Winston had helped Abby warm up with some warm towels for her shoulder, but the cold that had settled into her bones was still there. It was very unsettling, especially in her hands and wrists. She was getting very tired of being hurt and injured. But at least her skin felt warmer on her shoulder and didn't sting. And Winston had been beyond a gentleman and hadn't said anything when she had to pull off her long sleeved shirt to reach all of the frostbite. He also helped her adjust her sling so that it felt in place again. Neither of them spoke about the events on the roof, but he had spoken about missing the opera recently with his girlfriend and how he was hoping to get back to the show again once things had settled down and how much he loved the theatre.
She was the thing that needed settling down, apparently. How could she have been so blind all this time? Of course everything about her was wrong. So so wrong. She had even told Egon that earlier before the portal. She shouldn't exist in this universe. At least, 38 year old Abby shouldn't. 12 year old Abby was probably at home, making a Christmas wish list and perfecting it till it had everything she wanted. Not that her mother would have gotten it all. She wasn't much for things that she deemed frivolous.
Peter had gone back downstairs and Ray and Egon had come back in and gone back immediately to working on something. She was instantly reminded of her and Holtz. They had worked together at Higgins for so long that any problem that they came across they automatically conferred and started working on it. The team worked so well together that they had fallen into their old habits.
She wondered if the others had their own habits by now. The thought almost made her want to cry. The ache in her hands was worse as she tried to calm her nerves. She couldn't take being in the firehouse at that moment. It felt so stuffy in there, like she couldn't breathe without suffocating.
So she headed to the roof. It hadn't even been that hard as no one had even noticed she had left. It wasn't as cold as it had been earlier, which was something she was happy about as she had no jacket to keep her warm. It was one of the things that had slipped her mind when Janine had asked her for things she might need. She sat on an old milk crate someone had forgotten and stared at the line of rooftops as far as she could see.
It was stupid. It was all stupid. She shouldn't be alive. She was dead. DEAD. Even apparently the Guardians of the stupid ghost realm had come after her. She didn't know why the other team had saved her from them. Her life was meaningless now. She was nothing. There was no validation, no return on her life's work. No one would ever know of her sacrifice in her universe because they didn't care. And why should they? Ghosts weren't real. They were never real to anyone else.
Abby felt the tears come and didn't even try to stop them.
Downstairs, Ray and Egon were discussing how they were going to deal with the Guardians when they felt their ears pop.
"Okay, that was a definite AP-xH shift," said Egon, rubbing his left ear. "Big one."
"Been awhile since my ears have popped like that," said Ray. "I don't know of any ghosts around here…" He glanced wildly around.
"Abby? Abby?"
Egon got up and went across the room to the bathroom and knocked on the door before opening it. He did the same to the spare room. Winston came up the stairs about that time.
"Hey, was Abby down there?" asked Ray.
"Haven't seen her," said Winston. "Been helping Peter make some calls. Oh, and the Rookie's back. Peter's got him typing up some statements and faxing them to the newspapers."
"Shit," said Ray. "Where could she be?"
Winston crossed his arms and looked at Ray sternly. "Well considering the cat is now out of the bag, you might want to think about the fact that you've got possibly the very loneliest person in our universe who has just heard that she shouldn't exist and got attacked by some supernatural creatures for it. You might want to ponder on that thought a moment and see how that feels."
"Oh hell," Ray said.
"Mmhmm," said Winston. Ray grabbed his jacket off the back of the chair he was sitting on and ran up to the roof of the building. He was relieved to find Abby sitting up there, lost in thought.
She was also shivering. He took off his leather bomber jacket and wrapped it around Abby's shoulders.
"We didn't think," he said apologetically.
"That was obvious," said Abby, faltering a moment. She was a little flattered that Ray had easily given up his coat. And it was warm at least. He pulled up what looked like an old camping chair and sat down across from her.
"You know as scientists we try to figure out the unknown. To make it explainable. We knew something was wrong when you sort of appeared out of nowhere. We wanted to help you. And we probably should have explained that we needed to help you because something wasn't right."
Abby sighed. "I know that. I'm not a complete idiot Ray. I'd be curious about me too if it wasn't happening, you know, so personally." She grimaced as she looked at her hands.
"I can't get them to stop freezing."
"Did Winston not help you with the frostbite?" he asked.
"He did," said Abby. "But that was my shoulder. This is my hands and wrists. It's like… cold is radiating through my bones."
"Oh Abby…" said Ray, grimacing. "Temperature drop."
She closed her eyes and put her hands up to her face.
"I don't want to think about it Ray. It terrifies me."
"And it should," he said. He pulled her hands back down. "But you need to focus. Please."
"I would if I could," she complained, pulling out of his grip.
"They're going to come back if we don't get this PKE thing figured out."
"What… what are they? Egon didn't exactly explain."
"The Guardians are well, the guardians of the ghost realm," began Peter. "They monitor the beings that come in and out. Think of it like the gates of the underworld. They guard the four main ways in out of the spirit realm."
"So I possibly transgressed one?"
"More than likely, yes. Your presence I would have to imagine was not a welcome sight. They do not like living, breathing humans in their world."
"But all four?"
"You must have pissed them off royally?" grinned Ray, looking excited.
"So you've seen them before?" asked Abby, warily looking up to the skies.
"A few times, yes. We've been in other dimensions. Warped ones that technically shouldn't have existed."
"That must have been interesting," said Abby. She used the edge of her hard cast to scratch her knee.
"Not when it's your life on the line." He grimaced. "That was bad."
"Noticed," she said sarcastically. "A big string of them."
"You know, us men aren't quite good with this sort of thing."
"Not exactly the best with them either," said Abby. "It's the science. It blinds us to the basic of human emotions."
"Would you like to come help us do some more research?" asked Ray. "You know you're more than welcome. And we could use a blood sample." Abby glared at him over her glasses.
"At least all I ask for is blood," he said pragmatically, holding up a hand in his defense. "Could be worse."
"Just as long as you don't cause any more injuries in the process," she said with a huff. "I don't think I can take any more."
Abby couldn't help but feel a little silly laughing at Egon, Ray, and Peter later that evening. Peter was pulling on Ray's ears after he refused to tell Peter something. She didn't know what it was, but he seemed awfully embarrassed by it and wouldn't look anyone in the face. She was relieved when Janine came up with pizza. She was starving. She had wondered about going and grabbing something to eat herself. Though she wondered if any of the bills in her wallet were from any further back than 1996.
But her hands were warmer, so that was something.
Her heart was a bit warmer too, as she was enjoying the company. She had felt guilty about that automatically. She didn't know any of these men personally, except what little they had shown her. She trusted them, somehow.
Or maybe she trusted the logo and what they did.
Peter came up beside her, carrying a slice of pepperoni pizza.
"So are Ray and Egon getting anything figured out?"
"I don't– I'm not sure," sighed Abby. "They've ran every test they can think of to test a theory, but I think the fact that I'm breathing and I have a pulse sort of throws those off-balance."
"So they're still going with the undead theory."
"Oh yes, I am Schrödinger's Cat," said Abby sarcastically.
"Well, if there are many realities, which thank you for absolutely proving this is true, it is very likely that you could be dead and alive at the same time."
"Technically I am," said Abby, picking at a slice of pizza. "I'm dead and gone in my own universe, and I'm alive in this one."
"I wonder what brought you to this universe," said Egon. "This must be a reason."
"Maybe I was just looking for a friendly face," said Abby with a shrug.
"Well, you're the prettiest ghost I've ever seen," said Peter. He held up an arm in triumph at Abby's surprised face.
"Yes! I can still get any woman to blush! You're a hard nut to crack, girl."
"You can hit him if you'd like," said Janine, shaking her head in her seat next to Egon. "Everyone else does."
"How do you put up with him?" said Abby, fanning her cheeks.
"I send them out to bust ghosts," the redhead smirked. "Plus, Peter's hardly ever here unless he's working, so that helps."
"Guess he must be working then."
"Everyone's here and busy," said Janine. She looked at Ray when she caught him staring. She pointed over to their intern Rookie who was in the middle of a book and munching on a slice of pizza. "Having portals open in New York is something that the city has us on the books for keeping under wraps."
Abby frowned at that, wondering if there was anything she could do to prevent them. When she heard a beeping, she almost wanted to snap at Ray or Egon for scanning her again with what she had found out was a Giga meter. If she ever made it back to Holtzmann, she was so making her one to go along with their PKE one.
"What about the ghosts that came through the portal earlier?" Abby asked Janine. She shrugged.
"They'll show up eventually."
"What if something really–"
"Don't worry your head about it," said Janine. "Like I said, they'll eventually turn up."
"Everybody keeps telling me not to worry when it's all that I can think about," sighed Abby.
"They'll take care of things," the secretary said. "Honestly… they really want to. Do you know how excited they are? Yeah, they just finished a big bust. The mayor was possessed by the ghost of a man– pretty nasty fella– who tried to become a god and failed. That's typical for us. You don't know how many gods and demigods we've had to deal with. But you're human and a fellow Ghostbuster. And they're frankly, quite giddy."
"Maybe their giddiness can turn into a way for me to go home," said Abby. "Theoretically I could travel through a portal again, but the infinite number of universes out there I go could through till I found my own are just…"
"And we don't even have any ships that look like the Enterprise you could travel in," said Janine. Abby wanted to laugh.
"Original or new?"
"Original for me. Kirk was a cutie patootie."
"Think Egon would make a good Spock?"
"Oh, no question," said Janine. "And Ray is Bones, hands down."
Abby laughed at that, and smiled at Janine.
"You'd like a good Uhura."
"On the ghost ship Enterprise," said the secretary. "You want anything doll? I know you've got to be tired after putting up with them all day."
Abby started to tell Janine that she really needed to go look for a coat, but stopped.
"There wouldn't happen to be by chance a spare radio around here?"
