There was light. Everything was light.
Lance couldn't feel or hear anything. All he could see was the light.
A thought entered his mind. One that wasn't his own, but a thought that felt familiar.
"Greetings Lance." the thought began, "Do you know where you are?"
Lance was confused. Right now, the only thing that he could remember was his name. He tried to speak, but couldn't. He tried to move any part of his body, but he couldn't see or feel himself. There was nothing where his hands would be, nor were any of his other limbs. It was like he was in some weird, confusing dream that he couldn't wake up from.
"We understand your confusion, and it may help if we give you a little context as to what is happening right now. You do not have a body right now because the only things that exists in you are your thoughts and soul. You can imagine a body, if that makes you feel more comfortable."
He didn't understand what was going on, but he obeyed the thought. He imagined his hands and his feet and his face, and one by one, they appeared out of thin air, constructing his body like puzzle pieces. As his ears formed, he could hear a faint tinkling sound, quiet and muffled. His nose brought the scent of cool air, and his tongue brought the taste of it. Finally, he shielded his eyes from what he thought would be a blinding light, but as he slowly opened his eyes, he saw-
His breath caught.
He saw the darkness of space, littered with small, shining, colorful stars. Everywhere he looked, there were stars. It was like a galaxy. Some flew across the void, some staying clustered together, and each one twinkling brightly, every pulse making that muffled tinkling noise he heard earlier. It was breathtakingly beautiful, magnificent, wondrous, and he just couldn't look away.
Suddenly, his wonder came to a halt. Logic told him that sound doesn't travel in space, yet still the stars hummed with their tiny chimes, and as he looked down at his feet, he realized that he was standing on top of nothing, which was impossible.
"Where am I?" he asked, whipping around to try to see who had spoken to him before, but finding nothing. A rising feeling of anxiety grew within him for a reason he couldn't explain.
All the stars seemed to take a deep breath, before speaking in a disembodied voice together.
"Lance… this is not a dream. We call this place the Home of the Guiding Stars. We are here navigate and help you through... your death."
Lance froze.
There was brief moment of complete silence and stillness. It was the suffocating calm before the storm. But then-
Everything. Came. Back.
His joy. His sorrow. His comfort. His pain. His friends. His enemies. His life. His... death.
It was a raging hurricane of emotions and pain that flung Lance around like he was a doll. Lance's legs trembled and collapsed underneath him. His breathing quickened as he wrapped his arms around himself, as if trying hold it all pain of losing everything in his life was drowning him, and he was dying again. Again.
He was dead.
He was dead.
He was dead.
His whole fake, imagined body that didn't exist shook violently and his thoughts came to him only in fragments.
"I want my friends- I'm all alone- I lost them all- I'll never see my family- I can't be dead- I failed them all- It's only a dream- It's all my fault- I want to go back I want to go back I WANT TO GO BACK-"
He rocked back and forth until the floodgate of pain broke and all he could do was scream. He sobbed and screamed at everything because it was all so GODDAMN UNFAIR.
…
He didn't know what to do. It was all pointless now.
But…
He didn't want this. He refused to let this be the end. He had to go back. Somehow. Someway.
He wouldn't give up yet.
"Lance."
Lance looked up with a jolt, recognizing the familiar voice that had been with him since the day he left Earth.
"Blue?" he asked, unsure if he was really hearing the lion's true voice or if he was imagining things.
"Yes, my paladin. I am here." A cluster of blue, floating lights gathered in front of the Cuban boy, and encompassed him with a warm and comforting feeling. Lance sighed.
"What am I gonna do now, Blue? You have to help me get back there." he said.
The lights chuckled. "Do not fret, cub. There is much for you to settle before you begin again."
Lance's eyes widened. "You're serious? I can really live again?"
A sorrowful feeling pulsed from the glowing orbs. "No. You will never truly live again." Immediately, Lance's hopeful feeling dampened. "But you mustn't focus on that." Lance brightened again. "You have unfinished business, which means, until you resolve your issues, you cannot move on."
"Wait, what? This isn't it?" Lance was spun into a feeling of confusion. "This isn't heaven? Or hell, or, whatever the end is? Am I in purgatory? Holy crow, am I a ghost?!" He pulled his hair and paced back and forth. "What is going on, Blue?"
"Stars above, Lance, calm down." Lance recognized the sharp, impatient voice of Red. A cluster of stars similar to Blue's gathered beside the lights already in front of him. "Blue, no offense, but you take too long to explain stuff." The lion grumbled quietly, but let Red continue.
"Lance, I'll make this as quick as possible. You're going to go back to your life as a Flicker, which is what your kind calls a ghost. You've got some problems, so you can't move on until you fix them." Lance opened his mouth to ask a question, but was cut off. "And before you ask, no, we can't tell you what your issues are. If we could, we wouldn't be here, now would we?" He snapped his mouth shut. "You're gonna have to figure out how to talk to the living by yourself."
"Come on, Red, you can't just leave him with nothing like that!"
"Watch me."
Blue snarled something that sounded like the lion equivalent of a swear word, then focused on Lance again.
"Ignore that. Just imagine if you were bonding with me or Red." Lance tried to imagine connecting with the team like he did with the lions, but it just didn't click. "I don't get it. I can't talk to them, so how am I supposed to bond with them?"
Blue sighed. "I can't explain it. You'll have to figure it out yourself."
"Literally what I just sai-" "Shut it, cherry bomb." Blue interrupted. Lance snorted.
Red growled. "Whatever. Let's just get this over with so we can be out of here faster." Blue silently agreed, and they both positioned themselves around the boy. Lance shifted from foot to foot and chewed his lip nervously.
"Close your eyes, Lance."
A/N: owo lonce is a ghosty ghost
sorry i haven't updated this in a while, i want this to be good, and i got someone to beta it for me, so it should hopefully be better than if i was doing it alone. i also have a pretty nice endgame too, so i'm hoping i can execute that well
thanks for reading, if you could leave a review to tell me how to improve it, that would be fantastic. i still am kind of unconfident (thats a word, right?) about my writing, so any constructive criticism would be immensely appreciated :'))))
