Disclaimer: I do not own anything Nickelodeon owns.

Claimer: This story is mine, though. I'm the one thinking it up and writing it down.

Epilogue
Anniversary

2014.6—Anniversary

They rebuilt the roller coaster.

It took a year, but it was rebuilt, this time with ghost-proof materials courtesy of his parents. He hadn't known a thing about it until a couple weeks ago.

Seeing it doesn't quite bother him the same way it did a year ago. He still finds it unusual, just like the looks and attention he got at school during the past two months, but he has made peace with it. He thinks, if that thing got a second chance, maybe it's fair that he gets one, too.

And he did get one. He's been talking a lot with Jazz lately, trying to get a hold on his sanity again. It's really strange, to dissect and analyze everything he thinks of. Not that he hasn't done this before—it's hardly the first time he talks with Jazz—but this time is different.

His conversation with Scepter and Iris (or whatever they were) left him worried. He knows he can become Dan, that he has been close to that breaking point before. So he's making a conscious effort to understand why that could happen, and how to stop it.

Also in this vein, he has made sure to spend time with his friends more often, hanging out the way they're supposed to at this age. To be perfectly honest, sometimes it's still kind of strange to think that he has a girlfriend, and that's the first indicator that he's not doing something right.

So he's trying to do things right.

Among those things stands Valerie. Sam says Valerie really made a difference during the fight against Vlad's drones, and that she helped her and Tucker get through school during those difficult three months. They're hardly best friends, but Danny thinks they're getting there. It's nice to be friends with Valerie again.

He also told Tucker that he's cool with him liking his sister (which he is—on most days). It was one of the weirder conversations they've had, but he got his point across. Tucker blew him off with something about "taking his time" and ended the conversation. They haven't really touched upon it again, which is perfectly alright by both of them.

Other weird things: school. Graduation came and went, which was a weird affair for him because he didn't graduate. He has to take classes during the summer to pull his grades up and earn three months' worth of credits, a task that might have been impossible without the "ghost kid" rep backing him. That's not to say that he's a shoe-in—he has to earn those credits, on his own merit, or else the deal is off.

He's okay with that. He will graduate, he's going to make sure of it, and he's going to attend community college in the fall—as will Sam. Tucker, on the other hand, was invited to a study abroad program in Europe, and he's off to reconcile with everything tech. The decision wasn't easy for Tucker, but Danny understands. Tucker never had any real interest in the paranormal, not from the beginning—he may have developed something similar over the years, but this isn't the life he wants.

Strangely, Danny can say now that maybe it is the one he wants. He can't quite believe it, but he thinks that after everything he has been through, every burden he has shouldered, he can't just leave. This may not have been the life he wanted, but it is the one he got, and now he doesn't want to give it up. It's strange, but strange runs in his family. And Sam loves strange—how could it not be part of their lives?

Tonight is a particularly hot summer evening, but he's not going to spend it in Amity. It's the one-year anniversary of his coronation and, according to Anne and History, this means that his trial period is over.

He didn't even know he had a trial period.

History explained that a vote is held after trial periods end, to determine if Danny gets to keep the crown and ring or not. It's purely symbolic, of course, because a simple vote can't actually remove his authority or his hold over the crown and ring. But if the vote doesn't work in his favor, discontent could act out and trigger a coup, which could manage to remove him from power, if someone else gains ownership of the crown and ring.

He only allows himself to worry a little. If the vote doesn't work in his favor, he isn't going to fight back. He'll surrender the crown and ring to someone else, somehow, before anything else happens. No more attempts at war, he thinks. No war, period.

He's trying really hard to improve himself and his life, and he doesn't want anything else getting in the way anymore. The past year has been a mess, and he isn't going to allow the next to be the same.

History called it a formal celebration, but it's really a party.

Courtesy of Sam's extensive renovations, a plaza stands smack-dab in the middle of the island, large enough to hold a considerable amount of party-goers. Besides the general chaos settled there, ghosts dot the streets, crowd buildings, roofs… people everywhere.

"Scary, isn't it?" Sam tells him with a smile that says she's not scared at all. "They all know your name."

It is kind of scary, especially given that, somewhere inside of him, he really wants each and every one of them to hold his name in a favorable light. He doesn't quite understand why he wants the vote to work out in his favor—a year ago, he would have relished the chance to lose.

Sam says that some things aren't supposed to be understood, just known. As always, she's probably right, but that doesn't mean he has to like it.

"Scary is the word," he responds, watching from his spot on a balcony overlooking the plaza. His parents are here as well, seated along one side of the balcony, watching as well. On the other side are Tucker and Jazz (Valerie politely declined the invitation, chose to keep her reasons to herself).

This feels a little like last month's graduation party—everyone formal, everyone in a party mood, a happy mood, a generally crowd-like mood that makes the atmosphere feel like it's closing in on everyone's goofy grins. It also resembles the party in that he feels like a separate entity, like he's walking around with bubble wrap lining his limbs. He doesn't quite belong here the way he didn't quite belong back there.

He hasn't graduated, and he doesn't yet have a motive to be in a party mood. The vote hasn't been cast yet.

And—here's the thing—maybe it's wrong of him, but he can't stop thinking about everything he shouldn't be thinking about right now. The first element on this list is Vlad—he hasn't been around for a while now. His trial already happened, the verdict should be out in less than a week.

That's not the issue so much as the news he received no more than a week ago: a psychologist talked with Vlad for some time, studied him properly. She, the psychologist, really does think Vlad is off his rocker. "Obsessed" is the word she used, when trying to use lighter terms to explain to Danny's very distraught parents. Danny doesn't think she realized how strangely appropriate her choice of phrasing sounded.

Vlad probably is crazy, a properly crazy fruitloop just as he always thought, but Danny doesn't feel any gratification in knowing he was right. That's the thing no one tells you about winning: you don't feel so great once you remember to look around and watch how the losing party is doing.

He doesn't know how to feel. Vlad tried to kill him, insane or not, and he hurt his parents. He attacked Amity without remorse, said so himself. What finally did him in? When did Vlad reach a breaking point, go past the point of no return?

The biggest question: could Danny have done something about it?

He hasn't told anyone about these thoughts, though he intends to tell Jazz soon enough (definitely before she returns to college). Problem is, everything looks so perfect, everyone has all these great hopes for the future. Sam smiles so much all the time, lights up every time she sees him. It's hard for him to understand how she and the others must feel, to have thought at some point that they'd never talk to him again, and to now see everything returning to normal, everything getting better.

Well, maybe he can understand it. Kind of. Clockwork is for the most part sane now, again, can form complete and complex thoughts and such, and can communicate them. But he still mumbles a lot, and when he tries to get in touch with his powers again, he's overwhelmed.

He doesn't talk much about what happened to him while Vlad had him in captivity. From the bits Danny has pieced together, he concludes that he was probably hit several times with the same gun that rendered Danny's powers useless for short spans of time. The effects on a full ghost, as opposed to a half-ghost, could explain what happened to Clockwork. He also thinks there was violence involved, somehow. Sometimes he forgets that Clockwork has enemies the same way he does.

He wishes Clockwork were here, to see how far he has come, but today is a mumbling day. A nurse ghost, an old lady called Susan, takes care of Clockwork every now and then, on occasions like this, when everyone is out while Clockwork is stuck at the house. He's not here today because it's a mumbling day, rather than a lucid one.

Tucker said once that, while Danny was in coma, everyone else worked hard to make sure that things would be better once he woke up. That that's what kept them going. This is more or less what Danny is doing right now: doing his best so he can show his mentor everything he has accomplished, once he's in the right state of mind to appreciate it.

Sam's fingers tighten around his, briefly, bringing him back to the balcony. "You're up," she says.

The ice in his stomach is curiously absent, but that doesn't mean his fingertips aren't trembling with nerves. "Wish me luck?"

She shakes her head. "You don't need it."

That's a very Sam thing to say, he figures, but something about the way she says it translates to something stronger: I have faith in you, is what she's really saying, what she has always said.

"Thanks," he says. Her smile says that she can understand the subtext behind that, the grateful undertones of for putting up with me and for being here and the million others that he's not eloquent enough to say out loud.

She moves to stand at her spot beside Tucker, and then he's alone with the buzz of voices quieting into a murmur.

There's a small microphone pinned to suit, inside the outline of the letter D, so he taps it once, sees a tiny green light blink to life and says as calm as he can manage: "Don't worry, I won't take too long."

A polite bout of laughter from the crowd, then silence again. Silence he's supposed to fill up with the sound of his voice. He rehearsed this in his head for ages, trying to find the best way to say what he means to say. He doesn't quite feel like he's improvising, but then, he doesn't really feel prepared either. Ghostwriter offered to help, he turned him down. Why did he turn him down?

"A year ago," he starts, choosing the introduction he finds easiest to voice, "I stood in a spot like this one, talking to you just like I am right now. That day, I tried to offer you a choice, tried to negotiate some way to keep this ordeal fair. I guess the same is happening here.

"I know a lot of you were skeptical. I'm pretty sure you guys didn't act out against me because, really, how much of a threat could I be? I was your safest bet, convenient. I couldn't see it that way back then, but I get it now.

"A lot has happened since then. I've learned, mostly through trial and error, what exactly I got myself into a year ago. I understand that now, for the most part. If you agree—if your opinion of me has changed—I want things to stay the way they are. Unless you ask me to, I won't step down.

"If you do want me to step down, if your opinion of me hasn't changed, I want to clarify that I won't put up a fight. I said this last year, too—we'll figure something out. I'm not a tyrant or a dictator. If I ever do become one, here's permission to lock me up in a thermos until I learn my lesson.

"The past year was difficult. I don't want to relive it. That's my promise, if a promise is what you wanted to hear: I'll do my best to keep from making the same mistakes twice. I suppose it's a weak promise, but it's honest. I can't be sure I won't mess up. In fact, I probably will mess up—but at least you'll know I don't mean to, and that I'll fix my mistakes.

"I guess that's it. I don't want to try to convince you to think that your best bet is to cast a vote in my favor, because maybe it's not. Or maybe it is. Your choice." He pauses, awkward. "Um, thank you."

There's no applause here—that's not how this works. Ghosts voting in his favor will rise, floating to stand more or less at eye-level with him. Ghosts against him will stay on the ground. It's purely symbolic, History said.

For a moment he doesn't know if the outcome is favorable or not—ghosts crowd his vision and leave him momentarily unable to look down at the empty streets.

Later on that night, he and Sam join the crowd in the middle of the plaza and dance. Surrounded by people in every direction, he thinks that he doesn't quite feel like he's covered in bubble wrap anymore—rather, as if he has found common ground with something strange yet familiar, something that has given him the chance to become someone he wants to be.

A/N:

At 94.9 thousand words and 235 pages, I can finally allow myself to say… the end.

Except not quite—KoC: Extras and Outtakes is still in progress, though I think I should warn you that school is a thing in my life. Still, keep an eye out—I'll be slow, but hopefully not too much.

A couple other announcements before I get on with the emotional goodbyes:

1. I will go back and delete all my ANs whenever I find the time, hopefully sometime this week. I will only leave in story notes and clarifications, or anything else I find important.

2. I hope to revise this story in December/January. Till then, any constructive criticism is always welcome, so if anything seriously bugged you as you read—now's your chance to make a difference!

3. This story will not have a sequel. BUT, among the one-shots I've planned for KoC: Extras and Outtakes, there is one that takes place in the future, think ten-fifteen years after the epilogue. I do not know when I will write/post that one-shot, though, so please allow me some time to sort that out.

For the most part, though, I left this story open-ended on purpose. I understand that this story could end in several different ways, and I think it's only fair that you guys get to believe in the one you like best, the one you find most realistic… that's one detail I don't want to pick for you. (But if you're interested in what I think happens, keep an eye out for that one-shot I mentioned.)

And I guess that's it. Wow. That's it.

This story was written for three reasons: 1) nostalgia, 2) freaking plot bunnies, and 3) to get this incredibly irritating 3rd-person limited, angsty, run-on-ish, fragmented, conflicted voice out of my head. This was Danny's voice, the tension inside his very messed-up train of thought. I'm so glad I found a home for this narrative, and even more so that it has finally stopped bugging me.

This story, I think, has its faults. I think I'll look back to it in a couple of years and cringe. I also think I will smile, probably read over the reviews, look back on its stats. This is the first story I've finished since Project: Family (2011) and an original project I worked on in 2012. I owe it to this story, in part, that I'm still writing. In that sense, I guess I owe it to you guys, too.

Thank you very much, not just for encouraging this story, but also for encouraging me. I'm young and I've got a long way to go, but this story is a milestone for me, and I could not have done it without you. My reviewers hold a dear place in my heart, especially the names I learned to recognize as the weeks passed. But even with them, this story would not have been the same without the people pushing the favorite/follow counter up, up, up every week, or the silent and watchful readers that kept the views and visitors stats constant. These numbers mean that there are real people out there that care about what I have to say, and that is more than I could have ever asked for.

So thank you, everyone. Thank you very, very much.

—Rose.

08.23.2014