A/N: Huge thanks (as usual) to Keegan, my brilliant beta.
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1: the seat of life or intelligence: soul.
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Sara Sidle sees ghosts.
They're not transparent with torn, bloody dresses or gaping wounds. They don't float aroundwith their feet an inch above the ground nor do they follow her obsessively into the shadows.
Instead, they linger, seeping into her pores to draw up filmy memories.
Her ghosts are, essentially, the memories that she will never forget.
The first time she saw was when she was waiting outside Ward 324 for her mother. She still had her bloodstained black boots on, and the hospital was a welcome familiarity with its sterile white walls and wood panelling and shiny steel surfaces.
It looked the same, smelt the same, but everything was different.
She made a face on the steel cart behind her green chair, sticking out her tongue and baring her teeth, which was kind of hard to do simultaneously. She saw two narrowed brown eyes, a warped nose and lots of gum and teeth.
She also saw him.
Her grin faded and she turned around quickly, heart pounding in her ears.
"What's wrong, Sara?" asked the nice woman who took her from her house, turning away momentarily from her quiet conversation with the nurse with subdued eyes.
She shook her head quickly, keeping herself from turning back behind. "Nothing."
It really was nothing, or maybe it was everything, because for the first time ever, she noticed that her eyes were the exact shade as her father's.
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You can be anything you want, her Harvard professor tells, a brain surgeon, an engineer, a rocket scientist.
I was thinking…quantum physics? she muses aloud, sticking the edge of her pen into her mouth and leaving perfect half-moon marks in its soft plastic.
Dr. Hennigan just smiles. Then there's a lecture I think you'd be interested in.
So on a sunny Thursday morning, she walks into Hall 3 and into Introduction to Forensic Science instead of Application of Quantum Physics.
Embarrassed, she is halfway out the hall when something catches her attention.
"Crime scene investigators are a victim's last voice."
She turns around and hovers by the back, half-intrigued, half-apprehensive.
"They bring justice to those who can no longer speak for themselves."
Curiosity takes over the apprehension, so she settles down in an empty seat, clasping her hands over her bag.
Five minutes.
"They, literally, speak for the dead while dealing with science."
A shiver runs down her spine, and she reaches into her bag to draw out a pristine notebook to pen down her thoughts.
Science and ghosts?
"Welcome to the world of crime scene investigators."
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In her line of work, it's no wonder new ghosts start to follow her.
They're never full-bodied, just flashes of features and memories that play behind her eyes. They never speak or show any initiative to make contact, and there are triggers that allow her to see.
Her father appears when she has one too many beers to drink, when her eyes are brown tinged red.
Pamela appears whenever religious jewellery is involved, even as her body lies breathing in Haven View Centre, not here but not really there either.
Suzanna appears when she's at her lowest point, when she's at a loss with herself.
Cammie appears seemingly at random, in the layout room, at a wine shop, in the window of a garish neon casino.
And some ghosts are nameless, residue from the cases where abused women are never identified and lost children never found.
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They come and go, like flashes of sunlight on a cloudy day.
They don't scare her; her ghosts are not like how they portray them in Hollywood. They unnerve her, but she usually wills them away and concentrates on the tangible until they fade away.
Beer helps too, as long as she stays away from mirrors.
They only scare her at night, when the world is dark and her room is silent and empty. She wakes in cold sweat, shaking on the creased sheets, sometimes on the floor.
They don't frighten her because they're covered with blood or have slit throats. They scare her because they show her what could have been.
It started back after her father's death, with images of her father with his brown eyes and short hair at the dinner table, all smiles and all sober as he talked to her mother about his twelve-step program.
She still sees him in her sleep sometimes, along with the others.
Pamela and Tom watching a musical, his arm comfortably around her shoulders as she leans into him with a serene smile.
Suzanna at prom, in a knee-high baby blue dress with ruffles at the hem, laughing with her girlfriends.
Cammie and Corey at the park taking Fin for walks, a little girl with her mother's thick brown hair and her father's kind eyes, the picture of a perfect American family.
People (child psychiatrists in particular) called them nightmares.
She calls them hauntings.
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"Griss?"
He's leaning against the headboard, absorbed in a hardcover book and she's at the foot of the bed, burrowing her socked toe into the soft carpet.
"Mmm?" he asks, looking up, his reading glasses perched endearingly on his nose.
They've been seeing each other for three months now, and are about to embark on a new milestone in their relationship – sleeping in the same bedroom throughout the night.
Together.
She settles on the edge of the bed, running her palms over the incredibly familiar cotton sheets. "I…get these nightmares sometimes. I just wanted to let you know that in case I kick you in the middle of the night, it's nothing personal."
A small smile finds its way on his lips but his eyes are worried. He places the book away, and beckons her to the middle of the bed, which she complies. "What are they about?"
She rests her head against his shoulder and struggles to find an answer. "I don't remember most of them," she says, twisting the truth into something that tastes like a lie.
Holding her breath, she waits for the moment he sees through her cracked exterior, for him to realise there is something extremely wrong with her.
It doesn't come, at least not today, and he places a warm palm at the back of her neck, and speaks three simple words:
"I'll be here."
She turns her head to the side and into his pyjama top, which smells of clean detergent and something so intricately him that she unwittingly breathes in deep, branding this memory of him deep inside her consciousness.
Maybe happy memories can become ghosts too, a different kind of company to keep in the dying light.
"Thank you," she says softly into thick cotton, so silently she doesn't think he can hear or feel the syllables on his skin.
Like a ghost.
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"Sara!"
The scene dissolves from view as her eyes open quickly, breaths coming out in unsteady intervals. Matted hair frames pale cheeks and it's incredibly cold, even under the blanket.
She turns to face him, worry etched all over his features, apparent even in the darkness of the room.
"Hey," she says shakily, flashing a weak smile. Calm down, calm down.
When his eyes are still frozen over with quiet concern after several heartbeats, the smile fades and she leans over."I didn't hurt you, did I?"
"Of course not," he murmurs, reaching over to feel her forehead. "Are you all right?"
"It's nothing to worry about," she says, brushing away his hand with her own.
"You're freezing," he says, curling his fingers around hers.
"Bad circulation," she replies with a shrug, feeling her heart race inside her ribcage from the remnants of the vision.
Please drop this, please drop this.
"Can we go back to sleep?" she asks nonchalantly, looking him straight in the eye.
His eyes never leave hers as vivid blue cuts through a thick blackness, as if attempting to seek out the truth.
"Please?" she breathes, turning away to lie down, seeking solace and silence in the sheets though she knows that sleep will evade her for the rest of the night.
Beside her, he finally does the same, and his hand never leaves hers. It's minutes and minutes later, maybe even hours when she hears him whisper into the blanket, half-asleep, "What do you see?"
Everything, she mouths but he hears nothing but quiet breathing.
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He asks subtly, over the weeks, about her nightmares, but she always smiles and reassures him.
It's nothing.
When he raises an eyebrow in silent question, she steps away from the counter and brings her palms to the side of his face before looking him straight in the eye.
Don't worry.
He casts his eyes downwards and she drops her palms, stepping closer.
Trust me.
He meets her eyes again, and his gaze cuts and settles somewhere so deep she's almost afraid he can see them.
Finally he nods, and equal parts of relief and dismay course through her. No one ever sees them the way she can, and it leaves her feeling a degree more unbalanced than a heartbeat ago.
She smiles, turning her attention back to slicing apples for their Waldorf salad as he walks over to check on the pastry of the mushroom pie.
When has she become such an expert liar?
It's nothing is a lie because all these ghosts, all these 'nightmares' are part of her, and they, to an extent, define her. It's everything.
Don't worry is also a lie because he has every reason to worry. What kind of person, let alone scientist, sees ghosts? He, she, they, should worry.
And the biggest lie of all: Trust me. She can't think of two other words that hold more untruths, except for I'm fine.
"You okay?" he asks from across the room while uncorking a bottle of port wine, watching her still figure and ridged spine.
There's a beat before she whirls around with a glass bowl of salad with apples and walnuts in hand, and with glowing cheeks, bright eyes, and an old-fashioned apron tied around her waist, she looks like the perfect image of herself…
…except not.
I'm fine.
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Sara Sidle can see ghosts, but on a sweltering afternoon in May, she speaks to one.
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TBC
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