AN: Um. Wow. For such a terribly depressing chapter, I sure enjoyed writing this one. I wonder what that says about me. Anyways, wow, this chapter has like almost no dialogue. I didn't even notice that until halfway through. As I'm sure you guys can tell, we are coming up to the end here! Shorter chapter, but I think I like it better this way. It wouldn't work quite as well if I did it differently, and I do really like how this ended up.

Black and White

Chapter Eleven: Worst Case Scenario

It was Valerie.

Nobody in Amity Park ever seemed to know who the mysterious Red Hunter was, as she had never shown her face to anyone. But today, Jazz and Sam learned that it was Valerie Gray. One of Sam's own classmates.

And here she was, hooked up to a life support system, struggling to stay alive.

Though her fall had done severe damage to her body, she had survived it. Her body suit seemed to have helped take some of the force of the impact. She was comatose now, it seemed, and the doctors couldn't say when she would wake up- or even if she would. Her father had been called, and he seemed to be feeling a mixture of anger and despair, the former of which he seemed to be directing towards his daughter's doctors, seeing as there was no other place to let it out in.

Sam and Jazz had never known Valerie very well. They knew she had briefly dated Danny back in the ninth grade, but that it hadn't lasted long. They knew she used to be one of the popular crowd, until her father lost his job and most of their fortune. They knew she worked at the Nasty Burger as a cashier.

They had never really known each other, never had really talked all that much, and yet here they were, watching over her broken body in a hospital room as her father raged at the doctors outside.

After she hit the ground, the two girls didn't know what was going to happen next. Left alone now against the black version of their friend and brother, they both feared for the worst. What he had done to Valerie was confirming the fact that he would indeed show no mercy to the two of them.

Although the whole dating thing hadn't worked out, Valerie and Danny still remained pretty good friends, after all. They would talk and spend time together, just as Danny did with Tucker and Sam.

And yet it was all too easy for the black Danny to do such a thing to her. It wasn't that he didn't know it was Valerie, oh no, he knew. The two girls found that out as he finally managed to come back to himself, facing the full horror of what his other self had done to one of his closest friends, and what he was planning to do to his older sister and the girl that he had come to love.

Unable to face what he had done, he ran. Or flew away, rather, having not resumed his human form. And as much as Jazz and Sam were terribly worried about him, and what he might do now, somebody had to take care of Valerie. And so here they were, in a room with a girl they barely even knew.

Jazz knew she would have to call her parents at one point. They needed to talk, but she didn't even begin to know what she would say to them. She didn't yet know that they knew her brother's secret and had accepted him for it, and she didn't know that they had met his other self as well.

Despite the danger she had just been in, there was nothing more Jazz wanted to do than go and find her little brother. Or rather, her heart wanted to do it. Her mind, her logical, rational mind, screamed at her to stay in place, and rooted her body to the chair she was sitting in. What would she even do if she found him? It asked her. What if he became like that again?

Valerie was alive, but she didn't think she would be so lucky.

Valerie herself wasn't even looking so lucky, if what she could hear from outside the door was true. Her spine had broken in several places, and it was likely that even if she woke up, she would probably be permanently paralyzed. It was a horrifying thought, given that Valerie was a pretty active girl.

Although her father had eventually gotten a new job, they were still in a considerable amount of debt. The weight of medical bills would on complicate Mr. Gray's life, complications which they did not really need. And if his reaction was any kind of indication, Jazz got the feeling that he had known about his daughter's more unique extracurricular activities.

Known, and had clearly disapproved of them.

No doubt, this was one of his worst fears come to life.

Of course, Jazz's own fears had come to life today. Ones that she hadn't even known were there until they were shoved in her face. She had so adamantly denied them that she didn't even seem to recognize they had been there all along.

After all, as the child of two ghost hunters, she had been raised on stories about how ghosts were evil, vile creatures. But she knew her brother, and so when she learned that he had become half-ghost himself, she seemed to be assured of the fact that nothing like that would ever happen to him. Besides, she was well aware of the fact that not all of the ghosts that her brother encountered were really evil, so obviously, her parents must have been wrong.

They were ghost hunters after all.

So she had set the fear aside, before she had even really acknowledged it. Today, however, she was forced to realize that maybe she should have dealt with it.

There was guilt, too, in her heart. She should have never left Amity Park, never gone off to a distant university and left her younger brother alone. She should have confronted him, should have let him know that she knew his secret, and she should have told him that she loved him anyways. Danny was Danny, after all, he was never going to be anybody else.

Right up until he did.

"Sam, I," Jazz began, glancing over at the raven haired girl. She couldn't stay here any longer. Danny had called her here for her help, and he needed it now, more than ever.

Sam didn't look at her, seeming to be lost in her own thoughts. Instead, she raised her hand, as if she knew what she was going to say. "Go on."

Jazz nodded, giving a last look at Sam and Valerie, before she headed out of the hospital room. She went by Mr. Gray, still arguing with the doctors, insisting that there must be something they could do, something they hadn't tried yet. She hurried out of the hospital and into the chill winter air, set on trying to find her little brother.

As were her parents.

After recovering from the initial onset of shock caused by Danny's other self, Maddie and Jack had bundled up and headed outside. They could have brought their ghost tracking equipment with them, sure, but something about showing up where their son was carrying all of that stuff might have given off the wrong impression.

They wanted to know what was going on. That had been Danny, they both knew it, but it had not been their Danny. Was it a trick, put into play by that other ghost? What had Danny called him, Walker? Or was it something else, something that they really didn't want to even think about it.

But couldn't avoid it.

Oh, there were so many of their son's oddities that they could attribute to being half ghost. But there were other still, that had no explanation. Sneaking out late at night, brief flashes of attitude, talking to himself, seeming almost constantly paranoid even long after he had gotten control of his powers.

There was another Danny.

They both seemed to know that.

But he was not their son.

They had decided on that.

If there were some other Danny, they needed to find a way to get rid of it. Their son had enough stress in their lives, he didn't really need to deal with some kind of malevolent entity living inside his brain, just waiting for when he dropped his guard so that he could take over.

It was quite clear that this other Danny was just that, they could tell it simply from his tone of voice. What words weren't coated with twisted amusement were spoken with a strong flavor of sarcasm, mixed with sadism. He reveled in finally being exposed to them, as if he was anticipating all the suffering it would bring on to his other half.

It was what he wanted, they were smart enough to realize that. That was why they couldn't give him the satisfaction of it.

The sound of sirens filled the air as an ambulance rushed passed them, and the two adult Fentons exchanged a look.

For some reason, it sounded very ominous.

The arguing outside had finally stopped.

Samantha Manson didn't really register when it had, but slowly came to realize that she was left in a room filled only with the sound of various monitors. Jazz had left some time ago, but she didn't really know how much time had passed since then. Everything was so strange right now, as if she was here, and yet not really here.

Her mind kept replaying the events in the park. She found herself focusing on several things- the kiss, Valerie's fall, and Danny's return to himself. The look of utter horror on his face at what his other self had done was enough to break her heart.

He couldn't even look at them before he fled. For some reason, Sam couldn't shake the sense of dread rising in her, telling her that might be the last time she would ever see Danny. And with that sense of dread came another, wondering exactly how much time her Danny had in this world before he finally disappeared, forever becoming that... that...

Monster.

She had yet to see the black side of Danny do his worst, and yet she already knew what he was. He was a monster, one from which she couldn't even think of how to save the boy she had come to love from. His claws were dug too tightly into the boy, and were sinking in more as each day passed.

If only she had noticed earlier.

If Danny had a friend who knew his secret, who supported him, would he have ended up this way? Sam had to convince herself that was not the case. If she had confronted him early on about his strange behavior, or if Tucker had done so, things would have been different.

She wouldn't be here, contemplating how long they had left before everything went wrong forever.

Although she was a Goth, she had never been exactly pessimistic by nature. To be sure, she wasn't an optimist, but she did not usually give herself over to despair. She didn't think it was egotistical of herself to admit that she was a strong person, but rather, that it was just a fact. She had always been a pillar of support for her friends to lean on in hard times, and had always been able to help them with their problems.

So why hadn't Danny just come to her? She found herself thinking in frustration. Was he really so terrified that she would reject him? That she would think of him as some kind of freak, and that she would stop talking to him? Or worse, let everyone know exactly what he had become? There was no way she would ever do that to him! They had known each other for far too long.

Why hadn't she come to him? She found herself asking next. She clearly knew that there was something wrong, that something weird was going on with her best friend. She really should have confronted him as soon as she noticed it. What kind of friend was she not to try and do something when she knew he was having a problem?

She found herself wondering exactly when everything had started to go wrong. Looking back now, she could almost see the chain of events, all of them culminating up to this. One long train wreak that extended back for four years, and hadn't even reached it's conclusion yet. And everywhere along the way, she began to see points in which it all could have been stopped, could have been avoided.

Hindsight is perfect, after all.

She heard the door to the room opening then, and she glanced up. Mr. Gray, Valerie's father came into the room. She had never met the man before, and for awhile, they just stared at each other, neither knowing what to say.

"I'm so sorry." Sam finally said then, feeling herself trembling, her body quaking as tears rolled down her face. "I'm so sorry."

Danny Fenton was alone.

He wanted to be that way.

He shuddered as he wrapped his arms around his body, gripping so tight that he knew the pressure would cause his arms to bruise. He wasn't cold, even though he was out in the snow. He found himself hidden away in the warehouse district, as far away from the park as he could.

He wanted to disappear.

All the earlier resolve he had gained was gone now. It had vanished into thin air the very moment Valerie's body had hit the ground. Oh god. He felt bile rise in his throat as he replayed the scene in his mind again, though nothing came out. Just thinking about the sound of her bones snapping as she impacted was enough to make him sick to the stomach.

His other self had done horrible things before, but this was the worst of them. He didn't know if Valerie was alive or dead at the moment, but he could only assume the worst.

At best, he had ruined a life.

At worst, he had taken one.

Either way, neither option was looking very good.

Even though he had always known Valerie was the Red Hunter, he couldn't really bring himself to hate her, not after his initial anger at her dissipated. She had too many good traits that he couldn't overlook when he thought about her. She was a hard worker and someone who pretty much always spoke her mind.

She had become a good friend of his, too. There was a point, before his other self had begun to emerge, that he had actually considered coming clean to her. Not just to her, really, but to everyone he cared about. To Sam, to Tucker, to Jazz, even to his parents. He seemed to realize just how much his ghost hunting was taking out of him, and he knew that he shouldn't try and handle it alone any longer.

It was then that the first signs that there was something wrong with him began, and he put all such thoughts on hold.

That was a mistake.

He shuddered again as he heard his other self's chuckle in the back of his mind, as if he was terribly amused at his suffering. That was probably the worst part out of all of this, this whole messed up scenario.

Because Danny was the only one that knew.

The only one who realized that he hadn't taken control back from Black.

He had given it to him. Given it to him so he could watch him suffer, watch him break down under the weight of what he had made him do. And although Danny wanted to be strong, although he didn't want to do exactly what Black wanted...

The weight of it all was too heavy for him to do anything else.

He knew, as he sat there, tucked away on the roof of an otherwise empty building, that everything had gone wrong. He could feel his other self in his mind, lurking there, just waiting for the right moment to take his body away from him again. He hadn't known how well Black could pretend to be him before, and the thought that he could take him over without anyone else knowing was absolutely terrifying.

At any moment, he knew that his other self would take the reigns back, no matter how hard he tried to resist. And he knew that when he did, he might be the only one to know that.

It was the worst possible scenario.

AN: SEE HOW DEPRESSING THAT WAS. Gawd. And you know, it's probably only going to get worse. Wow this really is my most depressing fan fiction.