AN: Can anyone say 'Deus Ex Machina'?

Oh, and a note to Mackie- Yeah, I did steal Aiden's last name. I wasn't actually trying to make a connection, but I just really like the name 'Teague'. Blood and Chocolate is an amazing book, too! 

Pain is relative. It varies, depending on type, degree, situation, time… A person can handle extraordinary amounts of pain simply by adjusting the degree of adrenaline to fit the situation.

That being said, I'd just like to submit the opinion that being shot, as in actually shot in the chest, is the singularly most painful experience I have ever had. When that pain hit me… there are no words. I remember the sensation of falling, of crumbling to the ground as if my entire body had been transformed into thousands of bits of confetti scattering all at once. I remember being trapped inside myself, wrapped in my agony, a blind animal caught in the undertow. I remember opening my eyes and seeing, or not seeing, or imagining I saw, Reid's face. I remember dying.

There, then. That's the crux, the vertex, the eye of the storm. Death. My scrape of a slide into alive-no-more.

Or did I die? Am I, this bodiless emoticon, dead? Am I a ghost? Curiously unafraid now, I opened my eyes and looked around. There, there, I lay alone. Singular. I saw my body as a mass of flesh and bone, not endowed with spirit or life or dimension. I saw my blood as a scientist views data on a slide, or as a pathologist studies the next wound in the latest corpse. It wasn't something I was connected to.

I sat up, touching my chest. No gaping hole. No bloodsoaked shirt. Behind me, I left my body. I should have been sickened. Terrified. Instead, I rose to stand over myself, looking to the room.

Reid was sitting against the far wall, his head lowered. I thought for a moment that he was asleep, but then I saw the way he rocked back and forth ever-so-slightly, his hair falling in front of his face. I went to him, falling to my knees and reaching out. My fingers brushed through his hair, ghosting across his skin like silk on marble. He didn't look up, and I understood that he could not feel me. I, however, felt him with perfect clarity. The softness of his bangs, the smooth warmth of his forehead, the perfect top rim of his ear.

"Hey," I said aloud, ignoring my common sense. As I'd thought, he couldn't hear me, either. I tried to tip his chin up to see his face, but nothing happened. My fingers didn't slip through his body like I'd expected. Instead, they seemed to almost slide off his face, as if my hand and his chin were two magnets rejecting each other. So I could touch, but I couldn't affect. As each new fact about my new situation occurred to me, part of my brain muttered that I probably should be getting pretty freaked out about all this. I didn't. It just didn't seem to matter the same way I thought it should have. Like I was considering things on a different plane than I had before.

Because I couldn't move him, I bent my own head to look at Reid. His eyes were shut, his mouth a still line. His nostrils flared with some emotion, and his lids squeezed tighter.

"Kat," he murmured. "Ah, Kat." I felt energy course through me as he said my name, and my incorporeal head bent forward of its own volition. My phantom lips pressed briefly against Reid's, a kiss born of a strange kind of joy that beat back my mental turmoil. I wanted to kiss him, and I didn't want to kiss him, and I wanted him to know it. I now knew what it was to be, the sweetest thing, remembered. It gave me power, hearing my name on the lips of the living. Reid started, his mouth opening with surprise. I fell back, shocked. Had he felt me? Hope filled me.

"Reid. Reid! I'm here."

"Oh God," he sighed. "Fuck it. I gotta… I gotta figure this out."

"I'm here," I said again, feeling the first twinges of a different pain.

"I'll kill her," Reid muttered gutturally, rising to his feet. "I'll kill her, and Caleb 'n the others, they'll get me the hell out of here. But that bitch is not leaving here alive." When he took a step forward, I yelped and stumbled to catch my balance as I was repelled away from him like I'd been when I tried to tilt his chin.

"No! Reid, no!" Helpless, confined, I watched as he strode to where Mary lay against the wall, motionless.

"Do you think she's dead?"

Mary's voice made me jump, and Reid snarled. He leaned down, grabbed her by the collar, and lifted her in one quick move.

"You killed her!"

"Did I?" Hand shaking, he flung an arm out to point to my body. Accusation beat through his veins. I could taste it on the air I didn't breathe.

"I'll tell you a secret," Mary said quietly.

"I don't want to know your fucking se-"

"She's not dead."

"-cret!" Then, Reid fell silent as her words sank in. I walked up behind him, staring at the witch.

"Well, she died, that's true. But I hardly expected that to happen. And frankly, I'm surprised she's still dead."

"What?"

"Yeah," I agreed, the sedateness of my mental state giving way to confusion. Sure, emotions didn't seem to mean the same things they had before, but this woman was saying I might not stay in this phantom-life for long. "What?"

"Well, why didn't you heal her? You have the power. It doesn't matter to me either way; I'll still win. But you could make the last few hours a lot more bearable." She had the audacity to shrug.

"Heal her? If I could heal her, would she be lying there- all-" He broke off.

"Her spirit's still here, boy," Mary said, sounding annoyed at his slowness, but not at all put out by the fact that he had apparently knocked her out more than once. "Call it back. Bring her back to life."

"I can't! And why are you helping me?!"

"I'm not. I'm helping me. Despite the fact that, should I die, both of you will be incinerated and I will be replaced by another member of my coven, I'd rather not. You're less likely to kill me if you aren't running on vengeance. So bring her back, moron."

"You shot the girl I- You shot Kat. You imprisoned us both. You're gonna kill us in the morning. Now you think insulting me is a good idea?" Mary didn't blink. I could see the struggle on Reid's face: he wanted, so badly, to hurt her… but he wanted to save me, too. Finally, he bit his lip.

"How?"

I felt a rush. He would do it. He would bring me back. I remembered kissing him at Nicky's, and the confusion and hurt it had brought me. Then, I remembered kissing him for the second time when only I knew I was doing it, and the feelings of anger and uncertainty faded away. It had taken dying to pound it through my skull, but I had to admit it to myself: I liked him. Really liked him.

"Call back her spirit. Put it back inside her corpse. There's still time."

"If you're lying to me," Reid started carefully, "I-"

"Spare me," Mary said dryly. I frowned. She wasn't afraid of him in the least. Why was that? Why wasn't she afraid?

Reid dropped her, stalking over to where my body lay. I went to stand across from him, gnawing on my lower lip. Come on, Magic Boy. Please. Please let this work.

"Kat," he whispered. I felt the power in me rise to meet the power in him. "Kat, are you there?"

"I'm here," I answered, pushing at the veil between us. "I'm here!"

"Live. Come on. Live."

"I'm trying," I breathed, pressing my hand against my still heart. "Help me!"

"Give her something," Mary called. "Give her something to come back for."

I felt a whirl of feeling, the emotion that had seemed so numb and deadened when I first rose from my fleshy grave. My spirit seemed to spin in place, sending tingles through my ghostly stomach.

"Please," Reid tried. "Live. Live for me. I need you to live, Kat." My hand, down against the bloodied chest of my lifeless body, warmed.

"It's too hard," I gasped, closing my eyes. I felt as if all my particles were about to fly apart and dissipate into oxygen.

"Kat," he said again. "Kat, Kat, can you hear me?" With each time he said my name, I felt stronger. More real.

"Help me," I whispered into his ear, and he jerked his head around.

"Kat?"

"Help me."

"I can feel you," he breathed, dropping to his knees and placing both his hands on my corporeal belly. I wrapped my arms around him and held on tight, despite the force of death trying to push me away from his vibrancy.

"Bring me back," I begged, feeling heat spiral down my spine.

"You're everywhere," he cried, throwing his head back and letting out a hoarse, wild laugh. "I feel you, Kat! I hear you! Live, Kat! I need you," he choked, and I gasped. My arms were torn from around his neck, my body thrown backwards and down. I screamed as my being flew into a thousand pieces and slammed back together in a wild, uncontrollable explosion of gravity.

Slowly, painfully, a heavy weight settled on me. I moaned, my entire body aching. My eyelids were like iron seals over my vision. I struggled to raise them, lift them up and away.

Breathless, I sat up with a wincing catch in my ribs. Reid knelt there, speechless, staring. I looked down at my chest, saw blood and fabric and skin. Reaching up in an almost surreally slow motion, I touched the place where the bullet had hit me.

Nothing but scar tissue.

"I'm alive," I said, and saw him hear me.

"Oh my god," Reid let out, the words spilling from his lips like water.

I took him in my arms and held him like a child, his head against my breast as he breathed me in. His grip on me was like steel, belying the way I cradled him.

"Well," a weary voice said from the far wall. "Isn't that sweet?"

And it all came crashing down.