It became obvious very quickly that there was something wrong with Rose.
For starters, he wouldn't eat. When he woke up with his head in my lap, he had smiled softly and let me help him sit up. He had been awake for a little bit when Jazz had come back out of the kitchen, carrying a bowl of soup for Rose and a bowl of cereal for me. When she had handed it to him, he had taken it with a small thank you. But he hadn't eaten any of it in the half hour that my sister was upstairs getting dressed. When she came back down, she was rather disappointed that he hadn't touched the food.
"Rose, you should eat," she had said very gently, as though he was a very small child. He'd looked at her like she had suddenly turned into Spectra,
"I'm not hungry, Jazz. I'll be sure to eat when I do get hungry, though. Thank you." His voice had been flat still, and he'd looked immensely bored. She had nodded, as though this was to be expected, and she had backed off to go finish getting ready to go out with her friends. One look at her face, however, had told me that she was panicking. She had probably tried to tell our parents before she had to leave.
The second thing that was wrong with Rose was his voice. It was flat and emotionless, as though he was a deaf person speaking. There was nothing in his voice to suggest that he was happy, sad, angry, nothing. It worried me, and it worried Jazz too. He sounded very... suppressed is probably the right word. He sounded very suppressed, like he was holding back all of his emotions.
The thing that tipped me off that there was something seriously wrong with Rose was that he didn't flinch when my parents told him they would taking a blood sample from him. He had always flinched before needles before he had melted; but all he did this time was stare at them with a disconcertingly blank gaze. He simply sat very still and let them take their sample, which was red with flecks of green swirling around in it like an early Christmas soup, and he watched them go to the lab with the same blank look.
"Hey, Rose?" I tried, reaching forward to wrap my arm around his shoulder.
"Yes, Danny?" His voice held an emotion there, but it was one I didn't recognize because it was so distorted. He turned towards me, letting me hold me close. He was alert, certainly, but he wasn't... well, he wasn't acting like himself. The Rose I remembered didn't act like this; he ate when he could because a ghost could attack at any time, he spoke with all the emotion a person could possibly hold, and he flinched away from needles and doctor's visits. This Rose was more like... more like a full ghost than a half-ghost. And that thought scared me.
"Are you feeling okay?" I rubbed his back a little, noticing that he seemed to be having trouble drawing in oxygen. He coughed as I did so, covering his mouth with one of his arms. He made a retching sound as he finished coughing, gasping for breath. I pulled him closer and let him rest against me for a moment. He soon pushed back, however, and I let him sit up again on his own without fighting him. I was really worried about him; what if he hadn't reformed properly and he was going to actually die this time?
He looked up at me with his bright purple eye and said to me, very slowly, without the slightest inflection of emotion,"Danny, I'm completely fine."
***line break***
Rose's friend, Kit, came by later without his other half, Cobalt. They were technically one ghost, but they liked to split apart and be called twins. Kit had this really weird ability to just know certain things, so it shouldn't have been a surprise when he dropped in (literally) later that day around lunchtime. He dropped right into the lab where my dad was conducting tests on Rose, whose blood sample had revealed something that neither of my parents would share. My dad shouted in surprise when Kit dropped down right in front of Rose, but Rose showed no sign of shock at all. Cobalt wasn't around, so I assumed he hadn't split away from Kit.
"Hi, Kit," Rose said, emotionless, smiling like it hurt.
"Rose, I'm so glad you're okay!" the pink-haired boy chirped, flinging his arms around Rose. Rose froze, looking like he didn't know how to handle this explosion of emotion Kit displayed, but he awkwardly hugged Kit back. I, myself, chuckled a little; Kit was always so hyper and random. The ghost acted more like a small child than a 22-year-old. Because he had thought he was alive for a while, Kit had kept aging just like a normal person along with Cobalt. When he learned he was actually dead, he had stopped aging. He currently lived with Clockwork, who had been the one to break the news that he was dead to his face.
"Of course I'm okay, Kit," Rose sighed, no trace of anything remotely emotional in his voice. "Didn't Clockwork tell you I'd be okay?"
"Nope!" Kit pouted. "He made me wait until I was sure that you were okay!"
"I only reformed today, you silly duck," Rose laughed, a flat sound that was almost painful to listen to. "I'll go get you that glass of circletine I promised you before I melted..."
Rose left the room and Kit watched him, smiling until he was out of sight. Then he became sort of grave-looking. "That's a bad case of ghost syndrome, isn't it Maddie?" he said, cocking his head towards my mother. She froze and I stared at her, shocked.
"Ghost syndrome?" I whispered into the silence. Kit turned to look at me next, his green eyes brightly glowing and shining like a cat's.
"Yes," he confirmed, nodding his head. "Ghost syndrome. Didn't... didn't anyone know that was it?" He looked sort of nervous now, shrinking in on himself.
"What's ghost sydrome?" Dad asked, looking suspicious. He had never really trusted Kit, mostly because Kit was very unpredictable and he was very prone to breaking out into destructive anger. He'd ruined a few of my dad's inventions like that while Rose was still melted.
"Well, when someone goes through a very long period of grief, say 10 years or so, they become more ghost-like; emotionless, hunger-less, and any form of emotion mentally hurts them. In half-ghosts, it can also happen if..." Kit glances away, looking a little guilty. "There's a 50/50 chance of a half-ghost developing ghost syndrome if they're in an ectoplasmic liquid state for a long time. It's more dangerous with a half-ghost, because the half-ghost will experience fits of anger or other negative emotions while afflicted. A half-ghost also doesn't have a real need to eat, and all half-ghosts that have been recorded in the past, if they started as a human, have only ate out of habit and humanly need."
"Rose did start out as a human," I told Kit, looking confused and pretty angry too. Kit nodded quickly.
"Yes, I know that. But when a half-ghost develops ghost syndrome, they find themselves locked into the mindset of a ghost. Ghosts don't need to eat, though we do enjoy eating, and since ghosts don't need to eat a half-ghost with ghost syndrome will probably find themselves unwilling to eat." Kit glanced away, looking very uncomfortable. "Ghosts don't tend to show their emotions, which is what led most ghost scientists to believe a ghost has no emotions. When a half-ghost is afflicted with ghost syndrome, they'll probably register no emotions whatsoever."
***line break***
Ghost syndrome.
Rose was in a ghost-like state of mind, so he thought of himself more as a ghost than a human. It explained his strange behavior, his unwillingness to eat, even his flat voice. What I wanted to know was why. Kit had said it was only a 50/50 chance. So why had Rose developed it?
Kit had also said that the best and the most effective method of getting rid of ghost syndrome was to treat the afflicted person as though they were human. It would bring the person back to their normal human-like state of mind. So at dinnertime, Jazz made Rose sit down("No floating!" she had snapped when he'd tried to discreetly fly away; she had tied him down the Fenton Ghost Fisher, and he wasn't happy about it) at the table and she made him eat the food that my mom put in front of him. At first, he ate rather reluctantly, but pretty soon he was eating as though he had never had any reason not to eat.
None of us really had any idea how to get him to have emotion, but it wasn't something that we were concerned about for the moment. Rose had wished me a happy birthday earlier when he'd noticed the date, and he'd forced emotion into his voice for me. The action of speaking with emotion had tired him, though, and he'd taken another nap.
After dinner, it was time for birthday cake. Rose declined having a piece, but he remained at the table (not like he had a choice, what with being tied to his chair with the Fenton Fisher) and made conversation with us. It was like he'd never disappeared; with the exception of the lack of emotion in his voice, he did his best to act just like he did before he'd melted. Rose certainly teased Jazz to no end with forced playfulness about her new boyfriend, which is something I'd done when I'd first found out as well.
Rose's ghost sense went off about halfway throughout dinner, something that surprised him. It showed through; his eyes widened and he nearly tipped over his chair. Mine went off as well about half a second later, and Rose motioned for me to sit back down. He untied himself and transformed, floating up.
"I'll get it, Danny," he chirped, a painfully happy smile on his face. "You enjoy your birthday." Then he was gone, phased through the ceiling. Jazz looked pretty confused.
"If he could untie himself that entire time," she wondered, "then why didn't he untie himself before?"
"He was probably trying to be polite," I answered. "Kit said that most ghosts really are polite. At least, polite by ghost standards. He was being polite by human standards."
"Maybe," she said distantly.
We made small talk while we waited for Rose to come back, and he came back after about an hour. He was battered and looked exhausted, but he showed no sign of pain even as Jazz and I relocated his dislocated knee but yanking him down from the air.
"It was just Skulker," Rose protested, tucking his legs under him in an attempt to stop us from bringing him back to the ground. It didn't stop us; Jazz jumped up and got one of his arms, effectively pulling him down to a point where he had to stand on the ground. My mother and father came back from the lab with a first aid kit, designed to help me whenever I got hurt. Since I healed very quickly, all it really contained were band-aids (more band-aids than I could count) and antiseptics to keep out infection.
Rose's worst wound had been his dislocated knee, though he also ended up having a dislocated elbow(something that he insisted was fine, and something my mother insisted on fixing. She got her way) and multiple bleeding scrapes.
"Did anyone see you?" Mom asked Rose as she fixed up his cuts. Rose tilted his gaze to the ceiling, his face devoid of emotion again. I settled down next to him, holding his hand; he smiled a bit at the pressure of my grip.
"Probably. There were a few people on the sidewalk who looked up and saw the fight. I don't think anyone recorded it, though." Rose shrugged, completely uncaring of what would happen. At least, it seemed that way, He was probably freaking out on the inside, like a ghost would.
Jazz checked YouTube on her phone, and shook her head laughing. "You were wrong, Rose. Someone did record you." She showed us a video titled Shadow is back! which already had over a thousand views. "Everyone's pretty excited, Rose. This will probably be on the news tonight and tomorrow morning."
And it was on the news that night. The newsman speculated how Phantom would take Shadow's return. I chuckled and said to my family, "Oh, I think Phantom will be very happy with Shadow's return."
Even Rose smiled.