Bury the dead
My invisobang fic for 2025! I'm posting max of a chapter per day and I'll reblog with the next chapter. A special thanks to my wonderful beta superus who has read this a million and one times for me and help me a bunch make sure it was the best it could be for publishing. WARNING: GORE
Summary: Death is a part of the circle of existence, everything that lives must eventually die. It is the nature of things. No matter how far long, or not far along as the case may be, a being is in their life, Death can come knocking at any time. This is a fact. There is no escape, only ignorance for those who have not faced reality yet.
It has come time for a select group of people in Amity Park to face this truth and the fact they might have had a hand in one young teen’s death. At the end of the day, at least his soul is still around to explain and get his body buried.
ao3 link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/70251576/chapters/182429261
Chapter 1: Proof of Death
word count: 4036
There’s a maturity that comes with dying. Some sort of wisdom or perspective that makes his life and priorities from before seem incredibly insignificant and childish. He knows that he’s been changed, that he’s died, that he’ll never be the same. There’s no way to change back now.
The metamorphosis altered him beyond his new mindset, species, and subsequent power set. He can’t help but see his classmates and friends (though it is mostly Sam and Tucker that he sees it in) as adorably oblivious. They look so young to him now, so innocent. Most of their actions and worries are trivial in the grand scheme of things, but he can’t help but be enamored. He’s become weak to their pleading because, at the end of the day, they were there for him (even if they were the reason behind it in the first place). They could have left, could have fled once he started screaming. Or before, when they were all humans and got in trouble together doing their hare-brained schemes. But they didn’t.
They covered for him. They stayed, even if he is now a completely different type of entity than them, a fact they’ve been ignoring in the face of pretending he is still human (even though pure humans would never be able to develop such abilities and skills that he now possesses). His friends, who were there when it happened, seem unable to accept the consequences of their actions and the fact that he’s not the same being who walked down into the lab with them.
He knows dying made an impact on him. That he will never be Danny, be the little kid (barely a teen—oh how proud he used to be of officially being a teen!) who wandered into the hole in the wall in an effort to show off in front of his only friends, completely disregarding his screaming survival instincts and the voices of his parents in his head that warned him away from the lab. He barely recognizes that version of himself, the boy who had known better, who had hesitated on the precipice of reason before forcing himself to step forward (to trip and fall and die a death no one but him has accepted or even tried to understand yet).
He hadn’t wanted to. He had known it was a bad idea. He had even said as much as they urged him into the PPE, but the thought of backing out and seeing the disappointment in their eyes, had been worse. (He would do practically anything for them.) Besides, his parents, while telling them to stay out of the lab for safety, had claimed that the portal machine was safe, even if they didn’t know why it wasn’t working… so it would be fine, right?
So, he had silenced the voice of reason, ignored the churning of his guts (instincts that had saved him before), and walked into the device. Not out of excitement, but because turning back had felt like an admission of… not weakness, but something he hadn’t been ready to name. (A feeling that he can no longer comprehend like he used to… his whole way of understanding emotions and processing them has fundamentally shifted and changed with his soul emerging from the human chrysalis it used to inhabit and shifting into his current form.) The jackhammering of his heart in his chest was the last thing he had felt before he had tripped and only felt the A̷̢͈̽͐͛͐̄Ǵ̶͙̤̞͌͆͑̎̚͝͝Ō̶̡͇͖̻̝̠͔̺̭̝̼̠͙̅̋̀̆͒̊̈́̊̍N̸̫̹̘͔̬͍̠̺̘̯̟͖͕̋́̐͒̿̀̔͛̚͜͝͠ͅY̷̘̻̜̠͈̫͚̻͂ of death. (A feeling he will never have again, for he no longer has a naturally beating heart.)
Now, he wonders what that boy would think of who he is now. Would he be horrified (at him or their friends)? Would it be possible for him to understand the ways he’s been reshaped? Would Danny be able to recognize the body he sees in the mirror as his?
His friends still laugh, still stress over things that once felt important, still carry themselves like the world is exactly as they always thought it was. For all that witnessing his death traumatized them, his friends carry on like the world is still solid beneath their feet. (And to be fair, it is; they don’t have to worry about existing in the same dimension as everything else like he does. It makes him feel like what they did had no real consequence. He hates it.) The only reason he hasn’t exploded at them is how exhausted the two of them have become. With Tucker panicking and updating everything to be even less likely to discharge electricity, and Sam not only no longer joking about being dead inside but also no longer wearing anything that has a death motif… it is clear they were impacted by what happened. The panicked calls for “check-ins” in the middle of the night make that more than clear that they care and were impacted. Even if neither of them have tried to address it.
He doesn’t begrudge them for it. But he knows, with a quiet certainty, that he will never again see things the way they do. And he’s glad. (For all that, he wishes that someone would accept his state of being or at least acknowledge it; he would never ask them to die for him, to face what he did. He just wishes they would accept that he’s no longer human. They deserve to be Protected; they were the twin stars he orbited around after all. But the result of their peer pressure needs to be addressed before it forces him to leave.)
They, his friends, just call it “the accident.” He almost laughs at that sometimes, like it was something minor, something that had no big impact or held much importance. But every day, the evidence piles up as he notices more things that mark him as more “other” than human.
In his human shift, his skin holds no warmth (all he feels is cold now, but he doesn’t mind, it’s comforting); his touch startles others, like touching ice unexpectedly. His skin is now pale in a way that feels uncanny if one stares at it too long. He’s the kind of white that the women he’s read about in history textbooks used to die for. Literally, women used to poison themselves for the perfect porcelain complexion. (Ha! Ironic isn’t it? He achieved what they strived for, it only took his death. His skin is now the shade of death and dolls that gather dust on antique shelves.)
His ears taper to points, his canines long enough to puncture his lips if he were human. His fingernails are much thicker now, almost like claws with their sharp ends. And when he moves, he’s all fluidity and grace; no stumbles, just the precision of an apex predator. His eyes gleam an unsettling and piercing blue, shifting to a glowing ectoplasmic green when his emotions get particularly strong.
And when he’s outside, or under any kind of light? Nothing. No shadow. Just emptiness where it should be, no matter his form or how solid he tries to be.
And if one were really paying attention, they’d notice that he doesn’t eat anymore. (Despite not eating, he never finds himself hungry. He has found that he can still stomach water, and enjoys drinking it chilled with ice cubes on occasion, but that’s all he can bring himself to stomach. Instead, when he feels fatigued, he goes home so that he can absorb the energy radiating from the portal… if he finds the emotions around his friends isn’t enough to sustain him.) They would also notice that despite the almost translucent quality that his smooth as silk skin now has, there are no veins that can be seen. (It makes sense, when he took the time to think about it. He has no need for blood; after all, he’s not naturally a solid being after all.) Sometimes, when he sees himself in the mirror, he wonders… if he cradled a skull in his hands, would anyone even be able to tell the difference between the color of his skin and the bone he would be holding so gently?
The truth of his being isn’t something he can hide from anyone who cares to look, isn’t something he cares much to hide either, but it also isn’t something he will shout from the rooftops. In fact, he is still discovering things that make him Other, makes him different from the humans he surrounds himself with.
Not that anyone pays him enough attention to notice, beyond his friends who are living in denial. And Jazz, who has most of the clues but still can’t put the puzzle pieces together. (It’s probably the sheer absurdity of it. Her brother is dead, and she doesn’t believe in spirits or anything like that. And yet, there he is. Still going to school, despite lacking a heartbeat. Still laughing with his friends.) He knows that if the portal wasn’t working, his parents would already know… or at least Maddie would, but they’ve been spending all their down time in the basement working on countermeasures for the portal and possible ghost invasions.
For all that he’s accepted that he’s not a human, he would like to say that he still embodies the virtues that are held dear by them, even if he judges things and makes decisions on a different metric than they do. It sometimes takes effort for him to understand some of the decisions people make, but he tries. It is the least he could do when he wants them to do the same for him.
His true form, he knows, would draw from the masses horrified screams and make him the center of attention with his lack of legs and the fact that his eyes are a swirl of green, blue and white. His deathmark is also far from subtle, sparkling along his pale-blue skin and white lips that match the shade of his hair and eyebrows. Nothing about his appearance could fool one into thinking he was human. He liked that about it. It was in no way misleading or lying.
His decisions these days are mostly based on whether he will regret it later and how it would impact those around him. (Since his death, he’s become more aware of the world and people around him. He’s always been considerate, but now he notices the little things: the people who enter rooms after him, the exhaustion that Mr. Lancer always emits, the way Mikey’s eyes light up when someone talks to him. The way his friends, Sam and Tucker, brighten when they ramble on about whatever they want to talk about. And he acts on it. He holds the door open for anyone who is behind him, stays after class to help clean up, makes sure no one gets left sitting alone [even if it means talking his friends into it], and makes sure to hang out with his friends, both together and solo. It feels important now, in a way he never grasped while red blood traveled through his veins.)
Even with this new, broader understanding of the world and what he wants his place and impact on it to be, he finds himself surprised and a little emotionally unprepared as he floats above Danny, the charred remains of what used to be his body.
The reality of his death stares back at him, raw and undeniable. He had already accepted his death. It had become a known fact in his mind as soon as he had woken up. But even knowing of his own demise, stumbling across him (the body, the chrysalis his soul left behind) isn’t something he had expected. (Oh, Ancients, look at him! That was him!!!)
His corpse lies twisted, contorted in a way that suggests Danny had tried, in his final moments, to reject what was happening to him (even though he had eventually failed). His arm is still stuck out, like it's still touching the button or loose panel that started it all.
The PPE, meant to shield him, the suit that he put on for a stupid photo he was peer pressured into that would have no significant or emotional meaning behind it, clings like a second, ruined skin, shriveled and warped, desperately holding onto the flesh beneath it as if trying to keep him together. It has fused in places, the fabric melted into charred muscle and stiffened into grotesque ridges where electric fire and energy had licked and seared. In other spots it is torn and peeling, ripped apart where his body had fought against the unbearable heat/pain. The material has sunk in, melted past the epidermis, becoming one with the raw and blackened tissue that had been cooked from the inside out like it was some big steak at a barbecue where all the dads got too distracted and wound up putting everything in the microwave because it got too cold.
And his face—Ancients, his face.
The fatal wound had slithered its way up from his arm to his cheek, jagged and branching like lightning frozen mid-strike. It stretches across his skin, chaotic and sprawling, stopping just beneath one of his eyes. As if the force that had killed him had managed not to affect him, to not reach his soul through his eyes (the natural body’s window), turning the skin around the area to the texture of jerky. (A food he hated even back when he was human, one he thinks he’ll never be able to even look at now.)
It is said that eyes are windows to the soul, but isn't this (him being unaffected by it all) then a lie? Like the butterflies that mimic others in order to seem poisonous when they aren't. He is no longer who he once was. He is not Danny, the boy who lived and breathed and grew in that skin. He is something different, something taken from the heart of the star he used to be and exploded and twisted into something new. He cannot say that his death didn't affect his soul because it did. It changed who he is; changed how he defines himself and how he interacts with the world. So, finding his eyes clear of any damage disgusts him. One last falsehood branded on his body. (He hates this. He hates this. He really, truly hates it.)
The organs remain perfectly preserved, half open and lifeless, as if they should comfort him with their pristine state saying that he was unaffected. But instead, they only disturb him, even with the settled blood staining the ends of the orbs a dark red. It is nothing but a pretty lie, a deception that sickens him… but maybe their state would bring his friends comfort?
His skin, everywhere else, tells the truth. It is ruined, warped beyond recognition, twisted into something that no longer looks 100% human. In that, at least, he can find comfort. He has come to value truths, a virtue he didn’t hold too much stock in until his metamorphosis. Because beyond his new instincts saying lying isn’t even worth it, he understands now what it means to be the unspoken consequence.
That is because he is the result, the aftermath, the only evidence (excluding his corpse), of what occurred. His body is a testament to the price paid for foolish actions and his parents’ lies, a scar carved into reality itself. (Why has he had to pay the price when his parents have no clue that anything even happened as a result of their lies, beyond the portal suddenly working?)
There is no denying what happened. There are no soft edges, no illusions, just the raw, unvarnished truth lying before him in all its glory. And if nothing else, at least the truth does not pretend. (Danny can’t; he’s dead.) It does not soothe with empty reassurances or try to reshape itself into something more palatable. It simply is. His skin bears it, his very existence embodies it. And though the world may try to look away, to forget, to deny, he never will. He can't. Because he is the reminder. The consequence. The floating, talking proof that some things, once changed, can never be the exact same again. He will most likely never lie again (there’s no real point when it comes to things like this).
Finding Danny had been a surprise. Not a shocking one, but something unexpected all the same. (It did raise an emotional response in him, but it was mostly a sense of wrongness; that he shouldn’t be there.) He had wanted to see the portal from the other side, to see if his instinct about how different the swirl pattern in the portal from the other side was right. He never expected this. (He hadn’t truly thought about it. If he had been asked earlier, he wouldn’t have believed that he had left a body behind. Would have believed that his undead form had somehow been bound to the human one he was based on, or perhaps that it had been incinerated from all the energy of the portal opening and stabilizing.)
He thought he’d take a moment to trace the swirling patterns in the familiar green light that followed him everywhere these days, just a brief pause to get a bit more energy before trying to focus on reading that book Sam asked him to look over. But then… but then he saw Danny, and he couldn’t do anything other than stare. It had taken him a moment to realize that he had instinctively gone invisible at the sight, as if hiding would somehow erase the horrifying sight before him. His remains. Danny.
And the worst part? Danny shouldn’t be here. He should be buried, safe beneath the earth, and given a proper farewell. Laid to rest.
But he isn’t. To be stuck on his death site is a horrific fate, a constant reminder of his last moments… No wonder he’s been having issues with his anger. Danny won’t find peace, not here. Not surrounded by the machine that took his life and its ceaseless noises. How could he rest with the sounds of his worst agony constantly echoing around him?
He has to do something about it. And it has to be now.
The moment he shifts dimensions, to move him, to free him from this terrible place, he takes a deep breath (an ingrained soothing habit that no longer really works anymore) and is immediately hit with the odor. He tries to expel it, tries to remove the memory of experiencing it, but it’s everywhere—thick and sticky, clinging to him like syrup left out on the counter on a hot day, something that would be impossible to ever fully clean up.
Danny smells of things that… are just plain wrong. He smells of burnt chicken and sickly-sweet decomposition. The air stings with the scent, almost burning the ecto-strands in his nose with something similar to sulfur and ozone. It’s... too much. Metallic bitterness lingers at the back of his throat even after he turns off his lungs, like blood spilling from an infected wound. The memory/sensation of it sticks to him, sinking to his very core and sticking to it like droplets of slowly coagulating blood.
There is no escape. He innately knows that there is no shower hot enough nor soap strong enough, and no amount of time in the fresh air will be long enough to get rid of it—of the memory of this discovery. He will carry this with him forever. Though thankfully all the ectoplasm in the air has stopped him from decomposing as fast as he would in any other location.
It takes him a bit to get his bearings, to rally enough to be able to actually approach Danny with the knowledge of his scent (even if the only reason he still smells it is he remembers it and it won’t go away). He floats closer slowly, cautiously, like he wishes he had allowed himself to be when he was here before instead of racing to get the photo so that he could leave (back when he was alive and fragile enough for it to kill him). The glow he passively emits in this form adds a light to the glazed-over eyes that only emphasizes their emptiness, that there’s no one home. It’s like a vampire staring longingly into a mirror, having long forgotten their appearance but still having no reflection to view themself with, and so their visage is forgotten.
He considers forcing himself onto the physical plane, to place his feet on the ground and feel the weight of gravity, but that feels wrong. Like he’s trying to convince Danny that it’s okay, that he’s alive, but he’s not. Hasn’t been for a while now and never will be again. So, he continues in his natural state, the pull of Earth’s mass towards him nonexistent on his paranormal body as he changes his orientation so that his body is closer to the floor. How does he want to do this?
Gathering up his courage, he goes to scoop up his corpse into a princess carry, only to find his hands slipping through Danny. He stares at his hands, he knows that they are tangible at the moment, he can feel his body forcing itself to be still enough to be solid. But his hands slipped right on through, leaving them to brush the warm metal of the machine.
Maybe he just missed? Maybe he moved too fast? He knows that isn’t the case.
He steels himself and floats forward again. He squares his shoulders, forcing himself to stay calm. Be solid. Pick him up. That’s it. One thing at a time, he can do this. Then he floats down to scoop up Danny, only for his hands to pass right through him… again.
He blinks. Looks down at his hands. They’re solid. He knows they are, just like he knows that they were last time. He can feel the strain of holding himself together, forcing his form to stay tangible. But Danny? He’s untouched, still in the same position as before.
With a shaky breath, he tries again. He forces himself to slow down, and be more deliberate. He focuses, narrows everything down to the feeling of his hands, his fingers, the forced tangibility he wills upon his body. He reaches. And again, his arms slip through Danny like he’s made of smoke.
A surge of panic bubbles up from under his forced calm. That’s not right. That’s not right. He growls, his eyes flash an even brighter green, and his core rumbles with his rising emotions. And he tries again. And again. And again. Each attempt is more frantic than the last. But no matter how hard he focuses, no matter what he tries, he gets the same result of his hands gliding through Danny like he isn’t there even though he can still smell him. He almost wishes that he could smell his own emotions, that way it might drown out the scent of the corpse but he has a feeling it would also make things worse.
He can’t touch him. He can’t move him. He can’t do anything. And that terrifying truth sets in like trees taking root in his core.
What to do now? He ponders, having finally given up being able to even touch his body. Well, maybe he could get someone else to help move and bury him? Who could he ask? Jazz, Maddie, and Jack still have no idea that he could even be dead, so they’re out… but perhaps Sam and Tucker could? They would freak out over seeing his corpse, and that isn’t something he wants to happen, but he doesn’t have the time to wait for them to accept his death. Danny deserves to be moved from there. As fast as possible. And if that means that he needs to force his friends to face the truth, then that’s what he’s going to do.
He’ll fix this. It’s already a travesty that Danny’s been here this long.
