Prompt: Feel
Originally Written: 10.31.2008

"I know that ghosts have wandered on earth. Be with me always—take any form—drive me mad! Only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you!"
-Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights

Was she really dead? Everything felt so…surreal. She was still on earth, to be sure, but no one could see her and she couldn't move from the spot where she died. Wasn't she supposed to ascend to Heaven or something? In all honesty, even though she was a spirit medium she couldn't tell for sure what was really there in the afterlife. Pearl had merely assumed that there was a Heaven and a Hell. No one had told her otherwise, so she had been left to her own devices.

And now, the very notion that you could do nothing after death save for watch the world go by was incredibly depressing, even if she doubted that she could feel anything.


Un-fucking-believable.

The police who were investigating the mysterious occurrence of a girl washing up on the shore of southern Los Angeles automatically assumed it was a homicide. Sure, there was a lack of anything particularly engaging as of late, but that didn't mean they had to jump to conclusions and completely rule out suicide. There were a few sane people who had some doubts, and that included him, but they were usually drowned out by the morons.

It had been about a week into the investigation—which was turning up fruitless, of course—when interesting rumors started circulating around the precinct about locals reporting strange things happening around the crime scene; an abnormal pattern of wind, weather that was radically different from the rest of the area, and the ocean was more violent than usual. People were reading way too much into this. Weirder stuff happened before, why was this getting any special attention?

So Daryan Crescend went there by himself to disprove the belief that anything supernatural was going on, not suspecting that there was a possibility he could have been wrong.


After a week—or was it two?—of aimlessly walking around, Pearl wanted desperately to be able to talk to someone. Whenever she tried to leave the area, there was something like an invisible barrier that wouldn't let her pass. She had tried again that morning, but it was the same thing. Frowning, she merely shoved her hands inside her jean pockets and walked along the shore. Dead at the tender young age of eighteen. How lovely.

She had left Kurain to establish her own life once she was of age, with Maya's approval. Of course, she was still a spirit medium, and when a job needed to get done Maya would often call on her for help. And now that she had just started her life—her normal life, anyway—that had all been thrown away. Her memory of the incident was blurry, but she believed that she had been taking a walk when she started falling, looking up vacantly at the bridge above her. She hadn't really considered that it would be the last thing she saw with living eyes.

Pearl had been taught to embrace death, but she found herself hating it more and more every day.


She had seen many people from the police come and go, but everyone else had been barred from the crime scene. It was slightly amusing to watch the police do their work, completely oblivious of her presence. Every now and then someone would mention feeling something strange, but the rest of the team would dismiss them as looking too much into the situation. Ghosts aren't real, what are you talking about, that kind of drivel.

Taking all of this into account, she was justifiably shocked when she saw someone else coming towards her—or from their perspective, the general vicinity. He didn't look like a regular person, but he wasn't there when the police were probing around. So who was this guy? Shifting her weight to her other leg, Pearl didn't see the big issue with it anyway; even if she wanted to, there wasn't anything she could do to prevent this guy from coming here. Still, she couldn't bring herself to stop staring at his hair…If only spirits had telepathic or telekinetic powers, she'd have a field day with it.

Pearl thought all of this, but really? She was nothing more than a depressed, bored ghost who had nothing better to do.


Jesus Christ, he could not be seeing what he thought he was seeing. This had to be because of a lack of sleep or something, because there was no way this girl could be alive and kicking when he had seen her dead body, cold and certainly not breathing.

Still, here she was, staring absently at the ocean, her jacket flapping in the wind and her arms folded neatly across her small chest.

There was no mistaking that this was the same Pearl Fey that the news had reported, but…there was definitely something different about her. She looked older than eighteen. There was an almost disheartened cynicism in her eyes, if there was anything there at all. For all Daryan knew, she could've been a statue.

She looked up, the same eyes widening. Apparently, he had thought too soon.

Pearl must've sensed that he was able to see her, because she looked absolutely mortified and said very loudly, "Hey, you can see me?!"

"Wait a second, you're real?" This whole thing was confusing him way too much. There was no such thing as ghosts or spirits or whatever other fancy name you gave them. But to the best of his memory, he hadn't done any drugs or drinking in the past few days, and he wasn't particularly overworked or tired. The implausibility of it all just served to frustrate him.

Surprisingly, she grinned brightly and said, "That's…That's great! I've been here for two weeks and I saw people, but imagine what it's like not being able to talk to them or even being seen by them! I guess that's a disadvantage of being dead."

Sweet Jesus, was this girl touched in the head?

He looked away, absolutely not believing that he was talking to thin air. "You're the girl who died. Pearl Fey, right?"

Her expression changed for the briefest of moments to mild curiosity, but returned to its previous euphoric state. "Y-Yeah. Um, who are you…?"

"Tell me who you really are first, and then maybe I'll consider telling you."

Pearl frowned and chewed on a nail. "Oh…well, there's not much to say. If you want to know how I died, I can't really remember very clearly. The only thing I can remember is taking a walk on that bridge and then falling."

This was obviously going nowhere and it was getting there fast. Daryan decided to just screw the useless talk. "Look, why are you here? Revenge, or something? Did someone kill you? Why don't you leave?"

"I can't leave! Don't you think I would've done that already? I would've gone to my cousin! She can talk to spirits…As hard as it is to believe," she shouted, visibly upset. "You've heard the name Maya Fey before, right?"

"Can't say that I have. I don't see—"

"There's no point in you being here. You're probably just going to go home and forget that this ever happened, right? Because if you can't see it, it's not real. That's what most people believe, anyway, and I wouldn't be surprised if that was how you felt." Her voice had dropped to a whisper, and she was staring at the sand beneath her feet. He assessed the situation in front of him. There was such a thing as Heaven, right? So why was this girl here? Why did she have to be bound to the earth that she was allegedly supposed to leave once she was done with her business?

"I'm a detective," he said slowly, not wanting her to think that he was just some random person who happened to be able to see her. "You're the flavor of the week at the precinct."

Pearl looked surprised at this, which meant that they were essentially in the same boat. "Really?"

"They think someone killed you." It felt too weird trying to talk to a dead person, even if he was able to carry out an otherwise normal conversation with her. There was no way people would think he had any credibility if he claimed to have talked to the victim after she died.

"What? Are you serious? I don't remember how I died, but I know that no one killed me!" She looked understandably frustrated, her arms folded across her chest again. He wondered just how difficult it must have been for her to stay here without being able to talk to anyone. Just the idea of that happening to himself was disconcerting, to say the least.

He sighed and looked at her straight in the eye and noticed that she looked vaguely familiar, like a face he had seen in the newspapers before she died. "You're saying that your cousin can help you out with this?" he asked, having nothing else to talk to her about.

Pearl nodded, then added as an afterthought, "You…don't believe in Heaven or anything like that, do you?"

Raising an eyebrow, Daryan didn't see how that had to do with anything. "Why does it matter?"

"Well, typically, people who do believe in something like that can't see spirits. It's usually the skeptics who are able to see them. My cousin's an exception, of course, but it doesn't actually matter, but I thought I'd point that out."

"Right, right." There was an awkward silence before he announced his departure, and he couldn't deny having seen the dejectedness in her eyes again.


"I don't think I can help you, Detective. Even if she was bound to the earth, there's no way I could actually talk to her without channeling. And she has to have gone to whatever afterlife in order for me to do that. So…if you're really able to see and talk to her, you need to tell her that for me. And tell her that I miss her, too.

Oh, this was just great. What was he supposed to do now? The one request Pearl had given him, he wasn't able to go through with. Angrily slamming the phone down onto its receiver, he realized that he was a lot more stressed than he thought he was. This was completely unnecessary; he wasn't obligated to do anything for her, and yet he felt compelled to. And why? Was it because she was dead? He didn't even know for sure if that encounter hadn't been a dream or a hallucination. It went against everything he had ever been taught, everything he believed in. Daryan wasn't sure if he even wanted to believe what had happened. Maybe that was the only reason he was doubting it at all.

People saw how disturbed he was, but they mostly left him to his own business. Klavier was really the only one who actually brought the subject up.

"You're very out of your element lately, Daryan. It can't be because of the girl who died, is it?" he asked after leaving the courthouse the day after the phone call to Maya Fey. Even though he was involved exclusively in International Affairs, this case was so enigmatic and unbending that they even had to enlist his help.

"You heard about that too, huh?" he said tiredly, having mulled over this far too much.

Klavier didn't look right either, indicated by the nervous darting of his eyes. "Not a single person knows what happened. It very well could've been a suicide, it could've been a homicide—especially with the time of death—but it appears as though no one will ever really know. Even I can't figure anything out for this one." He shrugged his shoulders slowly, staring at the cloudy sky. A few drops of rain started to come down. "It's sad that things like this happen, but I suppose they're part of life. Unless we finally figure out a way to talk to the dead, this case is better off closed."


Even though she had asked him to contact Maya for her, Pearl had deeply doubted that he'd ever come back. Coming to grips with the fact that she'd be here for the rest of eternity wasn't easy, and she still couldn't completely wrap her head around the concept. Honestly, it'd be so much easier if she had someone there with her, even if they just came by every now and then. It would make the days that much more bearable.

When he did come back, she was beyond thrilled. She hadn't noticed him at first, mostly because she was too busy feeling sorry for herself and staring off into space, but minutes passed and he impatiently cleared his throat to grab her attention.

She put an awkward hand up in greeting and said, "Hey."

"Um, hi."

"Did you—?"

He folded his arms across his chest and looked irritated. He was hard to read, and Pearl thought of herself as perceptive in comparison to the rest of her family and friends. "Yeah, I called that cousin of yours, and she said that there wasn't anything she could do. You didn't go to the afterlife, and that pretty much means she can't talk to you."

Well, then. Crushed was the only accurate word that could possibly describe what she was feeling. But that…that couldn't have been right. Maya was a spirit medium, the master of Kurain and the head of the Fey family, no less! How in the world was this beyond Maya's ability? She was more skilled than Pearl could ever hope to have been! She could feel herself growing angrier and angrier at the situation in general, and irrationally mad at Maya for not being able to help. She would've thought her cousin would've been more enthusiastic about helping than just shrugging her shoulders and saying, 'Sorry, there's nothing I can do, I guess Pearl's just gonna have to stay this way.'

Shaking her head in disbelief, she merely said quietly, "There's nothing that can be done, I guess…" She wanted nothing more to scream to the sky, to tell the entire world that everything they had believed in all along was nothing more than a damn lie and that there was no Heaven. There was nothing you could do after death besides watch the fucking world go by!

"Hey, are you alright?"

She had been so absorbed in her own thoughts that she hadn't even noticed him waving his hand at her, trying to wake her up from her own little world. Resting a hand on her cheek, she apologized and said, "I'm sorry, but of all the people I trust she turns out to be the one who can't help at all…" It finally occurred to her that she didn't know his name. "Hey, what's your name, anyway?"

"I thought I—never mind, I'm Daryan."

"Is that right? I think I've heard your name before…" She quickly shook her head, knowing that this was totally insignificant small talk. "Um, you can go now, I guess. There's not much else to do, right?"

Daryan didn't say anything, but just walked over to her in her normal spot. She quirked an eyebrow and asked slowly, "What's wrong?"

He looked contemplative for a minute, considering what to say next, apparently. "So…"

"So? What?" Tilting her head to side, Pearl narrowed her eyes, she was immediately suspicious of what Daryan was doing. He definitely had an ulterior motive for coming here. She just wasn't sure if she wanted to find out what the ulterior motive was.

"I'm just wondering if I'm crazy for talking to dead people."

"W-What? Well, you can think you're crazy, if you want, but I'm real…"

And this was where she finally realized that she might not be real at all.

The terrified expression on Pearl's face told Daryan that maybe she wasn't so sure. It seemed real enough, but then again people were locked away in mental institutions for saying this out loud.

Maybe the word 'real' was objective depending on who you talked to. Who was to say that something existed and another didn't?

She sighed, resting her head on her hand. "There's no way to be sure now that you brought it up. Thanks a lot."

"But am I wrong? Fuck, Pearl, you're dead. Dead people aren't supposed to keep going on like nothing happened."

Her mouth opened to say something, but she quickly shut it and instead took a step backwards, staring at the ground. "You're right…but if I could go on like nothing happened…then why can't I leave this place? Why can't I talk to people like I can talk to you? Why can't they see me?" she asked, her voice much lower than before. "Dead people can't be seen by the living, but they're also not supposed to stay on earth. Something went wrong, and somehow both happened." She frowned and shifted her weight to the other leg, probably trying to anticipate his reaction.

There really wasn't a point in him being here; she was much better off being alone. He couldn't help the fact that he was still so skeptical and kept making her feel uncomfortable. Either this was an elaborate illusion…

Or Pearl Fey really was here, trying to avoid an awkward silence.


After Daryan left, Pearl thought that she'd finally have the peace she deserved. Where did he get off questioning every little thing, anyway? Some things are better left unexplained, Maya had told her, and that was too true in this situation. She'd never say the real reason she didn't want him to come back.

He had made her question her very existence, if everything around her was real or not. Leaving her in distress like that wasn't the best thing to do, either, but she knew that she couldn't rely on him. People too often turned their backs on the supernatural. She had come to terms with that. Even if her very upbringing was all about the unseen, she couldn't expect other people to think like that. Hugging her knees to her chest, she watched the waves come and go, wishing that she had been brought up normal. At least Maya could adapt easily to her environment; Pearl, on the other hand, had a much more difficult time.

Going deeper into contemplation, she wondered if that barrier between this area and the outside world was still there. She didn't get her hopes up; there was no reason that it would lift today when yesterday it was just as determined to not let her through. Even with all her years of training, she didn't know why she couldn't leave, but thinking about it brought something to mind. Maya had told her that if there had been unfinished business, the spirit would have a more difficult time going to the afterlife.

Pearl didn't even want to know what that meant. There wasn't anything that she'd call 'unfinished business' unless you counted not saying goodbye to the people she loved, but the vast majority of the world couldn't do that when they died. Nothing else came to mind when she went over the days before her death. Then again, maybe something just went wrong and she couldn't go to the afterlife. She had been too young to be a master on the subject of death.

If something could change…