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Danny mentally berated himself as he laid spread out on his bed, staring up at the glow in the dark stars he had made his parents put into forms of constellations when he was younger. Why was he feeling like his heart had been torn from his chest?
Sam has won! Sam and Tucker and Jazz all fought Nocturne and had won! He growled softly as he punched at his pillow, trembling slightly as he tried so hard not to cry out of frustration due to the jumbled feelings inside of him. Feelings which were quickly turning into their own cosmic nursery, all hot and swirling with things colliding into each other.
Danny bit his lip hard and thought about what Nocturne had planned. What he had done. But that only made guilt surge in his chest, because Danny had helped that monster. Nocturne had the entire town within his grasp and Danny was helping him almost every step of the way. He had been a marionette being pulled around by its strings, but that did not erase the fact that Danny had helped Nocturne with his plan to enslave Amity Park forever within the realms of sleep. His hands shook slightly as he thought about what he could have done. To his town, to his family, to his friends.
It scared him, how easy it was to fall under that monster’s power. How simple it was to slip under his lull and stand at his side. Danny had always been a bit of dreamer with his head in the clouds, but he knew his limits. You don’t burn so bright that you only have moments to live. He knew he didn’t glow white or blue, even if he did love the colors. He was a much more calm yellow star, youngish, bright enough to glow but not enough to shine. He liked to imagine that if he really were a star, he would have planets around him, constantly orbiting while he rushed through whatever galaxy he was in. Milky Way, Alpha Centauri, Andromeda beyond the fact that one housed the Earth, they were all the same to him.
But Nocturne… Nocturne had whispered into his ears, murmuring about his dreams. The same ones that he saw every night when he looked to the night sky and say it glittering and wanted so badly to be up there that he would give almost anything. Nocturne had spoken of power, of brightness, he had lead Danny to his side, and like a comet heading towards the sun, Danny couldn’t resist even if he tried. The gravity of Nocturne’s powers and promises were too great. But maybe had he been someone else, he wouldn’t have needed to resist the ghost.
Danny shook his head. He didn’t dare to wander down that particular train of thought. If he changed because of Nocturne then he would only ever be running away from the problem. Danny turned over on the bed, closing his eyes as he clutched at his pillow.
Because if he was truly being honest with himself, it wasn’t really how easily Nocturne got him under control that was what made him tremble and shake with emotions more powerful than an electrical storm on Jupiter. No, it was that some part, some small traitorous part of him, wanted the feeling back. He had liked what he was under Nocturne and somewhere in the corners of his heart wished that he didn’t have to give it up.
Oh he didn’t want to destroy Amity or anything! Far from it, if he was like that again what would he have need for Amity Park? For sleepers and dreamers? They would not be his goal.
Danny curled more into a ball, putting his hands over his ears. No, he wanted the feeling of being truly apart of the universe for once in his human life.
Danny knew that he was made of atoms, the same stuff that was formed in stars. He knew all the facts, he knew chemistry, even if it wasn’t his love like astronomy is. Even just being on Earth was being a part of the universe.
But when he was under Nocturne, when his mind had fled and his dreams came up and almost swallowed him whole Danny could feel the stars dancing across his body. He had comets in the whorls of his fingerprints, galaxies in his lungs. With every step he took he trailed void and dust, rays of light traveled light years across his body and he could feel every wave and particle. He held the universe within him, and it showed from what Sam mentioned of his “outfit”. Danny blushed in embarrassment, since the stars that covered him did not exactly do much in the way of clothes.
But still even with Nocturne commanding his army, even with him speaking of how they would go from city to city and eventually entrap the world into the land of dreams… Danny couldn’t say that he’d prefer the event to never to happen. Even though it probably would have spared many people trouble and he felt a little selfish for even thinking that he was glad that this ghost attack happened. If he would never feel the way he felt when he was wrapped in the fabric of the universe, the power of dreams but more importantly the feel of space at his fingertips… even though it came at the hands of a monster Danny could not say that he wished it never happened.
And now, now he had a taste of stardust coating the inside of his mouth while his lungs were filled with the dust of nebulae and he couldn’t stop shaking underneath the star-print covers.
A single, silent tear slid down the edge of his cheek. And Danny thought about the way his human hands had felt so alien when he had come back to himself and tried not to scream from the unfairness of it all.
Dreams were wonderful until reality set in, and coming down after flying in the stars was one of the hardest things he had ever done.