I'm gonna update this before I forget it again. All who reviewed are wonderful, lovely, beautiful people and you all deserve medals for making me so happy with your lovely comments!

Chapter 4

"You either sink or swim so you have to mature otherwise you'll regress and not get along with everyone anymore."

Gerard Way (My Chemical Romance)

'Surprised to see me, kid?' Beka's 'psycho ex-boyfriend' smiled sadly at him. He had changed a lot since Harper had last seen him; the parts of him that had been replaced by machine when the landmine had blown him apart were once again human body parts, and his dataport was gone. He was still tall and broad-shouldered, with tough features and thick brown hair. He was everything that Harper wasn't. Perhaps that was why the engineer had disliked him so much, or maybe it had something to do with the fact that the guy had repeatedly tried to kill him.

'Uh… yeah, Bobby.' Harper realised what he had been doing and if he had been alive he would have blushed furiously. 'Um… look… I wasn't… I mean, with Beka and all…' his voice trailed away into nothingness.

'I understand. It's so much easier to get close to people when they don't know you're there.' He turned back to look at Beka with an anguished expression. Harper didn't know what to say.

'Well… I mean… I gotta say, you're the last person I thought I was going to see,' Harper said honestly, unable to disguise the relief in his voice. At least now he had someone to talk to. Then he remembered that this was, after all, Bobby Jensen, the guy who had lied to him, kept Beka away and had ultimately made his life hell, and his heart hardened. He looked at the ghost in front of him. Gone were the arrogance, the self-confidence and the righteousness. All that was left was a sad dead guy who got his kicks out of looking at naked ex-crewmembers. Sound familiar? Harper's troubled mind broke in nastily. 'What are you doing here anyway?'

'Same thing as you, Seamus…'

'Harper,' Harper interrupted instinctively.

'Same thing as you, Harper, I'm just hanging around wondering why I'm here and when I'll get to move on. I might ask the same thing of you, or do you usually spend your time watching my girlfriend take a shower?' He winced. 'Ex-girlfriend.'

'Yeah, but, what I meant was, how'd you manage to get away from the Reaper?' Harper pestered him desperately. He needed to know that he had done the right thing.

'Reaper?' Bobby frowned. 'I don't remember a Reaper. I think He only comes when it's your time to move on, when you don't have any unfinished business left.' Oh crap, Harper thought. It seemed that he hadn't done the right thing. However, Bobby was looking at him with a sudden interest. 'So… you met Death, then? Wow, that's heavy. What was He like?'

'Uh, kinda gullible,' Harper replied distractedly. 'So what happened to you then? I mean, the last time I saw you there wasn't a whole lot of you left.' It was true. He had joined Beka, if against her will, when she had received a message that Bobby had died and was asked to identify the body. However, once again he had lied to the tough blonde Captain, and despite stepping on a landmine was still very much alive, albeit minus a few limbs and vital organs. He had locked Dylan, Beka and Harper up as hostages and tried to take over the Andromeda. Beka had made a quick decision when Dylan's life was in danger and sent about 60,000 volts of pure electricity coursing through her ex's mechanical body. Harper had thought that he would never have to face Bobby Jensen again. It seemed he was wrong.

Bobby shrugged. 'I guess machines don't have ghosts. You can't see it yourself, but your dataport is gone as well.'

'Huh?' Harper lifted a protective hand to his neck, but of course could feel nothing. He looked in the mirror only to find that he had no reflection. It was strange because he would never have to use it again, but he had felt that the little port had become a part of him. Bobby looked at him sympathetically, then with open curiosity.

'So, kid, how did you bite the dust then? Overdose on that Spiky Cola or whatever it was that you drank?'

Harper bristled at the remark, but before he could reply he heard the whisper of air being pushed aside by the blade, felt the cold metal biting into his neck once again. He shuddered and closed his eyes, trying to get rid of the image. He saw a misted view of Bobby's impatiently waiting face through his transparent skin.

'You know,' he almost spat the words out as if they were leaving a nasty taste in his mouth. 'You really are an insensitive bastard.'

Bobby blinked at him, then grinned in what Harper thought was a rather stupid manner. 'Haha, very funny, Seamus. You mean you are actually offended by me? Come on, tell, you know you want…'

'I got my freakin' head sliced off, OK? Are you happy now, or would you like more detail? Maybe you want to know how it feels to go through hell to survive life in a human ghetto and being infested with Magog eggs, just to have it all end with being… executed… by my least favourite person in the universe, without even a fight. Is that what you want?' If he had needed to breathe, Harper would have been gasping for air by now.

Bobby stared at him for a split second, then lifted a hand to smack Harper round the back of the head like he would have done in the good old days. He suddenly remembered that he would never be able to hit Harper ever again, and the hand fell back to his side like a dead fish.

'Yeah,' he sighed, and Harper was shocked and slightly uncomfortable to see that the big guy was crying. 'I know what you mean. You know, all the time when I was helping the Mugani, even when I was being blown apart by that landmine, all I could think of was her; her lips the way she smelled first thing in the morning, the feeling of her hair on my skin. When they were stitching me back together, all I could remember was the way she rejected me, mostly thanks to you and your incessant inability to keep your fat mouth shut…' he glared hatefully at Harper through his tears, then collapsed back into self-pity mode. 'You know, kid, they say that it's better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all. That's not true. I would rather I had never met her than to go through what I went through when she chucked me off the Maru. When I met her again, I thought it was my second chance…'

'And you showed your undying love for her by taking her hostage, trying to take over her ship and trying to kill her captain,' Harper muttered, unable to resist. Bobby ignored him, too absorbed in his own thoughts.

'Anyway, I was wrong on that front. We don't get second chances, kid, we just wander around making false interpretations out of meaningless things, and then the universe's last cruel joke is to kill us after we've spent our whole lives surviving.' Harper had often thought the same thing himself, but when Bobby said it, it was just so damn depressing. He needed to say something to comfort the guy, something which he had thought he would never want to do. If Bobby weren't already dead, he'd be drowning in his own self-pity.

'She never stopped loving you, you know? She only killed you because you were trying to kill Dylan, and because you had already lied to her and hurt her. It hurt her so much, what she did to you,' Harper said, crossing his ghostly fingers. Amazingly, Bobby seemed to be buying all this girly-magazine bullshit; in fact he was smiling so much he seemed to be bursting in happiness. Now that Harper looked at him closely, Bobby seemed to be growing fainter, breaking up.

'Thank you, Harper. I always knew it, I just needed to be told.' Harper frowned, then realised what was happening. He leapt forward, trying to grab Bobby's slowly disintegrating shoulders. His hands met no resistance; Bobby could have been made from thin air. At least, that was what he was turning into.

'Oh no, don't you dare go getting all fulfilled on me. You still have unfinished business! You gotta help me get out of this dump! Bobby! Bobby?' It was too late; the ghost of Bobby was gone, leaving Harper yelling at nothing. 'Crap!' he snapped crossly. He was alone again. He was about to start ranting and raving when he was interrupted by a tiny sound from behind him.