Started my daily ficlets to make the hiatus pass, then decided to keep going with a 2nd cycle, and then a 3rd, 4th, etc through 67th cycle. Now cycle 68!

"Walking With Ghosts"
In Gen1!world: Gen2!Mike, Gen1!Puck & Matt
Berry-St series
(all series now listed under the communities tab in my profile)

Mike was getting used to having his leg again. He would still have moments where he forgot, and he discovered it again, and moments where he could almost pretend like it had all been a horrible dream and he'd never actually lost it. But he could only hold on to that for so long. He knew this wasn't 'his' leg. This was another Mike's leg, a Mike who'd never lost it in the first place, and when they'd figure out how to send him home, he would lose that leg all over again. He had no idea how to process that knowledge. Was he supposed to try and not get attached to it again, or was he supposed to get as much use out of it while he could?

As far as that second option went, he had definitely been doing just that. Once he'd gotten used to walking again, his thoughts had gone right into dancing again. It wasn't exactly like riding a bicycle, and he had lost some of his ease, but the more he did it again, the easier it got for him to remember what he was doing. It was the most alive he'd felt since… since that day, the accident.

Being in this world, it wasn't just his leg that stayed on his mind, although there was that. It was the people that really got to him. He had never seen a world where Glee Club was alive, where he was part of it. He had only known that world where it had been shut down before it had ever really gotten off the ground, and he didn't realize how much good it could do until he walked these halls, sat in that choir room… There were some of those people sitting there that he had no recollection of ever seeing smile the way they did now.

The ones he was still rediscovering were the other two who'd been in the car with him that night.

The last time he'd seen Puck, back in his world, he still had that same look about him as he'd had for months. He carried the losses of that accident heavily on his shoulders. He'd been the only one of them to come out with little to no bodily damage, but just because the hurt wasn't physical, it didn't mean that it didn't exist. He had to live knowing that he'd been the one driving, when Mike lost his leg and Matt was killed. The accident had not been his fault, not in any way that would have gotten him in trouble, but that wasn't how it felt to him. As far as he was concerned, it was his fault. The months had been hard on him after that, and it had landed him in some other trouble and straight to juvenile detention. He'd been there for months before he was released and returned to McKinley. Mike had learned to rise above his loss, he'd had to. Puck still carried his everywhere he went.

Mike still lost his breath every time he came across Matt in the halls, or in class, in Glee Club… He thought he would get used to him being alive in this place, but every time, without fail, he kept seeing him the way he'd last seen him, in an open casket, and before that… before that… He wasn't about to tell him about his being from another world. If he did that, he would have to tell him what that world was like, and if he told him that, then he'd have to tell him how he'd been dead for nearly a year. No amount of preparation could do, and even if it wasn't his world, even if he was alive here and was likely to stay that way, it couldn't be the kind of thing that would sit easily in a person's mind.

Now that he was in this place, Mike felt like it meant he could have his friends back, the way they'd been, before they'd been torn apart. But that was a lot like his leg, too, wasn't it? One day he would go back to a world where he had lost half a leg, where Puck's life had been hung under a dark cloud, and where Matt was dead and gone. Unlike his leg though, he very much wanted to try and spend time with Puck and Matt while he was here… he just didn't know how to do it without looking at them without seeing them the way he did… They were ghosts.

"Hey, man, you alright?" Mike felt someone tap his shoulder and looked up just as Puck dropped in to sit next to him in the choir room. Mike blinked, sitting up.

"Hey," he replied.

"Did you just have history?"

"I… No, why?"

"I don't know, you look like you're about to knock off and sleep right there," Puck chuckled.

"Oh, no, it's just…" He couldn't think of anything.

"Better try and wake yourself up, Rachel looks like she's on the warpath today."

"I will," Mike promised, just as Matt joined them. He looked from one to the other, and he kept having that feeling like a knot in his stomach. They had no idea, neither of them. They were going about their days like they had the whole world ahead of them, as well they should, but to Mike, who knew the other version, the other truth, he saw them as walking on a road already pulled out from under them.

"My parents are going out of town this weekend," Matt announced when he sat.

"Dude, party," Puck immediately jumped in.

"Not after last time," Matt shook his head.

"Then why the hell are you telling us? Parents gone is the international code for get the booze, get the girls, it's party time."

"If he says no, then no," Mike said before he could stop himself and got two confused looks for it. That's how it started last time, too. "What did you want to do?" he turned to Matt, trying to steer things back on track.

"I don't know, I figured we could hang out."

"What, like a sleepover?" Puck scoffed.

"Not like a kids' sleepover, but it still has potential."

"Well I'm in," Mike decided. He wanted his friends back, so what better way?" Puck looked at them, and he smirked.

"Alright then, bros' weekend it is."

THE END

A/N: This is a one-shot ficlet, which means that signing up for story alert will not bring you any alerts.
In the event of a sequel, the story will be separate from this one. And as chapter stories go, they are
always clearly indicated as such [ex: "Days 204-210" in the summary] Thank you!