A/N- I read somewhere that a garnet ring was supposed to be a pathway for the soul. But then I couldn't find the source again, but the idea stuck in my head. Hence—one shot!
EDIT: ... At least, it was a one-shot until I added another chapter.
So then I looked it up and found out Turquoise said to being spiritual clarity and wisdom and trust and all that happy stuff. And so it became the title.
It's supposed to be UK → US. I think. I need to work on romance.
How long had it been since he died? Thirty years?
Something like that. Around three decades. Maybe four, if his sense of time had really screwed up. And yet, somehow, he managed to stay in the mortal realm, a ghost, bound to the room where he had been poisoned and killed.
Yay.
He could leave the room, if he wanted, the medium-sized bedroom that had been repainted at least twice over the last thirty years. For a little while, he could walk around the house to see if anything was happening, but could never leave his room for long. If physically hurt to stay away from it, and he was always drawn back. So he usually just stayed in his room.
Many families moved in and out of the house. He watched them, usually without interest. They claimed there was something creepy about the house, ominous, like it was haunted.
Heh.
They usually left before they reached the three year point. One couple persevered and lasted six years, but eventually they too were driven out by Arthur's ghostly presence.
He remembered when the Jones-Williams family moved in.
He didn't expect their stay to be all that long, either. He knew that the current family—surname Vargas or some such—was preparing to sell it, and he figured some nice couple would buy it and again convert what was once his bedroom into a storage room or something similar. Then three years later they would leave and the cycle would continue. Usually, they would leave his room alone.
So he was mildly surprised when a noisy blonde teenager burst into the room, carrying more boxes than he appeared capable of. He took one look around and then called out in a voice far louder than necessary, "Mattie! I get this room, 'kay?" Arthur observed this boy from the closet door, immediately unimpressed with his attitude.
The one at said boy's door—Mattie, he was called—who held significantly fewer things, raised an eyebrow and replied, "If you want it." He looked thoughtful, "It's a little creepy, if you ask me. The room." Arthur frowned. Never once did that insult get old.
The teenager tilted his head. "No it's not! Don't be silly, Matt!" So he lacked any ability to sense Arthur was there. Huh. "Hey, I'm gonna get the bed and start setting it up. Can you help me?"
"Yeah, yeah…" Mattie put down his own box and followed his brother back to the front door.
That was the git who would be living in this room.
Right. Jolly good.
At first, Arthur just ignored his new "roommate". He mostly resided in the closet, pretending he could sleep or stared at the wall and ceiling, but when Alfred—as he later learned the git's name to be—went out to school or the movies or whatever he felt like doing that day, Arthur would venture out to the rest of the room, lay down on the bed, watch the busy suburb out the window, his only real form of entertainment.
But then, after a while… He didn't know when or especially why, but he started talking to the idiot American. Small things, unimportant, reminders and criticisms. Not that said idiot American could hear him.
"Hey, git, it's getting late. Shouldn't you be starting your homework?"
"Staying up all night without dinner won't help you pass a test, smartass."
"I've heard of that Belarusian girl. The family who used to live here spoke of her. Isn't she supposed to be crazy?"
"Alfred, you press the B button when he fires an attack. And here you claim to be good at video games."
"I've seen Dr. Who episodes with better special effects than that. And you hate horror movies. Honestly, why do you watch these things when you have nightmares after?"
Or respond.
He didn't hate Alfred. No. At some point, he started smiling lightly at the stupid little things Alfred did, like when he lost something and ran around his room searching for it or cheered far too loudly at winning a game or stole the stuffed polar bear from his brother and proclaimed it to be the supervillain of his latest story (the boy would be an excellent novelist with his imagination). Just a soft smile at his idiocy.
Alfred brought over friends every now and then, too. A petit Asian boy he met when he first moved here seemed to be his best friend. "Check it, Kiku!" Alfred said the first time Kiku came to his house. "This is my room! Isn't it cool?"
"It's very nice, Alfred-kun." The boy replied. Arthur was puzzled and annoyed at the "-kun", but mostly because he had considered himself someone knowledgeable in both culture and vocabulary and yet had no idea what the small word meant. "It… It has an odd aura about it." The British ghost rolled his eyes. Why did it have to be "odd" or "creepy"? Why couldn't it just be "different"?
"Hm? Really?" Alfred looked back at his friend from where he was preparing some video game. "I've never sensed anything." That might be because your sixth sense is the most pathetic thing I've ever seen.
"It may just be my imagination," Kiku assured him. "But if you ever need any spiritual wards, I will make you some." Like with when he first met Alfred, Arthur was very unimpressed with this Kiku character. Was it necessary to do say he might need to be exorcized? Arthur never did any damage to anybody. He was the one who was murdered. What idiot decided to spread propaganda that ghosts were evil?
As such, he took a disliking to Kiku.
Because Kiku wanted to exorcize him.
He was in no way jealous that Kiku could interact with annoying American git.
And if it was, it was because Arthur couldn't interact with anyone at all, and he and Alfred happened to live in the same room, and as such Alfred would be the most logical choice to interact with.
That is, if Alfred knew he existed.
He learned many small things about Alfred F. Jones.
Arthur soon learned Alfred had a love for superheroes—Superman and Captain America in particular, along with a few heroes from the books of that irritating Kiku boy—and liked to consider himself one, even though he had neither the superpowers nor the technological genius that Arthur had gathered were required for the job.
Alfred also loved animals. He had a special fondness for whales and claims to his brother that he befriended the one at the local aquarium, but Matthew clearly had his doubts on the subject. He also kept a strange alien toy in his room named Tony. He even made a back story for the doll involving the Roswell incident. Apparently now Tony was a special agent of Area 51 and worked for the United States government as an intergalactic ambassador.
Arthur, too, had his doubts.
He learned on July Fourth that Alfred was fifteen upon moving to the house and, ten months later, he was sixteen. Arthur realized that, if one counted ghost years, he was probably around forty-five or fifty, but without them was around the same age.
That also meant Alfred was allowed to drive.
Heaven or hell help whoever has to teach Alfred F. Jones to drive, Arthur thought with a smirk.
"I can't believe him!" Alfred opened and shut his bedroom door with a slam. "He's freaking mad at me over nothing!"
Arthur, who before had been lying down on the floor and trying to see what shapes he could imagine on the ceiling, looked over with curiosity at his "roommate". Someone was mad at him? Matthew? Kiku didn't get mad at him, not really, and Matthew could snap if wanted to. "What did you do?" he asked.
He was surprised to get a response, but then quickly remembered Alfred was probably just ranting. It disappointed him, that little reminder in the back of his mind. Arthur Kirkland can't delude himself for a minute, huh? "It's not like I even did anything! That guy gets pissed at me over nothing! Calls me an insensitive capitalist jerk. I mean, he's the one who's insensitive and everything, and that accident happened forever ago and—damn, I hate that guy!"
Alfred rolled over on the bed, facing the wall and away from Arthur. "He shouldn't be mad. That guy's just a jerk. Why should they hang out? I mean, he even once tried to kill me with a baseball bat." Arthur frowned at the exaggeration, narrowed his eyes, knit his monstrous eyebrows.
"Hey, Alfred, I never told you how I died, did I?" he said softly, knowing the teenager couldn't hear him, but continued anyway. "My parents had a deal with these people. I don't know who or why, but the deal was if they couldn't pay off some nice total, then I was going to die. My parents chose to run away. Cowards." He stared at the ceiling. "But those people, the debt collectors, they found my parents. They stayed for dinner and everything. I should have noticed something, but I didn't. They were shit-scared when one of the men gave me the salt. Heh." It was a humorless laugh. "It's wasn't really salt, if you haven't guessed. It's been thirty or so years, but I still haven't figured out exactly what it was they gave me when I asked for the salt. All I know is that a few hours later, I died in this room of some quick-working poison. My parents claimed it to be a fatal seizure or something. But then I woke up, a ghost, stuck in this room. Why do you think that is? Why am I still here?"
Alfred didn't answer.
Of course not.
Alfred couldn't hear anything.
"Alfred, I don't understand why you change in the closet," Arthur was going on. "I mean, can't the closet at least be mine?" He didn't like having to face the front door. It always bothered him, like he was waiting for someone to knock. But he also didn't want to see/watch Alfred changing. What kind of gentleman would he be if he did that? Or at least not-creeper? "Anyway, how long does it take to put on a shirt and pants? I know you dress as simple as they get, it can't possibly take that long."
Alfred finally emerged from the closet, and Arthur took his place at the closet doorway. He was always there, leaning against the frame and watching the room, and talking, acting like he can hear him while the reminder he most definitely could not stayed in the front of his mind. "Thank you. Can't you change out here so I can have my closet? I hardly think that's too much to ask."
And then Alfred starting looking around. Like he was surprised or scared, or even just confused. "Did someone… say something?"
A/N- That's right, I left it like that.
Cuba was "that guy". Just so you know. I loved that one strip in the manga when he had a baseball bat. Cuba, I love you 3.
R&R? &R&R&R&R?
