Disclaimer:
I really would like to thank Annasibs, who gave me permission to take free inspiration from her oneshot "Memento".
Please be sure to go read it! ( - /s/8413477/1/Memento).

I also would like to thank my beta reader, Exley K. Spengler.
One last special thanks to Sheri, who read this fic as I wrote it and bore with me.
Thanks also to anyone that will read this to the end, I hope you'll enjoy it.

Acceptance

The book clearly stated that a healthy mourning process is composed by stages which every single human being experiences: denial, rage, bargaining, depression and lastly acceptance.

Comfortably wrapped by shadows and warmed by the faint light of a small table lamp, Egon kept reading again and again the same page of that thick psychology manual he had secretly borrowed from Peter. He badly needed to give order to the illogical chaos that ruled over his mind.

Not being able to think and act according to the laws of logic was dangerously taking him to the extreme border between sanity and madness. He felt so silly thinking that those weird, irrational feelings stirred up by jealousy and romantic love (that always made his stomach knot and his face go pink for little to no reason) used to scare him. At the moment he deeply missed being tormented by them as much as he missed the person that still had the power to trigger them.

His glasses, neatly folded on top of a pile of books on the coffee table, projected their small shadow on the front cover of a ruined copy of the DSM-II – yet another manual he had dug up from Peter's college stuff.

Self-assessing his psychological condition maybe wasn't the best way to spend a late Monday night, but he shrugged that thought off and let his brain intake and elaborate the information his eyes were reading.

Twenty-three days, twenty-two hours and a bunch of minutes had passed since the night they had lost her. He still couldn't believe Janine could be forever lost. She couldn't be. She had to still be hanging in there, somewhere his instruments couldn't detect her. He refused to believe otherwise.

Denial, check.

It could have been so simple. He had played that scene again and again in his mind. He could have just taken off his pack and opened up his heart to her. Maybe it could have worked. It would have worked. To hear him say those simple words straight out surely would have awakened her from the fairy godmother's spell. And now they could be together, probably napping on her absolutely uncomfortable couch. He could be sleeping peacefully, feeling her weight pressed on his own body.

If only...

This must be..."Bargaining", I think.

He put the book down, closed his eyes and rubbed them. Reading in semi-darkness wasn't the best thing to do either, just he didn't want to wake the others up, they needed their sleep. Not only Ray had come down with a really bad flu, but also they all were in the process of grieving that weird loss. Yeah, technically Janine was still with them, or at least her body was.

On the other hand her soul... they didn't really know what had happened to her soul. It could have been permanently corrupted or plain stolen. They had spent days running tests on her and the fact that their meters couldn't detect Janine's original biorhythms from that body anymore had killed any hope to successfully make a desperate attempt to save her. A sinister and faint class seven-like reading coated her new biorhythms, suggesting she was in the process of transforming into a demon.

They had kept that particular piece of information to themselves. The only thing they could do was to keep her monitored at all time and wait.

They hadn't taken any solace in trapping the Makeoveris Lotabucks that had ruined her, it had been a complete defeat for all of them. They had ran out of options and could only wait, wait, wait.

Mourning a person that's not dead yet makes it really tricky for the brain and her situation could be very easily compared to a terminally ill patient's. A patient that doesn't know to be doomed yet.

Egon scratched his chin and his fingers got tickled by the stubble he had forgotten to shave. For the first time in his recent life he regretted not having an apartment of his own; he could have used a few lonely days away from the firehouse. It was surely a selfish thought, but he could barely stand that woman. He couldn't stand her musical voice, he couldn't stand her golden hair, he couldn't stand her perfect, curvy body. All he could feel whenever she entered his vision field was anger. Why had she been so incredibly stupid...

Oh, anger.

A digital clock beeped 4 a.m..

He stood up, stretched his legs and walked to the kitchen, turning on the small light over the stove. As he gathered the things needed to brew himself some coffee, he continued his inner monologue. Was he really angry with her? He shook his head. No, he couldn't blame her. He was incredibly pissed off with himself instead. He knew Janine had been going through some hard times. Problems with her family, fights with her friends... he knew she'd been so helplessly insecure about herself. His ambiguous behavior towards her had aggravated her condition and driven her straight into the arms of the Makeoveris Lotsabucks. He sighed, pushing his hair out of his face. He had also forgot it was about time to go get a haircut. Everything was a chore to him lately. What was wrong with his brain?

That's called 'depression'.

The smell of coffee dragged him out of his thoughts. He dug out a plain black headband from the pocket of his sweatpants and secured the rebel locks of hair out of the way before pouring himself a cup. He turned to go back to the couch and almost dropped the mug. A man was probably looking at him from the staircase.

"Lost your glasses again?"- Peter asked, walking towards him to let him stop squinting.

"I didn't hear you coming."- Egon replied, then shrugged- "Forgot to put them back on again. Coffee?"- he offered him his mug.

"Why not."

Peter sat on the couch as his friend poured himself another cup before joining him and couldn't miss the massive amount of psychology and psychiatry textbooks neatly piled up in columns on the coffee table. - "I see you found my lost DSM manual."- his voice held no reproach, he didn't really care if Egon had rummaged through his college junk. The guy was going through the hardest time of his life, he'd rather have him study psychology books than lay depressed in his bed.

The physicist sat by him, not completely managing to block a shade of pink heating his cheeks. He remained silent, blowing lightly on his coffee. It felt truly embarrassing to be caught red handed.

"How are you?"

Peter's voice made him turn to finally look at his face. - "According to your books, I'm simultaneously experiencing four of the five mourning process stages. I'm not sure how I feel about it."

"At least you haven't self diagnosed with some weird psychiatric syndrome."- Peter produced a little grin, sliding an arm around Egon's shoulders. He felt him stiffen, he'd been even less prone than usual to talking about his feelings. They had shared long sessions of meaningful silence since the day that tragedy had happened- "It's not gonna feel better anytime soon, but we'll make it through."

Egon felt he couldn't keep his feelings for himself anymore. The books were helpful, but it was just a load of new info his brain was fed with, not a real help. He had reached saturation and needed to talk and elaborate.

"Peter..."- he started, unsure about how to go on. A number of thoughts suddenly crowded his mind and closed his throat. He felt the man's hand grasp his shoulder, as if to encourage him to go on. He tightened his grip on the cup and decided to give up and speak his mind.

"I still have troubles not blaming myself for what happened. Mainly because I am firmly convinced it is my fault, and there are no words that can convince me of the contrary. But this is not the problem."- he calmly spoke out.- "What I cannot accept is that I cannot think of any way to assess whether any of Janine's soul is still present within her body. I don't have any idea when she's going to stop being a human at all, too. I know I might be in denial, as your excellent books suggest, but I know I am not. I still feel her presence here, Peter. I know she's still here, but I have no way to prove it."

"What makes you think that?"- Peter knew it was useless to question his friend's feel. They all had gone through enough ghostbusting to be able to distinguish between delusion and that distinct, cold sweat inducing sensation of being in the presence of a preternatural being- "Are you suggesting a part of her's turned into a ghost?"

"I... I don't know about that. According to our equipment there is no such trace, even adjusting her original data to simulate a class four state."- the coffee had gone from lavic temperature to a more drinkable one, so the physicist paused to take a long sip. It was about time to spill the beans.- "It's just that... I see her in my dreams. They're very vivid dreams that leave me exhausted. At first she just kept flying away, reiterating what I had witnessed that day. A sort of fixed repeater, we could say for sake of argument."

That bit of information made the psychologist frown. He had had his good share of nightmares about that day too, as well as Winston and Ray had. They had talked about it between themselves. No one had experienced anything like Egon was describing. He remained silent, waiting for the other to speak again.

"As I told you, that night she succumbed to the Makeoveris Lotsabucks' spell, I saw her fly away. Bright light, white angel wings and all."- Egon chuckled nervously. It was starting to feel too uncomfortable. Something inside him didn't want him to talk about that. He fought that feeling. - "I have kept to myself a memento of that night, a feather that came off her wings."- seeing Peter widening his eyes, he cut him off before he could say anything- "Off course I've scanned that too, and, although its cellular structure is clearly not natural, our instruments detect no residuals relevant to our case coming from it."

"What about this feather then?"- the dark haired man was getting more and more confused, he couldn't foresee what his friend was getting at.

A month earlier that conversation would have stopped there. It was getting too private too fast. But Egon finally was pissed off with himself enough not to give a damn anymore about keeping private his most private secrets and feelings at all costs. That stupid behavioral pattern of his had already ruined someone's life, he was determined to make things right. - "It's the only thing I have left of her. I keep it locked in my drawer, at the lab. It helped me making it through the first days. Then one night I felt particularly depressed I took it to bed with me. I usually put it under the pillow so I'm sure I don't ruin it."

"The dream changed."- Peter dared to guess. He was rewarded with a timid smile.

The digital clock beeped 5 a.m. and birds chirped just outside of the windows.

"Exactly. When I keep the feather near as I sleep, I mostly dream of her looking at me from afar. Sometimes instead, I dream of her standing or sitting closer to me. While I'm dreaming I can remember her voice, I can smell her scent... hear her laughter."- he felt headache irradiating from his temples and massaged them.- "It could be I have gone completely insane, deep into delusion. Or maybe it's my delusion that makes me think I am not delusional."

"I know you enough to believe you're not crazy. Well, not that kind of crazy."- Peter felt hope flooding straight into the core of his soul. He was having some kind of twisted fun reciprocating the flirtatious advances of this new Janine, but it was mostly out of boredom. He missed his stormy, somewhat brotherly relationship with good old Big J. He wanted her back badly. - "You sure this feather ain't giving away any lead we could follow? You tried to analyze it under particular circumstances?... I don't know... under a full moon? Or maybe at the same time as when it was created?"

Egon frowned, mentally listing all of the tests he had run and under what condition.

Peter had given him a good track: what had he not tried?

Silence fell on them as Peter let him think, finishing off his own coffee with calm and looking at him tormenting his chin. It had taken almost a month for Egon's brain to reset and get back to work at full power, but if there was even half a chance to make things right...

His trail of thought was abruptly interrupted by a loud gasp coming from his friend.

"I am so fucking retarded."

Peter smiled to Egon's unusual cursing. It was gonna be a good day.

The alarm clock's fastidious ring echoed through the silent apartment.

It was 7 a.m. and it was going to be a fine, sunny, late spring day.

Janine slammed her hand on the snooze button and covered her head with one of the two pillows she kept on her bed. Sleep was getting more and more restless. She would have liked to blame it on stress, but there was no stress in her current life, apart from the guys psyching over her new condition and popping up with any kind of weird test once every two or three days. It wasn't anything worth being stressed about, though. Otherwise, the firehouse had been awfully silent: very few calls, no accidents at the lab, quick and smooth billing tasks she could easily handle. She had picked up out of boredom a couple of modeling jobs and had used the extra money to revamp her wardrobe and finally get rid of that awful couch.

Those last couple of weeks had been the best of her life. Men lining up to ask her out, talent scouts out to hire her and a good flow of money going into her bank account. Becoming incredibly beautiful was the best thing ever happened to her.
She had found no problem whatsoever in accepting gifts from her new found suitors. Men were all the same. They just wanted to use her, to conquer her because of her looks. Out of a whim, she had even tried to flirt with Peter and he had flirted back several times. Certainly because her now blond curls and curvy body were appealing to him. Just a man after all. She could have all the men in the world, except...

The alarm clock dragged her violently out of her thinking. She turned the damn thing off and slid out of the bed. Fluffy slippers welcomed her feet and she dragged herself to the kitchen to get her first coffee of the day.

Scattered memories of a fading dream made her frown as she waited for the coffee to be done. She vaguely remembered dreaming about swimming in the sea. She'd go deeper and deeper and her chest would feel warmer and warmer... then a hand grabbing her strongly by the forearm and dragging her upwards to cold, cold surface...

It felt like a familiar dream. She had been having similar dreams for the past ten days or so.

Coffee kick started her mind and let her focus on her morning routine. Shower, skin care, a fix to her hair, make up. She got so lost in taking care of her beloved new body that she barely noticed how the red mark that had appeared a few days earlier on her back- right below her shoulder blades- was starting to swell and hurt a little. It looked like someone had whipped her, leaving behind a reddening line. She dismissed it as a consequence of sleeping on such an old mattress now that her skin was much more delicate.
"I really need to buy a decent mattress as soon as I get my paycheck."- she said aloud to herself as she put on the clothes she had decided to wear.