Notes: When I started this, it was intended to be a short, 5-10k-ish piece, although I stalled what I thought was three-quarters of the way through. After a short period of it going precisely nowhere, Nick suggested I make it a sequel to The Truth In Old Saws, and then... well, it turned out to be over 40k total, has spawned several small offshoot pieces, AND has taken over my ongoing Epic Cars Fanfiction (Explicitly Not 'OF DOOM').

...if you read my stuff in other categories, you will know that things like that does tend to just happen to my work, particularly when I have a particularly persistent Muse in the category. And to be honest, I've never had one quite as persistent as Nick.

This story is complete over on AO3, but being crossposted here for broader exposure and nostalgia. (Yes, I am one of the old days Cars authors. I did those two where Lightning gets killed and Doc angsts a lot, among others.)

WARNINGS for the story as a whole include characters with PTSD from various sources, lewd humor from Nick-sources, references to canonical character deaths (Nick's, and the P-3 Orion on The Wall) mild profanity, passing references to suicidal intentions (Saving Tomorrow is part of this 'verse), and brief discussions of societal homophobia. Anything I've forgotten will be warned for by chapter. And if you need to be warned that this is a slash fic, you may want to avoid my work.

Massive amounts of credit and appreciation go to the beyond-amazing AmbulanceRobots and her incredible stories. When you think you've spotted a reference to War Stories in here, I can almost guarantee you're right. There are so many I've lost count, since I consider her stuff to be essentially canon, and she is very kind about letting me clog up her comments sections over on AO3.

Disclaimer: The Cars/Planes Universe and all characters and settings contained are owned by Disney/Pixar. I make no claims to ownership and no profit from this work.

ALL HALLOWED
CHAPTER ONE:
Pumpkin Spice Impossibilities

Nudging the door of his hanger carefully closed behind him, Blade let out a sigh that he'd been restraining for what felt like hours.

It was October thirtieth, months into a horrific fire season, and he was exhausted. The entire team had been run ragged over the past month; tonight was the first time in three and a half weeks that his entire team, Smokejumpers included, was on base for a second night in a row.

Out of sheer habit, Blade shot a glance towards the far side of his hanger, huffing faintly in amusement when he found the space empty. It wouldn't stay that way for long, he knew; he hadn't spent a night alone since July.

July had been a very, very eventful month. A racing superstar sprung on them for training, the park's largest fire in half a century, Blade's own crash, Dusty's crash, Cad's removal, Windlifter very patiently guiding Blade through realizing his partner's ghost had been with him all along, until Blade was able to see Nick for himself...

He owed Windlifter more than he could ever repay. Having Nick back... it was more than he ever could have hoped for.

It wasn't the same, of course, it couldn't be. Nick's being incorporeal put a kibosh on any of the more physical aspects of their relationship - aspects that had, back in the day, been very satisfying once the hanger doors shut at nights. Or occasionally when they found a private enough rooftop on brilliant afternoons...

Clearing his throat, Blade bit back a smile, even though there was nobody here to see him. Nick had always been the more adventurous of them, and Blade had often wondered at the time if his partner would actually have objected to them being caught.

He was honest enough with himself to admit that he did miss the physical side of their relationship. There hadn't been anyone else, since Nick's death - the emotional and the physical were too entwined for him. Having the emotionally intimate half of their relationship back, but not the physical, was... well, more than he ever could have hoped for, certainly, but had put him in a rather awkward state once or twice.

Resolving said awkward state, with Nick smirking and urging him on, had been... well, there hadn't been a lot of that in the last thirty years, either, and he hadn't actually remembered it being that good.

Maybe he wouldn't actually have minded if someone had happened on him and Nick one of those brilliant afternoons, either.

It was incredible, now, being able to think about Nick so freely. Until he'd seen his friend, transparent but unquestionably there, still with him, he'd spent so much energy ruthlessly suppressing any thought or memory of Nick, CHoPs, even Hollywood in general. He hadn't realized until he stopped how exhausting not-thinking had been.

Which was a relief. He'd certainly needed the extra mental energy, as well as Nick's support, to cope with the last couple of months.

Other than the exhausting frequency of the fires, the last few months hadn't been bad, per se, just... intense. And weird. Cad Spinner was gone, thank Ford, and Jammer was an intelligent and extremely competent park ranger who unquestionably had Piston Peak's best interests at his core.

Those best interests, though, meant a slew of meetings that Jammer wanted Blade's presence in, which was a novel concept after Cad had spent the better part of a decade pretending the team was invisible, unless he needed to yell at them. Most of the meetings now were about budget rearrangements - unquestionably the Air Attack team needed more than the twenty percent of their budget they'd been subsisting on for years now, but now the damn bridge needed to be rebuilt, Jammer wanted the Base to have its own direct water supply, and maybe a second access road into and out of the Park should be explored?

After the fifth meeting, Blade had given up trying to glare-and-logic the Board into submission and sent Windlifter. Two hours later, the Air Attack team's budget had been restored to sixty-five percent, a plan had been laid to restructure the park's water lines, and the rebuild of the bridge was set to begin.

After all, while the Air Attack team was perfectly aware the massive Sikorsky wouldn't hurt a Bug, the park's Board - composed mostly of cars, and not large ones at that - didn't have that knowledge.

The annoyances of bureaucracy and the fires had been the intense part. The weird part was slightly less obvious, although Windlifter factored fairly significantly in that, too; after all, Windlifter was the one who taught Blade to see ghosts.

And now he was seeing them everywhere. Piston Peak Park was, apparently, incredibly crowded on a spectral level. He'd seen miners drifting in and out of the collapsed mineshaft where he and Dusty had sheltered from the blaze back in July, transparent boats bobbing on the still waters of Anchor Lake, a locomotive that had crashed fifty years ago crossing a railway bridge, and a few airframes of various types and sizes that drifted heedlessly around - and occasionally through - him while he was on patrol. He'd learned to dodge those when Nick didn't chase them off; getting drifted through left him painfully cold for long minutes afterwards. There were also a number of deceased park staff still hanging around the place, including someone he thought might have been the first Superintendent of the Park, an ancient-looking Ford that haunted the entrance road.

Blade had already decided that if Cad Spinner showed up to haunt the place instead of assuming his rightful place in the Smelting Pits after his death, Blade would hire an exorcist himself.

There were even a couple of ghosts here on base aside from Nick - a little purple Cessna that had struck the cliff twelve years ago, who mostly lingered near Dusty's hanger, and a much less distinct form of roughly Avalanche's size, which was generally around the Smokejumper's own hanger. He was probably a former Smokejumper, but he never showed up clearly enough for Blade to make out an identity.

Ghosts, fires, and meetings aside, his main source of worry in the past week had actually been from the last source he ever would have expected: Windlifter himself. Everyone on the team was feeling the strain of a long and relentless season of fires; Maru was getting snappish, Dipper hyperactive, the Smokejumpers increasingly restless, and Cabbie was getting mild but recurrent headaches.

And Windlifter, usually the very definition of unshakeable calm, had been... oddly tense for the last few days, enough so that Maru had actually banged on Blade's door last night to ask about it, unknowingly interrupting Blade's time with Nick.

It was probably just as well that nothing physical could be managed with a ghost; Maru didn't interrupt anything worse than a conversation, although he did give Blade a very odd look when he rolled in, undoubtedly having heard him talking through the door.

Neither Blade nor Maru - nor Nick, after Maru had rolled out again - had any ideas why Windlifter was acting quite so... not twitchy, really, but... agitated.

It could have something to do with Halloween, although Windlifter had never really paid the holiday any attention before. And, while Blade had become very aware in the last few months that Nick was not the only ghost within the boarders of the park, none of Piston Peak's spectral residents seemed to find the holiday particularly inspiring thus far.

For the team, Halloween tended to mean the same as any other holiday during the season; not much, other than a handful of decorations around the base.

The Jumpers, despite the fact they'd been camping on coals for most of the month, had somehow managed to get corn sheaves and stacks of gourds - thankfully not the variety designed as fire hazards - arranged in front of their hanger. Patch had placed potted mums at the base of the tower ramp. Dusty had orange crepe paper streamers and pumpkins painted with blue and white stripes and number sevens decorating the front of his hanger, undoubtedly courtesy of Dipper. Windlifter, in a display of either seasonal whimsy or unadulterated snark, had strung bundles of Indian corn along the entire front of his hanger.

And Maru had put pumpkin spice coffee in the communal coffee pot this morning, which meant that anyone on base who wasn't awake at oh-six-hundred got a rude wake up call when Cabbie discovered it.

Dipper was the only one who didn't seem to have a problem with the flavor, and had drunk the entire pot as a result. Blade had sent her back to the base to reload after every single one of today's drops, partly because she'd needed to fly off the resulting jitters, but mostly because Maru deserved to have an over-caffeinated Dipper inflicted on him after messing with the coffee.

The Smokejumpers, for their part, where enjoying the benefits of both their pressure washers and their television after a string of long stretches in the rough, and making enough noise at it that they were probably keeping half the base awake. Even through his closed door, Blade could hear them shouting; normal enough for Avalanche, but rare for Blackout - who was the only one likely to be shouting in Spanish - and rarer still for Dynamite, who usually kept a tighter rein on her crew. Tonight, she seemed to be shouting just as much as the others.

Frowning, Blade rolled to his door and nudged it open a few inches, intending to catch the gist of their yelling to judge whether it would die out on its own, or needed his presence. Something about the voices didn't sound quite right, but it was nothing he could pin down through the muffling wood.

Even cracking his door open didn't help him any; they were shouting over each other too much for him to actually determine words. But through the opening, he caught a flash of green, moving fast across the base, had a momentary worry of an ill Deere, and then realized, with no small amount of alarm, that it was Windlifter, rolling across the concrete as quickly as his wheels would take him.

Blade was halfway down the hill from his hanger by the time he realized exactly what had sounded wrong about the Smokejumper's yelling - there were two voices yelling in Spanish, not one.

Blackout was the only member of the team who spoke Spanish with any fluency; everyone else had picked up a handful of words here or there, very few of which were fit for polite company. But his current conversation partner -

Blade felt his tires lock under him, his rotors flicking in alarm. He'd gotten so accustomed to hearing Nick's voice again, the rich twist of his accent flowing over familiar endearments, and the easy banter they'd fallen back into as though the last thirty years had never happened.

But in all the time Nick had been by Blade's side, none of the Jumpers had shown the slightest indication that they could see him. Certainly, none of them had gotten into a bellowing argument with him. As far as he was aware, Dusty and Windlifter were the only ones on base other than him who were aware Nick was here at all.

Unlocking his tires, Blade bolted after his Lieutenant.

He arrived at the Smokejumpers' hanger only a few seconds behind Windlifter, rolling up on the bigger chopper's port side. Doors on the other hangers were sliding open now; Dusty, yawning as he rolled out; Dipper, a glob of polishing wax forgotten on her nose; Cabbie, looking quite ready to quiet his team down by force if necessary. Even Patch had rolled out of the tower booth, looking down on the Base with obvious concern.

Blade ignored all of them, his focus instead on the interior of the hanger. The team had formed a half-circle around their unexpected visitor, engines all keyed up to threatening rumbles. None of them were quite to the point of brandishing their equipment as weapons, but didn't look like Blackout and Pinecone were too far off. Dynamite, parked slightly inside her half-circle of teammates, was snarling with a venom he'd never heard in her voice.

" - some kind of sick joke, you have no business being here and no right to do this to our Chief -"

Forcing down his own confusion, Blade rolled forward and barked out "Dynamite, stand down!" with enough snap in his voice that the entire Jump team... well, jumped.

"Blade!" Dynamite wheeled around, clearly startled. "This guy just appeared in our hanger, and he -"

Halfway through, Dynamite clearly rethought openly admitting her knowledge of CHoPs, which resulted in her nearly biting her tongue to cut off the end of her sentence.

Nick, resplendent in his full California Helicopter Patrol paint job, polished to a high shine, and unquestionably, physically solid in the middle of the Smokejumper's hanger, didn't bother to smother his laughter. "Your fans always did have a way with words, Blaze."

"Yes, well, we know what yours had a way with," Blade shot back automatically, earning one of Nick's room-lighting grins.

Dusty, meanwhile, rolled up at Blade's side, still bleary-eyed and blinking. "Are we heading out?" he asked, the last word almost indistinguishable around a yawn, then, "And why's everyone staring at Nick?"

"Mostly 'cuz they can see me, would be my guess," Nick shot back, still snickering, and Dusty woke up in a hurry.

"Um, Blade," Dynamite began, eyes flickering between Blade and Dusty as though she expected one of them to explode at any moment, "what's going on here? This guy..." she trailed off again, looking frustrated enough to chew steel, and wordlessly waved a tire towards Nick.

"Looks and sounds exactly like my partner from my television show that we don't talk about," Blade completed for her, ignoring her sheepish wince. "That's because he is."

There was a very long moment of silence after that, and the looks that the Jumpers were exchanging would almost be amusing if it wasn't his sanity they were very clearly questioning. Blade could hear the sound of tires on concrete behind him; Cabbie's heavy roll unmistakable, Dipper's approach only obvious because he could hear her urgent, confused whispers.

He waited until he heard them both stop within earshot, so that they wouldn't have to go through the explanation twice.

Once he heard Cabbie's sharp, startled hiss and Dipper's yelp, Blade shot a glance to his partner. "You wanna explain this, or should I?"

"Blaze, sweetheart, I'd love to explain this one, but I have no idea what's going on." A bit awkwardly, Nick took an experimental hop forward. "Chrysler, gravity is weird."

"Also, not your friend. Make sure you remember how to fly before you pick a fight with it this time."

"Oh, you're makin' jokes about it now? I guess the last few months have been as good for you as they have for me, huh baby?" Death - and whatever the Pits this was - hadn't lessened Nick's leer in the slightest.

"MY BRAIN HURTS."

"Join the club," Dynamite muttered, rolling out of the way as Nick took another couple of hops forward, not stopping until he was directly in front of Blade, grinning at him from inches away.

Oddly - because Nick had always been the more impulsive one - it was Blade who moved first, rolling those last few inches, twisting in a way his body remembered at a level below conscious thought, and catching Nick's lips with his own. He could feel Nick laughing into the kiss, and thought he might have been doing the same. Somehow, even on the other side of death and three decades, the taste of Nick's mouth hadn't changed.

"NOW MY BRAIN REALLY HURTS!"

"What in the Smelting Pits is going on here?!"

"Boss?!"

"I knew it!"

Avalanche, Cabbie, Dynamite, and Dipper, the last one being shrill enough for him to wince away from Nick's kiss. Dusty, who had edged away from him, was looking awkwardly in the other direction. Windlifter, on the other hand, was watching the pair of them carefully, his face oddly blank.

Ignoring the bewildered chorus from his team, Blade turned enough to stare at his Lieutenant. "Windlifter, you have some explaining to do."

The big Sikorsky had a ridiculously good innocent-confusion face - doubly so if you had the slightest idea of what he could get up to. "What makes you think this is my doing?"

"You're the only true medium on base, Windlifter," Blade pointed out, turning as he spoke to settle himself against Nick's side. The familiarity of the touch thrummed through him, settling hot and bright in his core. Much as he wanted to indulge it, disappear into his hanger with Nick and lock the door, this... sheer impossibility, this miracle, this... whatever it was, had to be explained.

If it wasn't, if he didn't know the why and the how, he'd spend every second terrified of losing Nick again. He'd barely survived the first time, and having had even a glimpse of what they'd once had was enough to convince him that he didn't want to live without him again.

"Yeah, not to mention, you've been actin' awful twitchy the last couple of days," Nick added, leaning a little more against Blade. "And I'm not complaining, trust me, but if there's any kind of time limit on this bein' physical thing -"

A clatter behind them, loud enough that everyone except Windlifter jumped. Blade knew that if he looked, he'd already have the first streaks of Nick's blue paint amongst his red. Then, before he could turn, the one voice that had so far been missing from the cluster around him spoke up.

"Nick?"

Maru. He'd turned in early tonight, and Blade knew that the mechanic had planned to self-medicate himself into a decent night's sleep. When he hadn't shown up with the others, Blade honestly thought his friend was safely off in dreamland. Dusty scooted out of the way enough for Blade and Nick to turn, both of them facing their oldest friend.

Maru's metal cup lay on the cement beside him, dropped from heedless, shaking tines. Maru, who never trembled, never twitched, even forks-deep in his teammates, knowing that he was all that stood between them and the Reaper, knowing that sometimes he would unwillingly be forced aside.

Nick had been the first time the Reaper had pushed Maru away.

"No," Maru whispered, his horrified, wide-eyed stare fixed on the blue helicopter. "There's no way, it can't be -"

"Maru, it is him," Windlifter's tone was firm enough that it would have brooked no argument - from anyone except their resident mechanic.

"Windlifter, I'm not sure how clear this was made to you," Maru snapped back, anger surging forward but not stopping the trembling. "But Nick Lopez is dead!"

"Hey, don't I get a say in this?"

"No, you don't," Maru snarled back, and even a full length away, the smell of high-grade from Maru's breath and spilled cup was evident. "You know why you don't? Because you are DEAD, you idiot! Which means you're either some kind of freaky mass hallucination, or some crank with a lousy sense of humor here to torment Blade and I, and frankly, I don't like either option!"

"HE'S A GHOST!"

Thank you, Avalanche, for the clarification. And the earache.

Beside Blade, Nick sighed in exasperation. "I was a ghost. Heck, I've been a ghost for thirty-somethin' years! But somethin' changed, 'cuz ghosts -" he tipped slightly, rocking over onto one skid to tap a rotor blade against Blade's roof, not hard enough to hurt, but enough to produce a metallic ring off Blade's plating, clear and sharp. Blade grimaced at the vibration. "Ghosts ain't solid."

"Wow, newsflash."

Blade was facing in the wrong direction to actually glare at Dusty. Even if he hadn't been, the weary sarcasm was a relief amidst the others' alarm and confusion.

"Maru, it is -"

Maru rolled backwards, his cup forgotten on the concrete, shaking harder than ever, anger, confusion, denial, and fear, all flickering across his face. "No. There's no way, Blade, we saw him die, I was there, I felt him -" Maru drew in a rough gasp of breath and tore his gaze away from the helicopters in front of him, staring down at his shaking tines.

"I had my tines in him when he died. Even with the fire. I've still -" shaking his head, Maru gestured to some of the deeper pits and grooves scraped into the edges of his tines. "I've still got scars, Blade, from losing him, scars here," Maru looked up again, furious tears glittering at the corner of his eyes, and held his tines up to them for inspection, for judgement, before tapping one of those tines against the side of his head. "Scars here! And now all of you are just telling me that a hallucination I've never been able to shake is really -"

"You've been able to see me all along?!"

Nick wasn't the kind of guy to get loud when he got angry. Unlike most, he got quiet, precise, and still, every word clipped and measured. At that moment, his words were barely above a growl.

"I haven't seen anything, because you aren't here!" Maru, by contrast, got louder, sharper, and spoke with his tines, making sharp slashes around his body. "You never have been!"

"Maru -" Windlifter began, his voice urgent, but the forklift pivoted sharply around and took off for his workshop.

"Slag," Nick muttered, which Blade thought summed the situation up nicely. "Go, Blaze. Windy can explain this."

"I certainly hope so," Blade snapped, and headed after Maru at the best clip he could manage. The forklift, being designed for ground mobility, was faster than he was, but chances were good he was seeing at least double at the moment, which might slow him down just enough for Blade's needs.

Now, if Blade could just figure out what the Pits to say when he caught up to him...

[END CHAPTER ONE]

Notes: CH1 Notes: In regard to Nick's speech/accent: I've based his characterization (and voice) off his inspiration, Erik Estrada's character of Frank Poncherello on CHiPs. Erik is also Nick's VA, but his accent was noticeably heavier during the show's run ('77-'83) than when he was recording Nick's dialogue. While I'm not certain how obvious it is in textual format, in my mind, Nick has Ponch's voice, simply because it's a pleasure to listen to.