Seeing Double

Mirrors: A Flashback

"What color would you say your eyes are?" Phantom said.

Fenton wasn't really paying attention to the ghost. He was busy puzzling through a math problem. "Hmm?"

"Eyes, Fenton. What color are they?" He stuck his head up through the desk.

To his credit, Fenton didn't flinch. Just pursed his lips and flicked Phantom on the forehead. "Your eyes are green?"

"No, your eyes." Phantom stared up at them intently, unsure how the other would answer.

Fenton blinked. "I never paid attention?"

Phantom chuckled, floating himself up so he now sat on the desk, his legs dangling into Fenton's lap. "You don't even have a guess?"

Fenton frowned. "They... aren't brown."

He's worse than me, Phantom thought.

"You really have no idea?"

Shoving away from the desk entirely, Fenton stood and wrung his hands together.

He glanced around and Phantom stared at him, surprised by the nerves the simple question had triggered.

After a moment of awkward silence, Fenton sat back down. "Uh, why are you asking?"

Phantom cupped Fenton's face between his hands to stare closely at his eyes- a soulful blue- before giving his answer. "Before the accident I thought my eyes were gray."

Fenton raised an eyebrow. "That sounds about right?"

Phantom shook his head. "I just never looked closely. But now that I see them all the time it seems stupidly obvious. They're blue. Vibrantly bright. How could I think they were gray?"

Under his hands Fenton's cheeks were heating up. He closed his eyes.

"But you couldn't even give a guess?" Phantom probed. "Just... not brown? What kind of answer is that?"

"I kind of... avoid looking at myself," Fenton said. "Like when I wash my hands I look at my hands, not my face."

"Really? Why?"

Fenton leaned back in his chair and Phantom allowed his hands to fall away.

"I need to finish my homework," Fenton finally said.

Taking the cue for what it was- a request to let sleeping dogs lie- Phantom ruffled Fenton's hair and let himself vanish.

"D-do you plan on leaving or are you just going to lurk invisibly?" Fenton glanced around.

Phantom chuckled, but otherwise chose not to reply.

There was a mirror on the ceiling. Danny squinted up at his own reflection in mild surprise as his alarm blared in the background: ignored.

His hair was inky black, as dark as Sam's dye job, and his eyes were indeed blue.

Danny quickly looked away from the image and realized with a curse that his room was now covered in mirrors.

His first instinct was to close his eyes.

"Danny turn your alarm off!" Jazz banged on his bedroom door. "Aren't you awake yet?"

"Y-yeah, sorry!" He blindly reached for it and accidentally knocked it off the nightstand. "Fuck."

Feeling like an idiot, he opened his eyes and kept his head angled down so he could finally turn the alarm off. Then he went around the room and turned all the mirrors towards the wall.

There was nothing he could do about the ceiling, but Danny felt safe enough. Just don't look up.

Then he thought: Safe? Where the hell is the danger, you wackjob? Danny turned one of the mirrors back around and forced himself to glare at his reflection. 

You gonna bite?

It didn't bite.

So he stared at himself. For the first time since waking up in an unfamiliar room with no memories Danny allowed himself to drink in the details.

The boy before him was pale, he had a few faint freckles, and his eyebrows were thick and untamed.

Phantom's eyebrows weren't as thick as this were they? Or was it just less noticeable because they were white instead of black?

He couldn't look at this face without comparing it to Phantom's. Without wondering if, back then, would the bags under his eyes have been as thick or would he have been sleeping better? Would his cheekbones be as sharp or did he eat more?

Was Danny doing this right?

He didn't know.

But Phantom was disappointed yesterday. Disappointed enough to cover the room in mirrors, apparently.

Danny glanced at the ceiling and winced. "Yep! My eyes are blue!"

Now he wouldn't forget. Had it seemed selfish to Phantom that Danny didn't know that simple fact? Like he wasn't appreciating what he had? What Phantom missed?

Not for the first time, he wished he knew what the ghost was thinking.

He wished he knew what Fenton was thinking. Sometimes the guy seemed like an extension of himself, just a continuation of the life Phantom would have been living, but then there were times when he acted in a way that...

Well, that Phantom couldn't wrap his head around.

The mirrors were meant to be a light hearted prank. Something the human would roll his eyes at, if he acknowledged it at all.

Instead, Fenton was visibly perturbed.

Watching him fumbling with the mirrors, and the way he even fought with his own avoidance by glaring at his reflection after initially turning the mirrors away, made Phantom feel as if he was intruding on something private.

When Fenton addressed the room out loud and got no response he seemed unsurprised. And finally he ignored the mirrors and went about his morning.

When he was gone Phantom let go of his invisibility and regarded his own reflection. There was no forgetting the neon glow of his eyes now, nor the way his hair and face had been bleached of all color.

There was a morbid fascination in it, for Phantom. It reminded him of the time he'd dyed his bangs blue and spent hours taking selfies and smiling at his reflection before a teacher at school made him cut them off for breaking dress code.

It looked cool, didn't it? Didn't he? Sometimes he couldn't look away. Especially in the middle of the night. With all the humans asleep and the dim glow of his reflection the only company.

But things were different for Fenton. The mirrors would be gone before he got home from school, Phantom decided. Maybe they could pretend it had never happened.

Like they did with so many other things.