Co-authored by missatomictermini on tumblr. Consider this a bandage to cover your post-The Madness Underneath wounds. Spoilers, of course.
i.
"I'm so sorry for everything," Rory repeats over and over till the words don't feel like words and just become nonsense that she utters for the sake of the boy who was now being lowered into the ground.
Something had gone right-right as in the natural manner-in the process of dying, because his ghost wasn't anywhere. "I'm so, so sorry."
I'm here, Rory, I'm here—
But he's not here, not really. A part of him clings on, unable to be seen, unable to be heard, but able to feel the pain at the misty graveside as he reaches out but is repelled by whatever she is, human termini, and he tries to speak.
I'm here, Rory, I'm here—
There's a blurriness, an overarching whiteness to everything he sees, and a tug at his midsection forward into a direction that does not really exist. He wanted to go. He was supposed to leave, he was supposed to go to a better place, he was supposed to not kiss her he was supposed to not love her he was supposed to keep her safe he was supposed to—
I'm here, Rory, I'm here—
He stands beside her at his very own grave, not a ghost, but something less, something ripped apart from the whole, but he knows who he is, he's Stephen Dene and this is his grave and Rory is crying because he's been lost, he feels lost, but he's not lost, he's here, he's here, why won't she look—?
I'm here, Rory, I'm here—
I'm here, Rory, please. Look at me.
Her eyes passed over him, through him, as she turned and walked away from the empty wake, and he follows after her, because she is Aurora Deveaux and she is a living terminus and he needs to help her.
I'm here, Rory, I'm here.
I'm here.
ii.
It was a day after the funeral, and there was magnetic pull in her gut, as if it was trying to direct her to true North - and that was Stephen but Stephen was gone because there was no sign of him, and Stephen was dead because he was buried and once you're buried and there's no sign of you, Rory was pretty sure that meant you were left with nothing but ("You stupid martyr," she said to no-one, but he was listening; he was there) a headstone and memories of a poor boy who had to grow up too fast.
He didn't call it giving up; he considered it settling in.
He let his mouth wander without what was left of his mind, let it travel through the tangled highway of his life, his entire existence, now perfectly framed by a two-foot tall rectangle of granite in Kent with his name and a date. He stood by the anchor through the shadowless whiteness that threatened to engulf him, tear him away, bury him in emptiness, and he spoke nonsensical things.
Rory never heard.
He recounted Christmases spent surrounded by gifts and empty of family, of his boarding schools and his friends and his hopes and his first car, his first race track run, how terrified he had been at first of dying trapped inside the twisted metal, and he laughed like the creaking of a door, which made Rory turn her head; her eyes searched.
Then he comes back to himself and found the empty strength to say I'm here, look Rory, I'm here.
After a moment she shakes her head. "You stupid martyr." And then she hears him no more but he can hear her, and he can almost feel her, but not quite, all he could do was whisper to her through the gloom, pull on the edges of her, beg her to look, look Rory, look—
"I don't think I'm a martyr," he said to her as she moved through him and around him, leaving him suspended in the half-whiteness, "but I'm happy you think so."
iii.
It wasn't that they had stopped searching, because sometimes Rory thought she heard a door creak - almost like a laugh that needed to be oiled for proper use - or saw a blip from the corner of her eye, and she always searched for Stephen afterwards. But the major hunts, the ones that explored Goodwin's Court, St. Mary's, etc., were on a hiatus that was to last for a lifetime.
But then - oh, but then - she wilted ("I'm settling into this life, Stephen, and I'm so sorry.") and heard a cry of RORY.
As a child, he had been shown a magic trick by some classmate, something tediously normal. It involved a magic wand, black with two white ends, that hung loose and limp between fingers until pinched and drawn out, making it straight and erect. This was how he saw himself the day that Rory looked up from her coffee in the kitchen of the new flat and muttered through him, "I'm settling into this life, Stephen, and I'm so sorry."
His halfway existence, suspended weightlessly and in pieces, large pieces missing, jumps from mind to mind, is suddenly snapped together, struck through with lightning.
With arms he didn't remember having minutes earlier, he grips the top of the table she is sitting at, bending himself over it, feeling the rush of muscle and movement and air in his lungs (so ghosts breathe, huh) and he unleashes a single electrified cry.
"RORY," he says into the tunnel closing in around him, and her head snaps up, her eyes widen and he could almost sob with relief, letting himself fall back into the ditch that had been his existence for months, begging her through the drifting sensation overtaking him once again, strength momentarily spent, "No, Rory, please, Rory, I didn't want, I never wanted, look at me, listen to me, I'm here, you don't need to be me, don't be me, you'll end up like me…"
Then he is whiteness again, but unlike before she does not look through him, or around him. Her eyes look to where his mouth had been, and she reaches out a hand, and—
Her hand closes over his shoulder.
iv.
Her hand comes in contact with the lean bone and flesh that was once him and she wonders how damn stupid could she be when he begins to disappear again ("STEPHEN!") and she hopes prays begs that he is not terminated please be strong enough Stephen please and his words are echoing in her head and please be vestigial enough to not be effected by me ("STEPHEN DENE YOU WON'T LEAVE ME.") as she catches a last glimpse of those eyes those haunted eyes a blinding flash of white knocks her down.
As much as Stephen hated to admit it—hated to even know it, in the back of his mind—the Shades really had no reason how the termini even worked. They were diamonds, yes. When exposed to electricity they created a field that disrupted ghosts, yes.
If someone with the Sight died in contact with an active termini, they came back. Yes.
But beyond that, the actualities, there were so many theoreticals that Stephen had neither the waking time or the patience to wonder over. What if they used too much electricity. What if it was more than one ghost. What if they needed a replacement. What if one was stolen. What if a foolish American girl had been exposed to a ghost activating the terminus to another ghost, a ghost of a man with the Sight.
What if that same foolish girl became a termini. What if an equally, but differently foolish man died protecting that girl because she had long dark hair and a sideways smile and he had once wanted to kiss her but he forced himself not to because it was foolish… and she kept him from going away.
How many back-and-forth shoves could a soul (yet another vague theoretical) take, across the mortal coil? When would the world finally throw up its hands and declare enough?
Now. When Rory's hand moved over his shoulder.
All the white is sucked from his vision, and the color, the darkness, is blinding, it's all-consuming, and it rushes from him, leaving him constricted and under an incredible pressure and incredible weight that he collapses under (he can collapse? Why isn't he suspended any more?), and the ground strikes at his knees, at his hands, at his chin, and he feels dusty tiles under his cheek (cool—they're cool—can he feel cold?) and before he let himself sleep (he can sleep, he wants it, needs it, the whiteness left him explosively, left him tired enough) he sees, on the floor, stretched out on the floor on the other side of the table, the foolish girl of the fairy tale of his twisted, darkened life.
Rory looks at him like he's the last thing in the world she'd ever think to see, and he drinks it up.
"I'm here," he says, by instinct, and then everything is sleep.
v.
He reminds the girl of an angel: a pale, naked angel - only later would it occur to her that she had asked him about naked ghosts long ago - with a large scar across his forehead from the accident, but he's there and she feels oh so drained as she manages to pull herself to his sleeping form. The compass in her gut is a gentle lulling pull. Those creaky doors had been him. Those blips. ("You mad martyr," she sighs, and numbly watches him as the two other Shades arrive home.)
Although perhaps shouting "CALLUM STEPHEN IS NAKED AND YOU OWE ME FIVE QUID" is not the best thing to shout when seeing your dead leader—naked—asleep on the floor of the kitchen with Rory—not naked—Boo does it anyway, because it's the first thing that her mind can handle actually processing right now and dear God, she had never ever ever wanted to see this much of Stephen in her life.
Callum doesn't even seem to hear her, dropping the dual bags of groceries he had been carrying and saying something very rude very loudly, although it was almost affectionate.
Boo looked over her shoulder at him, a question in her eyes. He ignores it in favor of grabbing a tea towel from a counter and throwing it over Stephen. Priorities first, that's the Shade way.
"Five quid, yeah," Boo urges Callum once in another room.
He palms her the paper even as he mutters something about feeling violated, but money is money and she chooses to ignore it.
"Should we… deal with…" she makes a motion to the kitchen.
Callum gives her a look. "Should we?" he asks.
"No," she agrees after a long moment, and makes another motion to the kitchen. "That's for them."
vi.
Rory was not aware of Boo shouting and Callum throwing a tea-towel over Stephen's, ah, lower area, nor of time passing; her mind was examining every aspect of the last several months. Now, she was wondering how much he had seen, how much he had heard, and just what had been him and what had been her mind begging for some sign that he was there: that he was not completely dead. Her fingers glided over his face to the raised skin of that pinkish scar - oh his breathing was.. - as his eyes slowly fluttered open.
Rory. Rory's eyes. Rory's hands, her fingers, in his hair, across his skin. He turned his face into it, reveling in what he could not do for months as he stood by her side, whispering at her. Her fingers withdrew and he made an absolutely obscene noise in the back of his throat.
Rory had never thought a sound like that something Stephen was capable of, so when she heard it she had to giggle, just a bit.
That woke him up fully. His eyes bolted open and everything flooded to him at once—for the second time in half as many hours. But unlike before, where the onslaught was everything leaving, this is everything coming to him at once. All the sensations that he hadn't felt behind the white veil of whatever it was between him and Rory. The tiles against his side, his back, cold and smooth and slightly dusty; the rough sensation of a towel on the area where his legs met his abdomen (the only sensation of clothing he was feeling down there, oh God). The light from the windows, the sound of a house creaking, and, oh God, Rory's eyes looking at him, wrinkling at the edges because she's smiling, she's laughing quietly at something, but she's crying as well and he does the first thing that comes to mind, surely not the best thing considering his current complicated relationship with the tea towel that was acting as his pants, but the instinctual thing:
He reaches out his arms, and he pulls her close, checking through touch whether she's okay, whether she is still there, or if this is just some fevered dream of a dying man…
That was the precise moment that Rory turned quickly away, sitting up and bringing Stephen with her into a sitting position and vomited into an opposite corner of the kitchen.
Timing was never something the Shades seemed to be good at. Today was no exception as Callum and Boo finally let themselves into the kitchen to watch the display.
vii.
Rory notices four legs out of the corner of her eye as vomit spews across the tiled floor and she feels Stephen's thin fingers pressing into the skin of her waist, just barely slipping beneath her shirt, as if he was trying to confirm to himself that it was Rory Deveaux in the flesh. And it was her, and it was with a pointed clearing of the throat that Callum tossed underwear and black trousers in Stephen's general direction. A somewhat-mortified male barely catches them, his limbs shaking.
Along with the clothes, probably too short and too wide to fit him but better than nothing, Callum throws down a "Good to see you again, mate."
Stephen nods and decides to answer when he is fully dressed again, which he can't do with everyone in the kitchen.
Boo seems to catch up on this and although she can't stop staring at Stephen, alive and naked in the kitchen, she helps Rory up and out of the room, Callum following along behind to give Stephen some privacy to dress.
viii.
There are so many questions that Callum and Boo instinctively restrain. The life of a Shade is to not question how things work - they barely knew how their own lives did -, but to do the job and get aforementioned job done. So Stephen and Rory are split for roughly five minutes so he could shower, Callum could go get him clothes that fit, and the two girls could place covers on his bed. The questions can wait, Boo thinks, as she watches a clothed, doused Stephen link his fingers through Rory's.
He tries to navigate his way through the sudden physicality of having a body, having legs and arms and hands that seek out Rory's without his realizing it, closing around her hand as if trying to assure himself that he was not floating in emptiness, he was not dead, he was here, he was here—by some roll of the dice that almost had him believing in a benevolent God again.
She gives his hand a squeeze, and he feels like collapsing again because it's too much.
They let him sleep, but then they have to start asking things.
"How?" Callum doesn't aim the question at anyone in particular, looking at the ceiling.
Rory doesn't even shrug. She just lets the silence carry out. The silence continues for hours as one by one they go to check on the sleeping Stephen, as if afraid that they would arrive and he would be gone, dust, or another body to bury. Rory is completely sure that she couldn't handle doing that again.
ix.
Rory does tell Callum and Boo the story, eventually. However, she holds back the information of Stephen "haunting" her and of what he said to her - and oh how he begged and pleaded and attempted to make her understand that being him was bad, that she didn't have to be him, that he was not going to allow her to be like him if she only just listened - because that piece of the story is close to her heart, and it feels like a betrayal to speak of it aloud to someone not Stephen Dene.
With this train of thought, she takes her to leave to check on the aforementioned Stephen, who has been sleeping for at least two days. They were all trying to not be too concerned. Coming back to the world of the Living should surely take its toll. Hopefully he was not the next Persephone; hopefully, he'd stay Home.
Stephen is aware of her presence by how the pressure of his chest warps, bends to alert him that the direction he needed to go in was closer than before, off to one side. In a half-asleep daze he gives a twist of his torso that no one should ever do in public, but he becomes tangled, he becomes trapped, he's in the whiteness again, he's lost Rory again, he's reaching out for nothing again, and his lips begin to form the cry, I'm here, but then her hand is in his, electrifying, and he awakes covered in panicked sweat and panting like he had just run a marathon.
"I'm here," she assures him, eyes worried as she anchors his hand in hers, above the sheets. His pupils are dilated oddly. His new pink scar sees to have gotten a bit less healed in the time he had been alive, eroding back into a fresh cut that they will have to let heal normally.
"I'm here," she whispers again, when he is silent, lost in the inner assurance of "I'm Stephen Dene and I'm alive. I'm alive. This is not a lie."
And then he laughs, because she's here, she finally sees him, and isn't it funny how he was the one needing to be comforted this time around the bend?
He laughs and laughs until he cannot make a sound, and even then his body shakes and trembles into the sheets that had been his prison in his nightmare of suspended whiteness. Rory watches without knowing exactly what to do. All she can continue to do is hold his hand like any minute he will disappear again before her eyes.
x.
He mouths her name, and squeezes her hand until she feels her circulation beginning to cease. Her knuckles turn white and his white knuckles are whiter and it's a battle of wills, a battle of Rory, please convince me that I am here .
She sits on the edge of his bed, the striped sheets damp from sweat, and watches the cut-turned-scar-turned-cut fight the decision to open or not to open as his heavy breathing and silent repetition of RoryRoryRory stretches his face, his skin. His shaking shakes her.
"Stephen," she says, and her voice trembles. Behind the spare pair of glasses they had found abandoned on the bedside table, his pupils hold her pinned to his frantic side. She clears her throat. "You're not going anywhere, okay? I won't let you."
His gaze begs her to keep talking, and she does. She tells him the stories she believes that he didn't hear in the hospital (he did, in fact, but he was caged inside of himself and it was as if he was in a broken conversation and he wasn't able to say good-bye).
In the end, another hand squeeze and her stopped-circulation convinces her to place herself parallel to his terrified form.
"Rory," he finally manages to say. Her name dies at his lips.
She waits patiently for him to find the words. Patience had been one of the bitter pills she had forced herself to swallow when the search for his ghost had first begun. She could wait a lifetime, she felt.
Slowly, his hand released hers, but it remained caged in his fingers as he moved his thumb in languid circles around her palm, and inside of her wrist. He seems wholly engrossed in the contact, and so she does not move, and does not expect him to speak again.
He does.
The words are almost incomprehensible at first, smashed together like all of his words had been for the past few times she had heard him speak, as if an echo was present in his mind. But then she draws her face closer and he looks up at her, eyes fathomless, and whispers through a strained throat the last thing she ever expected to hear:
"Thank you."
She exhales a breath that she had been keeping in for months, the entire sky seemingly lifting from her shoulders, a pressure that had been yawning at her back for what seems like years gone in a single second.
"But… I didn't think—"
"Thank you," he cuts her off, and his eyes are drooping again ("Didn't he get enough sleep when he was dead?" she wonders inwardly). He brings her trapped hand up to his face so that he can press his lips to the magnetic force of her fingers.
"Thank you for not letting go."
She doesn't know which of the various things he could mean; thank you for keeping my ghost around, thank you for holding my shoulder and dragging me back instead of releasing me, thank you for being here, now.
But somehow, as she laid beside him on the bed and watched as he closed his eyes and pressed her hand to his mouth like he was afraid she would disappear if he let her go, it doesn't matter which.
Acting on some subliminal force that she can't repress, she pulls her hand from him, gently (another obscene sound, worse than the one she had heard in the kitchen days prior) and replaces it at his mouth with her lips.
In the morning, when he woke up tangled in sheets and screaming silently in his throat at the whiteness behind his eyelids, she was there, muttering to him, also half-asleep.
When he is quiet, he finally heard what she was saying, and he calmed down instantly, settling back into the mattress and letting a warm sense of peace invade his limbs.
"I'm here," she assured him tiredly, face pressed into her arm and the pillow, hair tangled in a beautifully private way, "I'm here, Stephen. I'll always be here, and I'm not letting you go again."
It's a promise, he knows. And even though he is Stephen Dene and he knows better than anyone that you don't make promises you can't keep, he likes the sound of this one.
He likes it a lot.
The End