They had discussed it when she was too young to understand and easily distracted besides; whether to tell her the truth and if so when to tell her.
They had even asked Kon for his opinion; he was blunt and told them to tell her.
They had decided that now was the time.
It was the day after her sixteenth birthday, as they hadn’t wanted to ruin her Sweet Sixteenth, when they sat Danielle down and told her that she was a clone.
She started laughing, obviously think it was a joke, before her laughter petered off when she realized that they weren’t laughing with her.
“You’re joking, right?” her eyes darted from one to the other and back again, “no, you have to be joking…I was…I was a teen pregnancy because of Aunt Ember’s music? Mom? Dad? I can’t be Dad’s clone! I’m a girl!”
“Your creator messed up the genetics somehow,” Danny sighed, “trust us, we had the same questions. Testing confirmed it. You’re a single source clone.”
“Oh my god! Has it all been a lie? Am I just…just a science experiment gone wrong?”
“No!” Sam said sharply, “Never, you’re ours, Dani. Mine.”
“I adopted you, Danielle! Are you saying adoption isn’t the same? I love you as mine, I—”
“Enough.” Danny stepped in with his Phantom voice, the one that always quelled arguments between Danielle and her brother David, “Dani—you’re too young to understand…things were different—”
“Too young to remember the Anti-Ecto Acts, the Ghost Investigation Ward…your Fenton grandparents. There’s a reason we lived with your Grandpa Jeremy and Grandma Pamela when you were younger, why you’ve never met your Fenton grandparents…honey, we lied to protect you.”
“The Fentons were ghosthunters,” Danielle said in a small voice, “and we’ve read about the Acts in school…Dad, you and Mom helped get rid of them.”
“Sweetheart, you were originally thirteen.”
“What, I don’t—I remember growing up—”
“When you were made you were thirteen,” Danny swiped a hand down his face, “I wasn’t—I was fourteen, in hiding myself, with ghosthunter parents. I let you go. I let you be free. Told you to stay away from Amity, from the Guys in White—but they caught you. They—they had you and they tortured you and I’m so damned sorry Dani. You reverted back to your core, remember the core talk from Frostbite? You reverted and then we found out and saved you but we—we were being hunted. They were looking for three teens and a weapon. Not a newly married couple with a baby. When you came out of your core, when you felt safe enough, you reformed as a newborn. So we concocted a story, two. One to hide under, one to tell our families if it was ever safe to contact them again. We couldn’t let you be a known clone.”
“Came out sixteen and with superpowers,” Sam explained, “he could protect himself. You were just a baby, a perfectly normal baby girl. You didn’t get your powers until you were four. He wasn’t being hunted for being half-alien. If anyone found out about you or your Dad—”
“Oh,” her eyes watered, “am I still a Manson, Mom?”
“Of course! You’ll always be a Manson. You’re my daughter, Danielle.”
“I—I’ve gotta think; is this why I have superheroes as uncles and aunts? Because they know I’m—is that why Jon and Damian babysat me—?”
“Not really? We lived at a superhero base for about a year, year and a half,” Sam answered honestly, “and Damian and Jon offered to babysit. Damian is liminal, you know, so he was grounded to the base until those Acts were repealed.”
“I—do they know? Did everyone know before me?”
“Not everyone,” Danny hedged, “everyone who needed to know the truth knows. So the Bats and the Kents and a few medical staff at the base we were hidden at. They kept checking your clone markers and DNA, making sure you were stable and functioning. Apparently, Kon didn’t age for a few years, something about missing the needed processes.”
“Oh my god, Kon! Is that why Kon is always so nice? Because he knows I’m…I’m like him?”
“No, he’s nice because he’s not an asshole and he does love you like a little sister.”
“Because I’m like him…why,” she licked her lower lip, “why was I created, Dad? Who created me?”
“To kill and replace me,” Danny said bluntly, needing to get it out and not trusting himself to manage if he did so gently, “but you were—to your creator only—a mistake—”
“A mistake? Like an accident?”
“He wanted a perfect clone, an identical clone,” Sam explained.
“But I’m a girl,” Danielle said dully, before asking, “He? Who made me?”
“My godfather; he was insane and wanted to marry my mother, kill my father, and have me as his son.”
Danny paused, “Good question. Never really knew his plans for her, if he had any.”
“So that’s it. I’m just…just a failed copy—”
“Bullshit,” her parents said at once, before her mother spoke fiercely, “You’re our daughter, Danielle—”
“That’s right, we didn’t ask for you,” her father said, nodding, “but we took you anyways.”
“Because you’re ours. And you always will be.”
Danielle stood up, wavering, “I…I need to talk to Anut Dinah…I can’t—I love you guys, you’re my parents but—”
“We understand, sweetheart. We’ll call her. Kon also said you could talk to him.”
2087
gummygunk
ellievsbear
germansingergirl
blakekathryn
izzy806
romaincrisis
dailybridgerton
