Number 12 House Street. The twelfth house on House Street, sitting at the very end of the cul-de-sac.
It was an idyllic place, with neatly trimmed grass and blossoming roses lining the paved path leading to the front door, a sturdy oak with a golden '12' boldly emblazoned above its equally golden knocker. The windows were crystal clean and built to last against cold and physical assault.
There were a number of green, yellow and darker green bushes that lined the edges of the grass in a square shape around the front garden. A small guinnel at the side of the house led to the back garden, with a concrete area with a long neglected fire-dust BBQ grill resting near the house, the centre of the concrete section dominated by a wooden table stained with the circles from long drunk drinks.
Beyond the concrete bit was a smaller green area and a small wooden shed, filled with old toys and abandoned furniture. Its windows were broken and the door hung off of its hinges, with empty beer bottles and cans littering the mess of a long forgotten family's memories.
The house itself was a brown-red colour from the bricks with grey concrete forming a line pattern across the house. The roof was fully tiled and the chimney was home to a cluster of nesting robins.
It was a beautiful home, in need of a few touch ups here and there but more than worth the price it was being sold at, just a meagre one hundred and eighty-seven thousand Lien. The house had been abandoned ever since its last owners had tragically died, though that had been many years ago and the house had been thoroughly cleaned of any of their traces.
Or so it's real estate agent thought…
"TV still not working?" Yang asked, lounging on the sofa and staring at the ceiling. She heard a few more grunts and thuds before her only companion in what was apparently purgatory gave up with a sigh.
"Nope." Jaune sighed, plodding over to her. She left her legs to give him some space to sit down at the end of the sofa. "Thanks."
With that he plopped down next to her feet, slumping back with another disheartening sigh. Yang rolled her eyes.
"Dude." She said, lowering her eyes to stare at him. "How many more times do we have to have this talk? You're literally the only other person here, so is it too much to ask if you don't kill the mood by being all whiny."
"Sooorry!" Jaune protested, raising his hands in mock surrender. "It's not as if I wasn't murdered or anything and now I'm stuck in a house that isn't mine with only a-"
"Only a what Jauney boy?" Yang interrupted, a warning smile on her face as she leaned up from the sofa so she could glare at him at eye-level.
"A lovely, beautiful, charming, hilarious woman?" Jaune finished, eyeing her wearily and speaking with the practised ease of someone used to upsetting women. Probably those sisters he kept on talking about.
Sisters…
"Damn right." Yang retorted, thought it was thoroughly devoid of all emotion and she slumped back onto the sofa, staring once again at the bland ceiling.
She missed Ruby.
Jaune stood up suddenly.
"If we're still stuck here then it's because we're bound by our mortal coils! Something, some regret or something like that, is keeping us stuck here when we should be moving on to whatever is after life."
"What if this is the afterlife Jaune?" Yang retorted, playing devil's advocate and more than willing to be proven wrong. The thought of having to spend the rest of eternity stuck in the house she was murdered in with the Jaune, a stranger and goofball to boot, wasn't a very attractive prospect.
"If this was the afterlife then why is it just the two of us here?" Jaune replied, and Yang shrugged, conceding the point. "Why are we just stuck in this house alone? Why can we still interact with things? Yang-we're pretty much ghosts."
"Heh." Yang snorted. "I've always wanted to be a ghost."
"Wait really?" Jaune asked, and Yang nodded, eyes still not leaving the ceiling.
"Yeah. I always thought I could prank…prank my old man and Ruby, my little sister. Maybe even Drunkle Qrow whenever he visited." She told him. Normally she would not have been so open, least of all to a stranger and dork like Jaune, but the fact they'd already been stuck there for months already had lessened her barriers and she recognised she didn't really need them anymore. The only person she could interact with anymore was Jaune, and it wasn't like he'd be going anywhere or telling anyone else what she told him.
"That's…That's weird." Jaune said quietly, though he quickly shook his hands when she gave him an affronted look. "Not the whole wanting to be a ghost thing. It's just that I always wanted to be a ghost too, for the same reasons as well. I'm kinda clumsy, so I was never ever really able to prank my sisters back without it backfiring on me in some way."
Yang perked up, realising the point he was getting at.
"You think that is what's keeping us bound here? We want to haunt our families?" Yang asked excitedly and Jaune just shrugged.
"It makes the most sense. It's the only thing we have in common, apart from us both being blonde and murdered by the same asshole." Jaune answered, and Yang grinned at him teasingly.
"I can't believe you thought I was your sister." She teased, tossing a pillow at his face. He rolled his eyes as it poofed through him, his form quickly reshaping. "By the way aren't you supposed to at least save the girl when pulling the whole 'white knight' routine?"
"If you did survive then I would just be haunting you." Jaune grumbled, picking the pillow back up and launching it back at the sofa, causing her torso to dissolve as it landed through her before her body reshaped itself instinctively. Yang shrugged, both at his words and actions. Turnabout was a fair play afterall.
"That would be pretty cool actually." Yang said, moving so that she was sitting up and stretching her arms, even though she had no bones or muscles to stretch. Just air bound together in her shape or something. "You'd be harmless as a ghost and it would be pretty cool if I was haunted. At least I'd, you know, still be alive."
"I tried, okay?" Jaune retorted heatedly, and Yang realised she had misjudged his mood and pushed too far. "If reincarnation is real then the next time a girl is being dragged away to some creepy house I'd just let the guy with the axe do that."
Yang winced, both at ticking off her only source of interaction and at the reminder of what had happened after Jaune had failed to save them both. But he was also right. He'd at least tried, which was more than she could say for some of the people she'd been dragged by who had just ignored the clearly wrong situation and walked onwards.
"You're right." Yang said honestly, holding out her hands in surrender. "I'm sorry. So you think you've identified the source of what's keeping us here right? Well what do we do now? If we're ghosts already then should our dream be fulfilled?"
"Why did we want to be ghosts?" Jaune asked, and Yang cocked her head in thought for a moment before answering.
"To prank people. No, to haunt them." She replied, eyes widening with realisation.
"Correct!" Jaune exclaimed, snapping his fingers and grinning at her. "We haunt someone then we either move on or get exorcised. It's fool proof!"
"How are we supposed to haunt anyone when nobody lives here and we can't go any further than the garden?" Yang asked, shooting a hole in his idea. His face fell and he frowned as he thought.
A real estate person and some cleaners had been their only visitors in the past few months. The last living person to actually live there was the man who had killed them, and he had been shot dead by the police when trying to escape Vale-according to the news at least.
He made his way over to the window, and he stared at the red 'For Sale' sign that taunted him.
"We'll just have to wait for someone to live here." He sighed. "It won't be too long right? The house has a bad history but it's already been cleaned and spruced up. Plus people move on from stuff like that easily. There has to be that one weird family that'll choose to live here just because we were killed here."
It was twenty-three years, eight months and twelve days after the 'For Sale' sign was put up before someone moved into the house.
"See honey? I told you this was a good purchase." Sun exclaimed, arm wrapped tightly around his soon to be wife. "I mean just look at the place! You couldn't even tell a murderer used to live here!".
"I don't know Sun." Blake replied wearily, glancing around the hallway of their new home with immense suspicion and nothing but. "You could have at least told me you were going to buy a house for us. "
Sun winced at that. He had hoped she would've liked the surprise.
"Is it really that bad?" He asked pleadingly, as he definitely did not whine. "It's a steal! Less than two hundred Lien and it's close to a hospital, school and a shop, so easy access to milk and stuff."
"Sure." Blake replied dryly, stepping out of his one-armed embrace to stalk through the hallway with a distrustful glare, as if she expected the wallpaper to peel off and reveal yet more victims of the house's former owner. "I would have appreciated being able to at least provide some input over the decision to buy our new house using funds from our house saving fund."
Sun winced at that. Yeah…that probably wasn't his best move. He probably should have listened to Neptune's warnings afterall.
Well it was too late to back out now! All he had to do was convince Blake this was the right home for them and everything would be a-okay with a capital A.
Happy wife, happy life right?
…Right?
Yeah, there was no coming back from this. He screwed up big time.
Sun sighed, shoulders slumping and tail drooping. He had the oddest feeling of someone patting his shoulder, making him whirl around and frown at the nothing behind him.
"Weird." He muttered, before shrugging it off as just the wind and hurrying after Blake.
"Are you seriously supporting him?"
"What? Blondes have to stick together right? Eh, you wouldn't get it. Broes before…"
"Broes before what Jaune?"
"Nothing, dear." Jaune sighed, slumping in a similar manner to his other half, the alive blonde Faunus who seemed just as good as he was at angering their significant othe-
Nope! Not going down that road. Bad thoughts!
"You don't think it's even a little romantic?" Jaune asked Yang, who rolled her eyes at his attempt to change the conversation. "He bought her a house! And you heard him, the place is great!"
"Except it's haunted by a smoking hot me-which is definitely a problem for him since his fiancée is definitely a nine out of ten." Yang replied, and Jaune very wisely chose not to agree with the assessment, even if he did. Yang always got weird when he said anything nice about other women. Actually it was just when he said nice things about other people in general. She acted…competitive or something like that. "You're not listening to me are you?"
"No! I mean yes! I…I mean no?" Jaune stammered, before scratching his head. "What was the question?"
"Nothing, just confirming you are, in fact, an idiot." Yang scoffed, before shaking her head and repeating herself. "The house might have been cheap because of the whole us-being-murdered-here thing but she said he used their shared account. If he had bought the house using his own money then it would have been a romantic gesture. As it is, he used their money and took the decision away from her."
"Oh yeah that'll do it." Jaune replied, voice filled with a sudden clarity as he glanced at the faunus couple they were stalking through the house. He could remember his sister's getting angry-not always at him!-for doing something similar. "You're in the doghouse buddy. Or is it a cathouse? I can't really tell."
"She's definitely a cat faunus." Yang replied confidently, before her voice fell into a husky tone that made him feel conflicting emotions. "I wonder if I could make that kitty purr…"
"Yang." He said disappointedly, half-aroused by the images his mind conjured up and half-jealous of his fellow ghost's roaming eyes. "That's racist."
"I'll let kitty-cat be the judge of that." Yang retorted, before her face fell sombre. "Or at least I would if we could talk to them. Damnnit!"
With a cry of frustration Yang stormed off, leaving Jaune alone to watch the not-so-happy couple tour around their house. He sighed, knowing that something was going to break when she got into one of her moods.
She always broke something whenever she reminded herself of being stuck their with just him. He had half a mind to be offended about that, except he technically didn't have a mind since he didn't have a body.
He shrugged to stop him from overthinking and contented himself with following the couple around, hoping that whatever Yang did wasn't enough to drive them off before they could properly haunt them.
Yang was bored.
Normally that would mean she'd go bother Jaune, but with their new housemates she had a new source of entertainment to go to, so she decided to spare Jaune and go get started on haunting the faunus couple.
Except they had been right in the middle of some surprisingly kinky sex. Yang was almost impressed the monkey faunus was so flexible as the girl rode him in ways that made her feel sympathetic for his pelvis and lower back. That definitely couldn't have been comfortable, even if he sounded like he was having plenty of fun from it.
Sex. It was almost a taboo for her. Before her death she had managed to fumble her way to third base with her long since ex-boyfriend, but she had never fully scored. Then she'd been drugged and dragged off at party to be murdered.
The before-afterlife was equally pleasure-less for her. Her clothes always remained on, and she had no natural urge to do things. She wanted to do stuff, but she didn't need to and in most cases she couldn't. Hell, at this point she would eat something that Uncle Qrow cooked so long it meant she could taste again-even if whatever burnt monstrosity he gave her would inevitably kill her taste buds anyway.
So here she was, Yang Xiao-Long, professional pun teller, any sane man's dream woman and all around cool person, bawling her non-existent eyes out whilst watching a happy couple have sex because that was something she would never experience.
And she had thought getting murdered was the lowest part of her life.
"Really?"
"It's easy and simple yet effective. I don't see a problem with it."
"But it's lame!"
"It's called build-up Yang! We start off small and build up to the good stuff like turning lights on and off."
"We really need to have a discussion about how low your 'high' bar actually is."
"And that can wait. Now, do you have your feather?"
"Yes, dear." Yang sighed dramatically, waving the feather in front of his face. "What about you? We both know you would be the one to forget it."
"Nu-uh!" Jaune protested eloquently, waving his own feather back at her. "Quiet soldier! We're going behind enemy lines now!"
Yang gave him a mock salute before phasing through the wall alongside him. For some reason, the feather in their hands followed suit, and Jaune decided it would be best not to question it too much because he didn't want to break whatever allowed him to think and feel.
Jaune shook his head and floated over to the sleeping couple, gently lifting the sheets to expose their feet. He brandished his feather.
"Ready?" He asked Yang, who nodded at him determinedly.
"Hell yeah. Step one on breaking our curse!" She exclaimed, whispering even though the faunus couple couldn't hear them. Jaune nodded back to her, before brushing the feather in his hand against the sole of Sun's foot.
Then the world became a kaleidoscope of colour.
"Gah!"
"Argh!"
Sun panted as he flung the sheets off of him and stared at Blake, who gave him a wide-eyed look.
"What the-?"
"Did you-?"
They stared at one another, eyes growing wide in horror as they surveyed the dark, seemingly empty room around them.
"I…I think I made a mistake." Sun whimpered. Next to him, Blake face-palmed.
"Are you kidding me?!"
"What's wrong? We broke the curse."
"In the lamest way possible! We had to wait twenty-three years for this and it ended because we tickled someone's foot with a feather !" Yang roared, screaming her frustration at the crystal blue sky above them as she fell to her knees. "Whyyyyy?!"
Jaune just stood next to her, taking in their surroundings. They were on a road of some kind, with a thick but warm looking forest around them. He could make out the shape of a building, a restaurant of some kind, resting atop a hill not far from them.
"Yang?" He asked, breaking her from her put upon grief. "Fancy some food?"
Her eyes widened and she scrambled next to him and stared at the restaurant with wonder and joy.
"Hell yes! But first…"
With that her hands grabbed his cheeks and pulled him in for a kiss that left him stunned and stammering.
"W-W-What?!" He exclaimed, face rushing with the long lost feeling of blushing. "Why d-did you?"
"Because I love you dumbass." Yang replied, cutting him off and rolling her eyes. "I've lived with you for twenty-three years now. I know you love me too."
"I-I do." Jaune said, letting out a cry as she grabbed his hand and dragged him towards the hill.
"Well duh! Who couldn't love me?" Yang exclaimed boisterously, a pleased smile on her face. "Now let's get some grub. I'm starving."
"Yes, dear." Jaune sighed, making her roll her eyes and giggle.
She knew he was hungry too. He could tell and she could tell he could tell. It was just a consequence of living together for so long.
But deep down he knew, and he knew that she knew this and felt this too, that he wouldn't change anything if it meant not having this outcome-of being able to enjoy the afterlife with her. Even if it meant not getting murdered.
Yang was just that awesome.
She was also a mind reader apparently, because she turned around suddenly and kissed him again, favouring him with a loving smile that made him feel tingly all over.
Yup. Definitely worth it.