Tried my hand at a fic, let me know what you think (nicely! This is my first time in the phandom!)
Danny froze, starting at his-
What was left of his kodak.
Scraps. Shards. Less than that.
The ecto rifle crushing it, his dad's booming laugh, his mom's airy promise to fix his kodak up, add new features - "oh, we could add a capture mode, snap those spooks up honey" - and Danny-
It had been a long day. A hard day. Dash had been... his usual self, honestly, to the point that Poindexter had had to help Danny pull himself out of his dented and now phase-proof locker. He'd failed a physics test on top of his already abysmal English and History grades. The rain had soaked his homework beyond salvage. And now?
"Enough!" Danny yelled, sharp, forceful. Barely off a Wail. "I have had it with you." He hissed. "You- you- do you even hear yourself? Ghosts, ghosts, ghosts, that's all you care about. All you'll ever care about." He scoffed. "I don't want some- some stupid ecto-torture device! I don't want to hunt ghosts! I don't want to be terrified you're gonna decide I- I'm too ghostly or whatever and hack me apart in the lab just because I don't fit in with your damn expectations!"
"Yes I mean it!" Danny snarled, cutting off his mother. "Your portal killed me for half an hour and the only thing you cared about was it was finally working!"
"Danno, what-" Jack's voice shook. Danny didn't have to see the reflected glow to know his eyes were blazing ecto-green.
"Look at what it did to me." His voice shook. "Look at what your precious invention did to me." He fixed his eyes on his dad's. "This is what you've done to me. I'll never get into NASA - even if my grades weren't through the floor I'm medically unfit. My arm's never fully recovered from having half the city's power channeled through it. My heart's even worse. There's nothing that can be done - Sam's been trying. Ancients, she's tried. Every doctor, every alternate remedy, even plucked up every bit of courage she has and begged a ghost to see if what's left of who they used to be knew if anything could help me. Nothing."
He gestured at his kodak. "That was a year and a half's wages, working quadruple shifts at Nasty Burger. I'm tired. Between homework, actual work, Dash and his lot - they trapped me in my locker again today, you know? Took me three hours to get out, only managed it when someone else unlocked it. And the ghost attacks, which you make worse - you brought the school roof down last week, chasing Phantom, remember?" He growled quietly. "I was in there. The ghost pushed me out the way of a beam that would have crushed me - a beam you brought down trying to catch him." He laughed, bitter and dark. "And Vlad. Oh, Vlad. He who raped me when I was fourteen and got away with it because you didn't believe me when I said I didn't like him and made me spend time alone with him anyway. Who can't let go of his obsession with you, Mom, and decided the son with your attitude was a good enough replacement."
Maddie dropped the rifle. It clattered to the floor - fired, left a scorched and glowing hole in the kitchen wall. Danny pointed at it.
"That's the only thing you're known for. Not ghosts, not ecto science, not inventions. Property destruction, and near-misses. Total disregard for the lives you trample through." He shrugged. "But hey." His smile felt... different. Sharper, more sarcastic. "At least you're right, huh? Finally made all the people who looked down on you looked silly, just had to endanger the entirety of Amity Park to do it. What's a few thousand lives to science?"
"No." Danny shook his head, scooping up the parts of his kodak. "You've done enough. Broken my things, ruined my life, chosen your work above me time and again." He turned away, as much so he didn't cry in front of them as to leave. "I know where I lie on your priority list. And believe me, when I turn eighteen - in three months, if you care enough to remember - I am out."
Danny stalked up to his room, ignoring his parents' calls after him. Placed what was left of his kodak in a shoebox, slid it up on the shelf with the other things damaged by his parents' carelessness over the three years he'd been collecting - the gramophone he'd got as payment for helping Ms O'Leary clean out her attic *shoved off the dining table to make room for the then-latest model of the Boo-merang), the sextant from Mr Weston after Wes had no interest in it (melted by ectoplasm), the pocket watch that used to tick like Clockwork's haunt from Mrs McKennan because she had no children to give it to (gummed up beyond repair by fudge).
The lock he'd made for his door refused to budge, despite the hammering his... Dad, from the sounds of it, was doing on the door. Danny flopped backwards onto his bed, staring up at the constellations stuck to his ceiling. If the tears trailing down his face ran green and glowing... well. No one else was there to witness it, not after he'd found and crushed the last of Vlad's bugs in his room.
Later, he'd go to Clockwork's haunt. Where and when it was safe, where he could cry and scream and Wail without risk of breaking anything, when he could hide with the Ancient ghost and doze off amongst the ticking of timeless clocks without fear of being dragged into another fight for his home.
But right now he just needed... well. Time.
