Chapter Text
7th of April (AKA the day of days AKA homework is the reason all of our lives are ruined)
Danny is silently cursing his parents’ scatterbrains as he flips through mounds of paperwork that were hidden in the back of the closet. Stupid Lancer with his stupid English homework. Why did they suddenly have to make family trees? It’s the weirdest homework Danny has ever been given.
“Where do I even start?” Danny grumbles to himself, flipping through another binder full of papers, but not finding what he’s searching for. God, where could those stupid birth certificates BE?
“Searching for something?” Jazz asks as she walks up to her little brother, sitting in front of an emptied closet, binders and papers scattered all around him. She also notices how Danny’s already wild hair has been fussed up more than normal, she knows it’s from Danny rubbing around in it. He must be worried or stressed about something.
“Where are our birth certificates?” Danny suddenly bursts out at his sister, frustration clear in his voice. And in the way he smashes the binder he’s holding closed with a little too much force. Jazz grimaces slightly at the creak the rings of the binder pitifully make.
“Why are you searching for those?” Jazz says with a small laugh, sliding smoothly to her knees beside her brother. She also starts organizing the mess around Danny again. A useless thing, really, but she still does it.
“Because Lancer is stupid and we were learning about the first colonizers in America and now that asshole wants to force us to write a paper on our family history and with official sources and all,” Danny explains desperately, all in one breath. He then gestures vaguely at the mess around him, “so, birth certificates.” Jazz can’t help the small chuckle as she starts putting things back in the closet.
“First of all, watch your language, young man,” Jazz reprimands him, hitting him ‘softly’ on the head with some papers. “Second, you should have just come to me. I have all the most important documents up in my room for safekeeping. Ever since dad almost burned them with ectoplasm some years ago, I keep some documents with me,” Jazz explains. Danny stares at her with an annoyed look, letting her clean up his mess.
“And you only tell me this now, why?” He asks, voice rough and irritated. Jazz shrugs with an innocent smile on her face.
“Because I like to see you suffer,” she answers simply, hitting Danny in the face with more papers on their way to the closet. “And I didn’t know you were searching for our birth certificates,” she then adds, dodging some papers that are thrown grumpily her way.
After Jazz has handed her brother the official papers, stored safely in a box with a suspicious burn mark on the top, she sits down to do her own work. She happily hums along to a song playing in the background while she reads a scientific paper for her psychology class. Jazz is nineteen now, she has entered the psychology course over at Illinois University and she loves it there. She has already made some new friends! Plus, over there, she can have full nights of sleep. There are no ghosts, no irritating fake uncles who plan her father’s murder and no rambling parents.
Danny also likes coming over to sleep at her campus sometimes when it becomes too much for him. The two of them have been considering buying their own house away from Fenton WorksTM to be free of the chaos that is Amity. But Danny always backs off in the end, his ghostly obsession can’t allow him to leave or be gone for too long. The maximum Danny can be away from Amity Park without going crazy with worry, is about a month. They tested it on one of their parents’ summer camping trips. Jazz chuckles to herself as she thinks how lucky Danny is she’s home this weekend and not at her campus. Otherwise, he would have searched himself silly for those papers.
“JAAAAZZZ!!!!”
The redhead sighs and leans back in her chair. Danny may be 16, almost 17 now, but he’s still as much of a child as he was when he was 12. God, how Jazz regrets being an adult sometimes. Jazz has exactly five seconds to put off her music, swivel her chair to face the door and lift an eyebrow before Danny is storming through it.
“Where is my birth certificate?” he suddenly asks, eyebrows scrunched in confusion. In his right hand, he is holding three other documents, Jazz reads her name and those of their parents. But…
“What do you mean? It should be in the box.” Jazz stands up and grabs the documents from her brother’s hands. She checks them over. And then they make their way across the hall to Danny’s room to look in the box. The two siblings dig in the box, read every document carefully and check everything over twice… but Danny his birth certificate is not there. Jazz sighs heavily and leans back on her haunches.
“Let’s search the rest of the house,” Danny says, biting his lip worriedly. Jazz knows that the last thing they want to do is ask their parents, so she agrees.
Jazz searches the living room, where the box with papers was previously. Danny searches their parents’ room. They find nothing.
“Damnit,” Danny grumbles as he slams a closet closed. Jazz then searches the kitchen and even the garage. Danny searches up in the lab mounted on the roof of their house. Yes, they are that reluctant to ask their parents for help. But they still find nothing. So the siblings find each other again in the living room, tired and in a worse mood than before.
“Where could it possibly be?” Danny questions, flopped all over the couch, juice pouch emptying into his mouth before Jazz’s eyes. Jazz shrugs and munches on a biscuit that was checked thrice for any possible ecto contamination.
“I have no idea, Danny. We searched almost everywhere. But I’m sure the papers won’t be in the bathroom or the spare room. I know our parents can be careless, but at least mum will have had the common sense to put your papers somewhere safe or logical.” Jazz stares at the black screen of the TV, looking at their reflection. Danny’s eyes give off a green glow in the image, but when she looks at her little brother, the glow isn’t visible. It’s something Jazz has noticed before but hasn’t dared to point out.
“Maybe Vlad stole my papers,” Danny bitterly theorizes. Jazz chuckles but shakes her head.
“I think I would have noticed that,” she counters. Danny looks at her with a questioning look.
“Would you? He’s a ghost, Jazz. Literally,” he remarks. Jazz finishes her biscuit and leans back, her back leaning against her brother’s long legs. Ever since turning 15, Danny has been growing. He’s taller than Jazz now. And Jazz isn’t small herself, she stands at a proud 5’11. Both siblings take after their father in height it seems. Speaking of their parents, Jazz realizes it might be time to grab the bull by the horns and just ask mum and dad about the papers. They’ve searched everywhere. And Jazz doesn’t want to confront Vlad unnecessarily.
“Time to ask our parents,” she concludes. She doesn’t like asking her parents things like this because they mostly just ignore them. One time, Jazz asked where the documents for her driver’s license were three years ago. But that ended in her parents taking their experiment upstairs with them and almost burning all of the important documents to pieces. That was the day Jazz decided to keep the documents safe.
“Fiiiiine,” Danny moans, the now empty juice pouch falling out of his mouth.
And so the siblings trot downstairs into the basement.
Danny waits carefully at the stairs while Jazz goes down to the bottom. Jazz notices their mum busy wiring something together while her dad is just eating fudge by the side so she calls out to him, even while knowing he most probably won’t have the answer.
“Dad, do you know where danny’s birth certificate is?” Jazz asks carefully, staying wisely away from her parents, she is not planning on being caught in the blast of a failed experiment today, thank you very much. As soon as the question is asked, do her parents both freeze and look at Jazz. Jazz eyes her dad, noticing how he’s suddenly squeezing the spoon he’s holding a bit tighter and the fudge on it drops back into the bowl. Her mum quickly continues what she was doing, trying to act like nothing is wrong. All right, Jazz is suspicious now. What did they do?
“Danno’s birth certificate… well you see- who wants fudge!” their dad plasters a forced smile on his face, lifting his gigantic bowl of fudge a bit higher. Both Danny and Jazz look at him with tired expressions. “It’s delicious,” Jack tries again. But both of his children just sigh. Danny even rubs with two fingers over the base of his nose.
“Dad-” Jazz starts up, but realizes she isn’t getting anywhere with him. And so she turns to her mother. “Mum, where is Danny’s birth certificate?” Jazz almost demands. Maddie now finally turns around and takes off her goggles. For a moment, the woman just looks at her daughter sadly before sighing and turning to Danny.
“Let’s go sit down for this,” she then says. This makes alarm bells go off in both of the siblings’ heads. Their parents haven’t been this serious since telling them about the ghost portal that didn’t want to activate. Jazz walks up to her brother who is frozen at the top of the stairs, not sure of what to do. So Jazz lays a soft hand on the boy’s shoulder and gently pushes him towards the living room. Their parents trot after them, unnervingly silent. Their dad still sweating and now inhaling his fudge as fast as he can. Their mum takes off the hood of her hazmat suit and wipes her gloves clean on a rag. When both are done, they join the siblings in the living room. Both Danny and Jazz haven’t sat down again, unsure if they would need to run or not.
“Before I tell you two, I want you both to know that I love both of you no matter what. And,” Maddie hesitates and grabs Danny’s hands tenderly, “that this has not affected how I love you in the slightest.” Maddie her purple eyes are soft and calm. Danny is clearly not soft and calm as he blanches at her words and connects some dots.
“Am… am I adopted?” he asks, frowning while his mind is racing. Is he adopted? Then that means that Jazz is not actually his sister. But how would that explain his missing birth certificate? How would it explain that he has been in the family photos from day one? Was he adopted as an infant? Did his birth parents give him away right after birth? Danny’s thoughts are interrupted by an amused laugh from his mother.
“Oh, goodness, no. Of course not,” Maddie denies. These words fill Danny with immense relief. “Your father and I cloned you in the basement, honey.” And then those words make his heart plummet through the floor. Danny’s mind goes blank. Jazz her mouth falls open wide and their parents just smile proudly. They both wait for the ‘just kidding!’. It doesn’t come.
“You know, this is actually worse,” Danny concludes from that. And then he yanks his hands out of his mother’s and runs up to his room. He doesn’t hesitate to transform and fly away to his friends to look for their support. Meanwhile, Jazz stays behind in the living room. And she explodes.
“Are you both CRAZY?!”
12th of May
“I’m so excited for the game!” Tucker excitedly exclaims as their bus approaches Metropolis. Danny yawns and sinks a bit deeper in his seat.
“Calm down, it’s only tomorrow afternoon, Tuck,” Danny dismissively says, patting his friend on the arm so he will sit still. But the other teen refuses.
“But you will be cheerleading with the others, aren’t you excited too?” Tucker questions. Danny sighs and looks up at the ceiling of the bus.
“I am, Tuck. But I’m nit going to start jumping up and down in my seat like some overexcited puppy,” Danny jokes back. “Besides, I need to spare my energy for tomorrow, our routine is insanely fast.” At that Star’s head peeks up above the back of one of the seats in front of them to smirk at Danny.
“You were the one who chose the song, you know. Ashley and I wanted to pick something slower,” she retorts. Danny groans when he realizes she’s right.
“Oh, ye of little faith. Come on, we’re going to be great!” Ashley cheers, also sticking her head out above her seat now.
“Yeah!” they hear some of the other cheerleaders call out in excitement. Danny and Tucker laugh. If you had told the two of them at fourteen, that in two years Danny would be in the cheerleading team and that the bullies would be more like acquaintances or friends by then… both of them would have thought you were possessed by a ghost. But here they are. Of course, Sam dating Paulina has played a big part in that. But who cares. Danny is happier now. Even after that bomb that was dropped on him not too long ago, he’s happier than he was right after the accident.
“Settle down, class. We’re almost at the hotel so I’ll go over the rooming duos once more so everything can go smoothly,” Lancer pipes up, silencing the rest of the bus. Danny stops laughing, but a small smile stays on his face. Yeah, he’s a little happier than he was when he was 14. Life's not perfect, but when is it ever?