Oh, look, that awkward moment when I'm not dead and have no good excuse for my absence … Anyway, we're back, thanks to one special person who had the right words at the right time. I promise, we'll see this through to the end!

The air felt warm and thick around me as I sat up in bed. I stretched my arms above my head, glad that there was no ache in my muscles. I always hurt – whether it be from ghost hunting or sports – having dull aches and pains was part of my life. I threw my blankets off my body, squinting in the sunlight. It was late. I felt like I'd overslept, though I had no idea what I had overslept for. I half-tumbled down the steps and turned to go into the kitchen. It was time for breakfast. But when I walked into the room, it was not the bright, cheery room at Fenton Works that I had been expecting. Instead, it was a dimly lit cemetery. I went to turn around, but my home had vanished. I bit down on my tongue and felt the pain shoot through my mouth. Where did I go? What did I do? All I felt was lost.

The sun was setting into the background of this strange world. When I faced front again, all I could see was dark sky with glinting stars. Something you couldn't truly see unless you were outside of Amity, away from so much as a streetlight. I turned in a circle but I couldn't see anything other than tombstones and green grass, stretching out for miles. I felt shaky all over but I took a step forward. I hadn't spent much time in the Amity graveyard. Why would I? I had enough to do with the dead without going and looking for shit like that. I could be walking through any cemetery. I wouldn't have known the difference.

I heard a sound coming from the distance and I started walking toward it, keeping an eye over my shoulders. Who knew what the fuck was coming at me? Being in unknown places never ended well for me. I crept between the tombstones until I peeked around one of the massive statues and there were Jazz and Tucker, transparent, off-coloured, ghostly and stomach churning like every other ghost I'd ever seen. If I could have thrown up, I would have, a feeling of dread running through me as I stared at them.

I hadn't made a sound. They shouldn't have known I was here but, fuck, if their heads didn't snap around and their soulless eyes didn't stare me down.

"Danny," Jazz called, and she sounded exactly like the sister I remembered.

"Danny!" There was a sharp growl to Tucker's voice. He was not the friend that I remembered.

I went to take a step backward but instead, I ended up walking toward them.

"Are you hurt, Danny?" they hissed in perfect synchronization and suddenly I was overwhelmed by pain. "Are you hungry?"

On top of the pain, the overwhelming hunger I'd been feeling for what felt like fucking weeks socked me in the stomach. The word 'hungry' echoed over and over again in my head and food appeared in the hands. Desserts and potatoes and burgers and everything that I wanted. I would have eaten fucking ecto-weenies, as long as I got to eat.

"Want some?" Tucker asked but it felt like something was gluing my mouth shut. I couldn't answer him.

"You killed us, Danny," Jazz spat. "Killers don't get to eat."

They whipped the food away and descended upon me, their clawed fingers digging into my shoulders.

"Fenton!"

I didn't want to open my eyes, terrified that I would still be looking at demon sister.

"I know it's going to suck but I need you to wake up."

The voice washed over me. Sam. I knew it was Sam. Still, I held my breath until I focused on her face, her stringy hair and her eyes that were starting to sink into her face.

"We have food!" she cried and I didn't know the last time I had seen her so happy. "And, oh, just a second!"

She turned away from me as my mind tried to tumble over what she had said. Food? I took a deep breath and my mouth watered so much I probably started drooling. Food. I could smell food and nothing else mattered because it smelt like honest, real fucking food! Sam turned back to me and showed me a painkiller in her hand.

"This will help with the pain and then you have to eat, all right?"

It wouldn't be a struggle to eat. It really wouldn't. I managed an 'okay' and shakily plucked the pill from her palm. I took it quickly so that it could start to numb everything. Not that things came into sharp focus that much anymore. There was such a lull in here that nothing stood out. Everything was exactly the fucking same. I met Sam's gaze. She was still just staring at me.

"Can you handle feeding yourself?"

"I'm not that much of an invalid!" I insisted. The thought of Sam feeding me was humiliating. I got my arms up under me and pushed myself up, realizing just how much strength I had lost. It was too much effort to lean myself against the wall but I managed it. "It's just my leg."

It made it better to boil it all down to just my leg. Like my heart didn't hurt every time it fucking beat. Like my face wasn't scarred to shit. Like I hadn't been beaten.

"Whatever you say," Sam said. I was probably imagining the concern in her voice. She passed me a Tupperware container and there was heat radiating from it. "That one is just for you. The rest of it, we have to share."

"Rest?" I blurted and I noticed the pile next to her. There was no way that Maheen had been able to still all of that for us. "Where did all of this come from?"

"Elliot was here earlier."

I ran my hand along the top of the Tupperware container. I wanted to tear into it but it was probably laced with rat poison. "Do we trust it?"

"Do we have a choice? I'm starving! This is real food." Sam gestured wildly. "I don't know why he and Vlad decided it was time to take better care of us, I'm just glad they did. I'm not looking a gift horse in the mouth."

We were probably going to die in here anyway. Part of me wanted to be defiant until the end but, then, I thought about how I would look: emaciated and at their mercy. If they wanted to kill me via poisoning, I thought I might prefer the quick death that it would take over what would happen otherwise. I took the container off the top of the food, just intending to see if it looked fucked with, but then the smell of warm, cooked meat smacked me in the face.

"Holy fuck. That smells so good."

"Have a spoon. We are still civilized people."

"Speak for yourself," I said, dismissing the spoon she held out to me. I thought of Sam's big house and her pretentious mother. Comparatively, I was raised in a barn and I grabbed a sausage out of the container with my hand and stuffed it in my mouth.

Silence reigned as we ate, but it was almost always so quiet between us. And the sausage was good. Clearly, Vlad had splurged on feeding us and I just wanted to bury my face in the bowl and just chew my way through even the fucking plastic. Hunger roared within me and I grabbed as much into my face as I could. When I had only one sausage left in the container, I reached out and grabbed another Tupperware and cracked that open too. Mashed potatoes. God, mashed potatoes. I grabbed a literal handful and dropped it in my mouth but when I reached for the second handful, sickness whacked me. I couldn't do it. I couldn't eat it. I felt full. Overstuffed, like after the fourth plate of Thanksgiving dinner but I hadn't even eaten what could be considered one plate. I looked at Sam, who was barely picking at her food. She met my eyes and sighed a little.

I knew what she was thinking. "Is it weird that I'm feeling bad about this?" I confessed. "All I can think about is how, at one point, I would have been able to eat all of this and more without even thinking about it."

Teenage bottomless pits. My mother and I had called Tucker and me that on more than one occasion.

"I know how you feel."

It wasn't as if Sam had ever constricted her eating either. She could put it away. I'd seen it.

"It's just fucked up." Anger roared within me. "Vlad took everything, even my ability to eat – a basic human function. Nothing is the same anymore and what give him the right?! I'm just so fucking angry and I can't do anything about it."

"I understand," Sam said and I took comfort from the fact that I was positive that she did. Softly, she added, "And I agree. It's so frustrating to know that we can't do anything about this."

I grabbed at the chains wrapped tightly around each of my legs and shook each of the violently. "I wish I could just pull them off."

"You could. You're strong enough to do it."

Physically, maybe. Mentally, I was half-scared of even touching them, for fear they would hurt her. How could I ever hurt her again?

"I was," I said aloud, knowing Sam would want an answer and just happy that we were talking a little. "After all that's happened, I don't know …" Would I be able to even defeat the Box Ghost now? "Anyway, I couldn't do anything like that. Not without hurting or killing you."

Sam's chain scratched along the floor as she pulled at hers too. I stared at her face, wondering what she was thinking. Even after all that I knew her and knew about her, I still wasn't a mind reader and she could still surprise me. I waited for her to explain herself but all I got was, "Sorry."

"It's not your fault; none of this is. It's mine." I wondered if she knew I wasn't just talking about Vlad. It was about everything I had ever done. "I wish I could make some big vow and say that I'll get you out of here, but I honestly don't know what's going to happen. I don't know how to get out. I don't even know what Vlad wants. I can't promise anything."

It was probably the closest thing to a big speech that I would be able to make but I meant it. I needed the world to exist with Sam in it, whether or not I was around to see it. And I was the reason that she was here at all.

"I think I'm better off when you don't make me promises," Sam said, not looking at me. There was bitterness in her voice, though I couldn't say I blamed her for that.

"That's probably true," I agreed, because she wouldn't let me do otherwise, even if it weren't true. "But, I can say one thing? And it's not a promise, it's a fact."

"And what's that fact?" Sam asked, glancing at me, even though she didn't really look all that curious.

"Even if I don't get out of here, you will," I swore, making my tone as serious as I possibly could so that she would believe me.

"Fenton," she sighed, tilting her head so that her stringy black hair slid over the shoulder of my suit jacket.

"No. Don't. You don't have to, okay? Just know that." I wanted to believe we would both get out of here. I wanted to believe in happy endings and fucking fairies and shit, but my sister and my best friend were both dead and Vlad was a psychotic bastard. There would be no happy endings, not for me, but Sam could get out, move on. Write a book about a half-ghost boy who almost got her killed. Whatever she wanted. Sam deserved whatever she wanted.

"Okay," Sam agreed quietly.

And that was that.

Updates will continue every Wednesday!

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~TLL~