantom rested, losing track of time, in-so-much as time mattered, his former body a distant beacon of Purpose fulfillment, soothing his Death-sore Core.
The wriggling and writhing things didn't become still so much as change, life cycles completing as soft, devouring things became hard and preparatory, before breaking open and out, pushing and shoving and biting and digging up, and up, and up from the haven of their hatching and to the light and air above.
With their absence, even filled by the next species in progression, Phantom's awareness, too, turned outward. Away from the soft and cool and dark of his temporary grave, and up to the light. To the air, where wind blew and friends waited. Where he was more than an unmoored spirit, more than a body-less ghost and a ghost-less body, as much as that body may be a boon to those strange creatures who burrowed and crawled below.
The urge to breathe grew within him, and the desire to see something other than nothing, so with a mental twist he pushed himself upward, hovering for a moment above the pile of soil. Time began moving again, the wind ruffling tangible hair as he finally shook off the post-Death-Day stupor.
He felt fresh, new, alive like he rarely did the rest of the year. Letting gravity hold him as he stepped away from the mound, he touched his feet to the ground, stepping forward and letting the light of transformation pass over him, leaving a living, breathing body where a ghost just stood.
He could smell something savory cooking, some sort of soup or stew that would be easy on his new and empty stomach, and could hear laughter from his friends. Jazz, too, and Valerie. It was, after all, around the time they had planned for his re-emergence, and he smiled to hear them present to greet him as he headed around the greenhouse, leaving his decaying body behind him.