SUICIDE TRIGGER WARNING - There is no graphic depiction of suicide, but it is mentioned throughout this fic, so please do not read this if you are easily triggered. Your well-being is way more important to me than whether you read my dumb story or not.
Written as a prompt fill for my beautiful friend Allie. It got a little out of hand.
I do not own Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and you should probably be happy about that. Enjoy!
Sorry if this is a little OOC (I really struggled with this prompt). All mistakes are my own. Originally posted on AO3.
The last thing he sees is the time on the clock beside his bed: bright green lines displaying the numbers 2:42. He closes his eyes and allows his thoughts to drift away. His last thought before sleep consumes him if of his mother, who has probably been awake for hours now back home, busying herself with housework and countless errands. He is overcome by an unwelcome, overwhelming wave of guilt, but it only lasts a moment before the pills kick in and the world around goes black.
At 3:22 AM, he takes his last breath.
Skye sits at her computer and stares at the blank page until the screen starts to dim, unable to bring herself to focus on anything. She swivels around in her chair to find the pile of textbooks and notes on her bed mocking her, and she lets out a heavy, deep-rooted sigh as she brings her fingers to rub at her temples.
She knew nothing about organic chemistry, barely knew enough about the fundamentals of chemistry, and found it absurd that it was a required course. The last she checked she hadn't enrolled into SciTech, but each student had to complete a set number of credits in order to graduate. If she was already struggling this early in the semester, she was in for an actual living hell.
What made her think she was equipped to handle any of this was beyond her; while she wouldn't deny herself any credit where her tech-savvy abilities were concerned, she didn't belong here. She'd only been a student for a little over two weeks, but everyone was so much smarter than she was, older and more ambitious and goal-oriented. That, or they were just a lot better at pretending they knew what they were doing.
Either way, she knew she was in the wrong place.
But she soldiered on and drowned in it all, because she had no other choice. There was nowhere else for her, no foster home that wanted her before, no other hope for her to amount to anything. She was lucky that S.H.I.E.L.D. found her when they did, that all of her illegal online activity had impressed them enough so that she ended up at the Academy, disappearing into a sea of khaki pants and collared shirts and black-rimmed glasses.
She was grateful for a chance to do anything with her life, but she felt trapped, and oftentimes she found herself laying in her bed drenched in sweat and unable to steady her breathing, sheets in a tangled heap on the floor. Sticky hot and desperate for relief even though the temperatures in her room often staggered due to what she figured was probably a ventilation problem.
It was too much for her in here sometimes, and there was no place for her out there.
She stood up abruptly, knocking her chair to the side, where it bounced off the wall and back into her desk, rattling the contents on top of it. She stripped her bed of the books and paperwork and crawled into a ball on top of her sheets.
It wouldn't be the first sleepless night she's had during her short time as a student, and she was certain it wouldn't be her last, but it was the first night she decided she couldn't bear the silence and headed down to the library.
She hadn't spent a lot of time at the library since enrolling, if she was being honest, mostly because she didn't see the need for it. She was lucky enough to not have been given a roommate - much to the envy of many of her floormates - so it was always pretty quiet in her room, and everything she needed she could pretty much find online in the databases.
Besides, she liked the solitude she found within her own four walls. It wasn't as if she didn't like socializing or anything; in fact, she was quite good at it. She's already made a lot more friends than she expected to, but nothing concrete or seemingly permanent. She was always quick to turn on the charm, but slow to trust.
The library was quiet and empty, but not totally deserted, even at such an early hour. She passed by a few night owls studying intensely, randomly huddled alone in random nooks and corners. She walked towards the back of the building, where older published research papers were archived and stored for student used (everything looked as though it had been untouched for ages). There was a slight chill, but she ignored it and zipped up her sweater. The air conditioning in this school was always on, it seemed. Even in her room, it got to be uncomfortable cool some nights.
She wasn't looking for anything but an excuse to kill time and occupy herself, so she absentmindedly studied the titles and names on the spines of the various documents.
Just as she reached the end of the row she was in, she heard a soft 'thud' come from behind her. She turned to find that one of the documents had fallen off the shelf and onto the ground. Perplexed as to how it could have fallen, she slowly crept over to pick it up, studying the empty space on the shelf curiously.
"Hello?" she called out, her voice a low whisper. "Is someone there? This isn't very funny."
No response came. She looked at the research paper she held in her hands before returning it to its rightful place, and noticed the title on the cover: Practical Principles of Physical Organic Chemistry.
"Huh," she thought aloud, a chill running down her spine as she flipped through the document to find that it contained at least two thirds of the information she needed for the research paper she'd been struggling with.
For a moment, she debated whether or not she should take out the material (or if she even could take out such content - it was hard to remember, she hadn't paid much attention). Much of her hesitation weighed on the eeriness of the situation; she wasn't one to believe in superstition or even fate, really, but it was an odd coincidence.
Although she was more than positive she could find all of this information on the computer if she pushed past all the stress and anxiety, she decided to take the material to the front desk and attempt to check it out. Why give herself more work to do when most of what she needed was compiled into an organized, concise document, that she held in her hands.
She left the dimly lit corner of the library and tried to push the slightly worrisome, unexplained situation to the back of her mind, preferring to just write it off as coincidence.
But as much as she tried, it was hard to ignore that she had found exactly what she needed when she wasn't even looking for it.
It happens again a few days later, but this time, she's in her room. And she doesn't suspect anything until later.
It's around 3 AM again, and Skye is up late typing away at her laptop with an intensity and focus she hadn't put into her schoolwork since, well, ever, probably. This paper was due in less than five hours, and she was so close to the end, but there was still so much left to do.
Just as she finally begins to type up the concluding portion of her paper, her lamp begins to flicker until it turns off completely. She slides over in her chair to the main light switch by the door, dismayed to discover that the power was out in her room completely.
She curses; it's impossible to read her notes with only the dim light of her laptop screen, and she is struck with a pang of fear when she realizes that if the power doesn't come back on soon, she now only has until the battery dies out to get this thing done.
Seconds later, as though her fears had been heard and prayers answered, her lamp flickers back on. She sighs in relief and is able to return to work, finishing just before 5 AM, allowing her a quick nap before she had to head off to class.
She finds out when she wakes up after only an hour and a half of sleep that the power is still out in the entire dorm - and almost every other dorm on campus. When she tries to turn on her own lights again, they don't work. The power outage persists until maintenance arrives, and by then Skye is already on her way to class.
She rationalizes last night's literal burst of energy with the fact that there must have been a generator. This was a big school after all, and she was fairly certain that S.H.I.E.L.D. would have backup power systems available when needed. No one else was awake to need it, so no one else probably even noticed. Never mind the fact that any working generator would work for more than just three hours at a time. But still, it was possible.
Or maybe the power had gone back on, and then went off again in the time she was asleep. That was possible, too.
Anything was possible.
A month into Skye's first semester at S.H.I.E.L.D., as the temperatures outside begin to drop, the temperature in her room climbs to an increasingly uncomfortable high. She makes a mental note to speak to her R.A. about calling maintenance or something, but tonight, for the first time in a long time, she's going out.
A girl from Skye's Intro to Comms class had invited her to an end-of-summer campfire party out in the woods and she'd decided she was due for a good time. She'd been struggling for what seemed like months (when it had only been a couple of weeks), and she owed it to herself to really make an attempt at fitting in.
The girl was nice enough, a petite blonde with friendly blue eyes and a warm smile, and had promised to stick near Skye the whole time just in case things got awkward. Skye felt socially adept enough to handle that kind of situation on her own - it was more the idea of still feeling smaller than everyone else that really bothered her - but she was grateful for her offer, anyway. It made her feel a lot less overlooked.
Bouncing from foster home to foster home as kid, Skye had never really been camping before, but was aware of the traditions thanks to all of the movies and television she'd seen growing up. She was pleased to discover that they did, in fact, roast marshmallows and listen to a few (pretty terrible) acoustic covers of classic rock songs, courtesy of some (pretty attractive) sophomore Skye didn't recognize that her friend Hannah had introduced to her as Barry.
As the moon crept higher into the sky, the group decides to turn the focus of the evening to urban legends and scary stories. None of them had stuck out to Skye, really; Hannah had a slightly different interpretation of Bloody Mary, and there were a couple of token Slenderman stories, and even a few myths about unexplained murders that had happened in the very woods they were sitting in now. It took a lot to phase Skye, but she enjoyed her classmates different approaches to storytelling.
It is Barry's tale that stirred her, and his is the least gory of them all.
He tells the tale of a young man (a boy, really - perhaps even younger than Skye) who attended SciTech a couple of years back and offed himself two months into his sophomore year. His spirit apparently haunts the different S.H.I.E.L.D. Academies, particularly. The story isn't particularly chilling; the apparition has never been seen, but the kid had supposedly been miserable and alone and therefore the spirit is responsible for most parties on campus dying out before they ever really begin.
When Barry is finished, everyone laughs at him ("What the hell kind of scary story was that supposed to be?" "Whatever, man. At least my story is true, and not some bullshit I got off Creepypasta."), but Skye walks home with a feeling she can't quite shake.
Over the next few days, Skye thinks about Barry's story a lot more than she'd like to admit. It's not that it scared her at all, but it stuck with her in a way nothing else had in awhile.
The kids at the party that night continued to ignore her in the halls and classrooms, and she ignored them right back, but she couldn't ignore the story.
She'd even researched it to see if his claims were true, and found a lot more regarding the incident than she'd even been expecting to.
According to her findings, his name had been Leopold Fitz. It's been almost five years since his passing. He was just sixteen years old when he'd been accepted to the Academy, one of the youngest ever applicants to ever have even been considered. And he was brilliant; he'd accomplished more in the field of engineering in his first year alone than most students were able to complete in their entire Academy careers.
He was almost a bit of a legend because of it, but when classmates were asked about him post-mortem, no one seemed to have much to say other than he kept to himself and didn't seem to like other people very much. A few of his professors claimed that he did appear to be lonely, but no one saw it as a cause for concern.
There was no suicide note or pictures or information regarding his life at all other than that he was survived by his mother in Scotland. A ceremony had been held for him on campus, but other than a few professors and a handful of curious classmates, no one had attended.
She'd only found about three news articles, and they all seemed to say the same thing. The semester continued and life seemed to carry on as though he'd never existed.
And now he was nothing more than a story to tell around a dying fire.
Skye's heart swells and then breaks apart.
Perhaps it was that identified with the boy, this Leopold Fitz - overwhelmed and alone, unable to find a place among her new peers. She clung on to his story as if it were a life raft; she knew nothing absolutely about him, but felt his loneliness as it reflected her own.
It's November and the semester is more than halfway through by the time the ventilation problem in her room is finally looked at. They do fix it so that it's no longer a blistering sauna, but she's back to where she started out in the year and the room is an icebox again. She fills out another request form, but she doubts they'll get to it any time soon. It took them long enough the first time.
She awakes one unbearably chill night to the clattering of her own teeth, but before she could get up to cross her room in her half-sleep, half-dazed trance to fetch a warmer sweater, she's suddenly surrounded by an almost uncomfortable level of warmth, not very different from the heat that had kept her up so many nights in the beginning of the year.
She felt comfortable enough, though, after kicking her comforter to the edge of her bed, covered by the two much thinner bedsheets underneath.
She awakes an hour later because the heat is unbearable again, and this time is unable to return to sleep, even after kicking off the remaining sheets and throwing off her sweater.
"Jesus fucking Christ," she groans, tossing her pillow over to the cooler side for relief. It helps, but not by much, and she knows probably not for long. "Why is this happening to me?"
She lets out a frustrated sigh and sits up, coming to terms that it's going to be another sleepless night for her.
Before she can help it, she finds her thoughts drifting back to Leopold Fitz. She still wasn't quite sure what fascinated her so much about the whole thing - other than the fact that he was a mystery, of course. But as much of a mystery as he may have been, she understood him pretty well.
She'd been a student at S.H.I.E.L.D. for a little over three months now and she still felt as though she didn't belong. She didn't want imagine being here for over a year and still feeling this way.
It was a weird thought, for sure, and one she couldn't quite articulate out loud, even to herself, one that didn't make any sense whatsoever. But ever since Barry's story, she began to sense his presence everywhere. She'd never believed in ghosts or the supernatural, not really, but she couldn't shake the feeling that she was never quite alone. Even in her room, late at night; even right now, there is a heaviness in the air that she can't ignore - and she's too far gone (perhaps driven to the brink by stress or the incredibly unreliable atmosphere in her dorm) to rationalize her unease anymore.
Skye thinks for a moment, and then pulls out a spare notebook. She opens up to the first page, pushes away the thought that what she was about to do was stupid and childish and begins to scribble away.
Dear Leopold,
What is up with the name Leopold? Is that what you like to be called? Or do you prefer Fitz? Or Leo?
It sucks, what happened to you. Everyone probably thought it was your fault, or whatever. But I don't. I get it.
I mean, I have nothing outside this place. I don't have anywhere else to go, or anything else to do. Without SHIELD, I may as well not even exist, you know? And it's like I don't exist in here, either. I don't get it. They plucked me off the streets because I was "extraordinary," but I'm less-than-ordinary compared to everyone else in this place. What do they even need my "skillset" for when there are a dozen other Skyes in here? A dozen non-dropout Skyes with no arrest records? I mean, everyone is nice enough, but they all know where I've been, and they're always judging me for it.
I understand why you wanted to disappear, to just not exist anymore. What's the point in trying when no matter how far you push yourself, it isn't enough?
So, I get it.
I don't get why I'm writing this, though. No one's going to read this. Especially not you. And what would you even say if you could? I guess I just want to have someone to talk to, and the only person I don't feel intimidated by is a dead guy. And I guess I'm technically just writing to myself, but whatever. Pretending that you're listening might actually help. Who knows?
I don't want to end up like you.
I'm sorry.
Skye
She shoves the notebook into her bedside drawer and rolls her eyes. She feels better having gotten all of it off her chest, even if it was just down on paper, but she can't help but feel silly about it. She'd never kept a diary before, not even as a little girl, and that was essentially all this is. And it was crazy to pretend to be talking to a ghost, but she tried not to let that matter.
She needed someone to talk to, and there was no one else she thought would really understand.
The following night, she opens up her drawer to pull out her notebook and is alarmed to discover that she had written more on the following page - until she realized that the handwriting wasn't her own.
Skye,
I very much prefer Fitz, thank you.
I'm sorry that you feel that way. But you are a lot more than that and you won't end up like me. I'm not sure of many things, but that much I can guarantee.
Fitz
Logic would say this was a prank, someone snuck into her room and found it and wrote back pretending to be the ghost of Leopold Fitz, and maybe Skye was just desperate for a real friend, but she threw logic out the window the second she began reading his response.
It was short and kind of cryptic, but it was a reply. An actual reply. From a dead person.
She really wonders if she was losing her mind now.
She hesitates for a good twenty minutes, pacing the floor of her dorm room back and forth. Is she losing her mind? Should she write a reply? Why did she even write something in the first place?
She plops down on her bed with a deep heavy sigh, defeated and exhausted and confused.
Later, she thought, she might kick herself; she probably needed to be checked into an asylum more than releasing her inner thoughts and feelings through words, but she flips open the notebook again and began writing another message.
This is the beginning.
The messages continue as the weeks pass on and the end of the semester approaches. Skye's entries grow longer and longer as she begins to accept that these exchanges are real and dispenses more of herself onto the pages in her notebook. Fitz's responses become longer as well, over time, though he rarely admits anything about his own life and almost obviously avoids all questions regarding himself.
In almost three weeks, all Skye learns about him is that he can see and hear her, and that she's the only person he's tried communicating with since crossing over.
She asks why, but he doesn't give her an answer to that, either.
It drives Skye crazy. She considers him a friend - quite possibly one of the only friends she'd ever had, as insane as that may sound.
One night, Skye's message is short:
Fitz,
Why do you never tell me anything about yourself?
Skye
The next day, she can hardly wait at all through all of her classes to return to her dorm and see if he'd responded. She is disappointed upon discovering his response.
Skye,
There is nothing to me that you don't already know. I'm just a boy who couldn't handle the pressure he was under, hated being alone, and wanted escape everything. And now I'm stuck here, this way. The cruelest sort of punishment. Now I really am alone.
There is nothing else to say.
Fitz
She frowns. It was definitely not the answer she wanted.
For the past few weeks, these exchanges with Fitz had been the only thing that kept her hanging on. It was definitely strange, that the only thing keeping her sane could also possibly have her institutionalized.
But he had been so much for her in such a short time, and it killed her that he never had someone like that there for him. She doesn't want to know more about him just because she's curious; she wants to know him. He is owed that much.
So that night, she tells him so.
Fitz,
That's the reason why you're dead, but that's not who you were. It can't be. I might not know you at all, but I can tell as much as that.
I just want to know you more, is all. But it's fine if you'd rather keep to yourself. I can respect that.
I know you can see me, and I know you can hear me. But can I see you? Like, is that possible? Are you invisible? I'm sorry if these questions are stupid.
Skye
The reply that awaits her the following evening is more favorable than the last:
Skye,
That really all there is to me, I'm afraid, but thank you.
To answer your question, I don't know if there's a way you can see me. You know I haven't tried this with anyone else, so I really don't know how it works. I'm not even supposed to exist anymore.
I guess it would make sense if I were invisible. Aren't ghosts supposed to be?
Fitz
She wants to ask him again why he's reaching out to her at all; why her, out of the thousands of students who have attended the academy in the past few years, she is the only one he's even bothered communicating with. His last few messages have been more telling than all of the replies she's ever received from him, so maybe it was worth pushing her luck.
After much hesitation, she asks again.
She doesn't hear from him in over a week.
Final exams are approaching and Skye wants to crawl into a hole and die there. She'd only been out of contact with Fitz for a week (not entirely - she still wrote to him; it was his responses that stopped completely, and she's still not quite sure why), but it was already too long, especially after nearly a month of constant communication.
She was beginning to hate herself again; never in her life had she ever needed another person to make her feel like herself, but without Fitz - who wasn't even really a person, at least not in the physical sense - she feels lost. She forces herself to get up every morning and drags her body to class, but her mind - her spirit - is back in her dorm room, waiting for Fitz.
It kills to admit it to herself, but she feels worse without the reassurance of his presence than she ever did before knowing he existed.
One night, she chooses to forget about writing - it was becoming way too defeating to pour herself out onto a blank page only to be left with nothing in response. She even tries to go back, read his other messages, but it doesn't help much.
She lays in the dark, staring at her ceiling, desperately trying whatever it took to fall asleep. Counting backwards, counting sheep, counting sheep backwards. All of her efforts only resulted in frustration.
"You have got to give me something," she says with a tired sigh. "I know you can hear me. Why aren't you… Why does it feel like you're ignoring me? Did I ask too many questions?"
It's foolish, really, she thinks. She's practically just talking to herself. Maybe she really is going mad. Maybe every single one of Fitz's responses were in her head, no matter how black the hastily scribbled words on the pages of her notebook were - scribblings that were in no way her own.
It could be that maybe she even wrote them herself. Maybe this place had destroyed her sanity to the point where she was having an entirely fabricated relationship with a spirit she invented herself and she didn't even know it.
Maybe she should write a book and at least make a profit, pay off all the therapy she was bound to need after all of this.
"Forget it," she says out loud. "This is fucking pointless."
The other side was much too quiet; a permanent deafness took over a mind that could never keep silent. An existence which consisted of aimlessly haunting the halls that had once haunted him; except he couldn't leave a mark on them, unsuccessful in his few attempts to scar them where they were much more successful in scarring him.
That all changed with a girl.
Ironically.
Prior to the moment she stepped foot across the threshold of the lobby in this dormitory, Fitz's unlife had been a mostly soundless existence. But something about this girl was loud. Or at least loud enough to awaken his long-useless ears.
The closest thing he'd ever had to a friend - other than his mother, of course - was a kind, young English girl named Jemma Simmons he'd met his first semester at the Academy, but due to a close death in the family, she was unable to return the following spring. Having only known each other for a few months, Fitz was much too shy and crippled by anxiety to reach out to her at all, and as a result, the two had lost touch.
Something about this new girl - Skye, he learned shortly after her arrival - called to him, and he wasn't sure why.
Watching her struggle to adapt to academy life hit close to home - so much of himself was in this girl, he almost couldn't stand it. But he could tell just by looking at her she was so much stronger than he was, so much more resilient and flexible. She would get by just fine, eventually. If she could get past the loneliness.
Though he knew she really didn't need it, he tried to find small ways to help her; presenting her with the information she needed for a paper by tossing a book in her direction, keeping her power on in a blackout so that she could finish her work, and other small, indirect little things to add a little convenience to her life.
It was really all he could do.
He didn't know how else to reach out to her - at least, until she started keeping that journal.
Watching her use writing to not only just communicate her thoughts, but communicate to him gave him the inspiration to attempt doing the same. He wasn't expecting to to work, and was shocked as a result when he discovered that it did. If he was going to be completely honest, actually, it almost disappointed him - she had so much to say, and he had so little of himself to share with her in return.
He'd never been very good at talking to girls when he was alive, and as it turned out, unsurprisingly, his being dead proved no different.
When she began to ask more about himself, about his life, and expressed how she wanted to see him, something in him broke and he retreated into himself, unable to bring himself to continue their exchange.
Even as he saw how much his sudden unexplained absence took a toll on her well-being, he could not break out of his own cowardice enough for it to make much of a difference in his actions.
He hated himself for it, and after a week, decides that enough was enough. He was long overdue for a change. If he is going to be stuck dead for the rest of eternity, he may as well make use of it.
Skye sits in her lecture the next day and takes notes absentmindedly. She'd be lost later trying to make sense of it all, but right now, she can't bring herself to concentrate on anything. A part of her wants to reach out to Fitz, as he usually had something to offer her, some insight to share or at least a sincere attempt at trying to understand her. Another part of her wants to disappear completely, to vanish without a trace.
But mostly, she just wants to be anywhere else.
The one place where she ever felt as though she belonged was tucked away in her dorm room, writing in her journal. Now that she doesn't have that, she doesn't know exactly where she fits. She's back to square one and she can't stand it.
She decides then to give up on Fitz, to pretend that none of this ever happened. She's better off that way; clinging onto the idea of a ghost wasn't healthy, anyway. The reason she had allowed S.H.I.E.L.D. to enlist her, after all, was to give herself a chance to amount to something, and talking to ghosts wasn't necessarily what she saw herself doing with her life.
She would give up on this nonsense, concentrate on school, try to make some new friends (Hannah still seemed friendly enough), and eventually - hopefully - graduate.
She feels good about her newfound resolution, steps out of class with a spring in her step, and heads off to the library to study for a few hours. Anywhere is better than cooped up alone in her dorm at this point.
This change, however, only lasts as long as it takes her to make an attempt at getting sleep that night.
She lays in her bed and stares at her ceiling through the darkness. As usual, she is tempted to turn on her light and reach for her journal, but she resists. As much as expressing herself may have helped, the act itself was now tainted with Fitz. She knows enough with her small knowledge of psychology that it was an enabling behavior for an addiction she was trying to kick.
Once she is finally able to close her eyes, she feels something in her room shift, a familiar presence fills the enclosed space, and she is suddenly too entangled in her own nerves to keep them shut or to ignore the hollow (and not at all hopeful) feeling in the put of her stomach.
Goddammit, get a hold of yourself.
She tries to shut her eyes again and pulls the blankets over her head, but she is weak and emerges from underneath to sit up. Just as she begins to contemplate reaching for her journal, she glances down to find it already sitting at the edge of her bed.
Her heart drops. She slaps herself. This is not happening.
Reaching for it, she finds that a new entry had been written in it. A few words deliberately written in black ink, an answer to the question she'd posed over a week ago:
Yours is the only voice I have heard in years. I don't know how and I don't know why. And I am trying so hard not to question it. That's just the way it is.
I guess I didn't really pick you, but if given the choice, I think I might have.
Fitz
She blinks in the darkness. Are her eyes playing tricks on her? She leans over and turns on her lamp and rereads the same words over and over again. The more she reads it, the less sense it makes.
She hastily jots down a response:
I'm not sure I understand. Are you saying you can't hear anyone else?
Skye
Unlike most of their conversations before, where she had to wait nearly an entire day for a response from him, his reply tonight is almost instantaneous; the journal had barely even left her lap. She watched in complete awe and disbelief as the words practically appeared on the page right before her eyes. It looked like something out of a Harry Potter movie, but it was happening a mere six inches away from her, nearly right under her nose.
But remaining true to the Fitz fashion, he ignores her question.
Can I try something?, was all he wrote.
"Sure," she says aloud, hoping he could still hear her.
I know for a fact that I can touch things. I am going to try to touch your shoulder. Tell me if you feel anything, he writes.
As though to better enhance her sense of touch, she shuts her eyes tight and takes a deep breath. After a brief moment or so, she feels a slight pressure on her shoulder, but opens her eyes to find no one there.
"I felt that," she whispers. "Unless I'm imagining things."
She looks at her journal to see if he has anything else to say but it doesn't appear that he does.
After another short moment, she feels a hand brush through her hair. Closing her eyes, she almost leans back into it. She can't remember the last time - if ever - someone had touched her so gently.
"Unless I'm completely losing my mind, I definitely feel that," she manages to get out, though her breath almost catches itself.
She almost whines when the feel of his hands disappears, but her attention is brought back to the journal sitting next to her on the mattress.
I'm sorry it's felt like I haven't been around. I have been, as you probably know. I just couldn't figure out why you were so interested in me or my life. It sort of freaked me out.
She almost laughs now. "What's uninteresting about you? You're a freaking ghost!" She response, trying her best to keep her voice down. "Not that that's the only interesting thing about you," she corrects herself. "You're a lot more than a freaking ghost."
She picks up her pen and writes down on a fresh page:
You're my friend.
There is a pause in their contact and just as Skye thinks he's given up for the night and starts to crawl back under her sheets, new words begin to appear underneath her own.
That was pretty sappy, Skye. Don't make me rethink this whole friendship.
She laughs again, a little too loudly for such a late hour. She looks at the clock and wondered how it got to be so late. It felt like she'd just crawled into bed a little over an hour ago, and now it was half past midnight.
He writes again: You should probably have real friends though. You know, friends that you could see and touch. And actually talk to.
"I am actually talking to you," she replies. "And what's so great about real friends?"
First of all, see above. Second, what's so great about me?
Skye shakes her head and rolls her eyes.
Everything, she wants to say. But she doesn't. Absolutely everything.
Instead, she closes the notebook and bids her spirit goodnight.
Tomorrow is Saturday and she doesn't intend to get out very much.
"I'm probably going to hang around on campus all break," she explains. "I don't really have any family to go back to."
Not even a friend? he replies. Since the night of their reconciliation, Skye has had to replace her notebook.
"My only friend is stuck here. Wow, that's pathetic." A soft punch lands on her arm. "Ow."
Well, whose fault is it that you have no friends? I'm not making you stay here, you know. I can handle a few weeks of being alone just fine.
"Yeah, you say that, but the second I'm gone, everything is going to be dead and quiet around here and you are going to miss me so hard,Leopold."
Fuck you, he writes, but Skye imagines that he's laughing.
If she closes her eyes, she can almost hear it.
She returns to her dorm one night at the end of January, at the very beginning of the new semester, to find someone sitting at the edge of her bed.
A young man about her age stares back at her with pale blue eyes. She knows for sure she's never seen his face before, but she recognizes him instantly.
"Fitz?" She speaks as her knees begin give out beneath her and the pile of books in her arms plummets to the ground. "What? H-how?"
He looks at her with eyes full of sorrow, though he somehow manages to crack a smile. He stands on his feet and crosses the dorm until he is standing just a foot or so away from her.
"How am I seeing you right now?" She asks, her dark eyes brimming with tears.
He shrugs. "I don't know how any of this works."
"And I can hear you?" She reaches out to try to touch him, but is disappointed to find that that's still something she can't do. Which is a shame. She wants so badly to throw her arms around him.
He nods again.
"Your hair… It's so curly," she stammers, unable to contain her excitement. Tears were already streaming down her face. "You really exist. Fitz."
His eyes widen and his mouth tenses. He has something to say. She can tell.
"What is it?" She asks him, finally thinking clearly enough to shut the door behind her. She didn't need the whole floor thinking she was any crazier.
His tone is flat and she suddenly doesn't feel so well.
"Skye, I think I'm…" he begins, barely able to speak. "I don't know how any of this works. I don't know what's happening. I can only guess. And I don't know how to stop it."
He goes silent after that, searching for the words to say what it is he so badly needs to tell her. She doesn't want to pressure him, but the suspense nearly kills her.
"What is it?" She asks again, this time more persistently. "You've gotta tell me."
"I'm leaving," he tells her, finally. "I'm going. Crossing over one last time. For good, I guess."
"You can't leave," she snaps. "You can't just… you can't just leave."
He doesn't respond; just turns away and stares at her haphazardly-made bed.
"Just… Why? And why now?"
"I don't know. I just… I have this feeling all of a sudden. That it's my time to go. I don't know why. I wish I knew."
It's Skye's turn to look away now.
"If I had to guess," he speaks again, "I'd have to say it was you. That sounds so stupid out loud," he says to himself. He turns his attention back to her. "But I don't know. I just met you, and things started to make sense."
She's silent still, and she could tell that her silence is killing him, but she can't bring herself to speak. She doesn't know what to say; she doesn't even know what to think.
"I only wish I had known you…" he begins, but discovers it's no use trying to explain himself. He was probably just as much at a loss for words as she was.
"I can't say goodbye."
"It was going to happen sometime, Skye. You'll graduate some day. I can't follow you around for the rest of your life. I'd be stuck here. How would we have handled that?"
She throws her arms up in defeat. "I don't know! I didn't want to think about that. But we would have had more time to figure it out. It's just… why now?"
"If I could ask for more time I would," he shakes his head and sighs, plopping back down on her mattress in a slump. She takes the empty space next to him after a moment, and tries to cover his hand with hers.
"How come I could feel you but you can't feel me?"
His response is a shrug and slight shake of the head.
"When do you have to go?"
Another shrug. "Don't know. But I feel like it's soon."
"How come I can see you now?"
He shrugs again, a sad smile playing on his lips. "Just our fucking luck, probably."
Things are silent again for awhile, and Skye tries to close her eyes and imagine they are anywhere else. That their situation is anything else. That Fitz isn't dead and they're just two functional, if not downright happy, human beings enjoying each others company.
She tries so hard not to choke on her own tears when she is pulled back to reality.
"Can you hold me until you have to go?" Skye asks politely, her voice almost as small as she feels inside.
Fitz wraps his arm around her shoulders and pulls her close. His touch is as light as ever, but it's comforting. Skye wants to disappear into it and live there. The two of them lay back in her bed, against the wall and turn to face each other.
She doesn't close her eyes again until he is gone.