12.

When he woke up he wasn't certain if he was truly in hell or not, unless you see being in a hospital room like being in hell that is. For him, it was exactly that, but at least he was in an ordinary hospital and not a mental institution, now that was truly a hell to be inside especially when you are probably the sanest one inside.

Either way, he woke up and found himself in a quiet hospital room with Scott resting on the chair next to the bed. He sighed slight amusement, knowing that if Scott was here then the rest of his family wasn't far away. That reunion was definitely not going to be bitter sweet like one would hope, he thought to himself as he sat up in his bed and no removing his gaze away from his sleeping older brother. Then he reached out his right arm and gently brushed Scott's brown hair. It was rare moments like this he could let down his guard and simply be the kid, who used to admire and look up to his older brothers like they were heroes, since he couldn't normally be as close to his family due to his gift of a curse. So he treasured the moment while he still had it and also meanwhile the rest of his family wasn't around or aware of him being awake to worry and interrogate him for what happen.

The previous events that led to this point came back to him and how he ended up in the hospital in the first place. A ghost had been ordered by that Hood guy to push him out the window. Fantastic, he thought to himself. His thought kept going on haywire about the situation at hand regarding pretty much everything. The ghosts, the Shadowlands and the Hood and how in the world he was suppose to fix it. In honest opinion, he had absolutely no clue. Normally his issues involved ghosts and spirits, not a psychopathic bald guy trying to control them for his own malevolent goals whatever those were. He sighed once again and attempted run a frustrated hand through his hair when he felt the slight pain in his forearm. Lowering the arm to take a closer look, he noticed that it was bandaged with a tube attached to it. Must have been where his main injury were he guessed, though he couldn't confirm due to his current position and also due to lack of having a mirror in the room. However he was pretty sure that he probably looked like a mess with cuts and traces of blood on his face. His assumption was confirmed when his hospital door was opened up and in entered his dad. The patriarch of the Tracy family was partly surprised to find him awake, but what really surprised him was his appearance.

"Dad…" His voice was croaked, but it managed to express his surprise and disappointment in himself. It took a minute for his dad to snap out of the shock and shook his head before he said relieved, "Alan, I'm glad that you are awake and okay."

There was a deeper meaning behind his words; Alan didn't have to read too much into it to know what either. His dad was glad that he wasn't dead, believing that this was another attempt to take away his life or something, but his dad was way off in that assumption and also he was pretty much anything but okay at the moment. Anyways he closed his eyes and sighed for a moment, knowing that there was no way he was going to be able to talk himself out of this problem, so he might as well face it now that he was currently tied to a hospital bed and unable to escape.

"We are going to have the talk, aren't we?" It was more of a statement than a question. Both of them knew what the conversation was about, even without saying it out loud, but his dad looked more or less reluctant to do it considering they were in the hospital. However Alan wasn't going to wait around and wanted just get over with it and move on so that he could deal with other things. His dad must have realized this when he clenched the bridge of his nose for a moment before he said, "Let's wake up your brother, and then we will talk."


If there was one thing Tin-Tin learned by staying at the waiting room in the hospital was that the Tracy family apparently was regular visitors and that they were always the ones who caused a ruckus once things seemed to have calmed down. She, Fermat, Scott, Virgil, Gordon and surprisingly enough John, who came back down just a few hours ago, were sitting in complete and awkward silence until they heard shouting coming from Alan's room. The Tracy brothers as well as Fermat looked uncomfortable and groaned in annoyance, but not surprised about the yelling. None of them was doing anything to prevent or stop the yelling, which she found even more odd, so when shouting stopped for a moment and a thump sound came from the wall like someone had thrown an object to the wall, her patience had finally run out.

"Okay, that's it," Tin-Tin rose up from her seat and glared at the five men, who were sitting next to each other and looked honestly shocked by her sudden outburst. "I'm tired to be kept in the dark about this. You are going to tell me exactly is going on with you guys and Alan and why in the world the relationship between you is so bad. And don't dare try and brush it off or lie to me because I seriously am not in the mood."
The four brothers looked between one another, silently asking whether they should tell her or not, until John turned to face her and said dejected, "Our relationship with him haven't always been strained like this. We used to be very close when we grew up, with Alan admiring and wanting to be like us. However because of us being away a lot for school as well as working for Tracy Enterprises as well as International Rescue, Alan was someway or another left behind a lot. We didn't realize it at the time, but our baby brother had grown distant and more prone to deal with things on his own than asking for anything. But still kept on being the same daydreamer and trouble magnet he always had been growing up. The only thing that seemed to make us slightly concerned was the fact that he would stare into space and sometimes talk to the air, but we shrugged it off as Alan having an overactive imagination or something."

Tin-Tin realized it was exact the same as she had seen him before he ran off and fell out a window. Was this because of his schizophrenia?

John had paused in explanation, smiled slight by that last comment. Then he looked at the door to Alan's room and between his brothers in order to make sure that his dad walked in on the conversation or that one of his brothers didn't feel comfortable enough to continue, but when neither of those things happened he exhaled a tired breath and continued, "Things changed drastically when Alan was around fifteen-sixteen. I don't remember the details, but Alan…he…tried to kill himself."

Tin-Tin was shocked to hear about it. She couldn't believe what she was hearing. The young man she had been walking around with carried himself with the same stubbornness and pride like his brothers, even though he seemed burden by something that could be anything, but still nothing about him showed that he was suicidal.

It was then Scott stood up, tired to listen to anymore of the story, but what he most of all expressed was his exasperation and called out, "It's true, we found him the same you two found him. On the ground, bloody and unconscious, while his left wrist were sliced and was bleeding in great speed. We almost lost him that day; it was thanks to a miracle that he was still alive long enough to get him stabilized. However at that point we finally learned the truth that Alan wasn't doing good as we believed and then before we knew it he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia."

She was sure how to handle all of these emotions that was coursing through her. She had at first only believed that Alan was miserable, but seeing Scott and the others so distraught like this made her realized that they too were miserable with how things turned out to be.

"Thinking that we couldn't help him as much as we wanted to after trying to help him, so we sent him to a mental institution, believing they could help him deal with it and be stabilized enough to live in the real world," John said calmer, but his voice still sounded sad and distraught about everything. "When we told Alan…well, he wasn't receptive to idea and was more or less furious and betrayed about the whole thing. After that Alan shut us almost completely out of his life, though he managed to bring us back whenever he got arrested or ended up in a hospital somewhere, and continue doing so as you have seen up till now. Regardless our relationship with him will continue to be estranged until he makes the first move, seeing as nothing we have done before have done us any good. However he wouldn't do it and we can't blame him for it either since we haven't done much to make him forgive us."

Something was missing from the story. It didn't add up with Alan's personality and those actions she have seen from him. Alan was hiding something from everyone including her and the only person who seemed to know was Fermat, but he wouldn't talk to her or the Tracys about it since he didn't want to betray his best friend's trust. In other words she would have to search for the answers to her questions on her own by taking a chance to talk to Alan first. Just as she had reached a solution, Mr. Tracy stepped out of Alan's room with an exhausted and dejected expression on his face similar to the expressions on his older sons. No one had realized that the shouting had stopped, but that was just a thought to the wind since everyone wanted to know how things were going with Alan.

"Visiting hours are over, but I promised him that we would be back in the morning," Mr. Tracy said, though he seemed pretty reluctant to leave as they all were. "He is fine, quite lively as I'm sure you all heard."

Everyone nodded uncomfortably, knowing that it was no use trying to deny the truth as obvious as it was. So they all stood up from their seats, checking in and saying their goodbyes to Alan before the whole bunch went back to the island, not realizing the dangers that were coming their way.


Over the course of time, Alan had learned the ability to be observant as well cautious, at least to some extent. Meru and Yoru had shown up after his family, Fermat and Tin-Tin had left the hospital, apologizing for how their tactless actions that led him to this point. Honestly, he didn't blame them since he was the one who was responsible, but he allowed them to make it up to him when he asked them to stay in his room and stay guard for any suspicious people around or trying to enter his room because he wasn't going to take the chance that the Hood was going to leave him be after what he did before. And his two spirits companions did it without hesitation or second thought, leaving him to try and get some sleep while he still could since there was only a matter of time before something were bound to happen and drag him back to the ghost business.

He wasn't sure how long he had been asleep, but he felt the tension in the room shift and the lightness that both Yoru and Meru had in their presence were easily overpowered. Then he heard the creak of a door opening, his hospital room door to be exact, and everything about sleep was easily forgotten. Alan was this time prepared for what to come next. Footsteps approached his bed and before there was a moment to reconsider the plan his unwelcome visitor attacked.

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Thanks again for the amazing response I have been receiving, hope you guys like this chapter.

Once again, since school is starting right now, I can't promise how much writing time I'm going to have, but I will try continue updating this story on Mondays every week. If I can't then you guys know that I'm busy with school and other things. However don't stop loving and support this story, I really appreciate your love and support.

I'm trying to tie the story, because I have plans not to continue writing this story to fifty chapters or something. But rest assured that I'm not going to be done with the story anytime soon.

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