Chapter 18: A Game of Grey
"Vivi, why are you doing this? Get me out of here, please, just let me go..."
He was strained as far against her leg and the door as he could possibly go, unable to stand as his legs failed him and his heart ran so fast it didn't beat at all. His eyes were the size of moons and his body was trembling like the feeble and ghostly light from it, searching the room frantically for a way out and finding nothing but the inevitability of a sure death, a drawn out sentence of pain followed by a long execution as payment for his many sins. Arthur knew deep down that he deserved whatever was coming for him, he understood why Vivi had handed him over to his absolute and terrible demise, but his eyes still stung all the same from her betrayal and the quickness with which she threw him under the custody of a vengeful ghost. When he had admitted his guilt, he must have simply mistaken the acceptance in her gaze for forgiveness, and how wrong he had been.
"Please, Vivi, if you let me go I'll never bother you again, I'll leave you two be, just let me live. I'm so sorry, I'm so, so sorry Vivi..."
The ghost was pressed up against the restraining ward with his hands pushing hard against the invisible glass separating him from the other two, his hair flaring and alive like a bonfire and his eyes burning and brighter than ever they had been. Under his breath he swore vulgarly, his voice caught like a curse around Arthur's name as it rolled around with the countless, unspeakable terms of growing distaste, threats bouncing from the spirit and reaching the ears of Vivi and his prey with frustrated and agitated sparks. There was a fire in the room, a nearly tangible flame consuming the space between Lewis and Arthur, and even if the orange boy had fueled it in the first place it was the ghost who set it up with the click of a match on sandpaper.
"Vivi, just let me out of here already! I can almost...I just need..."
Vivi throughout the entire excursion had stayed eerily calm. Arthur was screaming and Lewis was shouting and she just stood against the door with her arms crossed like a disappointed mother, tapping her toe occasionally as the two pleaded with her, begged her to see their side as true and in turn achieving nothing. It was louder than a train station and yet she did not flinch, it was dangerous and yet her fear of Arthur's death had faded, and before her she saw nothing more than two misguided and slightly murderous five year olds, bickering and whining at her ankles.
"Oh, would you stop that, both of you? Especially you, Lewis, I thought I told you to take some time and think about this," she scolded, turning to the trapped ghost as he stopped pounding against the ward and his voice fell silent, "I told you when I left to be ready to listen, and that we won't be leaving until this whole situation is situated. I have both of you here, now figure it out like adults."
Lewis felt a pulse of heat burst through his head, sizzling like the hissing of a cat as he clenched his fists tighter, venom filling his voice and tainting his words, "Did you not see what happened to me, Vivi? Did you not notice him pushing me off a fucking cliff? Or did that just kind of fly over your head?" He let his fist pound once again against the ward, a satisfying boom echoing through the silent motel room, "He doesn't deserve to be listened to! All he deserves is to be burned to a crisp, to feel the same pain I felt when I was falling if not more. He's the one who should be a ghost, not me!
Vivi shook her head, clearly not taking Lewis' orders as even a suggestion, "No one deserves to be dead, not like this. Either you sit and settle down or I'll find something in your grandmother's books to make you." Her voice was commanding, conquering all of the room like a drill sergeant and forcing itself to be heard, "Neither of you are leaving until I am satisfied with our talk. That means you don't get to leave your ward and Arthur doesn't get to escape from this room, capisce? You will at least try to talk about what happened, and if you don't...well, I'll make you."
Arthur gulped, his voice dry and cracked as it tried to speak, no more than a whisper in loudness yet even more trembling and terrified than any whisper could possibly be, "I'll talk if it gets me out of here, just please don't let him go before then, Vivi, he'll kill me. He wants to so bad, and this time he won't miss his shot, and...and..."
"It's alright, Arthur," her voice had grown quiet now, softer as he agreed to her demands with shaking skin and teary eyes, "I won't let him hurt you. You'll be safe with me, I promise."
Vivi's hands crept down to cover Arthur protectively for a few moments, and she could feel his trembling lessen and the tension in his stiff body give way as he leaned against her for support now rather than fear. She held his good hand in hers, lightly, gently, and waited for their eyes to meet as he searched for reassurance. Those amber eyes, moments before filled with lost trust and dying hope torn to pieces before his very fragile heart, had filled so quickly again with the realization that she had not forsaken him, that Vivi was still a loyal friend. Vivi twice had put her own life in danger for Arthur's sake now-he could trust her in this instance, he knew that now with her so close to him and the two of them both so far from the enraged companion who threatened him again.
Lewis was sputtering now as his lover showed sympathy to his murderer, watching as she held Arthur's hand and feeling even more rage fill his hollow bones with heat and energy as he took a step backwards in surprise, "Are you serious, Vivi?" he cried out, knitting his eyebrows in angry confusion before pulling his head down in angry hatred, "I don't think you're feeling the weight of the situation exactly: he killed me. This isn't some minor offense or petty argument, he took my life, stabbed me in the back, pushed me off a fucking cliff! I had siblings, parents, dreams, hopes, and they are all gone because of his greed!" Even as his voice reached its climax and his shouts were raised even higher into the nearly abandoned motel, he looked away, feeling his passion grow too great and trying to curb it away from Vivi if even only in the slightest, "Vivi, I wanted to marry you. I wanted to take you back home to our old town once we got tired of ghost hunting and take over my Dad's restaurant when he got old, maybe even start a family of my own, surrounded by everyone I love. I wanted so bad to simply live, to achieve the things I strove for, and they were all taken away from me. When I was happiest, when I was at the height of my joy, he pushed me in the most literal sense! How can you look at that and still see a friend, how can you comfort him and...and..."
His voice faded away, his gaze still to the side and away from her but his presence directed entirely at Vivi as he landed heavily into the chair close behind him. It was noiseless, silent, the thin walls of the room only faintly implying the noise of a vacuum cleaner working in the far distance. The pain on his face etched dents into Lewis' bony skull, turning his eyes downward and his flaming head to a calming halt as he began to solidify the flame, as he began to settle down slightly with his burning tangent ending. Vivi too had turned soft once more, feeling the pain of the room heavy upon her shoulders. He needed this silence to absorb and prepare, he needed this silence to reflect and repair, but all silence must meet their end eventually. She straightened herself with the soft rustling of fabric accentuating and making even smaller her fine words, not wanting to speak but feeling herself obligated.
"Lewis, even if that's true, there's more to it than just that. This picture isn't black and white, this trial isn't right and wrong-there are many shades of grey, and there are many stories to tell. Please, just listen to his."
There wasn't even a moment of pause before Lewis whipped around, furious once more though his eyes had grown wet with tears and his voice was crackling with the nasty lump that jumped to his phantom throat, rendering him to sound no more controlled than a toddler as he yelled, "There's nothing he can say that can change my mind, Vivi, he's a murderer, a traitor, a-"
"Listen to me then, and give him a chance!"
"No!" Arthur shouted, surprising the two and even shocking himself a little as he finally lifted his voice above a sickly whimper. He was tense again, his own fists clenched against the carpet on the ground and his eyes closed with the courage it took to speak up against the ghost who wanted him dead. He looked up then, meeting Vivi's eyes with a sense of acceptance, almost as though he had played through this dreaded scene a thousand times in his guilty head, "Vivi, he's right. I don't deserve to be listened to, I don't deserve a fair trial, I...I don't deserve anything, and Lewis doesn't owe me the time. I betrayed you and your trust by lying to you all this time, by...by pushing him off the cliff in the first place." His face fell back towards his hands with his voice small and his metal fingers intertwined with his living ones, "I am wrong. I am guilty. I don't deserve redemption, but most of all I don't deserve you. Just get in the van with Lewis and Mystery and drive, leave me here, ditch me. That's what I deserve, to be totally and utterly alone."
Lewis scoffed a little, surprised but not necessarily disappointed by the sudden words of his killer, "At least we can agree on something. Vivi, he doesn't want to be heard! He knows he's guilty, why don't I just put him out of his misery?" He had crossed his arms, one hand lifted matter-of-factly as Arthur gave him the fuel he needed, "It will give me peace, it will give me revenge, and it will keep you safe. If he could stab me in the back so easily after traveling for so long together, what's keeping him from hurting you? A few years? What's preventing him from killing you like he did me, even?"
Those words were filled with so much scorn, hatred with the power to leave Arthur breathless against the wall and feeling as small as an ant from his place on the floor. Then he looked up at Vivi, wondering to himself if maybe that was true. Never in Arthur's life had he thought of hurting her in any way, never had he wanted to make her unhappy or sad or even just uncomfortable-hell, the past two years had been spent on his best attempt to keep her safe. But was he, in some way, hurting her? Was he truly as much of a danger to her as he had been to Lewis, and would his presence lead to her demise? The boy gulped with his face turned away, because he could not look head on into the eyes of whatever truth he found within Lewis' eyes. He could not accept that he was bad for Vivi, because she meant the world to him.
But he had seen something in her eyes when he had looked up just moments ago. Only once had Arthur seen Vivi truly angry, eight years ago on her sixteenth birthday when her deadbeat dad showed up to try and make amends. He knew she was planning on emancipating the moment the clock hit 7:24 PM that night and, not wanting her to cut all ties with him completely, he had hoped to make things better between the two of them after a record year and a half away from home. When he walked through the door that afternoon, her eyes screamed of cold blooded murder and her voice was as quiet as a moonless night and just as cold as a winter blizzard through the North, her words able to freeze the hottest summer child to a stony death with just the biting of her tongue in restraint. When Arthur had looked back at her, his words confirmed and his fears strengthened by the warm phantom, it was that same anger that he saw in her eyes. Years on the streets had taught her control lest she be shot, ages by herself gave her restraint lest she chase away the only ones who stayed, but she was losing both now as their words wore her thin. With the terrifying power of swelling rage he could feel the room grow several degrees colder in response to her sudden change of character, her transition into an entirely different person. Lewis hadn't yet noticed the slits her eyes had become or the whiteness of her knuckles, the cheeriness of his love turning to deadly wrath as she stared him down and slowly became even more tense with animosity. Her entire existence was devoted now to that commanding grace she had so often hidden, the overwhelming air of demanding brilliance, that even when Lewis did look he shut his mouth and watched her with full attention. Arthur backed off slightly, giving her whatever space he could as she froze the space around them.
"You two don't have a choice. Arthur will tell his side of the story. Lewis will listen. Both of you will comply whether you think you deserve a voice or not, whether you hate each other or not. There is no second choice." She was stiff as a board, her head turning to Arthur slowly and steadily as the two boys' eyes grew wide with fear, "Arthur, go ahead. Tell me what you were going to say out in the lobby, tell me the truth. And for fuck's sake, don't try and lie to get you or Lewis out of trouble, you know damn well you couldn't lie to save your own life."
Arthur's eyes flashed between her and Lewis like a child trapped between warring parents, unsure whether or not he should listen to the murderous skeleton across the room and safely warded of his furious best friend, right next to his vulnerable and fragile body. Either way, he was likely to end up dead, be it physically or emotionally. It wasn't even a competition to him, and with eyes closed he felt rather than heard his trembling voice leave his throat in an escape of breath.
"You saw it happen, didn't you? We entered the cave, we went to the cliff, and then-"
"Give me the details, Arthur. The whole truth."
He glanced only momentarily at Lewis as Vivi coaxed him for more, a shiver running wildly through his body as the ghost sunk into his chair irritably in preparation for the story ahead. His voice hinged on these last words, holding out the syllable a little longer before letting it die out in a sizzle and into the next phrase, "Well, you remember what it was like, right? You and Lewis, the two of you were inseparable. I think...I think you guys thought you were being sneaky about it, like everything was just like it had been before you two totally fell for each other, but...you began leaving me behind. I'd wake up in the middle of the night in the motels and I'd be all alone save Mystery, you two would sit there and talk in the front seats about ghosts and things I couldn't relate to, things I couldn't understand; and then you started to forget about our time together, like the Friday meals. I know it's such a petty thing, but those alone meant the world to me, Vivi." He looked away, his jaw clenched noticeably as he stared at the closed blinds of the window, "I was jealous. I was lonely. I wanted nothing more than to be included, but every time I brought it up you got mad at me. You said that I was getting bent over nothing, that everything was fine and I was being too possessive, but it wasn't like that for me. I liked Lewis, Viv, don't get me wrong-in a way, I needed someone else in my life, someone who I could talk to and joke around with just as I did with you, but who I could pull advice from when I got down or when we weren't doing so great-but I wanted him gone. I wished more than anything that I would wake up one morning and he'd have disappeared, because as long as he was there, I had to share more of you than I could handle. You were no longer my friend-you were our friend."
"And so he pushed me off of a cliff. End of story." Lewis interrupted, but Vivi shot her daggers at him with killing aim and he sat back down with a huff, looking away and refusing eye contact with Arthur. The ginger lifted his robotic arm to run a hand through his hair, inhaling deeply as he prepared himself to go on.
"No that's...that's not it. I never wanted to kill you, Lewis, I just wanted you to go home. I wanted you to grow tired of ghost hunting so that I could have my best friend back, or maybe find that you had to go home to help out with the family business or something, but I never wanted you dead. You see, we came up to the cave and you know how it was, Vivi wanted to go in like always and so we did, me terrified and the two of you jabbering away about how interesting the bats were or something to that effect. I tried to bring up how dangerous it was, the bones all over the floor, the glowing green eyes of all the living shadows, and yet you guys brushed me off as just what I was: a coward. Vivi wanted to go forward, I wanted to go back, and Lewis was too enamored by his lady friend to care." His good hand lifted up to rub his robotic shoulder gingerly, almost as though he could feel the pain from within the cave in those moments, "We split up because of the fork in the path. You went down and I followed Lewis up, but something was...off. My arm was hurting really bad, and I had that sinking feeling in my gut like something bad was going to happen. I tried to tell you, Lewis, I asked you to leave with me, to get out of here, but the view was too nice and you didn't want to listen. And then...and then..."
He felt Vivi's hand on his shoulder, and he looked up to see her stone eyes softening and supporting. There was a worried smile on her lips, somewhat strained as though she were trying her best to let go of her earlier rage. He was waiting, pausing on the bad memories to try and put them into words but not quite finding a way with the burning of his eyes and the thickness in his throat, and yet he found her presence soothing now, knowing she had stuck by him so long without abhorrence to stain her bright eyes. How quickly she had changed, how fluid she had grown with the expression of emotion on her face, "It's alright, Arthur. You can do it. Tell us, what happened next."
And so he gulped away that troubling lump and nodded to her, knowing he had to finish this story without leaving it on such a neutral note, "And then I felt something eating at the edge of my mind There were...angry words, a voice telling me that...that I was better than Lewis, that he made a fool out of me, that you'd still rely on me without him there to make me seem worthless. I tried my hardest, Vivi, I swear to god I did, but..." he felt his eyes sting with salt and he closed them best he could to deter the tears, biting his bottom lip hard and clenching the tender inside of his good palm out of habit, "but those words kept coming back. I told them that Lewis was my friend, that you needed someone like him, but as I fought they took me over. I don't know what was in that fog, what monster it was or why, but all I could see was my hand lifted in front of me. It was green, like the fog, it was green and no longer mine to control. I tried so hard...I tried to call out your name, Lewis, to warn you, but my face was numb and the whole left side of my body was taken away from me and I couldn't even...I could only call out your name when it was too late. I was running, and screaming to you, and you were falling, and I was..I was..."
He took another moment to compose himself, the tears running down his face without a sob to accompany them, silent and quick as they sprinted down his cheeks only to fall onto the rough carpet beneath him. Vivi's hand squeezed, a comfort he needed, and with one final breath he continued on.
"I was still trying to fight it best I could because whatever monster was inside me knew you were there too, Vivi, and it wanted your blood. I tried to follow Lewis off the cliff, tried to bring my own life to an end with the hopes that whatever was inside me would die too, but my vision was cut off and I was...I was totally and utterly possessed. I heard something growling, something else in the fog, something big with re eyes and sharp teeth. It ripped my arm clean off, and then I fell and hit my head on a rock and the next thing I knew I was in the hospital." He finally looked back up into Vivi's eyes, but couldn't handle the empathy within them and found a wave of tears continuing down his face.
Lewis stared at the ground in astonishment, his hair calmed and his eyes dulling as he fully absorbed Arthur's words. In his fury and bloodlust, in the haze he had bee left in after death, Lewis hadn't really though of any alternative to Arthur simply being a treacherous and horrible man, but as all the pieces came together he felt his own anger ebb away with the pull of a tide. Lewis could remember Arthur's fear, his clear desire to be out of the cave, even his whining over the incredible burning in his arm that Lewis chalked up to be no more than a pesky cramp. Even evident in the screaming of his name, what he had immediately assumed and seen as an act of malice and scorn turned slowly into a call of warning, a cry to save and mourn rather than condemn and taunt. His head fell to his hands in a form of woeful defeat, elbows rested on his knees. Was his death truly more than cold blood and sin, had he been wrong the entire time, and was Lewis truly the bad guy after chasing an innocent man with thoughts on the grave?
"No...Vivi, this isn't...he must be..."
I swear that's the truth, Vivi. I wasn't able to control my envy, I wasn't strong enough to fight my own thoughts when the monster turned it against me and...and that killed Lewis. I killed Lewis, it's all my fault, I should have been stronger." Arthur interjected, choking on the loudness of his words as the crackling within them was hardly concealed. As he finished, as he concluded his bits of honesty, he doubled over himself with regret. This was what Vivi remembered, the guilt that opened the flood gates and swept her best friend up in a flood that reduced him to no more than a sniffling mess of wet cheeks and runny noses. Her knees buckled beneath her and she folded her legs below her torso so that she might envelop Arthur in a full hug, he warmth surrounding him entirely. She had feared he would be all that Lewis claimed, that her best friend was so possessive that he was willing to kill in order to keep her, and yet he was so riddled with remorse now that she doubted he had ever had it in him to even swat at a fly let alone murder his only other friend. He was still her Arty, her brother, and as Lewis tried to rationalize Arthur still being evil she was more than busy trying to calm her tearful ginger down.
"It can't be true, he's lying, I know it! He's just trying to displace the guilt, he's just making himself out to be the victim so that you sympathize, that can't be the truth! Don't you think that, if there had really been a demon in the cave, I would have sensed it once I came back from the dead? I lived there for two years, right above my deathbed. He's lying to you, Vivi, and you're falling for it!"
He pointed an accusatory finger, but Lewis could feel his argument falter and drift away before it even left his lips. Part of him could see on the clear and unmuddied face of Arthur that everything he said was fact, his brain seconding those feelings, but his heart still held onto the dying rage and wasn't planning on letting go anytime soon. He had been brought back to life by his hatred before his love, he had risen from the cave to claim Arthur's life, how could the basis of his existence be a lie? Lewis couldn't accept it, wouldn't take the veracity of his words, and so he was met once again with the cold gaze of Vivi and that sinking sensation of her fully forsaking him in those moments.
Arthur had recoiled at Lewis' extended finger, hiding his face from Lewis in the softness of Vivi's sweater as he continued to cry loudly now. Having laid his down his heart and soul, after exposing his deepest and darkest vulnerabilities and secrets, it took too much for the ginger to retain any control. He had been torn down, denied the legitimacy of his pure words, and with every added hiccup and sniffle he could feel Vivi grow to immense and terrible heights. She wasn't taking Lewis' repudiation very well, and as he continued on in vain, she rose to her feet with a protective hand placed over Arthur.
"Come on, Vivi, look at him. He even admitted that it was his fault, that he deserves whatever comes to him! What innocent man judges himself guilty? Who condemns them self when they have no regrets to pay for? He;s dangerous. He's traitorous. He's-"
"Shut up!"
She screamed it, the top of her lungs not good enough as her voice rang out like police siren. Lewis blanched, stepping back and tripping over the armchair as she began to approach him, short legs quick and arms sweeping as she veered to the side of the ward and slammed her hands down hard on the little desk at the end of her bed, diverting her physical anger onto the old and dirty wood. Her entire body bristled, the hair on her arms raised and tingling in excited response, her shoulders raised like hackles as she bore her teeth into the mirror in front of her, poorly adorned and falling apart. She could sense Lewis preparing to speak again in response, but she wasn't ready to listen with the metal still on her tongue. Her nails dug into the soft wood beneath, and as his voice began tiny and unsure, she swung around with her eyes a tumultuous ocean and body held ferally, no longer woman but wild beast.
"Shut your fucking mouth, I don't want to hear your voice. I don't even want to look at you. Just...stop it, Lewis. Just stop."
Vivi had never yelled at him, especially like this. He wasn't used to the anger of the joyful summer child, her mind forever floating on the sunny pools of a California scorcher, unaccustomed to her hatred when she had so often drowned all she knew and loved in smiles and kindness. It was shocking and utterly debilitating, the fury of a generous and passive woman, and Lewis wasn't sure he liked it at all. Slowly he could feel his stunned silence fill with a new form of anger, a bitterness towards the one he loved, a biting and fierce response to her blatant disrespect and unwillingness to hear his words. Why was she angry at him, the dead man, her betrayed teammate? He felt his own eyes squint, glaring at her as she bent back over the desk and began to shake her head with hair hanging down limply around her. His own fists clenching the arm of the seat beneath him hard, he could feel his heart burst with a scornful passion, "Vivi, you have a choice."
She didn't even look over at him, the pausing of her swinging head the only sign that she had even heard him as it halted and posed still over the desk. She didn't say a word, but Lewis could feel her attention on him like a scorching ray of limelight even if he lacked the vocal cues.
"It's all up to you. Either you can take his words for truth and drive off into the sunset with my murderer and pretend I never existed, just as you did before, faking that Arthur never hurt a soul and is some innocent sunflower without a seed of darkness or guilt and leave me behind to waste away in my mansion, all alone, or we can head up a different path. You can come with me. Vivi, you and I could make a new life, we could find a way to survive even if I'm like this, we can be happy together. But you can't have both of us, not like this." He was callous, his voice monotone and listless as it floated to her ears, "A traitor, or a lover. It's your choice, no one else's."
It didn't take much of thought on Vivi's part, really, and as she pushed herself up and away from the desk her heavy feet pulled her steadily along like a deadly march on snare, all the way back to Arthur. As she had told him many times before, this situation wasn't black and white, wrong or right, loyal or traitor, it was a game of grey. She thought back to Lewis' wintry denouncement of anyone who murdered someone innocently, his inability to see the grey and the accidents and exceptions that came with such a touchy topic as death. She thought of his unwillingness to listen, his abhorrence of an open mind and his stubbornness when faced with a likely alternative, and then she looked at Arthur. He had accepted her throughout her life for what she was, he had been gifted her truths and had in turn deemed her good, had looked upon her shadows and called them blindingly bright, and trusted her even when she forced him to spill his guts to a vengeful spirit thirsty for blood. He had been possessed, he had been guilty, and Vivi wasn't about to overlook the honesty within his eyes. Wings thrown back and halo shining, Vivi faced Lewis defiantly with her answer apparent on her body.
"Each and every time, I will choose Arthur."
The ginger let out a breath he hadn't noticed he had been holding in the first place, releasing his anxieties as she protected him from the judging glare of Lewis once more. He could hear the ghost sputter, eyes widening before they were forced shut tightly in angry silence and burning treachery when faced with a scenario he thought impossible, or at the very least unlikely. The ghost looked back up to find the stone cold Vivi tearful yet determined, pain clear on her face as she was torn in two and forced to assign her whole self a loyalty, pressured to claim a side in an argument she felt unjust in the first place.
"Arthur is my brother, Lewis. Before you even glimpsed my heart he was there with fingers wrapped around it, he was by my side, holding my hand and helping me along a path I didn't even think was possible for someone like me. For the scum of the city, the rats in the alley. He knows my darkest caverns, and even if I've done unspeakable things, he has trusted me. No matter what, Arthur looked at me and knew I was worth fighting for." She blinked, letting a rush of river water cascade from her lashes, "I was set for a life of crime and deception and sin, desperation and destruction that you couldn't even know ran so deep in our small town. You wouldn't be able to comprehend the surface of it, Lewis, and he looked at one simple act of kindness and deemed me an angel, a guardian, a savior. For the longest time, he was all I had to rely on."
She paused once more, taking a moment to fully compose herself as her words floated on top of the room. Never could Arthur ever conceive that Vivi had in any way felt as reliant on him as much as he did her, and the words that escaped from her in a deluge of pent up emotion brought a warmth to the edge of his mouth, the beating of his bandaged heart. Even Lewis, so bent on his hatred that he could not see the truth in Arthur's tears, had lowered his head in a sense of understanding, even if that acceptance was pined and laborious.
"I would never expect you to choose me over Perla, or Marisol, or your mother or father. And if you truly love me, you will accept that I will always choose Arthur, each and every time."
She watched Lewis closely now, studying the stillness of the phantom as he absorbed her choice fully, his form slowly fading in and out of existence with her loyalties made clear. Even with his tether so physically close by, with Vivi only feet away from him, he felt as though the two were dimensions apart. He could have been in the realm of ghosts and wouldn't have noticed the difference. His hand rested above his beating heart out of age old habit, his vessel crying out with the picture held and protected within burning the glass and giving him the utmost pain. He felt those last moments as what he truly was, a ghost, and his body began to mimic the loss of heart that came with the acceptance of transparency. His voice, when it finally did rise, was no louder than a wayward feather lost on the tumbling wind.
"...Fine."