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Protostar (No One Knows AU)

Or, Nick tries to make Danny's life as difficult as possible (while avoiding his other fics), and Danny suffers canon-typical character death

1 ~ 2 ~

Stars are born in stellar nurseries. When Danny was a child, he read about how stars could be every color of the visible spectrum: red, yellow, green, blue. He'd learned that the yellow, green, and blue ones turn red and orange, then turn black or white. He learned that the sun in their solar system was actually green, its wavelengths technically green but the human eye only saw white. Or yellow, if you counted the suns his classmates would draw in the corners of their pictures at school. He'd get in trouble for making his sun green, even though it was green. Adults don't like being wrong, he quickly learned. Stellar nurseries are made up mostly of hydrogen and helium, the base elements that made a star. The cloud of gasses would heat up and churn, giving birth to star clusters that would make heavier elements for planets later.

Danny Fenton was 14 when his parents brought him and his sister into their basement to witness their magnum opus. All his life Danny knew this invention was the star of the show: the Fenton Ecto-Transdimensional-Boundary-Breaker. Or, for short, the Fenton Ghost Portal. Year after year, he watched it develop from a thought on paper and a useless ring of metal and wires (that apparently hospitalized their college friend in the past) to a hole in their basement wall, lined with scraps of metal and wires and tubes. He watches his parents grow more and more excited and more and more distracted. If he were younger, maybe the Portal would still excite him, but now he traded it for the stars. He's seen evidence of ghosts, of course, but they weren't interesting, and the things his parents did to the little blobs of glowing jelly made him nauseous. He couldn't go down there without seeing mournful little faces of what his parents deemed "Level 1 Ectoplasmic Echoes", or as he likes to call them: blob ghosts. They seemed so sad to be there, and the only thing keeping him from releasing them was his mom and dad's warning of ghostly mimicry and manipulation.

He could hear them churr and chitter at them as his parents ushered them to grab hazmat suits.

"The portal could cause the atmosphere to shift," Mom explained. "Radiation, toxic gasses, things like that. You two need to keep these on," she said, fixing Danny's mask in place, and helping Jazz with her gloves. Dad was hovering over by the portal, scrolling through a laptop.

"And this thing is in the house?" Jazz muttered, and Danny couldn't help but crack a grin. Despite what his parents think, he's fairly sure he and Jazz already have ecto-contamination, especially with how often Mom leaves ectoplasm samples in the kitchen fridge to bring their food to life.

Mom ushered them over to the deep, dark hole in the wall.

"Behold! The Fenton Ecto-Transdimensional Boundary Breaker!" Dad bellowed, his voice hardly muffled by his own mask.

"We've been working on this since college," Mom said, as if Danny hasn't heard about it for the past 14 years. "Amity Park has the unique quality of being on an Ectoplasm Bifurcation Epicenter, making it the perfect place to build our portal! Hold on, kids, you're about to watch your parents make history!" Maddie exclaimed.

His parents buzzed with excitement. Danny squinted into the darkness of the portal, seeing nothing but wires and metal. It seemed completely normal. Usually his parents' inventions (and food) glowed a radioactive green, charged with ectoplasm, but he couldn't see anything. His mom grabbed a camera, flicking it on and mounting it on a tripod to get everyone in the frame. She passed by them and gave Jazz a squeeze, causing her to wheeze sharply. They repeated their introduction again, this time to the camera recording.

"Ready, kiddos!" Dad bellowed. "3, 2, 1!" He grabbed the handle of a console by the portal, pulling it down.

Danny tensed in anticipation. Nothing. He glanced at Jazz, and she shrugged. Still nothing.

"What...?" Mom murmured. "Jack, is everything okay?"

"Maybe the breakers?" Dad suggested, leaning over. Danny leaned to follow him, spotting a long line of breakers uncovered on the side of the console. Dad ran his hands over them, flicking their little lights off, then on again, and tried the lever. Still nothing.

"Guys... maybe it's just unplugged?" Jazz tried, but Danny knew she didn't believe it as much as Danny didn't.

Despite his parents being the leading ecto scientists in the world (a title not held by many in the first place) he doubted they could make a portal to (basically) Hell of all places. He felt bad, though. His parents' life work, everything they worked so hard for, gone. He remembers how many nightmare-filled nights were spent alone in his room because his parents were working on their portal and he didn't want to bother Jazz. How many days of Jazz teaching him how to pack his own lunch until he just started eating cafeteria food instead of possibly setting a pack of haunted chicken fettuccini alfredo after Tucker and Sam. It's not like it mattered for his reputation as the son of the town's local mad scientists, but at least Sam and Tuck don't have to worry if his turkey sandwich was going to fly and try and bite them.

Mom and Dad hovered frantically over their console, upset, and Danny glanced at Jazz again. He could see an annoyed, pinched brow behind the glare of lab lights on her mask. She yanked off the glasses, then pulled her gas mask down. Her hair stuck to her face almost worse than Danny's was sticking to his from sweat.

He stared at the portal while Jazz went to go talk to his parents. He's heard this argument before. He doesn't need to hear it again. The open maw of the portal looked so unassuming for being a (not) portal to another dimension. There's no evidence of its existence, unlike space. Space had data, samples, pictures and calculations, and his parents had...

He glanced back at the glass containers of blob ghosts, his heart twisting at their little frowny faces. He glanced back at Mom, Dad, and Jazz. Dad trying to defend why they spent so much time on a portal that didn't even work. Jazz was spewing her long, science-y, psychology words right back. Mom was trying to talk her down from her anger, and defend Dad. As usual. He sighed, taking off his own hood and gas mask and putting his goggles on his head. Ugh, now he can breathe. He couldn't imagine wearing this forever like his parents do. He shuffled over to the blob ghosts, who trilled as he approached, pushing up against their glass.

He huffed a laugh when one didn't even float, just simply rolled across the floor to get closer. The cages were sealed, a recent change in the past few years because his parents caught him petting the little creatures. They'd lectured him about how they ate emotions and radiated ectoplasm, and he was lucky they were such weak ghosts. He wasn't allowed to be in the lab alone when his did his chores after that, not that is parents remembered that part much when they needed him to clean up after them.

After petting them, he did notice he felt different. Lighter. Maybe that's why he liked them so much. It felt good to not have to worry for once.

He huffed again when that same one continued to roll at the glass like it was Sonic the Hedgehog in a speed-dash, and he tapped on the glass. It squeaked and trilled, smiling up at him. Parasites of no, he couldn't deny they were adorable.

Jazz stormed upstairs, throwing her hands in the air, showing an end to the argument, and Danny tuned back in to the world around him. A cool trick of his that he was sure Jazz would lecture him about. Mom and Dad were hugging each other, staring at their magnum opus, and Danny swallowed.

"I'm sure you can get it to work," he tried. "Maybe you just need to sleep for a fresh pair of eyes?" Something Mrs. Foley would tell him, Sam, and Tuck when they got stuck on homework.

"You're right, Dann-o," Dad said, perking up a bit. His shoulders remained slumped.

"Come on, honey, let's get you out of this," she gestured at his hazmat suit.

Danny followed, his parents swapping out the heavier ones for something lighter, and Danny out all together. They moved back upstairs in a cloud of disappointment.

---

Danny Fenton was just 14 when he decided he couldn't take it anymore. His parents were depressed, lacking that usual mad-scientist glint in their eyes. His dad snacked on his emotional support fudge constantly when he would normally be down in the lab. Jazz was arguing with them more often than usual. Telling them to step up. Telling them to get over it and persevere. Telling them they needed to be there for her and Danny. Danny didn't necessarily care: he was used to this in a way Jazz was not.

But a month of wallowing? That's a record. A record that was grating on his nerves. So, when his parents went out ghost-hunting and Jazz went to tutor some home-schooled kid for money for college, Danny snuck down into the lab.

He had half a mind to not put on a hazmat suit, as hot and itchy as it was even with a cooling system, but the echos of his parents' warnings of radiation and toxic gases made him think twice.

Despite the power of stars, very few forces actually caused the creation of one.

Gravity, the pull of large objects in the fabric of reality. It warped space itself and pulled smaller things towards them, like a basketball on a sheet in Danny's 3rd grade science class. The gas of the nebula needed to be pulled in by its own mass, twisting and churning as it made itself smaller and smaller.

Danny Fenton was just 14 when he approached his parent's life work. There had to be something, right? Something they missed? Sure, he doubted their work pretty often, but his parents were so sure. They usually were, and so far, them being sure had lead them to a lot of places in the scientific community. He searched around the outside of the portal, looking for anything. Anything.

The portal was a feat of scientific engineering, more massive than the giant Jack Fenton, one of the biggest people Danny's ever seen. Wires and tubes lay about and funneled towards the portal. He could spot, between the portal and the wall, tubes of ectoplasm, explaining why the portal didn't glow as much at the rest of his parents' inventions did. He checked the console. Nope. Danny sighed in frustration.

The next thing was the gravity's ability to overcome opposing forces. Pressure and magnetic fields could only be over come by gravity as the gas twisted closer and closer, practically a spinning disk. The gas collapses once gravity overtakes its opposing forces

Danny Fenton was just 14 when he checked to see if the lever was still up before entering his parents' portal. It was dark the further you went, and he had half a mind to believe the dark end of the tunnel really was the entrance to Hell. He tried to tread carefully. After a moment of looking, he sighed in frustration. This was stupid. He can barely see, and he should go back. He didn't even know what he was doing. No matter how many of Mom and Dad's discarded inventions he tinkered with, he'd never be able to figure out how to tear a hole in space.

Danny scowled. So stupid. He turned on his heal and stormed out.

The final thing was a spark. The first atoms smashing together in nuclear fusion, Hydrogen and Hydrogen crushing each other into Helium, heat so strong atoms speed up and break apart onto heavier, denser, element.

His boot caught on a tube. Danny yelped, trying to right himself as he felt, grabbing the closest dark thing he could find in a desperate attempt to not face-plant. A natural, human reaction.

Danny Fenton was just 14 when he was human for the last time. He stared at the thing he grabbed, safe from falling but no longer safe at all.

"What...?" he couldn't help but ask out loud. The blob ghosts shrieked outside the portal, and his hair stood on end. The portal lit up in green, and he could finally see. He looked down at his hand, and it was pressed against a red button, the green one tucked away behind a panel. Wires crossed wrong on a switch he recognized from one of his parent's larger tools, preventing accidental starts of saws in a busy lab.

Then, the pain hit. Worse than when he skinned his knee when Jazz taught him how to ride a bike. Worse than Dash slamming him into a locker. Worse than watching his family argue when all they had to do was stop. Something raced up his arm, something he couldn't even describe, and his body locked tight, teeth and muscles clenching and Danny screamed.

He couldn't move his body, couldn't feel it after a moment, but he knew, he knew, that the current was still going. White filled his vision, and he thought...

Maybe his parents wouldn't feel bad about him dying if their portal finally worked.

But the painlessness didn't last long. The burning returned, and he screamed louder, ringing in his ears and joining the sound of green choking him. The burning was so hot it turned cold and then hot again, and something held him together, holding, holding, holding, and he couldn't stop screaming and he couldn't stop shaking and he couldn't stop seeing green, green, green and oh god what about Jazz and Sam and Tuck and Dad and Mom but it hurt. It hurt and he wanted it to stop, please, make it stop anything to make it stop-

The ignition of a star causes a burst of pressure and heat, shoving the nearby gases away as it was born.

Danny's vision was green when his body felt crushed, and then everything was gone. His screaming didn't stop, vocal cords torn and shredded and aching and wrong, and he twitched and spasmed on the cold floor, and all he wanted was to feel cold again and then he did.

Danny's vision turned from green to white, like the ceiling of his parents' lab. He was... he was... what was...

He couldn't... think well right now. The words felt heavy, his body felt heavy, but he also felt so, so light.

He turned, and watched in awe at the green of the portal. Spinning, spinning, spinning, like a star. It hummed in a way that soothed him, like when his dad hummed to him when he was sick, broad chest buzzing with sound as he held Danny close and Mom moved about getting things to make him feel better.

He hummed back. His chest buzzed, and it felt easier than words.

Green rolled into his vision, a blob ghost on the floor with him. It blinked at him, frowning and cooing and humming the same way the portal did. The same way Danny did. He hummed back, and the blob trilled, rolling close to nuzzle his face. It was warm compared to the relaxing cold of his body. Other warm blobs clustered around him, pressing on his head and shoulders, humming, and he hummed back. Humming, humming, humming, a sense of worry, concern, grief.

Danny just hummed back, trying to get the tiny little ghosts to stop being so worried. About what? Had something happened? Were they okay? Did his parents dissect another, its screams and cries filling the house?

He brought a hand up, white glove stroking the blob, and it hummed at him, and he hummed back, and his finger passed through the little thing, barely adding any pressure to it jelly-like form. Oh. He couldn't...

Danny tried again, but his finger passed through. The blob hummed in alarm, concern, fear, the others joining, and Danny could only hum back. Maybe he could-

There was a warmth in his chest, next to the humming cold. It could help him. He reached for the feeling, and it spread willingly across his body. His black glove stroked the blob easily now. It trilled, humming in relief. He hummed back.

He spent a bit of time like that, letting cool little blobs of ectoplasm hum and coo and churr at him, and the aching feelings in his chest, nestled between his heart and something new, eased just a little bit with their care. He was tired. His whole body hurt more than he could describe. The blobs' humming felt so nice. Maybe he could spend just a bit longer here...

---

Danny was awoken when the blobs moved, crying out in panic and fear. Something was wrong. He needed to go. They needed to leave. He couldn't keep them safe asleep.

Something new was grabbing him. Yanking on his clothes. He whined, but no sound came out. He wheezed when the whine hurt his lungs.

"Danny, baby, talk to me," someone said, and they grabbed his cheeks. His hood and mask and goggles were down. When did that happen? Purple eyes. His head hurt. "Danny, hi baby, stay awake for me. Your father is calling 9-1-1."

911? Was someone hurt? No, Danny didn't want anyone hurt. He hopes they get here soon then.

His mom's hands are really warm.

"Danny!"

Another head of red hair invaded his vision. Blue eyes. Like him. Like his dad. Jazz. Jazz and his mom. If Dad was calling 911, and Jazz and Mom were here, who needed help? Jazz was blocking the light of the Portal, that big Humming mass that made his chest feel like it was buzzing in response.

Mom must have seen him looking at it. "Yeah, baby, you got it working. You did a good job. Could you..." she sniffed. Why was she crying? "Could you tell us what happened? I'd love to hear about it."

"Mom! Now is not the time-!" Jazz started.

"We need to keep Danny awake," Mom said, turning to Jazz. Danny hoped they wouldn't fight. He tried to reach out with that nice, icy feeling in his chest to them, but got no response. It made that thing curl up at the rejection. "Danny, why don't you tell us about your day?" Mom was talking to him again, drawing him away from prodding at that feeling in his chest, just right to his heart.

He opened his mouth, trying to pull out the words, but his brain hurt. What had he done today? When had the Portal turned on?

"The ambulance is on their way. Give him here." Dad's voice.

Danny gave a breathy, silent whine as his whole world seemed to shift and turn into streaks of light and sound. It was too much. His head hurt. He pulled his eyes shut, his eyes burning. Something was wrapping around him. It made his skin buzz and prickle, and he didn't like it. He was suddenly aware of how much the rest of him hurt, his joints and muscles and bones aching. He felt like he was just struck by lightning.

It was suddenly bright. Too bright. It hurt. A lot. Theres was noise and light and pain and Danny just wanted it to stop, please stop.

They were grabbing him. Danny couldn't even think fast enough to make them stop grabbing him. Things being pushed over him, blurry and it was too much and Danny's eyes were burning. His whole body was burning. Something cold was put over his face, fresh air in his face and he wanted it off. They grabbed his hand. They kept touching him. Where was Mom, Jazz, and Dad? Where was he?

They were prying at his eyes. Pulling on his clothes, talking and there's a horrible shrieking noise over everything, someone is holding his hand still, moving around, his stomach lurching, static popping across his skin as people kept poking and pushing and grabbing him. Danny's shoulders shook. Oh, he was crying. His shoulders screamed in protest. His throat gave nothing but soft gasps.

Danny stopped thinking.

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