So I finally drew Robert's soulmate mark for my soulmate au! This is supposed to wrap around his right arm, starting at his wrist and ending near his elbow.
I will be making references of it on an arm, and maybe draw robert WITH the mark. And then I'll start on Flambae's mark :]
I tried to hard to color it so it looks like flames 😭
Christmas Carol here, the one a bit obsessed with Better Half. Screw that, I’m totally obsessed with your fanfic. So I was thinking here instead of working and couldn’t help but wonder if the mark on their names is their real names. Is like Kleya really Kleya? Because we know Luthen isn’t Luthen, so I always assumed that Kleya isn’t Kleya either and the name is just a coverup. And I was left here wondering if you thought about that or if I’m just losing it here
Hello there!
First of all, I'd like to say THANK YOU for commenting on each chapter of BH. You have NO IDEA how much I laughed with them. They made my day. Truly.
Second, SORRY for the delay. This ask has been sit here a good few days and only now I could sit down and reply to that.
Third, seeing people become obsessed with my lil fic with this lil weird ship means a lot to me. I really had no idea this many people would become invested in this story when I first thought of it. For that, I'll be forever grateful.
Now, good question. I wondered that myself when I wrote the first chapter. I mean... if Luthen isn't Luthen, Kleya maybe isn't Kleya as well. Or not, because the reasons why Luthen isn't Luthen are clear, but the same doesn't apply to Kleya. She's just a civilian. Of course she could've changed her name to escape her past.
But to avoid complicating things, I decided to stay with Kleya. If the canon later changes that, so be it. And it becomes a canon divergence hehe
Not to mention that this man is a sly bastard. If the name on his arm was something other than Kleya, he'd go to hell to find out why she changed her name. And he certainly wouldn't stop until he found her connection to the Resistance, Luthen's role in it and so on and that def doesn't suit what I have in mind for this fic atm.
So the name on Krennic's arm is Kleya. Just Kleya. No surnames. And the name on Kleya's arm is Orson.
Summary: In a land of myth and a time of magic, where King Uther Pendragon forbade magic, making it illegal for everybody, there was one kind he could never banish from his kingdom. It was the soulmate magic.
Arthur wasn't happy with it, why can't the person he loves be his soulmate...
Well he could always make his soulmate... that should work... right?
Chapters: 1/1
Words: 5379
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
😭 This shit gonna make me cry, the soulmate trope always gets to me depending on how they do it but I’ll try my best to make it soft and not too ANGSTY! I’ll also do the sentence tattoo since it’ll make the story a lot more emotional. Child, I made this too long and way too emotional. I listened to the song attached below as I wrote this, I enjoy the first minute of the song but the tune explains the story.
Requested: soulmate au with bruce? where a person has half a tattoo on their (wrist, finger, hand, somewhere..) and their soulmate has the other half! not exactly sure how theyd meet.. maybe at a gala or bruce saves him?
Warnings: Fluff, slight angst, soulmate trope, Bruce is romantic, reader is also a romantic, protective Bruce, kissing, slow burn because of angst, lovesick, mentions of abuse, toxic family.
Tags: @bigassbisaster
—
—
Bruce got his soul mark at fifteen.
“I’ll stay as long as you need me too.”
He didn’t know what it meant back then.
He remembers showing Alfred and asking the older man if he knew anything about it. But Alfred simply told him that soulmates are considered sacred and special and whoever spoke to him those words is the one who’s to remain by his side for forever.
Thirteen years later and he still hasn’t found his soulmate. After starting his nights as a vigilante he can’t help but forget that we will ever have a soulmate, even if he did find them he couldn’t get them involved in his life after becoming Batman. It was far too dangerous. So, he hides his mark. Not in shame but in safety. He didn’t want people looking at it or asking questions about it.
He was a very closed off man that not many people approached him during events or charities. Too busy brooding back at home and focusing on his night patrols. So, imagine his surprise when he’s standing alone in a gala that he is forced to attend. Alfred had told him that he is to attend the gala. He honestly didn’t know what it was about but he is to show up and show the public they he is still around and cares for Gotham. He is the prince of Gotham. Hs is to keep up his image and do what he can to keep it that way.
Bruce ignore the press and photographers as he walks up to the building, keeping his head low as he enters the building where many other guests were gathered. Once he’s inside he is met with a warm welcomings and soft music playing in the background, he tells himself to hold up his appearance as he held up a fake smile.
He greets various people and lets them know that he is doing ‘fine’ and working on something ‘new’ for his company, knowing that none of it was true. He was too busy being the vigilante of Gotham, keeping the city safe from danger and making sure that everything went well.
“Mr. Wayne.” Bruce turns around to face a young man he hasn’t seen before. “I’m sorry to both you but, Mr. and Mrs. Changretta wish to meet with you.” He says in a polite voice, keeping up his own persona. Bruce is quick to tell that the young man doesn’t want to be here either, the way he Fidgets and avoids eye contact is enough for Bruce to know.
“Right.” Bruce mumbles out and gives his apologizes to the small crowd he was speaking with as he follows the young man towards an older couple.
“Mr. Wayne this is Mr. Changretta.” He points out to the older man who was sipping on champagne. “It’s nice to meet you.” Bruce says, greeting the other as Mr. Changretta chuckles. “It’s good to see you Mr. Wayne!” The two held up a conversation, talking about there own companies and the changes that are too come. His wife sure did gossip a lot and spoke badly of other tamiles that were attending the gala.
“Ugh, there he is.” He hears Mr. Changrettas wife says as she eyes over her husbands shoulder. Bruce raised a brow in confusion. “Always alone, that man should just get himself a nice women to bring every once an awhile to these things.”
Bruce follows the wife’s eyes, looking over see her watching another young man who had entered the gala. Bruce’s breath hitched, he didn’t know what he was feeling but the man from afar was stunning. He wore a nice all black suit, holding his head high and his smile—god that smile was doing things to him.
Bruce is quick to look away, his face heating up. The last time he has this feeling was when Selina Kyle was in Gotham before leaving him. The two didn’t have a relationship but he did have feelings towards her. Feelings he wasn’t able to reveal to her.
“Mr. Wayne—“ he is pulled out of his thoughts by Changrettas wife. He gives her an apologetic smile as he moves around her. “Please excuse me.” He says in a soft tone, separating himself from the couple. He is glad that he got away from the two, their bad mouthing was something he doesn’t appreciate and made him uncomfortable. They always expect him to say something horrible about others but Bruce was no where near like that.
“Changrettas giving you trouble?”
Bruce looks up to see the same young man who had entered the gala. He clears his throat and chuckled lightly. “They can be—“
“A lot?”
“Yes.” Bruce laughs out, not making what else to say.
The other hums. “I’m y/n.” He adds, holding his hand out for Bruce to shake which he gladly accepts. He glanced down at his wrist and took notice of his mark being covered. Y/n is quick to pull away, hiding his wrist. “Sorry—I don’t usually like it when people stare.”
Bruce shakes his head, not wanting to offend him. “I understand, soulmate marks are special and private. Im sorry if I made you uncomfortable.” He didn’t want to make the other uncomfortable for staring, he had grown curious of the others mark and was just surprised to see it hidden.
“I—thank you.” Y/n says. “Not many people respect the privacy of my mark. Always asking and wanting to know what it says.” He chuckles out, standing near Bruce as the two watch the crowds, people dancing and laughing as they gossiped amongst each other.
Bruce is the first to speak up. “Did you come alone?” Y/n nodded. “I always do.” He shrugs his shoulders, these types of things never caught his interest. He was always told to bring a guest with him so that the public wouldn’t think he was alone but he didn’t care about the publics opinion. If he wanted to be alone he’ll remain alone. “My family always tells me to bring a partner each time I attend these parties, but I always refuse.” He explains. “I never cared on how the public thinks of me. Most of them Pity me because I’m always alone.”
Bruce laughs. “That makes two of us.” He butts in, earning a laugh from y/n as the two had similar experience. “A family friend always tells me to attend these things, tries his best to set me up but I always reject the offer.“
“At Least he was nice enough to set you up. My family almost forced a marriage on me.” Y/n sighs, his family is very well known in Gotham, but they were too strict. They didn’t care if he found his soulmate or not, they wanted him to get married soon and to start his own family. Y/n was always the one to put his foot down on his families crazy ideas. He lost contact with them after that, too upset to speak with anyone since all they wanted was for him to be married off to some stranger he didn’t know or love.
“I’m sorry to hear that, couldn’t image the stress you must’ve felt. Them forcing you to do that.” Bruce turns to face him, taking him in properly. The other cleaned up nice and held the appearance of a rich man. But he didn’t act rich, no. He was a bit like him, faking his way through life
Bruce lets out a deep sigh as he takes in the music, smiling softly as he offers his hand to Y/n. “Care for a dance?” He asks, catching the other off guard as he chuckles. “Im not a very good dancer, I wouldn’t want people to judge you by your choice of partner.”
“Who says we have to dance in front of everyone?” Bruce questions, a smirk on his face. Y/n narrows his eyes, not knowing if he is to trust him or not. “What do you have in mind?” Bruce’s smirk can only widen as he takes Y/n’s hand and guides them far away from the main event, entering an empty room as he leaves the door open slight ajar, the two still being able to head the music playing.
“We can dance in here.”
The two weren’t very social and the room was empty a perfect setting. Y/n hesitates at first before taking Bruce’s hand again, the other pulling him in close as he placed his hand on his hip. The two dance in silence, taking in the music as Y/n leans his head against Bruce’s shoulder. He’s never had a dance like this before, always being forced to do it in front of the public, to show them who he was.
“I’ve never had a dance like this before.” He whispers against Bruce’s ear, causing the other to blush softly. “I’m glad I’m your first.” Bruce responds back, pulling away and spinning his partner who laughs quietly and shakes his head. “I’m not a women.”
“I know that—you’d be my first dance partner who is a man. I don’t have much experience around that area.” He admits.
“So I’m guessing your into both?” Y/n asks, facing Bruce again.
Bruce does a thinking face and shrugs. “Something like that—I’m not quite sure, I spent majority of my time staying away from crowds and people. I’ve never had the time to be with someone.”
Y/n hums, focusing on there dancing as he sways against him. “I would say the same.” He can relate to Bruce. He’s the kind of person to stay away from parties like theses ones. He always bombarded with questions about his love life and tries his best to dodge them or to change the subject. His family always expected him to do better, he was never enough to them.
The music, shortly came to an end. The two looking up at each other, staring in each other’s eyes. Bruce is unable to look away as y/n swallows nervously and gently pulled away from Bruce, turning his gaze away from him. “I—uh, thank you.” He whispers, his fingers tracing over his left wrist where his soul mark is located. He didn’t know what he was doing, soulmate were sacred and he didn’t want to lose the loyalty of his future partner.
But Bruce made him feel something, he made him feel special. He was the first person he’s ever gotten close to at a gala who didn’t judge the wha he spoke or dressed, or the way he came alone. No, bruce didn’t do any of that. He didn’t want to believe these sudden feelings growing inside of him.
He shakes his head, no. He can’t allow this no matter how much he wants it he can’t. “I’m sorry.” He croaks out, brushing past Bruce as he leaves the room. He walks away, not looking back as he heads towards the exit of the building. He avoids peoples stares and whispers as he calls for a cab. He wanted to leave he wanted to stay away but something kept pulling him back.
He shakes the thoughts away and gets inside the cab, slamming the door behind him and giving his address. He sits in the back seat in silence, tracing his fingers over the bandages as he unties them, revealing his mark.
“I’m not a religious person but I do sometimes think that god made you for me.”
The sentence always made him feel something inside, excited and joy. He always waited for someone to say those words to him, to find out who his soulmate really was but he never had luck. He always held his expectations high whenever he met someone only to be disappointed.
He didn’t want Bruce to disappointment him. The man was far too nice and sweet. He was a gentleman who didn’t judge him and respect him, he was kind enough to listen about his family. Most people would brush it off and complain about there own problems, not caring about him at all. But Bruce didn’t do any of that.
—
Bruce had returned back home early from the gala, tossing his tie to the side as he falls back into his chair. He didn’t know what he did to scare off Y/n, but the man ran out like he just got caught doing something bad. He doesn’t know much about him or what he does for a living but he can’t stop thinking about him.
He sits up in his seat and furrowed his brows, staring down at his mark and sighing deeply. He stands up and heads towards the living room where Alfred was seated near the fire, reading the paper and asks. “What happens if I can’t find my soulmate?”
Alfred looks up from the papers. “If you were to die your soulmates mark will disappear forever. Letting them know that there other half is no longer around.” He explains.
Bruce bites his lip. “What if I never find them but end up with someone who isn’t my soulmate.”
Alfred raised a brow. He sets the papers down and eyes Bruce up and down, taking in the stage he’s in before piecing the puzzles together. “You found someone.”
Bruce looks away. “Not really.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t think they feel the same. He ran away looking frightened, afraid of something.” Bruce explains, sitting across from Alfred as he stares into the fire. Watching the wood crackle and pop, Alfred shuffling next to him. “I heard stories that people do fall in love with someone who isn’t there soulmate, they get married and start there family.” Alfred sighs. “But what hurts most is when one of them finally finds there soulmate, the person who fits in well with there life and matches with them. It’s painful having to let go of everything you have in order to be with that one person.” Alfred’s tone carried pity, likes he’s seen it happen before.
Alfred clears his throat, focusing back on the paper. “It’s your discussion to decide if what you want to do is right or if waiting for the one is a better choice.”
With that the room grows into a comfortable silence. Bruce still thinking about Y/n, the time the spent together at the gala was short but yet, memorable. He can’t stop thinking about him, the way he moved when dancing, how soft his voice is when he speaks and the softness in his eyes. Bruce can get lost in his eyes for hours and oh, how desperate he wanted to kiss the other man.
He placed a hand on his chest, near his heart as he feels it beat rapidly as he thinks of Y/n. His face growing hot as he stands up quickly. “I’m going out.” He mumbled to Alfred, heading downstairs to the batcave and getting himself ready. He needed a distraction, he can’t always think about Y/n. So, he escapes into the night as Batman, hiding in the shadows as he moved around quickly and quietly.
Gotham will soon be covered in rain as the clouds moved closer, it started off soft, until the rain suddenly came pouring down. The streets of Gotham slowly growing empty as everyone looked for shelter or rushed home, not wanting to deal with the rain or getting wet.
Bruce on the other hand was used to the rain, his suit protected him from getting too wet and still being able to move around easily. His eyes scan the city until taking notice of a figure sitting on top of a building, near the ledge.
Bruce sighs to himself as he stands from his spot, taking out his grappling hock and using it to swing to the next building over, landing softly as he stares at the hunched over figure. He slowly approaches, the dark figure looking over there shoulder once they hear him approaching.
Bruce froze in spot as he takes in the sight of Y/n sitting near the ledge. He was wearing casual clothes, all wet from the rain and his hair damp, sticking to his forehead. “Don’t worry,” he hears him say. “I’m not jumping.” He turns back to Face the city.
Bruce takes another step forward, standing next to him as the two remain quiet. “You shouldn’t be to close to the edge.”
Y/n scoffs. “It’s not the first time I’ve done this.” Which was true, he was always sitting alone at night. Not matter how bad the weather is he always finds a way to sit alone in silence, lost in his own thoughts. Y/n gives Batman a glance, he’s heard of him before. Everyone in Gotham knows who he is, this’ll be the first time he’s ever seen him in person or up close.
“It’s still dangerous.”
Y/n appreciates him. “I know.” He slowly shifts, moving back as he moves further away from the edge, not wanting to keep Batman worried. He lets the rain pour down on him, using his sleeve to wipe water out of his eyes. “Shouldn’t you be out patrolling and kicking peoples ass?” Y/n asks, turning to face Batman.
Bruce chuckles. “Only when they are doing something that is considered bad.” He moves closer to Y/n, wanting to make sure he didn’t slip and fall. “I thought you were gonna do something bad.“
“By jumping?” Y/n cuts in, smiling at him as he shakes his head. “I usually just sit here in order to get away from everything—from everyone.” He wraps his arms around himself, gripping his wet coat tightly as he breaths out. “Sometimes I feel like I’ve already seen everything that’s gonna happen and it’s a nightmare.”
Y/n thinks back to his family, the disappointment they show him. Always comparing him to his relatives or siblings and how they were doing better than him, he was oldest in the family and they expected so much from him. He always tried to find ways to get there approval but they were never happy which lead him to leaving. He couldn’t handle being around them anymore that he cut off all communication.
They have tried various times to contact him after he created his own successful company. They only try to reach him in order to take apart of his fortune and company, but he wasn’t allowing that to happen. He’s been at peace with himself for five years, he can handle a few more.
Batman moves next to him, causing him to look up. He still doesn’t trust him to be here alone, he doesn’t blame the man. He would also be worried if someone he knew or cared about was sitting alone near the edge of a rooftop. He shifts to move.
“You can stay.” Y/n hears Batman say, noticing the sympathy and worry behind his blue eyes. Y/n gives him a sad smile, turning back to face the city, taking in the lights and silence.
“I’ll stay as long as you need me too.”
Y/n doesn’t notice the way Batman’s eyes widen.
—
Bruce was back in the cave, his mask discarded and thrown somewhere as he reviewed tonight’s recording. Rewinding his interaction with y/n over and over again.
“You can stay.”
“I’ll stay as long as you need me too.”
Bruce didn’t know how to feel, his soulmate was standing in front of him the whole time, he had spoken those words engraved into his wrist. He traced his fingers over the mark, looking back at the recording as he takes in Y/n’s sad smile.
Now that he knows that they are soulmates, he still has to find a way to confirm it. He can’t go after y/n and expect the other to accept him on the spot. Soulmates were sacred but not everyone was accepted. Majority of people who meet there soulmates are rejected, either due to one of them already moving on and not wanting to leave whatever they had with another person behind. While others were easily accepted. Bruce didn’t know how Y/n would react if he found out that they were chosen to be together.
He slams his notebook closed, tossing his pen aside as he rubs his eyes tiredly, smudging black eye makeup on his fingers. He paced in spot and groans to himself, he was going to regret this. He quickly sits up and goes on the computer, typing away as he enters y/n’s name and waits for his information to pull up.
He gets a file of him in seconds, pulling it up and reading through it. He knows that y/n owns his own company but spends majority of his free time in libraries, he does volunteer work there in order to get away from the press. He knows that he doesn’t have a partner and lives alone.
Bruce quickly turns his computer off and marched upstairs to get himself cleaned. He had to see him, he just had too and it couldn’t wait. He gives himself a shower and changed into something casual, he checks the time and cursed under his breath.
It was still too early, the sun was just rising and he hasn’t gotten any sleep. He lied in bed awake, staring at the ceiling as he tries to think of a way to tell y/n about him being his soulmate. He’s never dealt with something life this and felt embarrassed to ask Alfred. The man already teased him enough, he didn’t need to add more fuel to the fire.
All this thinking makes him tired and passes out, he sleeps for a few hours before being startled awake by his alarm. He winced and covers his ears, groaning deeply as he slams the alarm off, checking the time. It was noon and he’s been passed out for hours.
Y/n comes back to mind, causing Bruce to jump out of bed and get something on and quickly. He’s rushing out of the tower, too anxious to eat any of Alfred’s cooking or to even speak to anyone. He’s quick to get on his motorcycle and drive off into the streets of Gotham.
It only takes an hour for him to arrive to the library, parking his bike and throwing his helmet off. He doesn’t care if he doesn’t look decent or presentable, he stumbles inside the building and quietly walks around, ignoring peoples stares as he looks around frantically for Y/n, not seeing him anywhere.
He’s heading down the bottom floor where it’s empty. He walks past several shelves, where he finally finds him. He’s standing at the farthest section of the room, putting books away as he hums a soft tune to himself. He doesn’t take notice of him until he’s moving towards him.
Y/n is surprised to see Bruce and asks. “Bruce, what are you doing here?”
Bruce stops in his tracks a few feet away from him as he breaths heavily. He was running everywhere, searching for him. He was tired and hungry and anxious. He didn’t know what to say or how to start.
“I—I don’t know.” He stutters out, looking down in fear.
Y/n pushed the cart in front of him to the side. “Bruce.”
“I just—“ Bruce starts again. “Ever since I met you at the gala I couldn’t stop thinking about you and then you ran away. I thought I did something wrong and tried to stay away but I—I don’t have the strength to stay away from you anymore.”
Y/n’s eyes are soft. He too couldn’t stop thinking about Bruce, that one night they spent together dancing was enough for him to fall in love. He always told himself to remain loyal to his future soulmate, that he is to spend the rest of his life with them, but this feeling his has for Bruce is too much. That he breaks his vow for him.
“Then don’t.”
Y/n says in a soft tone, his eyes growing glossy. He hears Bruce chuckle to himself.
“I’m not a religious person but I do sometimes think that god made you for me.”
Y/n eyes widen in realization, he grasped his wrist. Staring at Bruce with shocked expression. “You—“
“I guess that confirms it.” Bruce says, stepping forward. “You knew?” Y/n asks, still processing everything.
“I did.” Bruce whispered, his voice sounding close. His hands reaching up to cup his face. “I just wanted to make sure that I was right, that my soulmate is standing in front of me.” Y/n sniffles, he tears up quietly and leans his forehead against Bruce’s. The two stand together in an empty section of the library. “Shh it’s okay,” Bruce whispers. Cleaning his tears away. “I’m here and I’m yours.” With that he captures his lips into a soft kiss, holding him close.
(Also, random thought , wouldn’t nightmares stain blend in with his goop- )
The answer to that is!...Yes.
There was an old insult in the village.
"You're worse than Passive's soulmate!"
It was something that… a lot of the villagers seemed to enjoy using, just to mess with each other. They would never use it near Dream, but Passive? They thought it was so funny to say. Or "I feel so bad for your soulmate. They're stuck with you" and slowly…
Passive became afraid of the idea of his soulmate.
Were they going to be stuck with him? Would they feel unhappy that they had to deal with him? He didn't… he didn't want to force someone to be with him! If they were unhappy with him then- ugh, how could they have done this?
The villagers tainted something that was supposed to make him happy. Something that was supposed to make him feel safe.
Now all he felt was fear.
…
He was sitting under his mother tree, his legs crossed under himself, and he was reading a book. He felt relaxed cause the others hadn't been bugging him much. It was just him… his brother was spending time with the villagers.
Passive decided to just stop trying to get his brother to stop spending time with them. He knew that they didn't care about Dream, they just cared about the good feelings that he gave them. He wanted… he wanted his brother happy.
And he knew that they wouldn't make him happy, but he didn't listen.
Passive perks up when he heard a voice. "Excuse me?" He looks up quickly to see a person standing near the tree. He stands up, putting his book down. If they got too close he would handle it, but he would rather not deal with this.
"Yes? What do you need?"
Why were they talking to him? They didn't seem like they came from around this place, which was a little strange. Why would they be here if they weren't part of the village? He saw their mark covered their arm.
"I'm a traveler, can you show me on my map where I am?" they hold up their map.
Passive clicks his teeth together. So they didn't know who he was, did they? That made… that made sense. He slowly walks over, and leans to look at the map. They press their shoulder against his own, "I'm trying to get here, do you think I'm going the right way?" they press their finger to the map at the town.
"Oh-" his eyes shoot down to look at where they were pressing against each other, and his breath hitches a little in his chest. Oh no. The black marking now was covered in rainbows. Shit shit shit. "That… That is ah…" he clears his throat before continuing "That is where you are now. My village"
"Oh! That's great then, would you maybe show me around?" They look at him with such a bright smile.
Passive lets out a soft mrrr sound and shakes his head, backing away "I need to keep watch on the tree. I'm sure you can find your way" he turns away, rubbing his arm. He could hear their footsteps slowly starting to go away. His knees buckled, sending him down to the ground and he coughs, catching the breath that he didn't realize he had been holding.
They didn't realize. They didn't know.
He was fine… he was safe.
Once they found out and learned who he was, they wouldn't even want to have him as their soulmate. They would be happy he sent them away. He crawls closer to the tree, curling up against the bark shutting his eyes.
Summary: Ever since you were a child, you had dreamed about getting your mark and finding the perfect person. When you finally got your mark, a quarter-sized star on the inside of your wrist, you were delighted! Your fairytale romance was just getting started. Egon didn't believe in fate. He didn't believe that a mark on your body meant something just because it matched a mark on someone else's body. When he woke up one morning and found a star on his wrist, he brushed it off. Moles could be star-shaped, he supposed.
Disclaimer: I do not own the Ghostbusters (sad, I know). This work has not been created for profit or financial compensation, and is a transformative fair use work in accordance with Section 107 of the United States Copyright Act.
Notes: Look who started another series without finishing her other Egon series (plural whoops). I don’t think anyone’s wrote a soulmate mark fic for Egon (apologies if I’m wrong. I’m basing this off of AO3)
Enjoy
1972, Columbia University
I notice the mark in the mirror when I'm brushing my teeth. A quarter-sized star on the inside of my wrist that wasn't there when I went to bed.
Excitement bubbles up in my chest as I put my toothbrush down to examine the new mark. A select few people were lucky enough to receive a mark. Never in a million years would I have thought I was one of the lucky few.
The childish dreams of 'soulmates' and 'true love' never really faded from my mind as I grew up. My mother's stories as a child were still vivid in my mind. Even as the months passed after my nineteenth birthday and I still hadn't received any marking, I hadn't given up hope. But here, on a random Tuesday morning, all my secret longings finally became a reality.
The idea of a mark match was such a romantic idea to me. Finding that person who bore the same mark as you and falling madly in love. Knowing that you were compatible in romance and life? It was a dream come true for me.
Hollywood only furthered the romanticization of 'the mark'. All films and television shows involved couples who were lucky enough to find their mark match and fell madly in love. Magazines ran articles for teenagers with real stories of mark matches. I wanted what those people had, the undeniable connection with someone at first glance. The shared mark to show we were a pair.
Giddy with the knowledge that I would get the romance I had always craved, I dash out of the bathroom to call my mother, not bothering to wipe the toothpaste from the corner of my mouth.
1974, Columbia University
Finals week, Junior year. These are the moments that count. The moments that will begin to dictate which graduate programs I'll be accepted into. My time has to be managed perfectly.
Would I rather go out for drinks with my friends after classes? Yes. But I have to be responsible. There will be plenty of time to get plastered once finals are over.
The professor wraps up the class, again reminding us of the date and time for the final exam. I jot it down at the top of my page even though I've had it written in my planner for weeks now.
I walk out of the classroom with my peer and one of my only friends in my field, Ray Stantz. He's chatting away about one of the points Professor Graves made during lecture.
"I've got to get going, or I'll be late," Ray checks his watch, "See you at the final." He waves before taking his leave. I wave back, beginning my walk across campus towards the library.
Before class, I had suggested we study together in the library, but of course, Ray had other plans tonight. Probably a date with the girl he's been seeing for a few weeks. It must be nice sometimes to be unmarked. I couldn't get myself to date much. The occasional time I went out with a guy, they were nice enough. But the mark made me wary of seriously dating any of those guys. What if I ran into the love of my life and had to hurt someone? It wasn't fair to anyone.
***
The library, of course, is packed. Finding an open space seems nearly impossible by the time I've taken my third lap around, that is until I see a spot has opened up by a guy hunched over a circular table.
The table was small, but I wouldn't take up too much space. It should be fine to share.
I tap on the man's shoulder, "Would you mind if I sat on the other side of this table?"
Without even looking up from his work, he replies in a deep voice, "Fine."
"Oh, uh-- thank you." I move around the table to the seat across from the grumbler, setting my backpack down before sitting down in the chair.
He's a mop of dark hair bent over a notebook that he's scribbling in. I watch for a moment as his hand rapidly moves across the page.
Right, I ought to get to my homework instead of watching the strange man work on his.
Reaching into my backpack is harder than it looks at this angle. I plant my feet on the carpet, twisting my body at an awkward angle to reach into the backpack for my Psychology book and notebook. Right as I've almost got my hands on both, my foot slips, kicking the stranger squarely in the knee.
I straighten quickly, feeling positively mortified. "Oh my god! I'm so sorry!"
He looks up, and my heart begins to beat faster. Never in a million years would I have expected the student wearing a sweater vest over a white polo to be cute. The scowl and everything.
"It's fine."
I pull the bag of M&M's I brought for a snack out of my bag, "Could I offer you some, as an apology? I'm (y/n), by the way."
"Egon," he eyes the bag for a second before reaching out his hand for the M&Ms.
The cuff of his shirt rides up with the stretch of his arm, my eyes drawn instantly to the star on his wrist. My eyes shoot up to his. No way...
The questions escape my mouth before I can stop them, "What's that? On your wrist?"
He snatches his hand away without the M&Ms, "It's a mole."
"A star-shaped mole."
Egon goes back to his notebook, "Yes."
I bite the inside of my lip, my eyes narrowing as I look at him. What a liar! What's so wrong with having a mark that he has to lie about it? "Oh, have you gone to a specialist for that? A star-shaped mole sounds dangerous."
I notice the way Egon's lips tighten, "I have not."
"You're lying."
"I haven't gone to--"
"No, not that." I frown at him, "That's a mark, not a mole!"
"I don't believe in those fairytales."
My face drains of emotion. I've waited for this moment to find my match, and the one I match with doesn't even believe in the mark. Just my luck!
"You don't believe in the mark? Like at all?"
"No. Why would a small mark on my wrist dictate my life?"
Because that stupid mark means we're perfectly compatible, you oaf.
"You don't find it romantic? Destiny and all that?" I have to ask for my own bruised ego.
"It's nonsense."
Well ouch. I pull the sleeve of my shirt down my wrist, not wanting this... jerk to see we've got the same star mark in the same place.
"You're unbelievable. You're one of the people lucky enough to have a mark, and you don't even care."
Egon puts his pencil down, "Why do you care?"
The eye contact we're sharing is exactly the opposite I had hoped for when I met my mark match. I don't exactly know what to say to that. I could come clean and show him the matching mark on my wrist, but I'm not sure I want to be matched with this jackass, even if it's 'fate' or whatever.
I toss my head, "I don't care."
He grunts and goes back to his notebook.
Ugh! He was the last person I wanted to be mark matched with. The thought makes me miserable, though, because even as I'm already annoyed with him, he's supposed to be 'it' for me.
***
My watch reads ten p.m. when I start to pack up my backpack to head home. My table mate is still scribbling away in his notebook, not looking like he'll ever grow tired of it.
Is this really what the universe thought I was compatible with? Really?
I zip my backpack up before pulling the straps onto my shoulders and turning to walk back to my apartment.
Egon speaks, "Good night, (y/n)." He's still hyper-focused on the notebook when I look back at the table.
Summary: You have finally come to age; your soulmate mark draws itself in your skin. You can't figure out who it connects you with, but, oh dear, you can only hope and wish it is to him. But Loki won't make it easy for you to find out. Will you both overcome the pride and fear that would involve your love?
Word count: 4.6 K
Warnings: a bit of angst. (English is not my mother tongue and it’s my first time writing fanfiction in english, so forgive me if there’s any errors, and feel free to correct them!)
Sighing at your reflection, you stared for the Norns know how long to the fresh image that drew itself in the side of your abdomen.
You thanked it was easy to hide; saving you endless mockery from your friends if they saw that. The vivid portrayal of who you loved the most, in the most ambiguous drawing you could’ve ever gotten. How ironic.
What the Heavens would that mean, you asked yourself at least five times until the impatient knocking on the bathroom door pulled you out of your thoughts.
“Hurry up, we’re late”, said Sif. You knew she was already all dressed up for the Ball, and she would kill you, seeing you were still on your robes. You opened the bathroom door slowly, with burrowed frows. You couldn’t hide it, as much as you tried to. “Oh, for God’s sa…” she started complaining, but stopped as soon as she realized you were in a terrible state of mind.
“I got it”, you explained after she made you get out of the bathroom and sat you on the edge of the bed. “I got the mark. Impossible to guess”.
“Don’t worry about it, you’ll know who they is when the time is right”, said she, comforting you and eyeing the outfit you’d chosen earlier. “But crytime is over. Guess what time it is now. Yes, you guessed right. The Ball”.
The last thing you wanted to do in that moment was to dance; or to stay in a chair drinking wine the entirety of the night, for that matter. You didn’t need another reminder of your frustrated attempts at making him notice you. And you knew he wasn’t the one (if he were your soulmate, it would’ve already happened years; no, decades ago). But you still couldn’t help but falling in love at every little smirk, every little comment, every little thing he did. Dear, you were lost, completely gone in love.
That’s why you knew you wouldn’t find your soulmate for a long, long time. At least not until your crush for Loki had finally gone away.
“I’d rather stay”, you stated, and she rolled her eyes.
“Well, I want to go, and I can’t go alone. Please, at least do it for me”.
“Why would you want to go? Ever since we’re on age of being asked to dance, we have only gotten invitations from… well, anyone except them. And in the Balls we can’t even be their friends”.
“We can be friends, if they talk to us first we can talk back”.
“Yeah, we could, but they don’t talk first. They never do”.
Both of you were completely lost for the princes. But, unlike you, Sif had a chance with Thor. She was graceful, divine, a wonderful woman; a whole Goddess, an amazing warrior. There was no question Thor would sooner or later find love in her friend. But you… why would a prince like Loki lay his eyes on you? Romantically, he never showed a single trace of interest in anyone, much less someone in his friendgroup. You were the closest to him, yet he never said a thing.
He probably knew you drooled over him. He must have noticed how you looked at him in the library when he read to you, how you always defended him from everyone else’s mockery, how you intentionally pretended like you didn’t know any better in spells so that he could help you out. How your heartbeat raced when he fell asleep on your lap. He must have noticed, yet he said nothing.
She finally managed to convince you to go, with the condition that if you weren’t asked to dance at all, or even talk, you’d go back to your manor early.
You got in your best clothes, and undressing the best attitude possible, you both arrived at the palace and entered the ballroom as quick as your feet let you. The ambient was marvelous. Subtle lighting, most of them by candles. The golden details that characterized Asgard so well were everywhere. Both King and Queen were sat in their thrones, waiting patiently for the rest of the royal family to arrive before giving the annual speech and getting the party started.
“Do you think they’re not coming?” asked Sif as you got comfortable in your seats, eyeing the entrances.
“They can’t miss it, they’re sort of the hosts”, you said, “but… well, I don’t know. The other day after training, Thor mentioned something about this year being particularly difficult for them”, you added in such a low whisper that Sif had to pull closer.
“What did he say? He didn’t mention anything to me”, she whispered back. You two looked like you were merely gossiping, if it weren’t for the lack of giggling that would usually follow.
“He said… he said something along the lines of ‘we’re expected so much more than before in these dances, they’re more than just for fun now’, and, Sif, I think he meant…”, but she abruptly interrupted you.
“Courting? Oh, for the Norns, they’re not expected to choose a partner now, so soon, aren’t they?”.
“Soon? Sif, they’re already at each other’s throats for who’s becoming King, and they have been for a while”.
“They’re not exactly competing, anyways. You don’t have to worry about this. It’s not like Loki’s the one winning” said she, earning a subtle kick in the leg. “Auch!”.
“Would you stop being so hard on him?”.
“You know I’m right!”.
“You know it hurts him. If you think so, at least keep it to yourself, Sif”.
You could’ve kept lecturing her if it weren’t for the sarcastic clapping of the Queen upon seeing the arrival of her sons. You read the ‘you’re late!’ on her lips and the apologetic looks on their faces. But nothing of that distracted you from admiring how marvelous Loki could get sometimes. Just when you thought he couldn't look any better, he outdid himself. You let out a sigh and Sif laughed.
“You’re staring”.
“And rightfully so. Look at him”.
But no matter how much you looked at him for the whole evening, you couldn’t get even a gaze from him. He didn’t even eyed you from the distance. You would’ve even gotten actually mad at him if it weren’t for the fact that he wasn’t looking anywhere. He didn’t seem like he was avoiding you; he was actively staring at the floor, with the saddest look on his face. And Thor looked pissed off.
“There’s a story in there and I will ask for as many details as possible once Loki spills the beans to you”, said Sif, elbowing you.
“I don’t think he will. Look, it looks like more than a fight. He looks so upset”.
You could only wish you were brave enough to break the stupid rule of the royals approach first so you could take his hand tightly and comfort him in whatever he was going through. As you always did. As he always let you.
The music played for three hours. Everyone was on their feet, dancing away, drinking away and chatting away, as one should in a Ball dance. Everyone except you and certain dark prince you didn’t even bother staring at anymore. You gave up looking for his attention an hour after the dance properly started, and it did nothing good to your pride to have been trying for that long anyways.
Sif got her chance, of course. Thor took his time, but after long he gave up with whatever quarrel he was having with his brother and approached her decisively. You were past pissed. Disappointed. After another sip of your wine, you couldn’t resist and stole a glance to Loki’s seat. To your surprise, you met his gaze. The God of Mischief was staring at you, and he apparently has been for Gods know how long. He quickly dropped his head and went back to looking at the floor, now with a completely red face.
You soon realized he was even more upset than before, as he watched Thor and Sif dance. And then you understood. Everything fell into place. Of course. Of course he liked Sif. Who wouldn’t. That’s why he fought with Thor. That’s why he was so worked up. You didn’t even need to read his mind to confirm it.
You waited, still holding your eyes on him. You waited for another half an hour, but your patience was already on thin ice and he didn’t look like he would do anything more, anyways. So you did what you should’ve done hours ago. You got up and left.
“No, brother, you can go, I’ll let Mother know I’m staying”, said Loki from his room.
He could hear Thor’s patience shatter in pieces from the other side of the door.
“Don’t be ridiculous, we can’t miss the Ball. Father will kill you”.
“It’s not my problem”.
“I think it is quite your problem, brother”. Loki sighed. He wasn’t in the mood for his mockery. Thor sensed it and lowered his tone of voice, insisting. “Tell me what it is, Loki. I promise I’ll try to help out”.
But he only scoffed and locked the door, to start pacing around the room, feeding his anxiety even more. He covered his arm with his palm and tried his best to make it go away. It’s just an accidental illusion. I’m making it out of nervousness. I need to make it go away, he kept saying under his breath. But it didn’t go away. It wasn’t an illusion.
“Oh, FOR THE NINE REALMS”, he kicked his chair as a sudden burst of anger ate him alive.
“Loki, let me in!”, insisted Thor. “I’m going in”.
“You can’t help me”.
“I might, if you just tell me what is it. You love the dances. Come on”.
“I do love dances, Thor, I’m not particularly fond of the weight this one has on us; not this year” he growled from the floor, knees on his chest. “Not with what I had planned, I can’t do it now” he whispered. Thor pretended like he didn’t listen to that last bit.
Loki had been circling around the idea of asking you to dance for the last few months. It was all he wanted; to caress your hand and gently hold you by the waist, to move at the pace of the music, to feel your heart on his chest, his rising heartbeat with every breath you took. He wanted you, and if that wasn’t possible (and he was sure it wasn’t) he wanted to dance with you all night long.
But now, he would have to court you and marry you if he did. And, of course, it was what he wanted. It was definitely all he wanted. But he knew you wouldn’t. And he wouldn’t risk your beautiful friendship over anything in the world. What if he lost you forever? He could never bring himself to lose you, in any form or way.
“Brother, let me in. Or get out of the room. We’re late”.
“You’re late, Thor. Must I repeat myself? I’m not going”.
“I’m kicking the door”.
Loki sighed, and waited to hear Thor’s intense footsteps get closer and closer to the door to open it just in time and see him land on his face. Thor got up off the floor with blood on his nose.
“It combines with your crimson cape, brother, no need to worry” said Loki mockingly.
But Thor paid little attention to his silvertongue. Instead, his eyes were fixed on his arm. Then, he understood exactly why he was acting so terrified. Loki covered his arm as soon as he realized, mortified, but it was now too late and Thor had already seen it.
“Do you need any other reason to invite them to dance with you?”, he said with a grin of pride.
“It's not them. I’m certain”.
“How are you so certain? It’s such an ambiguous drawing, and you haven’t seen theirs!”.
“They doesn’t even have a soulmate mark yet. They told me the other day”.
“You didn’t have one at that time either, it must have changed. Come on”.
Loki sighed and put on a long sleeved outfit, while letting Thor rant about how much he was sure you’d reciprocate his feelings. And Loki couldn’t say anything against it, because it would only bring ruin to everyone; to spill the obvious secret that haunted him everyday.
The fact that you lusted over Thor.
And it hurted him like anything else, because he knew even though you didn’t say anything. He knew he was the lesser prince. The one that gets looked over. The shadow in his brother’s spotlight. The always-prince, never-King. It hurted like Hell.
But there was nothing he could do about it. And now he had a mark that linked him to the Norns know who, but he only had eyes for you.
Because you were always there. You were the one to defend him against his own insecurities, and everyone else’s accusations. The one to laugh the loudest at his jokes, the one to hold him the tightest when you were in fear, the one to call him first to anything. And you were perfect. But you, for obvious reasons, didn’t think the same of him. You thought the world of him, but not in the way he wished.
And he wouldn’t even get to see you happy from someone else’s love, because his brother didn’t even have eyes for you. The idiot of Thor could not see your brightness, and Loki wondered how could anyone not fall in love with you.
“You need to try, Loki, you’ll never know if you don’t risk a little”.
“A little? To you this is a little? Do you have any idea what would happen to me if I lost them forever? If the person that I love the most leaves me because I just decided to stop hiding my feelings?”, yelled Loki, completely angered.
“Ah, there it is. If I decided to stop hiding my feelings”, repeated Thor, crossing his arms and rolling his eyes.
“What is that supposed to mean?!”.
“You are afraid; so incredibly afraid of letting anyone know you fully. That is your problem, Loki. They’ll accept you no matter what, because they already know you. You think you’re hiding, well, you’re not so good with this little lie of yours”, said finally Thor, tired of biting his tongue about it.
“You know nothing about their feelings”.
“I know enough”.
“Believe me, you don’t. And you don’t get to say a word about my love life, or anything about this situation, for that matter. You don’t get to make light of my situation, as you do with everything regarding me. Now, leave. Me. Alone”.
They continued fighting about it until one of their tutors had enough of their unpunctuality and came to look for them. Both entered the ballroom still highly upset at each other and said nothing about it all night. Frigga knew exactly what they were talking about, and didn’t make too much of a fuss about the delay in their arrival.
Loki tried to not look at you in the entirety of the night; avoided all the eye contact he could with anyone, specially you. He was too afraid you’d choose that exact time to practice your special abilities at mind reading (since you’ve done this at previous dances, when Loki didn’t approach you), and if he didn’t see you, you couldn’t do it. Because if you dared reading his mind you’d only find yourself. And in those little moments he got to glance at you, while you were distracted with something else, he sank in sadness, because all he wanted was to embrace you and dance with you. You looked as fantastic as you always were and more. You looked especially excellent. And it didn’t go unnoticed to him that you looked annoyed. From the eye-sided glances he got to steal from you, he saw you staring at the seat he and his brother were in. You were expectant. You wanted to be taken out to dance. And Loki’s suspicions about your crush on Thor only got reassured when he asked Sif for a dance and you looked the most annoyed you’d ever looked in ages.
You left the dance early. After about ten minutes Loki decided to go after you. Outside of the ballroom you could still be a friend; that was the whole point of swallowing his feelings. He wandered the palace until he heard fireballs collapsing against the huge walls of your typical training spot, but he lingered his entrance to observe you in an incredibly angry state of your magic.
“You’ll set the palace on fire” said a gut-wrenching familiar voice. Of course Thor was there. Of course Thor would get earlier to comfort you in something that he destroyed.
“Then so be it”, you answered with a crack in your voice. Loki didn’t mean to invade your privacy, but he couldn’t help himself but to listen.
“I know why you’re upset. Believe me, it upsets me too”.
“You have no idea what upsets me”, you answered, and Thor chuckled. Loki could sense that Thor was thinking about how similar you and Loki were. You threw another fireball against the wall.
“Let me guess”.
“Enlighten me, your majesty”.
“You didn’t get to dance with the man you like”.
“You know nothing about the man I like”.
“When will you all stop treating me as if I were blind? Come on, why won’t you tell me? I’m your friend. I know you’re burning up in love and you still think you don’t have a chance because… because what? Because he’s the prince of Asgard?” said Thor. You stopped your magic and stared at him with teary eyes.
“Because the prince of Asgard I love, is in love with Sif. And there’s nothing I can do about it” you answered. Loki’s heart broke. Hearing you admit your raw feelings to Thor that way, and Thor not even understanding you were talking about him.
“What makes you think he’s in love with Sif?!” insisted, still clueless.
But Loki didn’t need to hear any more of that. He ran through the halls of the palace until he got to lock himself in his room.
“What makes you think he’s in love with Sif?!”, Thor asked, and you scoffed. You lowered your gaze to the floor, trying to make the tears go unnoticed. They didn’t, and Thor hugged you tightly.
Thor was almost like a brother to you. You grew up together, but it was more than that. You were always for each other. He never had to ask about your love for Loki, he always knew. And you never had to ask about his crush in Sif; it was transparent. So you both supported each other. You didn’t even bother telling him how she felt about him, it was bound to happen. Now, you and Loki, on the other hand…
“He is, you can’t deny it”.
“I’m denying it, I assure you”. You wiped your tears away and touched your mark over your clothes. He smiled. “You got the mark, didn’t you?”.
“Yeah”.
“What is it?”.
“Ugh, it doesn’t matter. Maybe I should just forget him and start looking for my soulmate. If the mark showed up today, then it must be for something. There has to be a reason”. Thor nodded, still smiling. “What are you so happy about, dumbass? My heart’s broken".
“Nothing. You keep on looking. Can I see it?”, said he, patting your back.
“It’s too ambiguous, you won’t guess it”.
“So I expected”.
“What’s that supposed to mean? Do you know anything?”.
“Nothing whatsoever”.
You got in your fighting position. Loki bent down in his seat, focusing on the next fight. He was sure you’d win; he has been teaching you new moves and you completely mastered them. And your rival didn’t know any better, anyways.
One kick from your opponent; you avoided it and threw a punch. Another kick. Another punch. The rival grabbed your leg, making you lose your balance and almost fall down, but you used that impulse to push him away and get him to the ground. He got up and started using magic. A blue light shone around him and started getting closer to your feet. You closed your eyes and focused intensely; soon, water drops started emerging from the tips of your fingers. They quickly transformed into a stream of water that wrapped your opponent from head to toes, making his electricity magic attack him, instead of you. Loki smiled.
Your rival pushed further his strength and one of the electrified waterjets hit your leg. You fell to the ground with a scream. It hurted, a lot. Loki gasped and Thor had to grab his shoulder to remind him it was just a training fight. For his tranquility, you got up on your feet soon and started using your magic again.
An aura of sparks and wind formed around you while you closed your fists, extremely concentrated. Your opponent waited without attacking, but behind the shield of his armour. Loki saw Thor smile proudly; this was the part he taught you. For your fire side of your powers, Thor was the one to train you thoroughly. Loki sighed, frustrated because you haven’t yet shown what Loki had taught you with such enthusiasm. He still observed you with attention.
“This part is awesome, look, brother”, whispered Thor in his ear, which only made him angrier.
“I’m sure it is. They is awesome. And wait until you see what I taught them”. Thor chuckled.
“No need for jealousy, Loki. They’s all yours”. Loki rolled his eyes and directed his attention to the fight again.
The sparks and wind grew bigger and bigger around you, circling your whole body. Once the sparks became fire, you directed your whole energy to your opponent, sending him against the wall. If it weren’t for the gigant fire-proof shield, he would’ve gotten completely roasted.
You put your guard down, and as you did so, the wind and fire around you dispersed. Loki got to see you again once the magic flew down, and realized you had your clothes slightly lifted up. He tried not to look out of respect, but Thor gasped, and that drew his attention directly to what surprised his brother. And it did not disappoint. Loki’s chest got as tight as it has ever been. His breathing became irregular and unsteady, and his face got completely red. You didn’t notice your shirt had lifted up, so you didn’t realize what was going on. You got closer to your defeated rival and shaked his hand.
“You win. I see you’ve been well trained”, he said.
“I have”, you answered, and directed your gaze to the princes who were watching the fight. You walked closer to them to chatter, as you always did, but Loki got up fast and ran out of the training room. Thor told you to follow him, and Loki heard your footsteps behind him for the entirety of the hall, until you two got to the gardens.
Loki was shaking. He didn’t want you to be there. He didn’t want you to see him that vulnerable. And you knew it, so you didn’t get closer than two meters apart.
“Loki”, you said after a while, behind his back. “What’s wrong?”.
He turned around, face still red. He was usually cold, but at that moment he was burning up inside and out. Maybe he was burning out of love for you. Maybe out of anger, for being so pessimistic and making himself a martyr when his brother was clearly right. Maybe out of rage to himself, for waiting so long to make a move and losing so much time lost in his own head. But you were still standing there, concerned. And he had to say something, because you still didn’t know anything.
“I saw your mark”, he stated. Now you were the one with the red face.
“Oh… I, I don’t, uh…”, you stuttered, and he got closer to you. He grabbed both of your hands and you looked at him in the eyes, clueless. “I try not to give it that much attention”.
“Why?”, he asked. “It’s your soulmate. The person you’ll love the most”.
“I already love someone” you said, in a burst of confidence. Loki swallowed in nervousness. Your hands started to get sweaty. “I… ugh. Sorry. I don’t want to say…”.
“Who? Tell me, I’m your best friend”.
“I don’t want you to be”, you finally said. “It’s you, Loki. It’s always been you. I don’t care about this stupid soulmate mark, because I know I’m in love with you and I always have been”.
Loki stayed silent, which only made your anxiety increase. He finally looked at you in the eyes and formed a subtle smile.
“I thought you loved Thor”.
“What? Why would I…?”.
“I heard you after the Ball; you said the prince you love was in love with Sif”.
“Yeah, you”.
“I’m… what? I’m not… I’m not in love with Sif, darling”.
Your heart stirred, and you weren’t sure if it was because of the pet name he just gave you, or the fact that you got it all wrong. He wasn’t in love with Sif?
“I’m sorry, did we both think…?”.
“We’re idiots, apparently”.
You both laughed. That was it; that cotidianity, that normality that felt, even in the most embarrassing and intense moments, completely fine. Because you were, before anything, friends.
You hugged him. He returned the hug and caressed your neck and back with one hand. You felt his heartbeat rise, and from that position, he whispered in your ear with that beautifully deep and raspy voice; “I saw your mark”.
“I don’t care about it. I don’t want to ruin our friendship, ignore my feelings if necessary. But my heart only beats for you”, you whispered back. He sank his nose on the crook of your neck and felt his mouth form a smile against your skin. You shivered and felt warmth in your stomach.
“I don’t want to ignore your feelings”.
“I love you”, you said once again, regretting it in that instant. You couldn't stop your words from falling out of your mouth. You felt like you sounded desperate.
“I love you too, my dear”.
You, in shock, looked at him in the eyes. He kept smiling, and putting a strand of your hair behind an ear, placed a small kiss on your red cheek.
“I don’t know what to do next. I like being your friend”, you said. “And I don’t think we’re meant to be. I got a mark, and you haven’t, so it’s obvious we won’t end up together anyways. And I want you by my side for all my life; even if it’s just as a friend, you know? I don’t want to lose you”. Loki chuckled at your rant. “What?”.
“What makes you think I didn’t get my mark yet?”.
“Well, I… I don’t know. Did you?”.
“Yes”.
“What does it look like?”.
He smiled.
“It’s very ambiguous”, said he, sarcastically.
“Hard to guess, is it?” you chuckled, realizing what was going on. Loki lifted his sleeve, uncovering an identical soulmate mark to yours.
“Hard to guess, yet so obvious”, he said. He grabbed your waist and neck and both melted in a long, desired kiss. You sank your fingers in his hair, caressing his scalp. “Yours?”
DP: Phantom Twins AU - Soulmate Mark & Omegaverse 1
An AU where Danny is born with a monozygotic twin sister, Diana who prefers to be called Dina (die-nah), but her loved ones sometimes call her Di.
In this universe, everyone has a soulmate & very rarely, you can have 2. Every person has a mark to represent their connection to their soulmate. It is located in the center of their chest. Jack & Maddie have matching soulmate marks, thus making them soulmates.
Anyway, those rare few with a second soulmate, don't learn about it until they're supposed to pursue a relationship with them. However, you will always know that you have a second soulmate even when you can only see one because instead of the mark you can see being in the center of the chest, it’ll be on one side of the chest, whether over the heart or opposite of the heart.
The timing can vary. From only having one at a time, the first soul mark fading to become dull when the first soulmate dies & the second suddenly appearing on the right side of the chest, opposite the heart. To having both at once, one mark on each side.
There have been rare cases where someone's own child bares their mark's match, but those are typically tragic cases that no one wanted or asked for because those children very quickly meet their end. Usually, it's by still birth. Never have children in such situations grown to even be a year old & that's with the help of modern medicine. Even then, it's a painful life for them. The reason for this is because of the nature of soulmate marks on a biological level. Incest, by nature, creates defects & soulmate marks are partly meant to help get rid of said defects. So, if situations where incest could occur if followed through, the weaker half dies. It's cruel, but that's the way it is.
It's possible for a soul to split & become 2 individuals for a time. Or even for 2 souls to merge on their journey to the afterlife & exist as a single entity for a while. Such individuals as the second case are typically the ones who have 2 soulmates, but not always. However, this is all subtext & no one living actually knows this. Dina & Danny are incredibly unusual examples of both. Danny's previous life's soul split in 2 before conception & both halves merged with 2 different, preexisting souls to create Dina & Danny.
Sometimes, very rarely, when souls merge, they do so permanently, thus creating a brand new, bigger soul. This is the case for Danny & Dina.
Now, most people agree that the existence of such marks proves that souls exist.
However, with the rise of science & the modern era, more & more people are becoming skeptical of this. Atheists & scientists have started to try & find another explanation for these marks.
One theory is that these marks indicate who your perfect genetic match is & that offspring spawned from such a pair have more biological advantages than those not produced from a match.
Now, while they're not incorrect, it also doesn't cover the entire scope of what the marks do or mean. Besides biology & genetics, there are also several social, mental/psychological, & spiritual benefits to getting into a relationship, romantic or otherwise, with your soul mark match. However, the more empirically minded don't believe the spiritual aspect of it.
They also are less likely to have some form of deficiencies or disabilities or even develop mental issues. They compare it to gaming the genetic lottery.
It's been discovered that most matches are almost never related by less than several generations & are always male/female.
The liberal woke & LGBT movements have started rebelling against searching for your mark's match as they claim it furthers some straight/ableist agenda. The radical left even go so far as to try & get their marks removed as some sort of statement, but no matter how much they cut off, it just keeps reappearing & not even scientists can figure out how or why.
Something that they seem to miss is the fact that you don't need to be in a romantic relationship with your soulmate. Yes, it works best that way, but at the end of the day, if you choose not to be with them, then that's that.
I mean, creationists & those who believe in souls know why, but none of the hardcore secular science sect believes it.
The only known ways to actually lose your mark is by selling your soul to some wicked being such as the devil or some other powerful dark entity & it's because in such instances, your soul no longer belongs to you. It's one of those things that always stumps the science community & no one can find a secular answer as to why marks sometimes just disappear. Like, they know they can, but they don't have any conclusive, material evidence as to why.
Like, it was actually proven during WW2 by unethical scientists in Germany who'd managed to capture several pairs of individuals with matching marks & they'd kill one while observing the other & learned that there really was some sort of connection between these marks, but no one can figure out what or how. Scientifically minded individuals can't figure out anything quantifiable.
Anyway, it is a tradition to cover one's mark in public, whether with foundation, a bandage, or just a shirt, & keep it secret until one's 13th birthday. At which point, they've reached dating age & are allowed to search. Some people will even have some sort of accessory or something that displays their mark on it that they can wear to show it off & catch people’s attention, specifically anyone who might have the same one. This means that they are actively searching for their other half. In cases where it’s just the mark itself being shown, it’s possible that they’ve already found their soulmate or they don’t care.
However, it's considered a major social faux pas, even a form of harassment, to uncover someone's mark without their permission.
People have tried to remove their own marks & then have the mark of someone they desperately want a relationship with tattooed into their skin, but it doesn’t work, because the mark is more than skin deep. Even if it did work, it’s fairly obvious the difference between a real soulmate mark & a tattoo because true soul marks are slightly iridescent & glow slightly whenever their match is near.
Even after your 13th, you are allowed to continue to hide your mark & doing so says you're not seeking your soulmate for one reason or another. For instance, Danny, Sam, Tucker, Jazz, & later Dina cover their marks. Danny because he's waiting on Sam to be ready to admit she has feelings for him & is afraid that they don't have the same mark, Sam because she's stuck on the 'not like other girls' thing & doesn't want to admit yet that she might want some of the same things that other girls do, Tucker because he wants to play the field for a bit, Jazz because she wants to focus on school first, & Dina because before she didn’t have any & she didn’t want anyone to get suspicious that she now had a mark when she didn’t before.
Because it’s so rare to actually meet your soulmate, some become discouraged & begin to hide their marks again, then begin to simply focus on finding someone they can be happy with.
Danny's mark is a flower with petals shaped like a snowflake, the flower itself surrounded by stars.
Diana has one that looks like the rolling waves of a red ocean with stars & a silvery full moon above.
Danny always had his mark, but Dina's didn't appear until after the accident turned them both half-ghost. As a result, Dina spent most of her life thinking that she didn’t have a soulmate.
There is an old superstition that says those without marks don't have souls. It's wrong, but it doesn't stop people from believing it & tormenting those who don't. Turns out those born without marks have to go through some kind of traumatic event that changes them fundamentally before the mark will show up. This is just very rare & there’s little research on it.
When one's soulmate dies, their mark becomes faded on their match's chest. It's painful & there is an instinctive knowledge that your other half is dying as it flickers with their life force & it continues to ache for years afterward it fades. If the remaining half of the pair's soulmate is reborn, the mark will change to better match this new iteration's destiny & become vibrant again.
Anyway, a soulmate is the person you have the highest potential of happiness with & the person most able to help you grow as a person. You fit together like the pieces of a puzzle. Of course, that doesn’t mean that you’re forced to be with them romantically or even platonically if you don’t want to be. Though, the whole goal of soulmates is romance. Just because they’re your best match, doesn’t make them the be-all-end-all. You are perfectly capable of having a perfectly happy life with someone else or even no one at all.
The big thing here is choice because free will is just as important as destiny. Also, this au has reincarnation logic so, if you aren’t with your soulmate in one life, you can be with them in the next. So, it isn’t quite as urgent of a need as you’d expect.
A sidenote: The person you share a soul mark with is your perfect soulmate, but because it’s so unlikely to meet them, each person also gets an unwritten, subliminal list of people they’re compatible with. It’s in descending order with your true soulmate at the very top & at the bottom is the person you’re least compatible with who still manages to register on the list.
For example, I hc that Sam is Danny’s true soulmate, however I also think that Valerie is very high on his list despite not being his true soulmate.
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Dina, herself, dreams of being a marine biologist & exploring the world's oceans. She's a little bit obsessed. She loves to swim & fish & read stories of pirates & mermaids & Atlantis & other things like '20,000 Leagues Under the Sea,' even encouraging her brother to read Jules Verne's 'From Earth to the Moon.' She's one of those people who believes that Atlantis really existed & wants to be the one to rediscover it. Her favorite Disney movie is Atlantis: Lost Empire & her second favorite was Little Mermaid. Her brother’s is Treasure Planet & any Star Wars movie. The dork’s a Trekkie too. When Dina’s cold core finally develops, her element turns out to be water & she is thrilled!
Dina's been offered a place on the swim team several times before, but each time she declined because she felt that it would kill the sport for her.
She gets pouty when her dad & Danny go out fishing without her. Like, she gets that it's their father-son bonding time, but she's still jealous & complains about it.
She may or may not have wished to be a mermaid when she was younger & her inner child might still hold onto that desire. Because of this, she sometimes likes to fly around with her ghostly tail because it allows her to pretend when no one is looking.
She always wanted to learn to surf but is unable to because she lives in the Midwest.
She's actually got a mild case of asperger's syndrome & mild OCD & finds structure comforting as a result.
Jack has severe ADHD, severe aspergers, & severe dyslexia, dyscalculia, & dysgraphia.
Maddie has moderate aspergers & mild OCD.
Jazz has mild aspergers, moderate-severe OCD, & mild dyslexia.
Danny has mild ADHD & moderate dyslexia & dyscslculia.
Dina has mild aspergers, mild OCD, moderate dyslexia, & mild dyscalculia.
Dina & Danny also do most of the cooking, because of how hopeless their parents & Jazz are at it. They both actually really enjoy it. Also, the twins have a sweet tooth reminiscent of their father. Dina has a fond spot for baking, in particular.
She especially enjoys food history, discovering how to cook food from games & other media, & researching old baking recipes from a really long time ago & keeping the ones that turn out the best. 3 ingredient cookies are both fun, fast, & interesting. Her Nana Walker taught her one for peanut butter cookies that just used peanut butter, sugar, & eggs to make these really good cookies. That was how her interest started. She later found these cornstarch cookies. So light & fluffy!
She also loves Korean food. Like, holy shit! The flavor combinations are unreal! Like, she's terrible with spicy food, but she's willing to get better if it means she can try more Korean food. Her favorite Korean desert is oreo bingsu. It's like... omG...
Dina's tastes in music are generally pretty eclectic, much like my own. She especially likes country rock, classic rock, jazz, anything with lots of culture or just meaning & emotion behind it. Classical fusion is really cool too. Especially with most modern music. Also, freakin' sea shanties!
Basically, if the lyrics jive with her & it's got a good beat, she'll generally listen to it.
Typically, she doesn't like rap unless it's stuff like Lin-Manuel Miranda. His stuff is amazing! Hamilton was the shit! Or has a really good message.
But then, that could just be her love of musical theater in-general talking. Who knows?
Despite having dyslexia, Dina likes to read like Jazz, if not quite as much. Though she prefers fiction, fantasy, adventure, romance, & mystery stories, as well as classic literature, there are a few non-fiction texts that she enjoys too. She kinda collects teen novels like Chronicles of Narnia, His Dark Materials, the Inheritance Series, the Guardians of Childhood, & the Skinjacker Trilogy. (There is no Harry Potter or Percy Jackson book series because both stories are real in this universe. So too is the Guardians of Childhood, but Sandman specifically inspired William Joyce to write the series in order to both better help children to believe & to possibly help Jack Frost's reincarnations remember their past life.)
One of her favorite books is the Count of Monte Cristo & she tends to tease Vlad by telling him he could only wish to be half as effective at getting revenge as Edmond Dantès. It infuriates him because she’s absolutely right. However, he’s admittedly impressed that she knows anything about the literary classic, but just assumes she’s only familiar with it due to the movie rather than the book or the play. While it’s true that she’s seen the movie (Hell to Your Doorstep rocked her socks off), she actually read the book first in class & she’s trying to save up her allowance so she can go see the play someday. She, personally, much preferred the ending where the count didn’t take Mercédès back & sailed off with Haydee. Especially, after meeting Vlad.
Dina is great with fixing her own hair, but beyond the basics, is terrible at fixing others'. The opposite is true of Danny. He's amazing at helping other people with their hair, but if he ever wants to look good for anything, needs Jazz's help with it.
She has very low-grade cleptomania. Used to steal little things every once in a while when she was little. As a kid, she would sometimes take candy, small, cheap toys, & pretty little things from stores, but she was taught that this wasn't right & made to do chores at home for money to pay these little things off. Like, Jazz would either return them or pay them back, but then would have Dina do Jazz's chores for her to pay her back. Each chore would've gotten her a certain amount of money, so once Dina had done enough of them to pay back whatever she took, she was free. This helped to ween her off of just taking things.
She will still take things infrequently as a teen, trinkets mostly, but it all depends on the person she's taking it from & their character. If they're an asshole, the temptation may become too great to resist. As she grows older & gets close to becoming an adult, she begins to reign the urge in more & more until she doesn't take things anymore.
Her favorite teacher used to be Mr. Fallucca because Chemistry & Biology (especially biochemistry & medicine) are her best & most favorite subjects, but after all the effort he put in to help her brother & his subject of English Literature, Mr. Lancer became her favorite.
She’s also the fashion expert of the Golden Quartet.
Has never been the type to wear something just because it’s trending because she isn’t about to just blindly wear something just because some rich or famous chick says so. Instead, she wears things that are aesthetically pleasing to her & she knows looks good. Is always dressed nicely, but is very open to different aesthetics & styles, so when buying things for Sam’s birthday, she always makes sure that it isn’t just good looking, but also cruelty-free & goth/punk style. Sam appreciates Dina’s acceptance of her life choices &, as such, is more open to compromising & fashion suggestions from her than she ever was from her own mother. The reason being that Sam knows that the girl not only has a good eye but will also keep her preferences in mind. As such, Sam is a bit more open to other colors & styles than in canon.
Can typically be seen wearing a blue jean vest (with bronze buttons for decoration & pockets) over a long-sleeve lavender top, blue jean skirt or shorts or skort, & beige wedge boots. In summer months her top is short-sleeved & made with thinner material. Then, in winter months she trades the vest for a slightly heavier, fur-lined, long-sleeved jean jacket with a hood, if not that then a cute little fleece-lined poncho with a hood, possibly cropped, her top becomes a turtleneck of varying colors (mostly purple), wears black or dark grey tights under her bottoms (also fur-lined), & short little brown Uggs. I mean, she has other outfits, but these are her go-to. She also hates pockets that are just for decoration. It pisses her off because what even is the point?!
She likes flowing, bodiced nightgowns that either cinch at the waist or just below her bust, especially long ones that reach her ankles because they make her feel elegant & pretty. Doesn't matter to her if the bodice is lace or not, lace up at the front or not. Stretch bodices are also cute. She just likes bodices in-general, okay? It may be a bit vintage, but regardless, she likes how they look on her & she finds them comfortable to sleep in. So, who cares if they're a little old-fashioned?
Her make-up tends to be modest & natural, but also pretty. So too does her choice in swimwear. While she wears 2 pieces, it's mostly tankinis. It’s cute, but modest.
Likes hats. Has a few cute & some silly ones that she likes to wear. She has these nice, knit pageboy hats that she wears for winter. She & Tucker are hat buds!
Doesn't like heels. Prefers wedges as they give her better support.
Often wears an antique platinum locket with a purple iris on it, given to her by her Nana Walker, her grandmother on her mother's side. It was given to her grandma as a gift from her husband, Elijah Walker, who'd gotten it from his mother because he had no female siblings.
The petals are purple amethyst & the center is a round, pink tourmaline. It unfolds into 3 frames for 3 pictures. It has only 2 pictures inside. The first one is of her & her family while the other is of her, her brother, & their friends, Sam & Tucker. The last one, she's saving for a picture of her & her husband, preferably on their wedding day.
Dina is a daddy's girl & enjoys spending time with him sewing, knitting, & doing needle point. Sometimes even designing her own clothes. This plus her fashionability makes her very good. She even made her own hazmat suit before the accident! Instead of circular or straight, the line of the accent around the neck is made to follow a reuleaux triangle in the front & perfectly round in the back. So, when seen from above, it'd have the shape of a concave teardrop. The belt draped off one hip & her boots are wedges. The boots & gloves are longer than Danny's & also have concave teardrop hems to them. It's also a 2 piece with the top being a dress or tunic that reaches her upper thighs, the hem trimmed with a white border. Despite this, she has no interest in pursuing a job in design as she just considers it a fun little hobby.
After becoming a Phantom, she quickly learned that wedges were not good for combat & immediately switched her wedge boots out for a pair of white combats with buckles at the outer ankle, sensible heels, high fronts that shaped into '^'s, & steel toes.
She & her mother have a tendency to be at odds with each other. It has to do with Maddie's imperialistic, scientific mindset, as well as she & Jack's unintentionally negligent lifestyles. Danny has a tendency to excuse their parents dumping them on Jazz whenever, but Dina doesn't. She holds them to it. While she lets her dad have a bit of slack because she knows he'd feel horrible for it if she confronted him about it & would try to make up for it. Her mother, on the other hand, Dina knew would try to make excuses for her actions & Dina can't stand people who don't own up & take responsibility for their actions.
In a lot of ways, Dina & Maddie are very alike, but in others they are very different. It's because of this that they butt heads.
Jack calls her “Dina-baby.”
Vlad calls her "little kitten" as opposed to "little badger," because while she's feisty, she's also adorable in her feistiness. Also, "my dear." When the nature of their relationship changes, he also calls her "Dearest," "Angel," & "Darling” or “Dear." Often referring to her possessively with "my." He also begins to use Russian endearments with her. Such as душа моя (Pronounced 'dooSHAH maYA'; translates to 'my soul' & is only appropriate to be used for someone you know for certain is your soulmate) & one he coined himself, лунечка (Pronounced 'loon-eska'; translates to 'little moon').
When their relationship changes, Dina starts to call Vlad "Big Guy" & "Hotshot." Even jokingly "Ghostveratu" just to get under his skin & tease him.
When she gets angry or frustrated or pouty, her cheeks puff up like a little chipmunk & everyone agrees that it's entirely precious.
She has a tendency to hold grudges, but only if something really gets to her & the individual themself is unapologetic. Otherwise, she finds it fairly easy to let things go. She also recognizes this grudgemental side of herself & tries to work at it.
Both twins tend to switch between Neutral Good & Chaotic Good depending on the situation with Dina being more steadfast & outspoken in her views.
Dina plans on going to college, then secondary school, after which, she'll take a break, find a man, get married, & have kids. She'll focus on her family until all the kids are in school, at which point, she'll find an easy job with flexible hours during the school year depending on her experience at the time. Finally, once all the kids are grown & out of the house, Dina plans to go back to school to either refresh on what she knows already or learn a new trade. After which, she'll actually start her career & become a successful career woman.
She believes that the gender pay gap is a myth perpetuated by feminists & the media, & that it has been soundly debunked repeatedly over the years. Studies show that women who take the same jobs as men & work for the same hours & take the same number of days off/sick days, are actually paid $0.06 more than men. So, she plans to game that system.
Dina likes video games, but prefers adventure RPGs, puzzle games, farming games, & sandboxy/crafting type games to the fighting games & MMOs that the rest of her friends like.
Like, she still enjoys them okay & is pretty decent at them, but it's obvious that she just plays them to have fun with her friends & brother.
She much prefers games that she can take her time with & enjoy at her own pace. Not really the competitive type, just being satisfied with experiencing the game itself. Doesn't do too well in those sorts of fighting/MMO games where she's forced to go it alone, being much more comfortable in team settings in such games & it shows in her playstyle that she does a lot better in groups.
She is, however, a completionist & it shows.
Is actually very jealous of her older sister's natural intellect &, at the beginning of the show, is very insecure about her own intelligence due to living in a house full of geniuses. Danny is similar, but they both recognize each other's innate intelligence even though they don't see their own. When it becomes evident to the both of them that their twin doesn't realize their own worth, they do their best to reaffirm each other's confidence in their mental capabilities.
Despite her brother being the one with a dark future, she actually has a higher capacity for committing evil acts if she thinks that it'll protect those she cares about.
When Diana is tired & angry, she can be extremely petty. Like, bordering on Vlad levels. Normally, she tries to fight this part of her, but when someone shows repeated disrespect to her or the people she loves, she is sure to concoct a plan that brings about comeuppance 10 fold.
Can be mischievous like her brother & because of this, doesn't see a problem with him pulling pranks every once in a while, so long as they're harmless. It's just one of those things that she doesn't agree with Sam on.
Like, she once ousted Paulina as queen bee simply by being a better person & putting a little bit of effort into it just to prove to her that she could. She then proceeded to abdicate the throne because she quote, "doesn't need fame or popularity to fill some void in my soul." The sass was beautiful. Sam first thought Di was betraying them, but then she pulled that stunt & she ate it up! She's a fuckin' girlboss.
Can be very calculating when she wants to be. She's the twin with actual strategies other than 'punch shit & see what happens.'
Doesn't like lying, but is actually very good & talented at it. She's very clever & can think of very convincing stories. Despite this, she only lies when she has to, preferring to instead misdirect or deflect attention by using people's own expectations & beliefs against them. When she does lie, she feels guilty afterwards.
Absolutely refuses to get a smart phone, choosing to have her brother build her one that was strictly for utility instead. It makes calls, can take notes, can look up information, has a built in Webster's Dictionary, has a calculator, can take pictures & videos, has a clock & calendar, but no internet.
If she wasn't so dedicated to helping people, she'd make for an exceptionally effective villain.
Unlike her brother, she has no problems fighting humans that hurt her precious people. If they cross a line, then so can she.
Has a much higher pain tolerance than her brother & it results in her being tough as nails. That isn't to say that Danny's is anything to sneeze at, just that hers is better.
When her loved ones are in danger, is subject to the same strength boost that mothers get when their children are in danger. When this happens, her strength far outstrips Danny's own, who is normally stronger than her.
Also, despite her independence, because Diana's never had to be truly alone for very long due to having literally been born with someone by her side, she doesn't like being alone. Like, she can be for long periods, but doesn’t prefer it. Then, after the Ultimate Enemy, this slight discomfort with being solitary or unaccompanied grows & manifests in a petrifying fear of losing everyone she loved & being left in total isolation. This results in her obsessing over her friends & family's health, which is what first leads to her becoming the team's medic. It's something she has to deal with.
She's actually pretty terrible at things like pottery & sculpting, but does decent with drawing. Especially with pencils & color pencils & using them to blend colors. Really good at charcoal. Not that great at painting. She eventually gets better at sculpting when she begins to train in cryomancy, but she never gets as good at it as Danny.
Diana loves to debate. L♡VES to debate. Doesn't matter if her & her opponent are on opposite sides or the same side but with slightly differing views. Doesn't matter if she wins or loses. So long as her words get through & she's heard & she can get people to think critically about her perspective, she’s happy & enjoyed herself & feels accomplished.
Now, this might ruffle some feathers, but she's got very defined conservative views & has the biggest celebrity crush on Ben Shapiro when she learns of him. She especially loves how candid & quick he is. (It also doesn’t hurt that he’s easy on the eyes.) Like him, she tries to always listen to her opponent's side of the story & use facts & logic to either counter her opponent's argument or back up her own.
She doesn't think that she has anywhere near the man's wit & intelligence, but she tries to emulate him as far as objectivity & logic goes as best as she can. It doesn't always work & she does get emotional & lose her temper sometimes, she's a teenager after all. Though, she has no plans of getting into politics, herself, she is part of the debate team at school & actually does really well. She just finds debate fun. This is actually something she bonds with Vlad over. Sure, they have very different views & opinions, but it's fun to have a civil argument with someone without having to worry about it getting hostile or too emotionally-charged. It initially surprised her that he doesn't, but now she's got someone to cross metaphorical swords with.
At the same time, this sometimes put her into direct confrontation with Sam, who had a definitively liberal mindset when they first met in middle school & was always vocal about her beliefs. Oddly, they manage to make their friendship work despite this & it primarily has to do with the fact that Diana tries to be conversational when making her point rather than confrontational. It allows the 2 to see things from the other side. Diana's actually alters a lot of Sam's thoughts on things just by having civilized conversations with her & letting her finish her thoughts before commenting. This causes Sam to feel like she's actually being heard rather than dismissed out-of-hand & that goes a long way into getting her to listen in return. Of course, Sam didn’t always reciprocate that courtesy, often speaking over her friend, & Dina had to remind her that she’d let Sam finish her thoughts, so why can’t Sam do the same for her? In the end, Sam takes on a more liberal-leaning independent stance.
Of course, Sam doesn't change all of her opinions. There are several things that she refuses to budge on no matter what anyone says to her about it. Like, killing animals & eating their meat or using their fur or destruction of the environment. She's totally against that & will never not be against it because that's just who she is, but she eventually decides for herself that she needed an attitude adjustment. Those "If meat eaters acted the way vegans do," "6 vegans vs 1 meat eater," & "vegans vs meat eaters" videos got her all in a huff until she realized that she'd been acting that exact way & pushing her own agenda & lifestyle choices onto others in the exact same way that her parents, & especially her mother, tries to push there lifestyle onto Sam. It’s a huge eye-opener for the goth girl & is very humbling.
However, Sam wasn't the only one whose perspective changed. Diana initially didn't understand veganism as a concept & so didn't particularly care one way or another beyond being confused by certain things about it. It wasn't until Sam could keep her calm in a debate & did extensive research into the subject & showed the other girl how cruel dairies & factory farming was to animals that Di began to better understand her position. It didn't convince her to switch to veganism completely, but she did cut back on her consumption of meat as a result.
This, in return, made Sam respect her more as a person. Not because she changed her eating habits, but because she was willing to change her mind on a subject given suitable enough evidence to do so. If there was one thing that Diana wasn't, it was too prideful to change.
At the same time, Sam was initially Pro-Choice & Dina has always been Pro-Life. It wasn't until Diana brought up the fact that it had been scientifically proven that unborn children could feel pain up to 20-22 weeks after conception that Sam hesitated on her stance.
Yes, her body, her choice, but as an ultra-recyclo vegetarian, she was heavily opposed to the abuse & unnecessary harming of animals.
So, when Diana asked her if she was okay with abortion after 20-22 weeks & she said yes, then Di asked her why it wasn't okay to hurt animals, but it was absolutely fine to hurt unborn babies that couldn't even defend themselves. Did she value animals more than humans?
Sam was livid! It wasn't until she'd gone home & really thought about it that she changed her tune. After reading up on what abortion actually entailed, dismemberment followed by crushing the head, then vacuuming up the remains, Sam felt sick realizing that at 20 weeks these so-called fetuses could actually feel that & she was not okay with that. It really cut Sam deep to realize the double standards she lived by.
Now she's Pro-Choice, but only up to the point of 20-22 weeks of gestation. And if even more evidence comes out that proves they can feel pain earlier, she's willing to shift her acceptable timeframe to fit that. After medicine has progressed to the point where infants can survive outside of the womb at 21 weeks, she changes her opinions to reflect that. If there's no need for the baby to die at that point, then they shouldn't have to. Like, it's one thing if the pregnancy is a danger to the mother's life or might cripple her.
But if she's simply not in a position financially to take care of a baby, she can simply give the child up for adoption. And if she merely doesn't want a baby, then she shouldn't have been having sex in the first place.
So, Sam is still Pro-Choice, but with some restrictions.
Then, when Dina spent a summer on her aunt's farm & realized that, Sam was misinformed on some things. For one, the pictures she'd been showed were very inaccurate. The metal cages, they were just a rotary milker that the cows only stay in for maybe 15 minutes tops. The animals were treated fairly & with love. They were all very happy & their food was natural & there were no chemicals.
When Dina showed her this, Sam was at first convinced that her aunt's farm was just one of the good ones when her butler, Benedict Babcock piped in about his experiences with farms, both dairy & otherwise. The idea that she might've been intentionally deceived by the vegan industry had never crossed her mind until Benedict reminded her of the time when he'd been sick for weeks. Turns out, it'd been because he'd been trying to at least go vegetarian to help support his young mistress, but it turns out that he had a calcium issue that made it impossible for him to live without at least some meat in his system. Not to mention what all that soy did to his testosterone levels.
He just hadn't told her because he didn't want to crush her dreams.
Dina also makes mention that wind & solar aren't as reliable power sources as she thinks. For one, solar takes up a lot of space & requires that a lot of land be taken up. That means damaging a lot of the environment to make room for them. Not to mention the number of birds that die either burning when they fly over solar panels or from colliding with wind turbines. Plus, while solar panels can be made from reusable materials, to actually reuse them requires expensive, specialized equipment, so 9 times outta 10, they just end up in garbage piles where some of the toxic materials end up hurting the environment even further.
Sam was distraught &, honestly, in denial for a long time, but she eventually got to researching. Really researching past all the bs & learned that they were right.
After researching it herself & finding that Di & Benedict were right, it shatters Sam & she... it takes a long time for her to figure out what she wants to do about it.
Now, that isn't to say that Diana & Sam don't square off over certain things. Like that time Sam changed the menu or when Sam released a purple-back gorilla with them sleeping not that far away or when Sam spied on Danny’s dates with Valerie, then went & lectured Danny for doing the same thing she did to him on her dates with Gregor. It isn't often that Diana yells, but she did in the second case.
When Sam changed the menu, Di was just frustrated & exasperated but not confrontational. She asked Sam how this was any different from when her mother tries to force her to wear frilly, colorful dresses. Sam sputters & insists that it’s completely different. Diana asks how, to please clarify. Sam then goes on a diatribe about how ultra-recyclo-vegetarianism is better for people’s health & better for the environment so that obviously makes it right. Then, Dina counters that according to scientists, wearing colorful clothes improves your mood. Specifically, looking at bright colors such as red & pink releases dopamine & the colors themselves don’t harm the environment so long as the designers use sustainable & environmentally friendly ways to dye the clothes, so by Sam’s own standards, her mother is completely in the right by trying to make Sam wear them because it's, technically, good for her health & doesn’t hurt the environment. Sam is stunned into silence by this, then demands evidence. Diana promptly shows her the study & the goth girl looks frustrated before storming off.
Also, Diana gets that Dalilah was trying to help, but Sam didn't know that at the time! Not to mention the fact that you should never, ever release a wild animal anywhere but their native environment, let alone the middle of a populated city! Diana admits that animals shouldn't be caged to begin with, but they are, so when they are released, it should be through the proper means! If Sam were to release Dalilah into the wild without proper reintroduction to her natural environment & without knowing whether or not she'd been bred in captivity, the chances are very high that Dalilah would die out there because she hasn't learned how to survive out there on her own! That's why those programs exist!
As for the things with Valerie & Gregor, Di just gets mad & frustrated at her friend. Like, at first when it was just her spying on the Valerie dates, Diana was upset, but Sam was right about it being a trap in-the-end. Not specifically about it being on Valerie’s part, but that it was a trap. Sure, it wasn’t right what Sam did, but she was correct in her concerns. Problem was, Sam appeared to feel justified in her actions & unapologetic for them because she was, at least technically, correct.
However, then she went off on Danny for spying on her & Gregor’s dates & Diana just could not believe the audacity. Di made it clear to Sam that she thought the goth girl was a hypocrite & when Sam demanded to know why, the teenage ghost girl reminded her what she did when Danny dated Valerie. Though, Sam tried to deny it by saying that she’d been right to think it was a trap. Then Diana countered that just because she was right, doesn’t make it right. She says that Danny is doing the exact same thing that Sam did & for the exact same reason. So, how does it make it okay for Sam to do it, but not okay for Danny?
For as much as she loves her friend, it's stunts like that, that make Diana hate how much of an entitled brat Sam can be. Though, thankfully, Sam gets better as she ages, so that’s a relief.
Anyway, after becoming a half-ghost, she gains a certain appreciation for utility & practicality in her clothes that she hadn’t before & her personal style changes to reflect this.
Eventually saves up enough money to buy a violin & take classes because she's always wanted to play. She ends up getting pretty good. Not a musical prodigy or anything, but pretty good. And she's completely fine with that because it was never about being some expert violinist. It was about learning to play an instrument she enjoyed & she did it. She does improve, but slowly over time as she's doing it more for fun than anything. (Interesting thing, Vlad plays the piano.)
She also wants to learn to dance, especially ballet, but she already spent most of her savings on a violin & only has YouTube to teach her, which only goes so far.
Not long after the Ultimate Enemy, Diana took 2 classes, 1 for first aid & another to be a certified EMT. Interesting thing is, she was wearing a wallet with her EMT license in it, then she transformed & the wallet was in her belt. When she looked, she found that the information on the license had changed to fit with Phantom instead of Fenton. Even the picture had changed. It's one of those weird things she's never been able to figure out the reasons behind. She also carries around a first aid kit bag.
Sam & Dina used to both crush on Kwan until he started hanging out with Dash. Diana can still see the sweet, animal-loving guy she used to like in there when he's reluctant to bully people, but she isn't about to try & excuse his actions against others, her brother especially. Later on, when they're in college, she happens to have Kwan in some of her medical classes (he's studying to be a veterinarian) & he asks her to go on a date. She refuses until he apologizes to her brother for going along with Dash's shit. He does, surprisingly, & being a girl of her word, she goes out with him. They proceed to date for a couple years before breaking up amiably.
During that time, she learns that Dash had been secretly bi & had crushes on both the Fenton twins & the Phantom twins. Coming from a family where masculinity was prized above all else, he felt trapped & afraid to express himself honestly. Because he grew up in a homophobic background, he felt the need to bully Danny more than her to lash out & prove to himself that he wasn't what his father hated.
While Diana could understand now the boy's actions & it explained the times he'd almost seemed to try & flirt with her in a piggish way before she always shut him down, she wasn't about to excuse his actions any more than she excuses Kwan's or Vlad's.
Due to exposure to Sam as her main gal-pal (which Sam would hiss at like a vampire dying in the sun if Diana ever verbally called her that), Di cares less about popularity than Danny even though she stands a better chance at becoming part of the A-Listers than him. Danny sometimes resents her for that. I mean, Dina used to want to be popular, but she just got over it a lot more quickly than Danny.
Danny, Diana, Tucker, & Star used to be friends from kindergarten through elementary. Then, in middle school, Star met Paulina, trading in her love of astrology, tarot card fortunes, & math to become the rich girl’s satellite. Now, Diana hates Paulina as much as Sam does. She absolutely doesn't support Danny's infatuation with the queen bitch.
In kindergarten, Danny, Dina, & Star used to bond over their love of the stars, but as time passed Danny focused more on the science of astronomy while Star & Diana focused more on the mysticism of astrology. That isn't to say that Danny doesn't know anything about astrology, so much as he went all in on astronomy. He actually developed a great interest in the legends & myths behind the stars. Not just the classic Greek interpretations either, but any culture he could get. One of which being the Christian concept that every star in the night sky was actually an angel & that the constellations can be used to predict what’s happening in the heavens.
His knowledge on the placement of the stars is such that one time, his parents forgot about he & his twin after a picnic when they were little & once it turned dark, he was able to guide he & his sister back to their house on his own.
After that, Diana endeavored to learn to do that too just in case it ever happened again & she didn’t have her brother with her next time.
Di is completely aware of Sam's crush on Danny & Danny's reciprocated crush on Sam. She's also the only one who knows that her brother actually isn't the 'Clueless One' & is also aware of Sam's crush on him & is just waiting for Sam to get comfortable enough with the idea that it's okay to want the same things other girl do & reach out for Danny. Diana can see it in how whenever they have blushy moments & Sam backpedals, her brother will immediately back off & give the goth her space. She's always been really proud of him for that & tells him so frequently, calling it super mature of him. He appreciates it.
Tucker is actually a closet Men's Rights Activist & Dina discovered as much. She actually supports him in his MRA activities & helps him to keep it a secret from the others, especially Sam, who Dina knew would equate it to being anti-woman.
Little does anyone know, that the twins both have fantastic singing voices. Like, holy shit! The Golden Quartet goes to karaoke one time & the place was rockin'! Danny has a very full, clear voice with just the right amount of rasp to it, while Diana's voice is naturally light & melodic, but she likes to belt it when she gets going. Both their voices tend to project easily. This may or may not be related to their Ghostly Wail.
Diana likes to do yoga with Jazz. She also takes up gymnastics as a hobby (it's mostly self-taught) & it helps her fly & fight better.
As a ghost, her eyes have a very slight aqua tint to them as opposed to her brother's straight peridot green. But it's so slight that you'd have to be looking at it for a while to notice it.
As a Phantom, Diana is skilled with telekinesis (often using it for damage control during fights to try & keep debris from falling on top of civilians), healing both with medicine & with her powers, & a technique that she calls her Shield Shot (but she doesn’t learn it until Ultimate Enemy). It allows her to shoot a special ecto-beam & erect a shield where it lands. It takes a bit of training to get it to where she can make the shield erect before the beam hits something. She's used it to save a lot of lives. Once she’s got a handle on it, she begins to teach her brother her new technique in case she’s ever not there.
She does have a Ghost Sense & it’s an extension of her core & element too, but it doesn’t work like her brother’s does. Instead of being able to sense when there’s a ghost a great distance away & their general direction, she more has a heightened awareness of where a ghost is when within a shorter, more immediate, vicinity even when invisible. It comes to her like ripples in a pond or sonar or echolocation & it shows itself in the form of watery eyes & involintary tears. She is also much stealthier than Danny by nature, even being able to turn off her own glow as a ghost when she wants to & suppress her heat or cold signature & ecto-signature so sensors can’t detect her. This is later something she teaches Dani who takes to it like a duck to water.
Diana later develops a cold core like her brother, but instead of ice, her element is water. She’s an Avatar: Last Airbender fan & absolutely takes up tai chi to mimic the waterbending fighting style. It actually does help with her water manipulation, too! She later learns cryomancy, but she had to work towards it before it would manifest in her. Ice comes pretty easy because it’s basically just frozen water, but it’s still nowhere near as natural to her as just using water is. Instead of just creating ice from thin air like Danny, however, it works more like waterbending in that she gathers water first, then turns it to ice. She uses it medically to ice over wounds. The ice she makes is unfortunately just normal ice unlike the Ghost Ice that Danny can produce which is practically indestructible. However, the ice she makes does seem to have a healing affect to it, which is a plus. She can eventually make Ghost Ice, but it's very hard for ghosts who's main element isn't ice to do.
Now, like I said before, Dina someday learns cryomancy, but it was more something she had to work towards rather than something that just manifested like it did for Danny or her hydromancy for her. Also, it'd never come to her as naturally as water does for her. The reverse can be said for Danny as well. She could still get very good at it though. In contrast, Danny's secondary element is wind & he too has to work for it.
At some point, Dina learns something she calls her ‘Shocking Grasp.’ It’s where she channels electricity into her hands, but she can only really use it for specific things & only up to a certain level of power because of her & Danny’s personal weakness to electricity. She typically uses it to either pester her brother or their friends by giving them little shocks, like static. Or, more importantly, as a defibrillator in emergencies. The first time she used it, it was by accident when she was trying to treat a civilian after a battle. He’d gone into cardiac arrest & his heart had stopped beating. Diana panicked & just zapped his chest, causing the man’s heart to restart.
Danny himself is able to both produce ice himself & manipulate ice that’s already there. The ice he produces is called Ghost Ice & is, as mentioned above, practically indestructible, similar to diamond & doesn’t melt naturally. Known ways to get rid of it involve either Danny himself making it go away, fire elemental ghosts using Ghost Fire to melt it, or with a similar heat level to that of a star. Diana helps him to realize that his element isn’t just for fighting & encourages him to learn more about it & to implement it more organically into his fighting style. This leads to him learning to make constructs with them. Frostbite mentions making statues & figurines to fine tune his control & thus begins the anthology of Danny as the sculptor, Eidolon. He sells them online for money under a fake name. It takes a long time, but he eventually is able to do similar things to Elsa or Jack Frost. It later turns out that his & Diana's elemental powers of ice & water aren't entirely ecto-based & are also half magic. I mean, Danny's Ghost Ice is obviously ecto-based, but the rest of it is a mix of magic & ecto. As such, even when they are unable to use their ghost powers for one reason or another, they are still able to use their elements in the form of cryomancy & hydromancy. Their secondary elements are entirely ecto/psychic-based however.
Eventually, Diana has the idea to create fog around them to obscure vision with their core elements, Danny's of ice & Diana's of water. Diana's can only obscure vision, but anyone inside Danny's who isn't resistant to cold will quickly begin to freeze over. While at first Danny & Diana, themselves, can't actually see in the fog, they can eventually learn to sort of sonar through it using the water droplets & ice fractals as an extension of their innate supernatural senses. Diana instead tends to use her Shocking Grasp on those caught in her water-based fog to up the voltage & cause a decent amount of damage.
Diana possesses the same Obsession as her brother. However, they both have different perspectives on what it actually means to protect people. To Danny, it means to fight off the ghosts so that people don’t get hurt in the first place. Diana’s thoughts on it are similar, but to her it also means healing those who’ve been hurt despite their efforts. Especially, her brother after he’s been hurt in a fight. As such, they have a lot of the same powers, but also not, with Diana having more of a Cleric thing going as opposed to her brother’s Paladin of the same faith. Similar power sources, different executions.
I compare them to DnD because the Golden Quartet plays DnD every Sunday. The Fenton parents are enthusiastic about this because they themselves used to play the game with Vlad back in collage. Jazz originally used to scoff at them for it, but the GQ are determined to get her in on it. They eventually succeed after they learn of her knowing about Danny & Diana’s secret. After actually giving it a shot, Jazz legitimately becomes very quickly invested & begins to show great promise as a DM. Now, whenever Diana wants to be a player, Jazz takes over. Not that Team Phantom gets much opportunity to play uninterrupted anymore, but they give it their best shot!
For that matter, she's just a genuinely great DM, like Ellie she can perfectly mimic anyone. This lends itself well to her job as a DM & she still freaks her friends out sometimes with the npcs she makes. Also, whenever she's feeling mischievous, she sometimes pretends she's someone else & scares the shit outta them. She's actually pretty obsessive when keeping her brother from seeing what she's planning for upcoming sessions. And sometimes she'll be figuring out a storyline or character's voice or something & suddenly someone's there like, "You talking to yourself?" She doesn't mean to, but she's the DM damnit! She has to figure these things out! Jazz used to give her shit about her just standing & staring into the middle-distance thinking about swords & shit or doing voices, saying it wasn't healthy, but now she is a DM too & she totally gets it! Finally, Dina has someone to talk to about it!
She also develops x-ray vision, but it's nowhere near as efficient as a Kryptonian's as it works more like an x-ray machine, her vision showing up in black & white & grainy. Not to mention that she's unable to see through walls.
However, despite it's lack of efficiency, it majorly improves the efficiency of her healing of others by showing her exactly what she needs to heal, which allows her to guide the energy right where it needs to be.
Dina & Danny both have a certain capability for assembling & disassembling their parents' tech due to years of familiarity. It's basically unconscious at this point, muscle memory. For Diana, it's all muscle memory & not only does she have no clue how they actually work, she has no interest in the technological aspect of her parents' jobs, being more tuned into the more chemical & ‘biological’ portion. As such, her knowledge of ghostly machines never expands farther than that basic innate knowledge of what her parents build, how to use them, & how to put them together.
It isn't until she discovers biomedical engineering (the study of building prosthetics & other machines to advance healthcare treatment) that she begins to take a genuine interest in building machines, which it turns out she has a knack for, it's just that, much like her parents, she's laser focused on her interests. After this & studying neurology enough, she discovers a way to use ectoplasm as an effective neuro-harmonizing tool in order to link prosthetics with the host brain. This allows her to build more effective prosthetics.
The discovery of biomedical engineering also allowed her to branch off in the building of more efficient medical machines such as x-rays, c.a.t. scan machines, ect. She soon founded a new branch of study called biomedical ect-engineering.
Danny, however, because of his interests in astrophysics & aerospace engineering, was able to pick up more of the ins & outs of how their parents' machines actually work. It doesn't start to become something he actively pursues until after the accident & the twins decide to protect Amity, but he eventually becomes skilled enough to modify his parents' inventions. Then, even later, manages to invent things of his own. He's definitely got a knack for things like guerilla science, having inherited it from his dad. Danny's also great at ecto-engineering & ecto-physics as well as regular engineering & physics.
He's shit at code & programming, though, being more the hardware guy, so Tucker has to help him with that particular aspect of inventing until, eventually, he learns to do it on his own.
He & his sister are both very good at chemistry, but she ends up having more of a hand in pharmacology.
Sam has a talent for pharmacology too, but more so botanical pharmacognosy which involves herbal medicine. At some point, she starts to grow ghost plants in her greenhouse to help with making medicine for her halfa friends.
After becoming ghosts, Diana & her brother have a psychic connection, but they can only talk telepathically to each other if they're within a certain distance from each other. Beyond that, they can only sense the other's stronger emotions. It comes in useful with planning or knowing when their twin is in danger. The further their distance away, the dimmer the feeling is, but it never fades entirely. They can block the link for a time when they want. Dina does it to keep her brother from cheating off her during tests.
Di's first job was at a Starbucks. It was there she learned to make coffee, but then 2 years later, she went to work at a little coffee shop. It was there that she learned to brew for real. Something she found she greatly enjoys. The owner was a middle-age man with extensive knowledge of coffee & skill at making wonderful cups of the stuff. From brewing to beans to coffee trivia & all sorts. He taught her quite a lot & she now makes her own coffee every day.
Diana also does this thing where after really experiencing her first decent Christmas, every December she'll bake all sorts of different cookies & bring plates of them to work, neighbors, family doctors, & friends. It's something she very much enjoys & it's garnered her the nickname, "Christmas Cookie Fairy." One crowd favorite is her pumpkin & white chocolate dream drops.
In the end, neither Danny nor Dina achieves their dreams for a very long time because of their grades as a result of being heroes.
Also, Danny & Dina have to become the Ghostly Dual Monarchs upon reaching 21, so if they want to become an astronaut or a marine biologist someday, they'll have to wait 'till the GZ is in better shape than it currently is, which could take anywhere from centuries to millennia.
Diana does manage to go into medicine though, having been the one with the most medical knowledge in the group with Jazz being the second best due to her initial desire to be a brain surgeon before choosing to become a psychologist/parapsychologist/ectopsychologist. Sam is the third best healer in the group & Tucker only the worst because he refuses to have anything to do with it unless absolutely necessary despite the fact that he has the potential to be very talented at doing stitches due to his own ability with sewing.
In the end, Dina begins to study medicine, biology, pediatrics, pharmacology, biochemistry, bioengineering, neurology (to an extent, Jazz knows more), anatomy, biophysics (the field that applies the theories & methods of physics to understand how biological systems work), biomechanics (the study of the structure, function & motion of the mechanical aspects of biological systems), biomedical engineering (the study of building prosthetics & other machines to advance healthcare treatment), ectobiology, & biomedical ecto-engineering.
It's only upon learning & studying about biomedical engineering does she eventually begin to start understanding her more engineering-focused family's ramblings.
She too has Danny & Jack's talent for guerilla science & resourcefulness, it just largely laid dormant inside her until she found her niche.
She eventually works together with a Dr. Cykes to build a chip to be implanted in the brain that simulates emotions using the Cykes Audio-Empathy Program as a base & purifies ectoplasm as a framework.
It's very much helped a lot of people with difficult feeling to finally feel something.
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The Fenton parents have a list of places that they want to travel to at some point in their lives to study the specific hauntings in them. This list includes New Orleans, Spirit Bay in New Zealand, the Catacombes de Paris in Paris, & so on. (I’ll likely expand this list as time goes on.)
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It's also an Omegaverse AU, but only Halfas & Ecto Sapiens are affected by this. Humans are just like in canon. The Alpha & Omega dynamics are further broken up into 3 each. Starting with Alpha(A)/AA, Alpha(B)/AB, & Alpha(O)/AO, & ending with Omega(A)/OA, Omega(B)/OB, & Omega(O)/OO. This creates a fuller, more complex system than the typical ABO & gives people a more diverse web of personality.
If asked, you are AA, AB, AO, OA, OB, or OO. The first letter is determined by biology & doesn't change naturally, but the second one is determined by individual personality & can change over time.
As an example of what this means, AAs are your typical Alpha & they may even fall prey to their stereotypes. Same with OOs. AOs & OAs, however, are very non-traditional. OAs, specifically, do not conform to the typical Omega stereotype of being submissive.
Only AAs can be Apexes & only OOs can be Fecund.
When the Twins became halfas, Danny becomes an AA. In the meantime, Diana either turns out to be an AA or an OA.
Now, there are 2 types of Omegaverses that I've read about. But the one I've decided upon is where males & females, no matter their dynamic, are reproductively the same as in real life except males have knots regardless of dynamic. The only thing that changes are the inclusion of instincts, heats/ruts, & the fact that Omegas are generally more submissive than Alphas.
Halfas produce milk while Ecto-Sapiens do not. Instead, they share their core energy with the baby.
Male Omegas experience Couvade Syndrome or Sympathetic Pregnancy Syndrome very frequently. For male Omegas, halfas specifically, this also includes producing breast milk too. Their pectorals become tender & inflate somewhat, while still maintaining their masculine shape. However, it's much less than females produce.
Also, female Alpha halfas, specifically, experience menstruation just like regular human women do.
Either way, ghosts of the dead (A.K.A. Ecto-Forms) don't work based on ABO logic because they don't reproduce the same way the living or even Ecto Sapiens do. Instead, they combine their core energies to form an ectoplasmic 'egg' of sorts that grows & develops over time. However, only soulmates can do this. So, this is very rare. As such, ghosts also have soul marks. Initially, the Fentons are convinced that this is a trick to get humans to empathize with them until they learn about Danny & Dina.
Ghost pairs who aren't soulmates, tend to adopt the ghosts of dead children, such as still-borns, aborted babies, or murdered children. The ghosts of dead children can take a lot longer to form than other ghosts due to the trauma they sustained in their short lives, so ghostly pairs will sometimes find them & use their core energy to help the child develop an ectoplasmic body quickery & to help them ease their suffering. This influences how the child comes out & that's one way to adopt.
At the same time, most of the ghosts that attack Amity are the ghosts of the dead & even the ones that aren't don't typically have children.
All halfas bare the scents of at least 2 flowers, one symbolizing life & the other symbolizing death as well as a hint of ozone.
Danny presents as an AA & smells like mint, freshly fallen snow, a forest in the dead of winter, hot chocolate, patchouli, & cinnamon. His life & death flowers are amaranth (never-fading) & stargazer lily (traditional funeral flower).
Diana presents as an AA & smells like the ocean, vanilla, pastries, & various tropical flowers including hibiscus, moonflowers, & tuberose. Her life & death flowers are lavender (long life & is used for healing) & white orchid (symbols of sympathy but an expression of love to the bereaved person or family).
Vlad presents as an OA & smells like red wine, ginger, cinnamon, dark Mexican chocolate, fire, as well as yellow chrysanthemums (neglected love & sorrow) & red roses (a fervent kind of love & desire that is passionate, seductive, & unstoppable). His life & death flowers are chrysanthemum (long life; a single mum petal at the bottom of a wine glass encourages a long, healthy life) & red camillia (noble death).
Sam, as a halfa, would present as OA & smell like delphinium, lilac, witch hazel, myrtle, & prickly pear. Her life & death flowers are peach blossoms (long life) & black rose (portends death).
Tucker, as a halfa, would present as a Beta & smell like saffron, blue lotus, cardamom, & cinnamon. His life & death flowers are apple blossoms (forever life & immortality) & aconite (causion, misanthropy, & death).
(A/N: In cases of my Legacy AU, Danny & Diana both also smell of red amaranth & poppies for their connection to Artemis & Thanatos. Sam also smells of asphodel, narcissus flower, & yew for her connections to Persephone & Hades through Zagreus, & Hecate. Finally, Tucker has the scent of fennel for Hephaestus.)
This should initially be Gray Ghost (DannyxValerie). But the end goal is Amethyst Ocean (DannyxSam) & Endangered Species (VladxFem!Danny).
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After the incident with Technus taking over Doomed, Dina suggested that they tell Lancer so that they have at least one teacher that is on their side, because he really seems to care. By nature, Dina is more sensitive & observant than her brother. After arguing over it for weeks, the argument rearing its head during several episodes, Danny finally agrees & they reveal themselves to Lancer. The teacher freezes for a moment & mutters a book title, having an internal freak out moment before asking for an explanation. He's very open & considerate & tries to support them however he can.
Because they have each other, the twins are better able to handle the ghosts that terrorize Amity. With 2 Phantoms, they are able to split both the hero work & schoolwork. This combined with Lancer knowing what they're going through allows them to better manage their grade point average.
When they meet Vlad, he doesn't pay much attention to either of them other than to note their resemblances to Maddie. However, once he learns of their halfa status, his obsession slowly shifts to include them. At first, it's all about making them his perfect son & daughter/ghostly apprentices & making their mom his wife, ect. Initially, Dina develops something of a crush on the man, he is actually very physically attractive after all, but very quickly is her budding infatuation absolutely crushed beneath the reality of Vlad’s fruitloopiness.
During the events of Reign Storm, the Drs. Fenton only make one ecto-skeleton, so only one of the twins could use it. Danny chooses to be the one because he's, at least physically, stronger than his sister.
However, I'm making this a Phantom Fusion AU, so Dina confronts her brother before the battle. They fight, they fuse, they kick ghost butt.
When Dana defeats Pariah & is struggling to put him back in the Sarcophagus of Forever Sleep, Vlad helps, but has no clue as to who they are. (The use of 'they' being correct terminology in this situation. They are not nb or gn or intersex, they are dual-sex as they are literally a hermaphrodite.)
Vlad had expected one of the twins to be in the suit & doesn't know who this is, but judging by the logo on their chest & the coloring of their suit, they are somehow related to the twins. He mocks them, issues a warning, & leaves.
The twins try to keep this new ability of theirs on the down low to keep their enemies from being able to figure out a way to counter Dana. So, they use it sparingly & only when necessary.
In the broken timeline where everyone the twins cares about dies & Danny asks to have his humanity removed, Diana is thoroughly against it. She'd always been the level-headed one with more common sense.
Being reckless, Vlad goes through with the procedure while she's busy. It goes about the same as in canon. That is to say, poorly.
Diana saves Vlad from the wreckage of his home & she grows up to be one of Amity, the world, & the Ghost Zone's main protectors against Dan. While Valerie was mainly stationed in Amity.
Diana's presence keeps the events of Ultimate Enemy from taking place for a few more years, 10 more years to be exact. She even had shields strong enough to defend against Dan's Ghostly Wail. In order to destroy Amity, he had to devise a plan involving duplicates & use his dupes to draw his half-sister away, then use his Wail on the town's shield.
She'd also learned to shoot a beam of energy & erect a shield where it landed. She called it her Shield Shot. It was very useful for protecting people when she wasn't fast enough to get to them.
Though Dan was physically stronger, faster on land, & had more stamina than her due to both being male & technically being both Phantom & Plasmius. On the other hand, Diana was faster when flying, more agile, flexible, dexterous, & had a better handle on her powers than him due to finally taking Vlad up on his offer to train her. Apparently, both her & Danny had always been naturally fast at learning to handle their powers. More so than Vlad had been anyway.
There had been many times when Diana would've beaten Dan, but it turned out that he'd gotten Vlad's penchant for escape.
When Amity fell was when Danny, past Dina, & their friends came to the future. Danny had gotten his hands on the CAT answers & though Diana would've normally tried to convince him to return them, her grades had also started to slip. So, she also struggled with the decision.
(Neither Danny nor past Dina learned of it, but upon turning 18, future Diana had spent her first heat/rut with Vlad & they'd proceeded to become lovers. She had become very important to the former halfa & their relationship had helped him to sort out a lot of things. She had an overall positive effect on his mental health. However, it turned out that having been ripped apart & left as literally half a person had some major drawbacks health wise. The only reason Vlad’d managed to survive for so long was due to access to ectoplasm & extensive transplant surgery whenever one of his organs failed. It also left Vlad sterile. So, they didn’t have children. Though, he remembered having his sperm frozen at some point, he couldn’t quite remember whether it’d been before or after his accident, but considered discussing artificial insemination at some point, but not until after Dan was a non-issue. Provided the sperm bank where it was being stored was still in one piece, which wasn't likely. Vlad also played with the idea of using cloning technology to combine their DNA & sort of grow them a child, but it didn't come to fruition before the events of Ultimate Enemy. They both knew they only had a limited time together.)
In the end, Danny & Dina fuse into Dana, learn the Wail to defeat Dan, then learn to use Shield Shot to save their loved ones. However, as it turned out when Clockwork showed up, because they'd been able to save them without his help, he was unable to bend the rules & turn back time so their folks wouldn't remember. They'd just have to deal with the fallout themselves.
This led to the Fenton parents having a bit of an existential crisis over how they'd chased their own children, shooting at them & promising to dissect them. The guilt they felt was bone deep.
They actually took to their children being superheroes rather well & were very proud... & apologetic for the way they'd acted before. At least, after the first couple of weeks.
After that, the Fenton parents swore that they'd do whatever they could to support their kids.
This led to a series of Phantom Support-based inventions, such as better & more protective suits with actual armor & ecto-infused kevlar. As well as, after giving their children a very thorough medical examination, they began to put together things specifically for the Phantom First Aid Kits that Dina had started with Sam's help. Dina had fishing line from the Fenton Fisher & the Drs. Fenton provided them with ectoplasm-sterilized needles for stitching, a Blood Blossom a/o Ghost Nip-based anesthesia that Sam & Dina concocted after Infini-Map. Dina had invented gauze made of ghost spider silk & the Fenton parents put in syringes of what is basically Ecto-Dejecto during D-Stabilize, but the effects are intentional. Also, Maddie & Dina had made a salve for burns from ecto-blasts together. Stuff like that. They also make the twins a pair of black domino masks to really fit the superhero theme.
However, the truth of the matter was that, once the adrenalin faded & they had time to think, Jack & Maddie tried to convince themselves that the twins were possessed, though they kept it under wraps, not wanting to scare the two away while they thought of a plan to free their babies. Oh, their initial acceptance in the episode was completely genuine, but afterwards they had second thoughts. And there were tests. Secret tests. They used everything they could to try to get whatever malicious ghosts were controlling their kids out of them, but everything came back saying that the ectoplasm was fused with their DNA. This wasn't simple possession or even ecto-contamination.
All evidence pointed to there only being Danny & Dina inside them with no outside influence controlling their actions.
Then, the Fentons went about trying to find a way to separate the ectoplasm from their bodies, specifically with the Fenton Dreamcatcher. This only resulted in creating separate bodies with split personalities & according to their DNA, the human halves were literally just halves & the longer they were separate, the more evident it became that both sides of their babies were dying. Even the ghost halves began fading.
It was then they looked closer, putting the ghost halves under with a new chemical invention based on Sam & Dina's ecto-anaesthesia meant to render ghosts unconscious so long as it was in their system so they could thoroughly examine the pair. Despite their convictions, they refused to take the chance that their children really were this halfa thing & risk traumatizing them further with their parents’ callousness.
Dear God Almighty, they hoped that they were right about some ectoplasmic scum taking over their babies because otherwise, it meant that their children had DIED in that lab accident & it was all their faults. The Drs. Fenton were desperate!
And they found that the ghosts were far more biologically complex than any ghost the Fentons had ever dissected before having only ever caught blobs & Ecto-Forms. The twin ghosts had skeletal systems, veins, muscles, organs, a brain that emitted the other half of their children's brainwaves, lungs, a heart, nerves, pain receptors, a pituitary gland that produced chemicals to make emotions.
The only difference, physically, it seemed between the ghost & human halves were that everything in the ghosts were some varied shades of green & at the center of their chests, hidden by the sternum was what they would later learn to be a glowing ghostly core.
They even had strange ectoplasmic-green blood cells & white blood cells & ectoplasmic blood platelets which they'd never even conceived of as being possible, let alone seen or heard of.
And both halves of their babies were dying, the ghost halves due to trying to maintain this more complex form & the human halves due to rapid organ failure. They had to put them back together!
After returning the halfa twins to normal, the Fenton parents gave them a thorough medical examination & found that it somehow all worked together seamlessly. The twins' blood was a little darker from containing a few green blood cells, their heart beat a little slower, they breathed a little less, & their body temperature was a little lower, appetites bigger with more complex dietary needs, but other than that, it was their babies, healthy with little to no ill effects to their mental or physical health.
That's when it all came crashing down on Jack & Maddie's heads what their children were & what they'd done to them, both over the last year & just now.
They were inconsolable & after everything the Fenton parents did to them just to be sure that their kids were still their kids, the twins' faith in them was broken. It takes a long, long time for Jack & Maddie to regain their trust & even after that, there’s still problems between them.
Regardless, the Fentons now openly supported the Phantoms both in private & in public. However, it took a good long time & exposure for them (Maddie) to realize that a lot of their biases against ghosts were wrong. At first, they just assumed that the twins were obviously different because their human halves helped them maintain their ghostly Obsessions in a more healthy manner & curtailed the more destructive ghostly tendencies. (They weren't necessarily wrong, but also not entirely correct.)
It took the Drs. Fenton, Maddie specifically, a very long time to openly admit it, but with both sufficient evidence & more opened minds than before, they eventually accepted that benign ghosts existed & that they do have real emotions, feel real pain, & are capable of complex thought & reasoning if approached correctly, but they (Maddie) were stubborn & set in their ways, so it was a bit of a fight & there were arguments aplenty about it. Jack had a better time of it because he is a more open-minded person by nature & is quick to change when he knows that he was wrong about something. So, he came around quickly, but was slow to relearn how to act around ghosts. Maddie, on the other hand, is much more stubborn & was convinced for a long time that her babies were just the exception to the rule. However, once she accepted the truth, she was quick to learn.
However, this didn't completely erase all their in-built ectophobic-based prejudices, but it allowed them to open their minds to the wider world of ghosts.
As a result, after learning that ghosts are, in fact, sentient & sapient, Jack loses a little bit of his zest for hunting because he'd never been the type to legitimately want to hurt someone without just cause. He gets a sick feeling in his stomach when he thinks about all the inhumane things he'd both done & wanted TO DO to his own flesh & blood & it made him take apart or completely redesign a good number of the more heinous inventions. The one that turned ectoplasmic energy from screaming ghosts into useable power having been foremost & the first to be disassembled & redesigned.
The twins didn't tell their parents about Masters & Plasmius being the same person, or that Plasmius was even a half-ghost at all because they didn't know how the fruitloop would react.
As a sidenote, Danny & Dina both have the Wail & Shield Shot, but Dina's Wail (she calls it her Spectral Scream as it's got a higher pitch than Danny's) isn't nearly as powerful as Danny's & the shields that Danny erects with Shield Shot aren't as sturdy as Dina's are.
---
Dani had been a product of both Vlad's desire for Maddie as his own & to make the twins his children. She'd been the only successful clone.
He'd used Daniel's DNA as a guideline to build her from the ground up, but instead of being Daniel, she came out more Diana & the mix up both confused & infuriated him. He'd checked to make sure it was Daniel's DNA he used, it'd been XY when he looked, but when Dani developed, she came out XX.
It is because of the exact way in which she was cloned that she was so unstable.
Diana reacted very badly to how Vlad used the clones. She refused to even look at him for a good long while. When asked, she told him that it wasn’t so much the fact that he cloned her brother as how he treated those clones. So what if they weren’t perfect, they were living breathing thinking people & deserved every bit as much respect as everyone else.
Vlad was desperate to have her look at him again so he swore to never even touch Danielle again. Because of this D-Stabilize didn’t happen. He didn’t chase Dani around the world, so she didn’t begin to melt until later.
As a consequence, Valerie didn’t learn about halfas, that Vlad was using her, & never made a truce with the Phantoms.
---
During the Reality Trip episode, they had also planned to go to Tampa, Florida to visit the Florida Aquarium for Dina. She chose one in Florida because they were already going to Cape Canaveral & this would minimize on time.
However, because of Freakshow, they had to cut corners &, unfortunately, none of the Reality Gems were sent to Tampa. So, her holiday was kinda left out.
---
In Eye For An Eye, Di tried to prevent Danny & Vlad's prank war from escalating & because of that, he didn't do anything to specifically antagonize her.
The Nasty Burger being demolished didn't do anything for her personally because she preferred the Heartsong Diner for its food, music, & atmosphere as she'd told Vlad herself. She also wasn't particularly addicted to technology & she was self-assured in herself enough to not feel threatened by a simple uniform policy.
For that matter, the uniforms were different here. Instead of the school colors being red, white, & blue, they were purple, black, & blue. So, the uniforms consisted of mulberry purple sweater vests, black & royal blue plaid skirts & slacks, black socks & dress shirts, brown leather school clogs, & royal blue ties.
At the end of the episode when everything was supposed to go back to normal, something happened that made Casper keep the uniform policy.
---
When Vlad gave Sam & Tucker ecto-acne to blackmail Danny, specifically, into finding him a cure, Dina stayed behind to help her parents look after the 3 of them. When she was helping Vlad she expressed disappointment in him for using her friends against her brother.
Sure, she was helping him, but that didn’t stop her from being angry with him. Of course, Vlad countered by demanding to know how he was supposed to find a cure otherwise.
In response, Dina said that he could’ve just asked them for help, further stating that she would’ve helped him, at least. At this, Vlad was strangely contrite.
You see, Vlad has NPD (though, he doesn't know that yet), but at the same time, Dina is someone that he respects greatly & values the opinion of.
She's emotionally independent (even though she fears being alone, she's working through it). Sets clear limits with him. Doesn't allow him to bully her. Isn't taken in by his presentory bullshit & hasn't taken any derision he's ever pointed at her. Though it pains him to admit it, she's better than him at many things. Specifically biology & medical science. Yet, she has never insinuated that she was superior to him in any way.
She is a very self-assured person with a clear sense of self-identity. She also is respectful of him to a degree so long as he's respectful of her in return, despite having out-smarted him several times.
More than all that, she sees him for who he is past all the bullshit superiority & dominance he presents to the world. Not to mention her scent. He'd always loved it; vanilla, pastries, tropical flowers, the ocean, moonflowers, tuberose, lavender, & white orchids. Like a Hawaiian beachside bakery. It calmed him down when he was upset.
She's also made it clear to him that she has other friends & that if he crosses the boundaries she's set in place, she has no problem not associating with him anymore.
These things combined cause him to respect her in return & because of this, he doesn't like disappointing her.
---
During the Christmas episode, Dina has as many bad experiences with Christmas as Danny, but tries her best to enjoy them when she can. She really loves the dorky-ass obnoxious holiday clothes like ugly Christmas sweaters, felt antlers, sequined elf hats, enormous curly-toed shoes with bells on them; she's a very dorky & festive person by nature, so by all accounts, she should love Christmas. But because of her experiences with her family's arguments, she doesn't. And no matter how hard she tries, she eventually gets fed up with her parents always fighting & goes to have Christmas with Tucker instead, where she gets to have a slightly better experience.
At the end of the episode, she helps the other ghosts fix up Christmas. Then, she sees her brother use a new ability to fix the destroyed presents & points out that, that power could be useful if he can use it to fix up the damage made after ghost fights.
He hadn't even clocked this until she mentioned it to him, but he's unsure if this even is a new power or just a plot device for Ghost Writer's poem.
Turns out that it is a new power & now Danny uses it all the time to fix up the town after fights. As a result, a lot of the townspeople that had been against them for property damage & such, no longer have a reason to hate them. Of course, that doesn’t stop others from continuing to do so, or for plenty of the ones that did because of the property damage to keep hating them for some other reason. Regardless, the twins' reputation goes up.
However, there are still plenty who still hate them anyway.
Danny teaches his sister how to do it & it really helps because now, she just mixes it with her telekinesis during battles where debris would've fallen on citizens & immediately fixes the damage.
For the Infini-Map episode, Team Phantom is about 16. When Vlad first told the map to take him to his destiny, the portal that appeared sent him directly to Dina, who had been just a few yards away, & bumping into her. Confusion ensues &, frustrated, Vlad commands the map to take him to what he deserves. At which point, both Vlad & Dina (due to proximity) are taken to the first place that Vlad goes to in canon.
The story continues with Danny & his friends chasing after Vlad & Di. Meanwhile, Dina runs interference & tries to slow Vlad down.
---
For the Endangered Species thing, I don’t want a Vlad Redemption, not immediately at least, & I don't like it when people minimize the villain's actions or handwave things with 'all he ever wanted was love' or 'true love will magically make him a better person' because that's not how things work. I want this to be an undertaking where Dina is the more levelheaded one of the twins & shows more sympathy towards Vlad but doesn't excuse his actions.
After especially vicious fights with him, she checks in on him & helps to patch him up while half-heartedly listening to his grumbling complaints about how she & her brother always ruin his plans & how she should forsake her father & join him because he could give her so much more than Jack ever could & blah blah-blah blah-blah. All the while they indulged in each other's scents. Vlad in her tropical island bakery scent & Dina in his complex, bittersweet, spicy, & smokey scent.
Slowly, they end up being acquaintances that don't hate each other, then frenemies when not fighting, then finally friends & they sometimes just talk or debate or play chess.
I think the trope is called either "Punch-Clock Enemies" or "Mutual Enemies On the Clock, Best Friends Off Duty" or something like that.
Like, one minute Danny & Dina are foiling Vlad's plans as a unit. He's cursing them & escapes capture, then after running away, he comes back to ask Dina individually, "Tea & chess tomorrow night, Kitten? I have a lovely Ceylon brew I've been meaning for you to try."
They love to debate with each other. This stalls Vlad's descent into insanity for at least a couple of years.
I feel like Vlad would need to hit rock bottom & consume an entire tin of humble pie before he could even begin to change.
Vlad is OA due to the more severe health complications that arose due to the ectoplasm that changed him into a halfa being contaminated with a carbonated beverage. By that, I mean that the diet soda did some bad shit to him.
Dina used to hide the fact that she didn't have a mark because bullies would make fun of her because of it. Paulina had even once removed the bandage Dina was using to conceal this fact in middle school to be a bitch, then showed the whole school when she realized that the Fenton girl didn't have one. Now, Diana hides the fact that she does because it'd look suspicious if she suddenly went from not having one to having. The reason being that it might clue others into the fact that something traumatic happened to her for it to appear, which could lead them back to her & Danny's accident.
The twins as Phantoms are always being asked by fans if they have soulmate marks & requesting to be shown.
---
With Sam's help, Dina created the first Phantom First Aid Kit & then the Drs. Fenton expanded on it. She also made the Fenton Ecto-Disinfectant Salve with her mom's help.
---
When Phantom Planet happens, some things are different. For one, despite his initial plan, Vlad decides not to reveal himself to the world & instead creates a duplicate of Plasmius & made it look like he’d overshadowed Vlad Masters.
Danny chooses to try & get rid of his ghost half like in canon, while Dina chooses not to, instead deciding to act as a rescuer & medic in case people get hurt during the Master's Blasters' ghost fights. She, specifically, does not engage with the ghosts during this time. Also, because he has a better relationship with Dina than he does Danny, after the first time she acts as a medic, Vlad makes it clear to his Blasters that so long as she doesn't try to fight ghosts, she's to be left alone.
No one knows it but Vlad actually struck a deal with most of the stronger ghosts that the Master’s Blasters captured with the goal to try & alienate the Phantom Twins.
Things go fairly the same with Vlad actually revealing himself to Jack in the ship, then their argument happens & he’s left in space.
However, instead of just moping there, he flies off a ways to hopefully escape the Disasteroid after texting Dina to try & get her to leave Earth. He'd all-but given up on Daniel, but Dina was important to him damnit!
Danny gets attacked by the ghosts & his powers are reawakened. Then he & Dina lead the ghosts to Earth & save the planet. Danny gets the girl (Amethyst Ocean ftw), however, here he & Dina don’t reveal themselves to the public because nearly everyone they want to know already does.
Now the Phantoms are a worldwide sensation & considered definite heroes.
Before collision, Vlad was so distraught that Dina hadn't come, that he teleported back to Earth to kidnap her if he had to. By the time he learns of her location, it's too late & he's convinced that they'll all die when the Earth turns intangible beneath his feet.
After the coast is clear, Vlad finds Dina in her room & hugs her, relieved that she's okay. He then tries to resume his life as Mayor Vlad Masters, CEO of Vladco. & Dalv, & Vlad Plasmius, ghostly conqueror, but it becomes very obvious very quickly that Plasmius has ousted the twins from their place as Public Ghost Enemy #1.
He now has to be more careful & discrete with his schemes because now the world knows about ghosts & not only are the GiW after his ghost half, but now most businesses begin to make it mandatory to wear a new, more compact Specter Deflector in the form of a bracelet to ward off ghostly corporate sabotage. As such, he’s forced to go about things the straight & narrow way.
---
Upon meeting Dani not even a day after the Disasteroid, the Fentons immediately adopt her, but only call her Elle or Ellie because Dani is just confusing & it allows her a separate identity from Danny. However, not long after her adoption, she began to destabilize, though much slower than in canon. The Fentons use Ecto-Rejuveno (Ecto-Dejecto) to keep her together & it works for a long time, but she eventually starts to destabilize again & it becomes apparent that as time passes that it’s keeping her together for less & less time & it starts taking longer for her to reform every time she breaks down.
In desperation, Dina uses her considerable talent & interest in biology to study cloning. Like, actual irl cloning. This was how they discovered that Vlad had tried to brute force using an ectoplasmic form of cloning to create what was supposed to be a half-ghost rather than a combination of ectoplasmic & biological cloning. This created errors in the programing & made Ellie more an Ecto-Sapien like Frostbite & the Far Frozen seemed to be than an actual halfa. But only half an Ecto-Sapien with unstable human biology.
Not only that, but the girl was missing a lot of markers in her DNA structure. The best that Dina could determine was that she needed another biological source besides Danny to help her build a stable human half for her core to connect to. Sure, Di could just double down on Danny's DNA or give her the mid-morph DNA & she should be stable enough to live a relatively normal-ish life, but the greatest success & chance for stability would be found with giving Elle a secondary template to latch onto.
Thing was, finding that secondary source. Neither Diana nor the rest of the family were about to provide it because the incestuous nature of mixing what was Danny’s clone with one of them was likely to cause more problems than fix them. Also, just ew. In the end, Sam volunteered.
With the Fentons & the Far Frozen’s help, plus Dina’s newfound knowledge of how cloning worked, plus using the foundational elements of the, still relatively new & unexplored, Lelonde Method of Ectoplasmic Human Cloning (which actually used uncharged, unfiltered ectoplasm & created unexpected results) to bind the 2 technologically different methods together, they were able to build a pod that they’d put Ellie into & it would rebuild her using a true combination of ectoplasmic & human cloning technology.
(Side-note: The Fentons actually contacted the young Lalonde & managed to secure her help in their endeavor. The young woman was highly intrigued by their planned use of her technology & the fact that world-renowned ectologists were using her method! They would go on to commend the young & very talented Dr. Lalonde, offer her an internship at Fenton Works & teach her everything they'd discovered about ectology & ectobiology. She jumped at the chance. I mean, she had been considering an internship at Skaianet, but this just seemed right up her alley! The ground rules? She couldn't tell anyone about Ellie's true nature & she couldn't drink around their kids. They later learn that full use of the Lalonde Method results in slightly ecto-liminal humans just by using the uncharged & unfiltered ectoplasm that Miss Roxanne managed to scrounge up on her own without the use of a portal. If one were to instead use charged & purified ectoplasm, the percentage & strength of the liminality would be higher & much more stable. To be clear, charged ectoplasm is the type we see in the show & purified ectoplasm is a charged type of ectoplasm that the Fentons use to power their tech.)
The process was a success, though Ellie came out with indigo eyes with a slightly slimmer face shape, a Greek nose, & reverted to the physical age of 2 years old. (In ghost form, her eyes are a slightly more yellowish shade of green.) Otherwise, she looked just like Danny & was fully stable & fully halfa.
If you were to look up the term joie de vivre, you'd find a picture of Ellie after she's stable. It radiates from her like sunshine & exudes from her very pores. She loves life & loves living it.
It comes about from this feeling of "omG, people love me & care about me. I have a family & a home now. Life is AMAZING!!!" She just wants to experience as much & learn as much from life as she possibly can, so she tackles everything with all the zest & enthusiasm she can muster.
She bonds with people by spending time with them doing the things they enjoy. If it's just something the other person likes, GREAT! They can teach her. If it's something they both like, EVEN BETTER!! She can enjoy just about anything so long as she's doing it with someone she cares about.
She knits & sews with Jack & Dina, cooks with Danny & Dina, studies the stars with Danny, practices martial arts with Maddie, studies plants with Sam, medicine with Dina, plays games with Danny, Di, Sam, & Tucker.
This results in her being very extroverted & friendly. Maybe a little too exuberant at times, but nothing too bad.
That isn't to say that she doesn't have things that she likes to do on her own or just for herself, but most of the things she learns are stuff she does with others. She loves to move her body for instance. She takes up dancing early on & never stops. Also, she turns out to be a polyglot with interest in other languages & cultures.
Not only that, she is an innately practical person. Anything she does, she tries to find a way to apply it to her life experiences & plan for the future. She uses sewing to mend her clothes, astronomy to memorize the night sky & never get lost again, learns survivalist cooking as well as hunting & gathering so she'll never be hungry again, martial arts in case she's ever mugged, plants & herbology to know which plants are safe & which ones to use on which injuries, first aid & other medical knowledge in case she can't find her way home in time.
Living on her own for so long, as much of an adventure it was, it also traumatized Ellie. As such, she makes a point to learn survivalism just in case she's ever on her own again.
Ellie later studies to become an anthropologist, survivalist, & explorer.
When her core settled, she developed dual core elements which is rare; plant & ice powers. It's because of how she was remade. If she was born naturally, she'd only have one.
It took years before Sam, Danny, & the rest of the Fentons were able to discuss how Ellie was technically Danny & Sam’s daughter.
Even still, Ellie was raised as Jazz, Danny & Dina’s younger sister because, let’s be fair, Danny & Sam weren’t ready for that kind of responsibility yet. Even despite that, both of them started to take even more of an active role in the girl’s life, fussing over her more than was strictly necessary & doting on her subconsciously.
They might not have been ready, but they always made sure Ellie knew they cared.
---
10 years pass & Danny is crowned King of the Ghost Zone at the age of 21. There had been some sort of kerfuffle over which of the twins would rule because of how they beat Pariah. In the end, he & Dina decided that they interchange ruling every 50 years or so & whoever isn't ruling at a time, becomes the other's advisor. Danny went first & in 50 years, it'd be Dina's turn to rule.
Anyway, there had been a few times when Vlad showed up to try & cause trouble, especially in the first 5, but after that, it quickly became apparent that even just one of the twins had exceeded his own expertise. Because, let's be real, he's more a slimy businessman than a warrior.
Such schemes included the use of Fright Knight before Danny’s coronation in an attempt to try & seize the crown for himself. He’d even joined a resistance group that wasn’t pleased with the fact that the next Ghost King was to be such a young & inexperienced ghost, let alone a halfa.
(Either the resistance group releases Pariah in an attempt for him to kill Phantom, Vlad planning to wait & see who the winner is before finishing them off to gain the right of conquest. Or, Danny & Dina are forced to open the Sarcophagus of Forever Sleep themselves in order to retrieve the Ring of Rage & earn the full right to be king/queen. Either way, they have to fight Pariah again.)
At one point, Vlad discovers Clockwork’s lair (more like he’s allowed to) & tries to strike a deal with the timekeeper & godlike entity, but we all know that was never gonna happen. So, he sees the dented thermos sitting on a table there & steals it, thinking it might hold some kind of trump card that he could use to his advantage.
When he opened it, Vlad was confronted with the worst parts of himself. Even so, he tried to manipulate the phantom of his misdeeds. Dan mocked him, psychologically picking the man apart. Showing him what he could’ve been had he actually put some fucking effort into becoming stronger. Even as Vlad fought him, he was completely, far & above, outstripped.
Because of this, he had to acquisition the twins’ help again & it’s through the combined effort of Team Phantom, plus Valerie & Vlad that they managed to capture Dan. When they returned him to Clockwork, he combined Dan’s broken timeline with a broken timeline where Danny was unable to save Amity from Undergrowth & Sam was forced to regain her own senses & save the day. (By the time she did, half the human race had been used as fertilizer. Having absorbed Undergrowth’s energy, she became halfa.) As a ghost, Sam has glowing yellow eyes with green sclera, fangs, & wears a very evil queen/dominatrix look.
Clockwork then sealed Dan into the new product because now the timeline had two heroes that could go toe-to-toe with him & had a chance to redeem him. At that moment, a soulmate mark suddenly appeared on Dan's chest. It was a single blood blossom surrounded by a green fire.
Now that I think about it, because Undergrowth killed Danny & Dina, then Sam caused Undergrowth to fade, that would mean that she'd have been the one in line to become Ghost Queen in her timeline. I wonder how that'd work with Dan technically being in line for Ghost King? Perhaps it splits the reign or it'll go to whoever beats the other?
Anyway. Strangely, Vlad had escaped from Undergrowth in the Sam timeline & when the 2 merged, so too did the 2 Vlads, allowing the Vlad from Dan's timeline to regain his ghost powers & his virility. Though, this resulted in him having 2 different sets of memories & drove him crazy for a while until he sorted them all out. There's a plot where because Plant Sam's Vlad had Plasmius, his personality seemed to win out & it was like Dina's Vlad never changed except when he'd see her & he’d become much like a giant, affectionate cat that tries to charm the pants off of her like he used to do to Maddie, just much more touchy. Either way, he's an enemy for a while until he sorts everything out. Then, he joins Sam & Diana to keep Dan at bay. (Also, the fusion of the 2 Vlads resulted in him having a Doctor Strange goatee. Di actually kinda likes it.)
Eventually, Sam is able to pin down & knock Dan unconscious. At which point Sam puts an enchanted collar on him that renders his powers. She puts him to trial in the Ghost Zone & sentences him to 50 years enslavement. (Because she's Jewish & the 50th year is Jubilee, when debts are to be forgiven & slaves released from their bondage.) He'd be released precisely 50 days after Passover preceding the counting of the Omer & the Jubilee Festival. (Unlike most Jewish families, hers never stopped counting the Omer just because not every Jew lived in Israel anymore.)
Keep in mind that Dan is no longer even half-human, so human rules don't technically apply to him. So, only ghost laws can be used on him & they are generally pretty archaic. At the same time, Sam didn't want to have to execute him, or worse, have him imprisoned by either Walker or the Observants as it'd likely last thousands of years. However, she also knew that he had to be punished for his crimes. And even though Sam was diametrically opposed to it, slavery was the only sentence that everyone could agree upon, though Sam made sure that she was the one to choose the length of his servitude.
She's only able to let it happen by convincing herself that it's like community service. Not to mention that, Biblically speaking at least, slavery wasn't viewed the same way it is today. Like, it was just a state in which someone is paying off a debt. They were generally expected to be treated well. Sure, they might not have a lot, but they were supposed to be well-fed & well-treated by their masters until they managed to work off their debts. Yes, sometimes, the debt was so large that it couldn't conceivably be paid off in a single lifetime, but that was why slaves taught their children young so that they could keep working it off. After that, they were no longer slaves & set free. The problem comes when masters felt they deserved to do whatever they pleased to them & abused their authority. Of course, that's not how every culture saw it, but this is how it was seen biblically or via the Torah which is all that mattered to Sam.
So, Dan essentially becomes Sam's slave & she gives all the ghosts he's harmed the clearance to punish him however they see fit for the first 24 hours, so long as they don't severely cripple him or end his existence. She then proceeds to give him a hundred lashes across the back with her blood blossom whip every month to remind him of the pain he'd caused. Even though she’s a dominatrix, there’s a difference between lashes for pleasure or sexual punishment & lashes for punishment for severe crimes committed.
At first, Dan fights every step of the way, but eventually realizes that he can't escape. As a result, without mindless destruction to distract him, he's forced to mourn his family properly. Slowly, over time, he submits & Future Sam draws out more of the Danny & Vlad inside Dan until he eventually gets better.
Dan, when he isn't consumed by an insatiable desire to kill, murder, maim, destroy, looks largely the same. Except, his irises are green with burgundy edges. He has both green & magenta ectoplasmic blood, but it mixes like oil & water.
The split in color indicates that the 2 sides of his psyche are not at peace with each other. In order for them to be at peace, he sort of has to go through a type of regression therapy that allows the Phantom side & Plasmius side to speak through him. His eyes change between green & burgundy depending on who's speaking at the time.
Once Phantom & Plasmius have reconciled, or at least, are no longer against each other, Dan's eyes turn green with burgundy edges full time. This allows him to better deal with his own inner turmoil & eventually become a more stable person.
Eventually, the 2 sides of his personality merge & leaves only the Dan persona. This causes his eyes to turn a sort of grape color & his ectoplasmic blood becomes purple.
This indicates that Phantom & Plasmius' desires aligned to such a degree that one could no longer differentiate himself from the other & this was the case for so long that neither exist any longer. There is only Dan.
To be clear, I feel like Dan has a pseudo-Oepidus complex that he despises with the heat of a thousand suns. I mean, think about it, if he has all of Danny’s memories & all of Vlad’s memories, then his mind would interpret it as him having been in love with & obsessed with his own mother. It’s gross, but logically speaking, that’s what it must feel like. I hc that, that’s a part of why he went so nuts & literally hates everything. Not to mention that Danny is known for taking out his misplaced aggression on others. These things, plus Danny & Vlad’s combined trauma, as well as Phantom’s possible feelings of betrayal due to being shunned by his other half create a vitriolic combination that explains a lot of Dan’s actions in the Ultimate Enemy.
This Oedipus complex would need to be something he’d have to address & get help with before he can get a better handle on his mental state.
I believe that DanxSam is called either Evil Goth or Amethyst Blood. However, the only ship name I could find for DanxPlant!Sam was Blood Blossom(s) which gets confusing so I feel like that needs to be changed. Maybe Evil Rose or Blood Rose or something.
---
Anyway, for the most part, Vlad had given up on his plans for Amity & the Fenton family. Once his term as mayor was complete, he didn’t bother trying for another one. The next mayor turned out to be Angela Foley, surprisingly.
After everything, the businessman decided that it was time to go to fuckin’ therapy. He just couldn’t do this shit anymore.
Here's how it happened:
After the battle with Dan, Vlad just stood there looking out into space, trembling. It was the most horrifying experience in his life. The sound of that abomination's voice rang in his ears. He'd known exactly what to say to pierce through all of Vlad's defenses. But then, he was half Vlad after all. Of course he'd known what lurked in the farthest, most dark reaches of the billionaire's brain.
Diana's voice came up behind him, but he didn't fully register who it was. "Vlad? Are you okay?"
He was panicking. He couldn't breathe.
Then, she touched his shoulder & something in him snapped in fear. He spun around, swiping out at the person who encroached on him while he was so vulnerable.
The next second, he realized who he'd just attacked & his heart clenched in his chest seeing the green-seeping gashes on her cheek where he'd struck her. Looking down at his hand, he saw green ectoplasmic blood coating the nails. "Oh God, Diana!"
She touched her cheek then pulled it back to look at the green stains on her glove. He’s sure that he saw it in her eyes the moment when she'd decided that he wasn't worth the trouble. Saw the shift in her perspective of him & it broke his heart.
For a second, they just stared at each other, then the half-ghost girl made a disappointed face, turned around & left.
Vlad went home & cried himself to sleep that night. Now, it wasn't so much that he hit her, goodness knows that they'd fought each other before. He even acknowledged that the girl had grown stronger than him.
It was the fact that he struck her when she was only trying to comfort him.
He spent the week between agonizing over what he'd done & sending her various expensive apology gifts. At the end of the week Diana called him & he struggled valiantly to form the words "I'm sorry," but he couldn't & he had no idea why.
That was when Diana told him that she expected him to get help or she'd never speak to him again. (The truth was that she actually wasn't angry because she knew it'd been a mistake driven by surprise & fear. She only said those things because she didn't think he'd get help otherwise. She fully admits that it was manipulative, but difficult times call for difficult measures.)
Vlad knew this was her ultimatum & he couldn't deal with losing her as a friend. She was the only real one he had!
So, he scheduled a visit for the next day.
---
Turned out, Vlad was diagnosed with NPD (narcissistic personality disorder) & depression. His father had been a narcissist himself & had a tendency to neglect him & his mother. Most of his interactions with the man had consisted of dismissiveness highlighted by verbal abuse. Very rarely, on especially bad days when his mother would collect enough courage to speak up for herself or her son, the abuse could sometimes become physical.
It wasn't until Vlad was 10 when one night when the family was eating together that his father just suddenly fell over, his face in his soup. The odd thing was that his mother didn't seem to react, just continuing to eat her meal. Afterward, she sent Vlad to bed. The next day, his father was gone from their lives. The police determined that it was a heart attack, but Vlad wasn't sure that was correct.
Before that, his mother had always had a problem with the bottle, but after his father's death, it only seemed to get worse.
She hadn't even been intentionally negligent of Vlad, but it was obvious that she was depressed herself & that caused her to have trouble remembering that her son needed her too.
It was determined that this, plus the trauma from the accident that led to him becoming half-ghost, as well as the subsequent hospitalization & neglect from those he'd considered his friends, had caused him to develop NPD to try & protect himself emotionally.
It took him a long time to make progress on this & part of why he was even willing to acknowledge that he needed to work on himself was the relationship he'd had with Diana. While she'd never indulged in his attention-seeking, she had treated him well & had been there for him.
She'd almost immediately established herself as not being someone he could control or dominate upon beginning their strange friendship, while still managing to provide him comfort & a listening ear.
She made him want to be better. If not just for her, then also for himself, & Vlad had always been a very selfish man. However, the way that he was had prevented him from acknowledging that he needed to change.
Then, meeting the displaced would-be future version of himself & Daniel combined had forced him to stare his own inadequacies in the face. He was made to confront the fact that he wasn't perfect & that all he did as he was, was hurt people.
That was when he became ready to change, so he was trying.
However, he was also too ashamed to face Diana again of his own accord until after he was sure he had reached a point in his mental development that she would be proud of him. Thing is, he wasn't ever sure when that was, so that time apart from his dear friend began to stretch out.
Oh, he still kept in contact with her via e-mail & phone, but he refused to see her. He wouldn't even look at the new photos of her & her friends & family that she'd send.
---
Eventually, Valerie learned Danny & Dina’s identities & gets a little upset at the fact that she dumped Danny to keep him safe from Phantom, when all that time, Fenton was Phantom. After getting over it, she ends up joining Team Phantom.
It turned out that Sam & Tucker were slowly becoming halfas because of the ecto-acne apparently working like cancer & before they’d just been in remission. So, the acne resurfaced & couldn’t really be cured, so slowly over the next 5 years, they started to become halfas in a similar way to Vlad.
Sam got chlorokinesis, shadow manipulation, & access to ghost magic, while Tucker develops a hot core with a lightning element, technokinesis, & harenkinesis (sand manipulation).
As a ghost, Sam's eyes turned yellow with mint green sclera & sharp fangs. On the other hand, as a ghost, Tucker's irises turned the color of blood oranges, grew long, sharp canines, & his hair turned a platinum color with a metallic sheen to it.
Valerie was becoming something of a pseudo-halfa herself because of her armor being infused into her body via ghost-tech nanites. However, the only powers she could use outside of her suit were the most basic. Only invisibility & intangibility. No flight without her board & no ecto-blasts without guns.
Eventually, Danny, Dina, & Ellie learn to use different types of photomancy. Danny learns asteromancy, where he can magically produce & manipulate starlight. Di learns lunamancy, which allows her to magically produce & manipulate moonlight. Then, Ellie learns something that I'm gonna call albedomancy, which is the magical power to produce & manipulate the light that reflects off of planets. Danny is also able to learn to manipulate the weather to a degree. To start off, Danny is only able to summon snow, hail, blizzards & fog, these being the easiest because of their connection to ice. Then, controlling rain, sun showers, wind & tornados are second easiest because, like in Naruto, ice is considered a mix of wind & water. Lightning ends up being hardest because of his innate weakness to electricity. Finally, Danny eventually manages to learn how to infuse his Ghostly Wail with ice, making it more devastating because the ice crystals cause the sound waves to reverberate. He calls it his “Glacial Howl.” He also sometimes summons a sword or spear or scythe made of Ghost Ice when pertinent.
Dina on the other hand, turns out to have a connection to aquatic animals & is able to control them to a degree. She can understand marine mammals to a degree, but only marine mammals. She also learns how to use her Wail underwater which works a little like a whale call. Another thing is she gains the ability to hypnotize/mesmerize/charm people with her voice.
---
10 years after the Disasteroid, Vlad is forced to return to Amity to deal with something involving Axiom Labs. He tries to keep a low profile in hopes that he doesn’t catch the Fentons’ or Team Phantom’s notice.
However, while he’s getting himself a coffee, he runs into an absolutely gorgeous woman, dropping his papers. They both get down to pick everything up, when he looks up & sees her. Long, midnight black hair like silk that fell all-the-way down past her rear & glittering blue eyes as deep as the ocean with full, pouty lips, an adorable upturned nose & curves to die again for. The woman had the loveliest pair of D cups he'd ever seen & very fetching 44" hips! But not in the fake or slutty way. Everything about her was natural. Even her make-up was subdued & was used to highlight her natural beauty.
He’s mesmerized, not having felt this way since he first met Maddie. His heart is fluttering in his chest.
She apologizes for bumping into him then, squinting her eyes at him, she looks shocked. “Vlad!?” Realizing that the beautiful woman appeared to know him, he took a step back & reexamined her only to be stunned by her sudden familiarity. “Diana? Diana Fenton??”
His thoughts ran wild at the realization that he found his little kitten, the girl he’d spent so long trying to make his daughter, attractive. (He'd have to unpack that one later.) He suddenly couldn’t help feeling like he was an awkward high school student talking to a pretty girl despite himself.
Dina: “What exactly are you doing here?”
He flinched, “J-just business. I’m not doing anything untoward; I assure you.”
He could practically feel the deadpan look she gave him.
They talked for a little, before saying their goodbyes, but just as Diana was turning away to leave, Vlad was suddenly struck by an impulse & grabbed her by the wrist. “Wait!”
An awkward silence passed between them. “I… I’m going to be in town until Friday, so would you like to… go to dinner sometime &... catch up this week?” Smooth Masters. Very smooth.
The ghost gir-! Woman, ghost woman, gave him a shocked, then puzzled, then contemplative look. Searching his face for a moment, Vlad couldn’t help but feel scrutinized. “Fine. This Tuesday at 2 PM & I get to choose the restaurant.”
Vlad’s heart flutters even more intensely & he suddenly felt excited. “Where should we meet?”
Diana hummed, “At the east entrance to Silent Hill Park. Don’t be late.”
---
Dina's preferred outfit at this time is a blue top under a white long-sleeve crop blazer jacket & a white pencil skirt with wedges that had blue straps that crisscrossed over her feet & circled around her ankles.
When she's at work, she wears blue medical scrubs, a white doctor's coat, & white tennis shoes.
No longer does she have the Fenton fringe. She's kinda got a Sheego from Kim Possible thing going on with her hair.
---
It goes surprisingly well & after a particular incident with a certain pirate captain that will remain nameless, they begin to date. Though, they don’t start dating consistently immediately. It only starts off with a single outing, then Vlad’s week in Amity was over & he had no excuse to stay except for Diana. However, he became nervous at the idea that this could be it. His chance at love.
At which point, he vamoosed.
He doesn’t gather up his courage until several months later & at that time, the aforementioned pirate captain had captured his kitten’s attention.
It’s only after the man had shown himself to be the villain that Vlad had suspected him to be, then he & his crew subsequently defeated that Vlad was able to try his hand at dating the woman officially.
---
The first time Dina sees Plasmius since he stopped his scheming, she startled. No longer were his eyes entirely red. His skin was more flesh-like in color if paler than as a human, with an obvious, if slight teal tinge to it, but his irises glowed maroon with burgundy sclera. And he got rid of that dumbass devil horn look.
He still bore fangs & pointed ears & claws, but other than that, he looked good. Still dressed like a damn vampire, but ya know.
Dina: “What happened to your eyes??”
Vlad blinked before realizing what she was referring to. “My apologies, it’s been something close to 3 years since my appearance changed.”
Vlad: “It happened after I began therapy. Evidently, our appearances are greatly affected by our own mental state, so when I stopped-”
Dina: “Thinking like the antagonist from a vampire horror story?”
Vlad: “Yes, that – I changed. I mean... When I get angry, my eyes bleed entirely red like before, but only when I'm angry or upset. Though, it appears that severe declines in mental health also leaves something of a stain on the physical appearance. When I first transformed into a ghost, my skin was pale, but without the blue tint & my sclera were white with magenta irises. I also didn't have fangs or claws.”
Diana examined him for a good minute or so, causing Vlad to feel uncomfortable. “I like it!”
He released a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. Relief flooded him.
---
When Vlad first sees her Phantom form again. He's surprised but not nearly as surprised as she'd been to see his.
Diana's Phantom outfit has changed. For one, it's made of a specially-made ecto-infused kevlar that her parents made for protection but she designed the actual look. (She's trying to learn how to make the material herself.)
Also, it's in 2 pieces; top & bottom.
The top is a black crop to reveal her midriff. Much like before, the white accent around her neck forms the shape of an upside-down reuleaux or concave triangle from the front, but perfectly round in the back. This time, the triangle part extends farther down to just past the center of her chest where her DP symbol is emblazoned in ecto-green on the white background. The bottom hem is a white band &, when seen from the front, forms the general shape of an obtuse circular arc triangle with a straight base. This makes it look like the white sort of cups her bustline.
Her gloves are much the same as before, only they have green metal studs on the knuckles, as well as what looks like mini-thermoses mounted on her wrists. (Her brother has them too.)
Her bottoms consist of a white mini-skirt over what looks like black (kevlar) tights. The skirt reaches about mid-thigh & is held up by a white belt with 2 pouches attached, hanging at her hips. One has a red cross & indicates it's for humans, while the other bares a green cross & are for, typically, the Halfas of Team Phantom. The belt has an ecto-green buckle in the shape of an oval. She also wore crescent moon-shaped moon opal earrings set in silver.
Her boots remain the same, except they have green metal buckles & toes.
Finally, over all this, she wears a white, sleeveless long coat that reaches down to an inch above the bottom of her skirt with a mint green lining. It's tailored to her, has pockets, & the breast over her heart has another green cross. It looks nice & gives off doctor's coat vibes.
Her hair now moved around her head like it was made of water. It's more pearlescent than her brother's, whose hair sort of sparkles in the light like freshly fallen snow & has more a 'smoke off dry ice' consistency, so it falls rather than rises like Dan's did.
Dina's hair is pearlescent in that, her hair is the same color as her brother's in body, but when the light hits it just right, you can spot a rainbow sheen moving through it. It's the sort of thing you'd catch outta the corner of your eye.
Having finally finished Halfa Puberty, both she & her brother also had pointed elven ears like Vlad's, but instead of fangs (which only extend from the top row of teeth), they had pronounced canines (both top & bottom with the bottom ones being a bit shorter), draconic tongues (long, thick, tapering, & prehensile with a pointed tip), retractable, cat-like claws, & slitted pupils.
She now wore striking, bright red lipstick, but no other makeup. Sometimes she'll wear a pair of skull earrings with peridots for the sockets.
Even as a human, she’s beautiful, but as a ghost, she’s devastatingly so.
---
Vlad had always known through interaction that he & his feisty little kitten actually had a few things in common, but he never really knew how much.
Like a love of classic literature (turned out she actually did read the book Count of Monte Cristo), chess (something they used to play every once in a while years ago; she hadn't known how to play back then, but wanted to learn & he'd been thrilled to oblige), food (one of his greatest pleasures, pizza being one of his guilty ones; some of the things that his fellow elite ate was rather alarming; he was actually a bit of a foodie, something he seemed to share with the ghost woman), baking (memories of doing so with his dear mother held a soft spot for him), music (Diana has eclectic preferences & was opening Vlad up to new genres & artists; Diana plays good violin & Vlad plays wonderful piano), & plays. This delights him to no end!
Even the interests she had that he didn’t necessarily share caused him a certain amount of joy when seeing how enthused she was by them. She could go on talking about the ocean or medicine for hours &, honestly, he found her enthusiasm adorable. It became very obvious to Vlad very quickly that the woman was incredibly smart. But then, she always had been. She'd had to be to keep up with him in a debate.
Vlad used to greatly enjoy going out dancing with Jack & Maddie in college. However, ever since the proto-portal accident, he hadn't had much opportunity or motivation to do so.
When he started therapy &, subsequently, dating after 5 years of said therapy, he made sure to get back into the swing of things & bring his dates out to join him on the dance floor whenever possible. However, none of his girlfriends were ever up to his standards until he started dating Diana.
While she wasn't experienced at dancing herself at first, she had a talent for it & was a quick study. She seems to enjoy it as much as he does.
Eventually, they've got this Dirty Dancing thing going on. Tango & swing are also big for them.
They tend to have the Geeky Turn On trope going, but that doesn't stop them from being attracted to each other physically.
It takes years but they eventually work up to a Morticia & Gomez Addams sort of relationship. They still fight like every couple fights, but it's just bickering mostly. The thing is that they realize that just because they don't always get along, that doesn't mean their love is dead. Their relationship is worth a lot more to them than that.
---
The first time they slept together & realized that they shared a mark, Vlad broke down hard.
He clung to Diana like she was a lifeline & sobbed against her as she comforted him.
The sex was slow & sweet, yet desperate at the same time. Full of passion & catharsis as they brought each other to the edge repeatedly until satiated.
Then, they just laid together & talked about their relationship. Vlad couldn't keep his eyes off her & the mark on her chest even as he agreed that just because they were made for each other, didn't mean that it would be easy.
If anything had become repetitively clear over the course of history, it was that relationships between soulmates can sometimes take even more work than normal ones.
---
When Diana took the Hippocratic Oath, she stopped fighting ghosts for a while, focusing instead on keeping people from getting hurt & healing those that did.
Eventually, she realized that she couldn't just stop & instead began taking classes in aikido & aikijutsu. The reason being that they were more pacifistic in nature & focused on incapacitation rather than hurting people.
---
Vlad never interacted with Ecto-Sapiens on a regular basis, so he never really learned about dynamics or how Alphas & Omegas behaved until he began dating Donna.
In universes where he presents as an OA, then every heat, he'd just suffer through the waves of need & pain on his own. The few times he had partners, he always either scared them away or wore them out to the point that they passed out. He never found satisfaction.
Then, his Darling found him in the midst of heat & knew exactly what to do.
Never had he felt so cared for & satiated. The way she'd doted on him for those 4 days, at first discomfited him, but as time passed, he melted into it instinctively. This was how he learned that Dina was a service top & realized that being a bottom was relaxing.
He found it odd how she'd immediately conjured water which she turned into ice that she'd wrapped around his neck & wrists. However, it quickly became apparent that they really did help.
Before he succumbed to his omega, he remembered Diana asking him where his nest was, but he didn't have one.
This was apparently the wrong thing to say as the half-ghost woman nearly exploded on him.
After his heat had ended, his love began to explain to him dynamics & Omega behaviors.
At first, he'd scoffed at the idea of building a nest, but then he'd opened the door to an unused walk-in closet in his home one day & began contemplating how defensible & safe it looked & felt. Before he knew what he was doing, Vlad had carried in an old mattress & gathered a bundle of blankets & pillows & brought them to the closet. He arranged them so that the mattress padded the floor & the blankets created short walls around the perimeters. He also brought quilts & other soft things gifted to him by his girlfriend, as well as some clothes that she had left over from their nights together & still smelled strongly of her. Even had a light installed.
Beforehand, he would hide the cloth treasures away & when he was feeling low, take them out & cling to them guiltily for comfort. Even going so far as to bury his face in her clothes & inhale deeply her scent.
Now, he kept them in his nest. He couldn't remember being quite so comfortable.
Soon, Vlad realized that his beloved's scent was fading & he began to ask bashfully for her to scent things for him.
He was surprised by how eager she was to do so.
The next time his heat came, he crept into his nesting chamber & curled up in it before calling his Diana over.
When she got there, the millionaire guided her to where he was through the phone, but when she opened the door, she hesitated.
Vlad whimpered & demanded that she enter, at which point, she snapped out of her daze & laid down with him. He then clung to her like a barnacle. He'd never realized how touch starved he was, but every little touch from her lit him up & he'd nuzzle & rub against her like a large, affectionate cat.
Even years later, he could remember the night his Dearest first comforted him in his nest.
---
Eventually, Danny, his sister, & Ellie took over as the three-pronged enforcers of space after learning everything they could from Sojourn, who was only supposed to be the ghost of space until they took over. Now, he was able to find rest & move on.
Not space as in the place beyond the atmosphere. Space as in mass, the 3 dimensions.
Danny would represent height & preside over sky. Dina would represent depth & preside over sea. Ellie would represent width & preside over land because she explores the earth, visiting all sorts of different cultures.
Together, they have the power to manipulate both space, the dimensions, & space, the place.
In this way, all three are Clockwork’s counterpart. Him representing time, & therefore the fourth dimension.
