Disclaimer: I do not own Dr. Horrible's Sing-A-Long-Blog or any of its characters and I make not profit from these FAN-fictions. All rights go to Joss Whedon and his gifted cast and crew.
Author's Note: Sorry for the relative filler and boring chapter last time.
Ghosts
She was there again, but she wasn't herself.
Billy stared unseeingly at his whiteboard that was filled top-to-bottom with pointless equations and ideas for modifications. Instead, his thoughts flicked back to his memories, namely a couple of weeks ago.
The little girl had been there at the homeless shelter too, looking up at him as he took hold of it and forced the proprietor to sign its deeds over to him.
The man who owned it had claimed to be the executor of the Caring Hands Group, but as Billy had looked around through goggle-clad eyes, he had seen nothing but an unused building that saw its end when "Captain Hammer couldn't protect it anymore."
But then there she was again, slipping through the door and gasping softly at the sight of the ray gun against the frightened owner's temple. Her red hair and soft expression had been so reminiscent, so painfully merciless, that he had again been frozen by the image of this child-Penny. Funny, he always thought that being haunted meant seeing wisps of an image, seeing something and turning around to find that it wasn't actually there. Plus, he never thought that a ghost could or would change its age.
But this Penny looked more like the orphan he had connected with than the struggling but fighting woman he had loved. No, this was a helpless Penny, the orphan Penny, the Penny who had stared at him with dying eyes.
When the owner had questioned him, Dr. Horrible took charge once again, glaring him down and forcing him to sign, but by the time Billy looked back, the ghost of Penny was gone.
Just like in the cemetery.
Just like the days before, he thought as the time passed.
At every heist, every shortcut, he would hear her small footsteps, her unspoken astonishment and horror, and every time he turned around, the ghost of her refused to vanish. Instead, she stared up at him silently, disbelief in her eyes as her head shook in denial before fleeing the instant he so much as blinked.
And after weeks of chasing shadows then ignoring them, Billy angrily erased all the formulas and equations from his sullied whiteboard and realized, plain and simple, that he had become insane.
This Penny, lost and orphaned ghost, was going to be the end of him.
TBC
