The Ghost I Saw
By Chinesemoon
A/N: This story is a sequel to "Ghost of someone you used to know." It was requested I write it by a friend.
Disclaimer: J.K. Rowling, I love you, please don't smack me. Honestly, I'm making no money off this and the very idea is laughable! I worship the ground you walk on! You own it, not me!
The first thing I can honestly remember is an odd sort of darkness, with a warm kind of heat building up inside my body. You know, that's so different from the last thing I remember. The last thing I remembered was sloughing against the wall behind me, silently holding my leg in a kind of mingled pain, mixed with horror, regret, and tears. I could almost hear my own blood dripping on the floor below me. I thought about the wife I loved, my wonderful sons, and my lovely daughter. I then passed out.
There's an unconscious brand of thinking when you believe you're going to die. You suddenly think of all the things in your life that you did wrong, and will never have the chance to change, and you know? Suddenly, you don't care. No, you really don't. You start to think about those things you did do right in life, like getting married, having a family, and fixing that damn toilet in the upstairs bath.
I knew I wasn't dead when I heard the people around me. Voices I didn't know were talking, someone was touching me; I was being lifted off the ground. I was obviously taken to a Hospital and given a pain reducer, because my leg stopped hurting. I couldn't feel pain; hell, I couldn't feel anything, I was so numb!
I kept coming back to a state of awareness at different periods of time that first night. Sometimes I would wake up, look around, and pass out again. I only remembered little things; maybe I even forgot them later on.
You know how a person can sometimes be in a state of sleeping, yet still be aware of things? Still, they can hear? What is it the Muggles call that? Well, that was how I was for a long time that first dreadful night.
I heard a door open. I was certain it was a Mediwizard. I thought nothing of it, until there was a silence and a light gasp. Who was it and what was happening? I wished I could open my eyes.
Footsteps were drawing nearer to me. That much I could tell for sure. Perhaps it was Death come to take me back with him. No. They said I would be fine. I remember that much at least.
How strange it was to feel a hand touch my forehead. The hand was cool, and shaking. It ran over my brow, back to my forehead, and remained there, on the hot surface of my skin. Someone was breathing heavily. I wanted to say something, but I was left helpless in my peril of weakness.
"Can't you see that you're wrong?"
I think that was the first time that the reality of what might have been happening to me finally hit home. I felt like I had been stabbed right in the heart. Just as if someone had yanked a totally different wound inside of me, one much worse than my leg. It wasn't the words that hurt, it was the voice.
Merlin, Percy. I know him anywhere. I know his voice, even when I'm not bloody awake.
"Can't you see that, Dad? Why can't you listen to me when I warn you of these things?"
I realized then a fact that had never before come to my mind in the past. We were both wrong. He was wrong for not listening to me, and leaving like that, and I was wrong for not understanding him better. How I longed to tell him to just for once let the pieces fall where they may, because I was sick of living on knowing that we were having this relationship.
He moved his hand away. I didn't want to lose the feeling of him. I tried to move. I did. Just a little at first, then more so that I felt my fingers brush against the sheets below me. Percy sensed me.
I did my darnedest to open my eyes. I did, and as dim as the lighting was, I squinted. I could make out the blurry outline of my son. He merely stood there, stiff and unmoving.
"Percy?" I muttered. "Is that you?"
My voice was so low, I wondered if he even heard me.
"No," he said. I closed my eyes again, feeling myself slipping back to that sleeping state. "No, Father. You're dreaming. I'm not your son."
No one will ever know how deep those words burned me. All the shouting, all the screaming and fury was coming back to me in small pieces. Like a puzzle, it put itself together in my mind, allowing me to remember our hateful glares and ill-tempered words. How I wished I could take things back.
"I'm not here," Percy said softly. "I'm only a ghost—"
I didn't try and move. I don't know why I didn't make an attempt to speak again. Maybe Percy thought I was unconscious again, I don't know. It just seemed like, when the time came for me to say it, he would know. When the time was right, he would know I loved him.
"I'm the Ghost of someone you used to know," Percy said.
He turned, and left the room. I listened as his footsteps echoed away into nothingness. Was he gone? Did he leave? I didn't want this, and I wanted him to know it. I wanted him back in my life; he was my son for God's sake.
Percy, I thought desperately. You're a ghost but I saw you. I saw you as you are, flawless or other, I saw you, and I will continue to see you forever. I pray—
I struggled to open my eyes. I stared ahead of me at the white pasty-looking ceiling. My voice was calm as I said my next words to the room at large.
"I pray that someday you see you, too," I said, now remarkably calm and controlled.
"You are the ghost that I saw."