prompt: For centuries, the cult has anticipated the glorious rise and return of Lord Phantom. That time is at hand. All they need to bring him fully into the mortal world is the perfect sacrifice: Danny Fenton. @five-rivers
warning: cults, injury (but hes ok)
lol
Danny didn’t know how he got here.
One minute, he was walking down the streets of Amity Park. He was headed to the mall to meet up with Sam and Tucker. The next, a bag was being thrown over his head and he was being grabbed by two different people. His wrists were tied together and he was thrown into the back of a car.
Why couldn’t they have put him in the trunk? Then he could have just phased out. Here they could see him. They would have stronger suspicions about his secret.
He could hear the car doors close and then they were stepping on the gas. When the car turned, Danny fell to the left and hit his head.
They didn’t even bother putting his seatbelt on.
They were in the car for a while. He didn’t know how long it had been. But some time later, he could feel the car finally pull over. The car doors sounded again and then he was being pulled out.
“Hey!” Danny shrugged one of them off but they grabbed him again. “What’s the deal?”
“Quiet, child!” They hissed.
They shoved him forward by the shoulders. He stumbled and almost fell to the ground before they grabbed him by his arms again.
He could hear another door opening but this one didn’t sound like a car door. It sounded more like a cellar door. It sounded old and creaky.
They guided him down the stairs and into what felt like a hallway. He heard another door open and when it closed, cheers erupted in the room he was in.
Then they cut the rope that was binding his wrists together. Danny took the chance to try to swing at one of them. He felt his fist connect with someone’s face and he was being grabbed and dragged again.
This time they threw him back onto a table, holding his wrists down and tying more rope around them. They did the same for his ankles.
Then they finally removed the blindfold.
It was dark in this room. Torches were light throughout the space and there were many people down there with robes down there. He could see one with a black eye. That must be the one he hit.
In the center of the room in front of the table Danny was strapped to was another man wearing a robe. He stood on a platform to make him taller than everyone else in the room.
“We are here to grant Lord Phantom access to the mortal plane!”
A man in a robe held his arms in the air, speaking in a loud booming voice.
“We have finally found the perfect sacrifice to bring him to us!”
Danny snorted. And then it turned into a full on laugh. The cult members stopped to stare at him.
“Do you guys like, use the internet at all?”
“The Internet is sinful propaganda!” Another member shouted at him.
“How do you know about Phantom then? Are you even from Amity Park?”
“Lord Phantom has been a legend passed down through generations. He will serve his followers in exchange for a hefty price. Records of him go all the way back to Salem-”
Ah. That explains it.
They dragged their daggers down the inside of his forearms on both sides. Little did they know, the wounds sealed up almost as soon as they were cut. But they couldn’t see that through the blood that did come out from the injuries.
“Phantom! Please come and grant us with your presence and take our offering!”
“Phantom! Phantom! Phantom!”
They cult members chanted around him and Danny smirked as an idea came into his head.
“Ark! Ugh! Bleh!”
Danny made over the top dying sounds. He arched his back and fell back down, laying as still as he could. The chanting stopped and the silence that followed was heavy with anticipation.
Danny went intangible and floated up into the air through his restraints. The cult members gasped and watched as he raised higher.
Then he let out his ghostly wail and arched his back.
They covered their ears at the sound. Some of them even clenched their eyes shut. The cult leader was still staring at him.
Now.
Danny summoned his transformation as he continued letting out his ghostly wail. He tried to make the rings more sparkly, harder to see through. He let his wail die down as his transformation finished and he could hear the gasps of the cult members as they saw him floating in the air as his ghost half.
Danny concentrated on making his eyes flood with green and then he sat up. He glanced around the room at them and they kept staring at him.
“What am I doing here?”
He put extra echo into his voice and some of them shivered at the sound of it. He let his gaze land on the leader.
“You. Why have you summoned me?”
Now that they had Phantom there, he could tell that some of them were nervous. The leader was still composed.
“We have sacrificed child, Danny Fenton, in your name! Please, grant us your help and power!”
Danny frowned at him, furrowing his brows. He let more of his ghostly energy out to make him look more spectral, putting on the facade of fury.
“You sacrificed a child in my name? How dare you!”
His voice shook the room, just bordering on another ghostly wail. The leader’s eyes widened.
“But the legends-”
“The legends are wrong!”
Danny let a bit of his wail into that one. The leader cowered and many of them got as far away from him as he could.
“Let this be a lesson! Your hubris will be the end of you! You have earned my wrath!”
“No!” The leader shouted in fear. “Is there anything we can do? We only wanted to-”
“There is nothing to be done! You can only count your days!”
“Tell me what-”
“The end is near.”
Danny took all of the echo out of his voice with that last sentence and used his ectoblasts to disappear in a black and green ball, activating his invisibility.
The cult members started scrambling around one another.
“What do we do?!”
“We’re all gonna die!”
Danny covered his mouth to stifle his laugh and flew up and out of the building he was in. Once he was gone, the laughs burst out of him.
“Oh, man! That’ll teach them!”
He looked at the sky and was shocked to see it was already dark out. He’d have to tell Sam and Tucker about what happened when he saw them tomorrow.
~~~~~~~
“Dude, why’d you bail on us?”
Tucker shouted the question at Danny from ten feet away. Sam was standing next to him with her arms crossed and her hip cocked.
“Yeah, what was so important that you couldn’t even tell us you weren’t coming?”
“You’re not gonna believe this. I-”
Suddenly, he felt like he was being watched. He stopped talking and looked around him.
Danny made eye contact with someone as he looked over his shoulder. It was one of the cultists that tried sacrificing him to summon him. Their eyes were wide and filled with fear.
They thought Danny Fenton was dead. For all they knew, Phantom ate him or some shit.
Danny put on the creepiest, sharpest grin he could muster and made his eyes turn green. It must’ve worked. The cult member turned around and ran away down the street. Danny started laughing.
“What’s so funny?” Sam shot him a look. He no doubt interrupted their conversation they were having.
“Man. I need to tell you about what happened yesterday.”
“Do you ever think it’s ironic?” asked Sam. “That people who can become invisible act so flashy?”
Next to her on the roof, Danny kicked his feet back and forth. A parade of ghosts marched through the streets below. “I mean, you have to remember the people who become ghosts.”
Sam looked at him. “What do you mean?”
“Well, it’s people who didn’t get what they wanted in life. Who wanted to do something, or be something, but didn’t get to. People who already feel invisible.”
“Does that include you?”
Danny shrugged and leaned back to look at the sky.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
“It won’t be that hard to pull off. You—sorry, Danny does it all the time.” Jazz lightly knocked herself on the head. “Sorry.”
Dan tried to not be aware of his reflection. Minuscule differences or not, everything about this outfit was so
Danny Fenton.
He couldn’t blame Jazz for the slip. He would’ve made the same mistake, all considered.
“Hey, if I’m convincing you then we have this in the bag, right?”
Or: When Danny is captured by the GIW, Dan is recruited as his body double.
annnnnd here's my Invisobang fic! huge thanks to my partners @dogometer and @arisu-artnfics who created amazing artwork for my fic here and here!
Hi! Do you read a lot of Phanfic, and if so, could you offer any recommendations? I’m craving some well-written E/C long fic.
i’m soooo sorry this took forever for me to answer. i don’t read much phic presently and, back in the day, i read everything with such ravenous fucking intent that i barely know what to recommend anymore. but!!!! here’s a few:
Le roi de Lahore by @paperandsong - 24 chapters.
“Alternate Leroux ending in which Erik takes Christine on a strange and dark journey from Paris to Lahore where she learns about his life in Punjab, before Persia, and long before the Opera house.”
Volée by veroniqueclaire - 25 chapters.
“Gunshot wounds, fast cars, first class flights, FBI in pursuit - but it's the quiet moments, the conversations, that leave Christine shaken. Hurtling towards her inevitable decision.”
Glass Heart by MulticoloredRosePetals - 46 chapters.
“Erik, the Phantom of the Opera, made an unlikely friend in violinist Gustave Daaé. But Gustave, in grief, fell from society and into the arms of vices, leaving his daughter to provide for them both. To force his friend into taking responsibility for his own life, Erik makes him a deal: give him Christine in exchange for money. Gustave accepts.”
Touch in the dark by Anonymous - kind of. it’s 4 long chapters and also e/r/c.
“After being abused and violated for as long as he can remember, Erik can’t recognise kindness even when it’s staring him straight in the face.
Or, the AU where Christine and Raoul save a man in a cage. He doesn’t want their help, but they’re either too kind or too stupid to care.”
Unsung by @wheel-of-fish - 23 chapters.
“Christine Daaé has spent eight months imagining what she might say to the Opera Ghost if she ever saw him again. Now he is here in her flat, quite by accident, and the fact of the matter is she can no longer speak.”
Teach Me To Live by donttouchthefigs - 29 chapters.
“They had not fallen in love so much as tumbled straight down the stairs of affection into passion, and here they were at the bottom, smarting from the landing.”
City of Angels by ashadeintheshade - 30 chapters.
“The tragedy of his mother’s death drives Erik, a once-famous pianist, into extreme isolation. Angry and alone, he avenges her in the only way he knows how, a tragedy that will follow him for years, until he comes face to face with the victim of his mistakes: Christine Daae.”
Made of Stone by Morrigan24601 - 20 chapters.
“Erik asks Christine for a marriage of convenience until his impending death, but things gradually unfold rather differently than expected.”
Mingled Tears: Tales of a Living Wife by bwayphantomrose - 50 chapters.
“Christine realizes what it's really like to be Erik's wife. Slowly, she learns that in order to unlock his heart, she must first unlock hers.”
okay another phic idea. 5+1 (or whatever number plus one) but it's the progress from fetus dan being embarrassed about waking up in the night with anxiety in front of phil to "make me feel better." the first one is he is like nineteen and wakes up from a nightmare and phil comforts him even though dan is embarrassed. then one of them is dan waking up with anxiety because of the phandom speculation and he fully shuts phil down when he tries to help because phils presence is making it worse. interactive introverts dan waking up and phil comforting him. we're all doomed dan waking up and desperately calling his remote crisis manager even though he's embarrassed. something in the back from the dead era maybe idk. the last out of 5 (or whatever the original number is) is right after hard launch dan going there's a man in the room and going to sleep right after. and the +1 is dan finally being comfortable enough to openly ask for help and reassurance no matter how silly the nightmare: "make me feel better."
Tumblr user bluebirdlester could you please share your classic first time fics 👉👈 also for reasons...
HI ANON IM SO GLAD YOU ASKED.
im slightly biased towards more recent fic; while i was Around for the early phandom, i didn't bookmark nearly as much back then. (i have gone back for my personal ultrafavs of the era though. god that would be fun to make a rec list of. someone ask me for that, i'll spend the whole long weekend curating it)
im also using a slightly broad definition, including "first time doing x" and non-2009 fics that still qualify for au reasons. all of that said, here are some recs:
first of all, perhaps the goat, just a little bit closer (whole series)
ask and receive
the best is yet to come
sun kissed skin on my lips
nothing but cherry
little bird, say it again (yes 2009, yes au)
the slutty nun chronicles (not 2009, this is an au, but it's a first-time-together and i love it so much)
Maddie and Jack are down in the basement with Danny when the accident happens. They’re initially a little scared, but they put it aside to help their son in any way they can. Along the way, they get wrapped up in ghostly adventures and start to relearn everything they thought they knew about ghosts. They did have emotions. They had an entire civilizations. They were their own people.
Meanwhile, post-accident, all Sam and Tucker see is their friend slowly unraveling. The light-hearted, passionate, quirky Danny they knew was replaced by someone more cautious, more tired, more wary. They knew something happened to him that day, something involving his parents’ work, but they didn’t know what. All they could conclude was that ghosts did it. And from what his parents used to say, ghosts were corrupted manifestations of negative emotions. They couldn’t be allowed to hurt others like they did Danny.
So Sam and Tucker become ghost hunters. Even as the Fentons begin to change their tune about the nature of ghosts, Sam and Tucker only become more suspicious. Had the ghosts taken them over? Manipulated them? Had exposure warped their own minds? So they continue on their warpath, their primary target being the infamous Phantom. Maybe once they caught him, maybe once he was on the edge of annihilation, Phantom would give them some clues on what happened to Danny. Maybe they could fix him.
