Title: Afterlife
Theme: Worship
Pairing: None
Rating: K
18. Worship
"What if there's no afterlife?"
Youngblood is panicking, and things are crashing all around him. Eight hundred years of power rocks and rumbles through the ghost zone, heaving with his chest. His eyes are full of tears, and he doesn't bother wiping at them. He screams and breaks things, snatched up passing ghost, just dead and very confused, and dissembles it into ectoenergy with hardly any effort, the never ending wave of power rolling out faster and harder.
"Where's your soul?" he seethes. "Where is it?"
"Breathe, kiddo!"
"Calm down!"
"It's not like you're fading!"
Then warm arms wrapped tight around him, rocking him slowly. The ghost boy – Phantom – was there. So daring as to take human form to do it, to be warm, that Youngblood stills, panting but no longer thrashing, and whispers an old language that's barely familiar, and a prayer he remembers his father whispering after he came in from a hunt. Before they ate. When he would kiss his mother, and sometimes kiss Youngblood.
"What if there's-" he begins, his voice cracking.
"If you want one, there will be."
"But what if I'm not real?"
"You're real," Danny promises, not knowing if it's true, and not entirely sure it matters at this point.
"I think I'm just energy."
"You're real," he repeats, and hugs him when he cries.
I think this needs a little clarification, in the sense that most people consider ghosts as a sort of inbetween. They aren't in the world of the living, but they certainly aren't in heaven or hell. Depending on what religion, that could be some kind of limbo, could be a punishment, could just be some people hanging around, but it's usually not the final destination.
I think I mentioned "fading" before, but I might not have, where, basically, a ghost essentially passes onto whatever's next. Or, in the case of Youngblood's fear, the ectoenergy simply runs out, and they cease to exist.
So, kind of philosophical. Kinda. XD I'm a college kid now, I simply HAVE to get my pretentious on!