The Hannah apologises a million times over for not updating sooner! She is a FOOL! Here yo go, enjoy if you still remember what happened in the last chapter. : D
Chapter 3
"And you said something
You said something stupid like,
"Love steals us from loneliness."
Happy Birthday.
Are you lonely yet?"
From Love Steals Us From Loneliness by Idlewild
'Trance? Hellooo? Come on, talk to me, baby. You're the most mystical person on this ship and if you can't hear me then no one can!' Harper's attempts to talk to people had so far had a success rate of zero, but he hadn't got where he was today by giving up. He was sitting next to the golden girl on a bunk in her quarters. She was holding a framed picture of him in her hands so tightly that her knuckles were white and was crying quietly, the tears falling onto the glass. Harper probably should have been feeling sorry for her, but from his point of view she had nothing to worry about. He waved a ghostly hand in front of her face. She didn't realise.
Harper stood up impatiently. This was no good. Trance had been his last hope for contact with the living; this was the girl who saw myriad possible futures spread out in front of her like branches on a tree, and he had hoped that with her seemingly telepathic abilities she might be able to hear him. Either she was deliberately ignoring him or she couldn't hear him.
He snorted in disgust. He had come to the conclusion that being dead totally sucked: no food, no Sparky Cola, no fixing things, no one to listen to his witty repertoire. He was half-saddened, half-annoyed by the way that the crew was mourning his passing when he was still here. His gloomy thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of Beka. Harper looked up and shuddered.
Beka looked terrible. She had not been eating enough and was scarily pale, with dark shadows under her eyes. She had run out of moisture to cry with and her eyes were bloodshot and puffy, her throat hoarse from all the screaming and shouting she had done. When she walked in, it could have been because she wanted to talk to Trance or it could have simply been by accident, she looked so lost and distant. Trance quickly forgot her own grief and went over to hug Beka. The blonde girl was limp and unresponsive.
'Beka, I'm so sorry,' Trance said, her eyes filling up with tears. 'He was my friend too, and I miss him so much. At least he's at rest now; I bet he's up there somewhere right now, drinking beer and laughing at us all.'
'Huh, I wish!' Harper said, folding his arms. 'Well, you're wrong, 'cause I am so totally not at rest. I'm gonna stick around here and haunt your asses off!' To prove it, he waggled his fingers in front of Beka's face and made ghostly noises. She ignored him and leaned forward to hug Trance, walking right through Harper. The engineer stepped back, deeply annoyed.
'I know, Trance, it's just so hard to look round and not see him there any more. I keep going to sleep and forgetting that he's gone, and then I wake up and remember and…' she looked down at the floor, her limp, tangled hair obscuring her face. 'All that I can see, over and over again, is him struggling while those things held him down, and that axe coming down and…' She couldn't put it into words. The sound of Harper's screams, and the horrible way that they had been cut off when the wickedly sharp edge of the weapon hacked his head away. It had only taken a few seconds, but it would haunt her for a lifetime.
'Look, go back to your quarters,' Trance said with real concern in her voice. 'Fix yourself a drink, get a good solid meal inside you and go to bed, OK? No offence, but you look terrible.'
Beka nodded and took a deep breath and shook herself, making an effort to get control of her overwrought nerves. 'OK, I guess I'm just gonna take another shower.' She hadn't stopped washing since they had got back, as if she could still see Harper's blood in the cracks of her skin. Trance wanted to say something else to comfort her friend, but she was still in shock herself.
As Beka walked out of the room, Harper stared after her thoughtfully. He tried to remember all the films he had seen with ghosts in, and the things that they had done. He remembered something that made him smile. Perhaps it was just a sick, stalker-type thing to do, but when was he going to get a chance like this again? He followed her, walking through the door without bothering to open it first, not that he could have done anyway.
Beka peeled off her clothes, still unable to shake the feeling that they were soaked in blood, despite having got changed three times since they had got back. She tapped a control panel on the outside of the shower stall, setting the temperature so high that when she stepped in she felt as though her skin was being stripped away. A vent in the wall removed the thick water vapour rising up around her. She poured a pool of clear soap into her hand and rubbing it into her skin until it turned to a rich, creamy lather. She looked down, searching for ribbons of rust-red blood amongst the water. Of course, there were none. She had washed the last traces of blood away long ago, and she didn't know whether to be relieved or disappointed that there was nothing left on her of Harper. She closed her eyes against the salty tears that dribbled down her face anyway, washed away by the hot water, unaware that curious eyes were watching her.
Harper leaned as far up against the clear screen as he could without passing through it. In the back of his mind was a tiny voice telling him that this was a gross invasion of his boss' privacy, that he was going crazy with loneliness. He ignored it. His eyes traced the soft curves of her body hungrily, looking at her long, muscled limbs and her pained expression. He was looking for something inside of himself; he had fantasised about this opportunity for years, surely there must be some part of him that was enjoying this? Yet he looked at her and felt nothing, just a hopeless sorrow. In his fantasies she had at least known the way that he felt.
It struck him as strange that he was no longer lusting after her like he had done when he was alive. Well, looks like being dead totally kills your sex drive, he thought absurdly. He wanted to laugh, but didn't, as if he was scared she might hear him. He looked at her one last time and, like before, felt absolutely nothing.
'Yeah, it's just not the same, is it?' a voice whispered in his ear. If Harper had had any skin he would have jumped right out of it. As it was, he jerked away from the shower stall as if it had become red hot and stared at the person who had spoken to him. He was speechless for a moment, then after a few seconds managed to pluck up the energy to say one word.
'Bobby?'
