Disclaimer: I do not own Ghost Hunt.

Genre: Tragedy

Warning: Technically this deals in a major character death but the story isn't about that. I would say it is set in an AU adjacent to the one that debauchery is set in. However, I will detail more after.

Loss

ooo

Oliver stood with his back against the closed door, ears tuned to the soft sobs coming from the room beyond. His eyes drifted down to his hands, empty and useless for the problem at hand. For all of his intelligence and abilities, he was powerless. His head fell back against the door before he pushed away and moved to find anything that might take up his time.

It had been a week since he had left the bathroom to find Mai standing in the hallway, shock etched across her face. The words came out of her mouth, but her eyes didn't believe them and when he crossed over to put his hands on her shoulders, to draw her into his embrace, her body stood stiff as if she had been struck senseless.

"My sister is dead."

A sigh escaped his lips as he sat back at his desk, mind in a million places. He and Hara had never gotten along, though they had learned to play nice. The happier Mai was, the more Hara seemed to like him and the more he strived to keep the peace. The girl – woman – had been Mai's family since her parents adopted Mai at the tender age of six. Ultimately, it was Hara who had introduced him to his now wife and he could feel some measure of gratitude for that.

Yet, even if they had been close and he had treated her as the sibling she legally was, his emotions would have been the same.

Most did not understand him and he had been called heartless time and time again. The loss of his own twin had seemed to have so little impact on him that the moniker seemed apt. But they were not entirely incorrect. Relationships had always been difficult for him, even important ones. He had felt grief at the loss of his brother, but it had settled thoroughly by the time he set foot in Japan and only crept in occasionally. A wave of sorrow might strike him, but it would pass nearly as quickly as it came.

Nothing like what Mai was feeling now.

And he could do nothing.

In the days since they found out, he had been forced to watch, impotent, as she oscillated from one emotion to another, beats timed out with each new piece of information. The first phone call from Hara's parents had been vague. She was dead but they had no proper information. Then, a couple of hours later they received an update. The police were treating the area like a crime scene and information was scarce.

Oliver had merely been able to watch as Mai moved around the kitchen automatically, cleaning up bits of trash, rinsing a cup from earlier. Her face remained blank while her hands stayed busy. Her expression did not crack until another phone call came in.

"We won't know what happened until the autopsy."

For the first time, he cursed that they did not have the sort of relationship where they called him instead. He had not pushed the relationship hard enough and now she was forced to hear all of the ugly truths directly from people too shocked and upset to even think to soften the blows.

Whenever he could, he sat in her peripheral. While she was perfectly willing to cry for others, Mai had never wanted to cry for herself. She did not like other people seeing her in that way. A part of him understood. Even if they had both been adopted into good families at a relatively young age, they were orphans, constantly aware that they were there on the good graces of those who had taken them in. She had always tried to hide her tears from him.

So, he tried to respect the distance he knew she would ask for while always being just a few steps away for when she needed comfort.

She asked for it less than he wanted.

Thus, he just felt like a spectator to someone else's tragedy. She would be fine for long stretches of time, denial so strongly running through her that she could forget. And then a moment would pass and her face crumpled in on itself and she turned away to find composure. She was too independent, even after years together, to allow herself to seek the comfort and he was too inept to be able to offer it in a way where she would.

Denial began to slip away by the fourth day, paired with initial results from the autopsy. The news seemed to force her to accept what was happening, that Hara was truly gone despite not being able to see her now vacant body, and the tears came more frequently and more readily. But still, the picture wasn't complete. Real life wasn't like television and full autopsy and toxicology reports take weeks, not hours. They were sitting in limbo waiting for the next shoe to drop.

And then it did. Some jerk off tabloid had written a report that the famous medium had taken her own life, sparking a flurry in the media and a round of rage in the family. Security had to be hired to keep attention seekers away from the family, a new layer of doubt added to the morbid curiosity that beset them as they waited actual news. Because while no one who knew her believed it, the lack of real information made the possibility linger in the back of the mind.

And then a week had passed. A week of simply being in the room while she stared out into space. Of watching idiotic television to distract her, of playing one of her mindless video games. Of reminding her that she needed to eat.

Of being unable to answer questions like when will the pain stop and why did it have to happen to her?

"I'm so angry. I don't even know what I am angry at but I am so, so angry!"

It was in these moments that Oliver felt worst. He had no emotional attachment to the situation in any way that wasn't to Mai. The woman he loved felt broken and he could do nothing to fix that and that broke him. There was no ghost to exorcise, no idiot to stop. There was only the knowledge that death was a permanent change in their lives, that Mai would never be quite the same. He knew that she might come out the other side of all of this as basically the same person, but also might come out different. Only time would tell and heal.

So, he sat at his desk, listening to her private sobs and catalogued the facts that came to him. He thought of how they might need to take care of Hara's child, young as she was, while Hara's husband struggled to just live for the next few months. He thought of how the Hara's birthday was going to be rough this year and probably for the next few years. About how other holidays were going to be painful as well.

(He tried not to think of the pain that would come when Hara's daughter went through her milestones without her mother.)

He also tried not to think about his own anger and frustration. How all he wanted was to make Mai feel better and how angry he was, how upset and even heartbroken, that nothing he did could fix the problem. He stamped down the ugly feelings that crept up occasionally. Thoughts of how he had always been slightly jealous of Mai's time with Hara and now he wouldn't have to worry about that. Thoughts about how her grief was going to change how he needed to live is life and the actions he took for months if not years. Even if he was happy to do anything she needed, he felt more like a monster than ever to be able to be so objective and distanced about her pain, even if its very existence hurt him in turn.

Instead, he focused on the mundane. On picking out an outfit for the service for both himself and Mai. Making sure they were pressed and cleaned. He fielded conversations with people that were close enough to Mai to know, but not close enough for her to want to talk to them directly. He talked to Luella and Martin who were ready to fly over if asked, but didn't want to intrude on what they well knew to be personal grief. He continued to work that needed to be done, complete the chores that had to be finished. Because the worst part of losing someone is that the world doesn't stop. Bills still need to get paid, trash still needed to be taken out. The world might express sympathy at your pain, but it would never be so helpful as to stop entirely while you grieved.

And when the sobbing grew quiet, he left the office and crawled into bed beside her and just held her, wishing that he was powerful enough to make the pain go away. She curled into his arms and they laid in silent peace for a moment, the pain pushed temporarily at bay.

"I just want it to not hurt anymore."

"I know."

Author's Note:

This story is basically just self-gratification on my part. My husband suffered a loss last week and it has been a journey. This is less creative writing and more just dumping the thoughts and experiences I've had this week. Unfortunately, our reality deals with a lot of family drama and shittiness that just make everything more exhausting to experience.

I thought about not posting it, when I first started writing, but in some ways I feel compelled to because you don't really get this sort of discourse from people like myself. Emotive characters are more engaging so you read their side of loss more.

I've said that Naru reminds me a lot of myself and that extends to things like this. In the short stories it is very clear that he loves people that he considers to be his, but that grief and loss are always going to be felt differently.

I've had a coworker call me heartless before because I have very detached emotions. I am sure there are plenty of other people out there who are like me. So, in case you know someone like us and don't really understand how we can seem to be so blasé about things like death, here is sort of a picture of what goes on in the mind.

Because I've lost loved ones but nothing hurts so bad as having my person be broken and not being able to help them.

Anyway, thank you for reading (if you indeed did).

On wildly different note, I started a tumblr blog (and I am way too old for tumblr). It is about the fundamentals of writing and will also soon have a bunch of research dumps for how to write about different things (like Japanese schools or ADHD). I am posting more each day. You can find it under KyraJolie (my actual pseudonym).

Til next time.