Title: Heart Beats Slow

Genre: Anime

Series: Ghost Hunt

Characters: Mai Taniyama, Lin Koujo

Spoilers: N/A

Rating: M

Summary: Mai becomes lost after a brutal spiritual attack, and has trouble finding her way home.

Disclosure: It's not mine. (If it were we'd have had a second series.)

It started after Nagasaki, after a demon dog attacked the team and tore through Mai's mental shields like paper, leaving her nothing more than an empty husk without a thought behind it.

The best neurological doctors in Japan couldn't explain it, there was no reason for her to stay asleep for so long, yet she wasn't waking. Lin knew, however, he could sense that she'd left her body. The only way for her to ever return to them was for him to find her. No other member of the team would be capable of entering the spirit realm as fully as she had, and as he could. The ritual would take some time to prepare for, there were herbs that he'd require that were not in season yet, certain moon phases that had already passed. Unfortunately, Mai would have to stay in the coma until he could get those things.

He visited every day.

After a few months her lease came up, and he and the team packed away her things. Instead of storage, he had them taken to the house he shared with Naru. Their third bedroom could hold them until she woke up, and sometimes the way the air outside of his bedroom smelled like her made him smile even if it made his chest hurt as he recalled how long it'd been since he'd seen her smile. Naru accused him of grieving her, that despite his actions he didn't believe he'd be able to bring her back, but that wasn't the cause of his melancholy. The reason Lin couldn't seem to drag himself out of that dark place was because it was only by losing her that he realized how much he'd grown to care for her.

Now he wanted her back, desperately, in whatever way that he could have her and time just wasn't on his side. It would be at least two more months before the herbs were mature enough to create the tincture he needed to leave his body. It would take an immense surge of power to break the restraints he'd placed on his spirit to prevent possession and projection, but for her he would do it.

He dreamt of her every night.

They were running down the street, a deluge of rain making the inky shadows seem malevolent. Her hand was clenched in his, her nails biting into his skin sharply but he refused to release her. "We have to find shelter."

"I can hear them, Koujo, they're getting closer," Mai whimpered, pressing her face into his back as they paused on the street corner. The sound of howls and barking echoed down the street behind them, she was right they were gaining on them.

Lin studied the houses around them, smiling ferociously when he saw a thin sliver of light appear around one of the doors. "There!" He leapt towards the door, pulling her with him and inside as he kicked the door open. There was no deadbolt that could keep the oni out, but he knew of a couple wards that would. A quick slash of his knife gave him the medium he needed, blood would hold the protection longer than any ink or chalk would. He was just finishing the last sigil when an immense dark force slammed into the other side, sending him skittering backwards.

"Will it hold?" Mai asked, wrapping her arms around herself as if cold. She was soaking wet, so was he, but she didn't have enough body mass to fight off the immense cold like he did.

"Yes." Lin reached for her and she slid into his arms like she was meant to be there. Her soft form fit against him perfectly, his chin resting on the top of her head as she shook against him. "You're cold. We need to warm you up."

"I've been looking for you," she asserted, ignoring his observation. "I don't know what's going on, I'm scared."

"You don't have to be scared, I will always come for you," Lin reassured her, pulling back so that he could see her face. "We're going to fix this. I'm gathering everything I need to bring you home."

"It's getting harder for me to remember where I'm trying to go, Koujo, I've been here for so long."

"I know." There was a blanket on the couch in the living area, he wrapped it around her and they sat together, fingers entwined as they let the silence stretch between them. It was a dream, he knew it was a dream, but she felt real, she acted like her, sounded like, smelled like her. "It won't be much longer now."

"We have a new case."

"Where?"

"Saitama."

"I will not be joining you."

"She is not going anywhere, Lin."

"And neither am I."

She was waiting in a field of poppies, their bright red color absolutely still, no wind to disturb them. As soon as he stepped foot in the field it was like a drop of water in a lake, they bowed away from him in waves, bouncing back and forth in his wake. She turned as he approached, her expression grave. "The oni are gone."

"That's good."

"No, Koujo," Mai denied, "it's not. Something else is coming. Someone else. I can feel him, like electricity in the air. Except it's not. Because this isn't air. Because this isn't real."

"It's as real as we make it."

She reached for his hands and he allowed her to pull him closer. "If it's a dream, then I can do what I want."

Her lips were softer than even he had imagined.

"We need you here, Lin. The spirit is resisting all efforts of exorcism," Ayako screeched through the speaker of the office phone. Lin quirked his eyebrow but didn't pick up the receiver. Even if Ayako doubted Naru's capabilities without his assistant, he knew that Naru was more than proficient. More often than not Lin was merely there to catch him as he overexerted himself, since telling him not to do something pretty much guaranteed he would. He'd actually already spoken with his ward and knew that Naru had a plan for banishing the spirit from the home, but wouldn't be able to do so until tonight, when the moon was fully waned.

Tonight was also the night he would attempt to wake Mai, when the layers between the physical and spirit realms were thinnest. He'd prepared himself as much as he could, meditating for four hours this afternoon alone. That he was trying this when the team was gone was for the best, they'd only distract him. If for whatever reason he wasn't able to bring her back, then maybe he'd just stay with her. The spirit realm wasn't the most hospitable place, but if she was there then he could survive it.

Lin pushed himself through the heavy gray fog, searching for a sign of something solid or familiar in the dense shadow. He felt himself flailing, unable to ground himself or find his bearings, with no sense of where Mai could be or where his sudden drop into the spirit realm had landed him. He knew that it often mirrored the physical realm, taking most of it's basic dimensions and shapes from there, but if there was anywhere that mirrored this place it was the deep dark ocean, endless and overwhelming.

"Lin..."

A whisper reached him, his senses were stretched so wide it might as well have been a scream with the way it grabbed his attention. He wrapped the sound around him like it was a physical lasso and using it pulled himself from the soupy nothingness that surrounded him. A wind slipped past him, a piercing speed that chilled him to his bones. When he finally stopped he was kneeling at her feet, her hands in his.

"Mai!"

Her face was solemn as she gazed at him, her eyes almost empty of their usual light. "You never told me."

"Told you what?"

She swallowed and pulled her hands from his. "What happens to souls who linger here too long. "

"You're fine, Mai. We're going home now," Lin assured her, his magic already reaching out to find a weak point in the walls between the realms. He looked around and realized they were in the office, the walls hazy but defined, the furniture familiar.

"Not me, Lin," she whispered, clenching her fingers around his shirt and stepping closer. "Gene."

"What are you talking about?"

"Our first case, at my school? I first saw him then. I thought he was Naru, or some version of him my mind had made up. When we began to realize that my dreams were cognitive I realized that he was something else. It took me a long time to understand who he was. I thought when you and Naru took his body back to England that he'd be able to move on, but he didn't."

"So I've been here, waiting for you."

Lin startled, the voice was one he'd never thought he'd hear again. Despite being a twin, Gene had always had a distinctive way of speaking, very different from Oliver. Rather than a mirror image, Gene and Oliver had been more two sides of the same coin; different but ultimately made of the same material and strength. "You shouldn't be here, Gene."

"I can't leave," he explained, almost apologetically to his once mentor. Lin shuddered, every facet of the boy's face was correct, even down to the small scar on his chin where Gene had once nicked himself shaving. It was disconcerting to see that face so young, especially when he saw Naru every day and could now compare the way he had aged to the way they had once been. Gene's eyes observed the discomfort on Lin's face before sliding down to Mai's face.

Lin could feel it then, the connection between the two. "You're feeding off her life force."

"It was an accident."

"You're killing her," Lin swore, his arms wrapping around Mai as she weakened and lost the strength to stand.

"She is...mine. I think we were always meant to be connected but the accident...it made things more difficult."

"You never believed in things like soul mates before," Lin retorted, looping his arm under Mai's knees and cradling her to her chest.

"Being dead can change things," Gene explained, his face becoming malevolent. Mai's form was becoming blurry around the edges, the colors of her stretching away on an invisible wind and filling Gene. With each passing minute he became more solid and she faded.

"I'm sorry, Gene. For what happened to you. I will not allow this, however." Lin silently called his shiki and instructed them to sever the link. They tore at the thread, manifesting teeth and claws and shredding through the strings of Mai and Gene's souls that had become entwined. With each wound Gene screamed and Mai echoed his painful screech. Her body hummed with agony, muscles twitching and her breath catching in her throat as she shook in his arms.

When it was done, Gene was gone and they were alone.

Lin awoke in lotus position on the hospital floor, late morning light coming through the blinds and slanting across his face. He could hear the noise of the morning shift outside the door, could even see signs that the nurse had come and gone, changing Mai's leads and sensors, all necessary for someone in a coma.

He'd need to call for someone to remove them, they were no longer needed.

"How do you feel?"

"Like I need a big glass of water," she tried to say, and he grinned, standing and ignoring the way his joints creaked from sitting there for twelve hours.

"I can assist with that."

Several drinks later, she shook her head and tried to sit up. "How long was I sleeping?"

"Six months," Lin revealed, shrugging when she looked shocked. "You were very lost."

"You found me."

"I will always find you," Lin vowed, sitting on the edge of the bed and taking her hand. "Always."

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