Phantom of the Fallen: (by timydamonkey)
Author's Notes: Sorry this took so long in coming. Unless this grows again this will be six chapters long - two left. Possibly with an epilogue, I haven't decided yet. I know what's going to happen, it's just getting it down and making it sound credible. Also, a huge thank you to Luiz4200 for pointing out my rather silly mistake near the end. Fixed now. Enjoy.
-4-
"…What?" Lancer asked, because the admission didn't make any sense to him. With a deep sigh, he wondered if the boy were in denial, as he was clearly different. As much as a sceptic as Lancer could be, he didn't deny evidence in front of his own eyes.
"I… I… I told you it was complicated, I'm not dead!" The boy seemed to be pleading with him. Believe me, he seemed to be trying to say, please.
"Your disappearing acts suggest otherwise, Fenton." The boy flinched at the name, obviously hoping Lancer wouldn't have realised his desperate slip. He looked upset – Lancer could relate; he felt sorry for the boy.
"You don't understand," Fenton objected. "I can do all that stuff, but I'm not dead. Really. I mean, I don't appear to be dead, and I'm walking, and sometimes I don't look dead, and-"
"Fenton," Lancer interrupted, "you are as pale as death." The boy looked bemused at the unintentional pun, but Lancer carried on without reacting. "Not to mention, while you resemble… how you were, at the same time you look different. You're barely recognisable. Not to mention, Manson and Foley saw you die!" This wasn't common knowledge, but the teachers knew. Being privy to such information could be a pain sometimes, but now it actually seemed useful.
"Theythought they saw it, but it didn't happen. And they were so upset, and when I opened my eyes they'd gone to get my parents… and everything felt weird… and I was like this." He gestured to himself fruitlessly. "And I was scared… I ran away." He flushed in embarrassment and it was a disturbingly human expression.
The boy was obviously in denial. Lancer sighed. It had been a trying day. "You're not thinking logically, Fenton," he tried. Should he even call the boy 'Fenton' anymore? He didn't know the etiquette for talking to ghosts, or if any even existed.
"It's not logical but it's true!" Fenton insisted, looking frustrated beyond words that he wasn't 'getting it'. "I can show you."
"There's nothing to show."
The boy gave him a look. "You'll see." The boy closed his eyes, and Lancer sighed once again in resignation – and then something happened to Fenton. There was a bright flash of light and the boy stood in front of him, unscathed, looking the same as he done every day in class as far as Lancer could remember. He stood, gaping.
"I'm not dead," the boy said again defensively.
There was a long pause. "Why have you chosen to tell me this?" The boy wasn't a bad student, but he was hardly the best and they didn't particularly get along any better than any of the other students in his class.
Fenton laughed nervously. "Well, you know what they always say… go to your teachers for advice. And it's not like they have some sort of hotline for people supposed to be dead, do they…?"
"What about your parents?" he asked, genuinely perplexed, then a second later it dawned on him. He felt like an idiot.
"Don't get me wrong," Fenton said, "I have nothing against my parents… but they're ghost hunters. I don't want to be atomised!" And then, "You know, I think it might have been about careers advice… seeing you, I mean… but it's not like I can get a job, can I? I don't want to just sit around doing nothing!"
The boy sounded frustrated. Lancer knew how he felt. "But now that you look as you did," Lancer said, "why don't you go back and let things go back to normal?"
"And say what?" the boy asked scathingly. "'Oh, it wasn't me you saw die, it was my doppelganger I hired for a few days. He disintegrated on impact, sorry for not telling you!'" He snorted, and then took a deep breath. "Sorry. It's just… I can't."
Lancer just managed to refrain from asking 'is that what really happened?'. Pupils' imaginations these days were really running wild.
"Surely there are more plausible explanations," he said, exasperated. "I don't know… you could plead amnesia. I'm sure they'd be happier that you're back rather than how it happened."
"But what if they think I'm a ghost? They still think I died!"
There was another long pause. "Perhaps you'll just have to risk it."
"Maybe I am a ghost," he muttered softly. "A living ghost. Is that possible?" Lancer didn't quite feel up to a philosophical debate, and the boy continued, barely pausing for breath. "So I'd still be a ghost, so I wouldn't be able to go home… when did everything get so complicated? I wish I'd never gone near that stupid portal…"
"Portal?" Lancer asked.
The boy jerked up as if he'd been talking to himself and suddenly realised Lancer was there. "Nothing," he said defensively. It seemed the boy had hit his limit in terms of how much he was going to say. Frankly, Lancer was surprised he'd heard as much as he had. He supposed it was the lack of anybody to turn to…
"Well," began Lancer, but whatever else he was going to say didn't quite make it out when the principal strolled jovially into his room.
"I thought you were talking to somebody – I heard voices," the woman said, his forehead crinkled in confusion. Lancer was confused too and turned around, but Fenton was gone. He worried briefly that for some bizarre reason he'd been hallucinating, but knocked away the thought. He had no reason to. A living ghost, the boy had said. Was that even possible?
The principal's voice broke through Lancer's internal chatter and made him focus on the conversation in hand. "I've several enquiries to make…" she began, and Lancer sighed internally.
It had been a long day, and it seemed to have stretched so far ahead of him, there was no end in sight.