Amusement

In the end Danny’s death was ruled a suicide. Despite the long, intricately detailed autopsy (that Danny sat through, watching from his invisible perch on top of one of the morgue’s stainless steel cabinets) and three second opinions, and the fact that his body was found on the outskirts of Amity Park where there were no buildings present, it was determined that his injuries were self inflicted and death was caused by a fall. A massive fall that apparently crushed half the bones in his body and drove him into the ground creating a crater two feet deep.

Even though Sam and Tucker were incredulous at first, Danny had taken the results without blinking. “Let’s face it,” he’d told them in dry amusement. “If my own parents missed it for three years while I lived under the same roof as them, how can it possibly surprise you that the general populace will believe something like this?”

They conceded the point rather quickly.

But the oddity of being dead and not-dead always amused him. Everyone he knew, and everyone he didn’t (barring Sam and Tucker and Jazz, because they always knew the truth) thought he’d killed himself in a fit of teenaged emo driver angst. It didn’t bother him in the least, and when pushed his friends and only knowledgeable family member had to admit that he didn’t act like he had before he died.

Danny agreed wholeheartedly, because the Danny Fenton who’d been killed bya ghost had spent his days hiding from everyone for some reason or another. He didn’t worry about hiding anymore. If a human saw him he was assumed to be the famed and feared Phantom of Amity Park (since he’d been Phantom when he died instantly on impact, his body only reverting to its human state after his death) and if a ghost saw him…

Well, they tended to run away.

Oh, there were some days where he felt like staying curled up in whichever attic he was currently seeking refuge in. he didn’t have to eat, though he still could and sometimes even enjoyed it, but sleep was a necessity, and Sam and Tucker had offered him sanctuary in perpetuity. Jazz told him he was safer there than at home, since she was pretty sure that the attic had more ghost gadgets than the lab, and since all of them were ‘broken’ when he was alive… Well, Danny had an excellent imagination.

Really, things hadn’t changed all that much from when he was alive. Boredom drove him to floating through the hallowed halls of Casper High within a month of his death, which provided an endless source of amusement. Oh, Sam and Tucker knew he was there. Even when they had no warning they knew when he’d been in the school. But no one else did, which made hallway conversations all the much more interesting.

Paulina was, as Sam had so often claimed, too shallow to get her boots wet were she to stand in a puddle of the girl. Star studied calculus and trigonometry in her spare time and apparently didn’t want to live up to her mother’s expectations of a perfect cheerleader daughter. Nathan already had an invitation to Julliard, and half the kids in the AV club were ringleaders of the spy cameras in the girl’s locker room and showers. (Danny had to applaud their efforts, even as he warned Sam and condemned them to her wrath.) And Dash and Kwan were gay. For each other.

Certainly explained why they bullied so much; they had their own little secret to hide. (Danny didn’t share that one, though Sam implied she knew all about the two jocks sometime during her graduation party a year later.)

But the best part of it was how often Sam and Tucker wound up in the guidance counselors office for grief counseling and the repeated recommendations for proper therapy.

He remembered Sam crying after he died, and Tucker’s grief during her hysterical spate of tears. It lasted a few weeks; Danny knew that factually. But somewhere along the line the three of them had accepted his death as a part of their life. He was still here, wasn’t he? And he was, just not the same as they were.

So it was understandable to Danny and to his best friends (when they weren’t sitting through another session with a shrink or being told repeatedly that it wasn’t healthy to bottle up their emotions) when they seemingly recovered over a long weekend, coming back to school cracking jokes and having a three way conversation. Especially when the third party was invisible and making sure not to be heard by prying ears.

He supposed that eventually they’d have to tell people, the family’s if no one else. But for now, it was just amusing to watch them squirm.