Chapter Text
As soon as Cole Sear entered the fast-food restaurant he was hit with a blast of cold air. This wasn’t the normal cold air of an air conditioner, this was the cold that seeped into you and made you feel like you would never be warm again. As a kid, that cold would throw him in a full-blown panic, but now he just knew his day had the potential to get interesting. The panic was still there to an extent, but after years of practice, he had a better handle on it.
As he ordered his food at the counter he couldn’t help but see the cloud of vapor that came out of the cashier’s mouth as she took his order and the way she rubbed her arms that were prickled with goosebumps as he pulled out his credit card. He took his cup over to get his drink, watching the other customers discreetly. No one stood out as being dead. There were no bloody faces, no one was walking around with their head hanging at an awkward angle, and no one was screaming profanities that only he could hear.
When his order was called he grabbed his food and headed off to find a table. It didn’t take him long to discover the dead person. She was in a booth by herself studying the rain-soaked window next to the booth and wearing a dark uniform. Blood covered one side of her neck from her jawline to her collarbone. Cole guessed she’d either been stabbed or shot in the neck. As soon as he put his tray down and started to sit down he realized he knew her. Lucy. Chen. The nametag on her uniform reminded him of her last name. She had attended the same grad program that he had at UCLA, but she had dropped out during their second year. He’d kept in contact with her through Facebook and knew that she’d become a cop. Then four years ago he’d seen on the news that she’d been killed in the line of the duty. He’d been on the lookout for her for the first year, but this was the first time he’d come into contact with her.
He put his tray down and slid into the opposite side of the booth. He pulled out a small Bluetooth earpiece out of his coat pocket. No one would probably notice that he seemed to be talking to himself, but all the years of being called a freak in school still weighed heavily on him.
Lucy’s gaze never left the window. That didn’t surprise him. Dead people didn’t perceive things the same way as the living. Time moved differently for them. If things disagreed with their viewpoints they simply didn’t notice. He’d encountered some ghosts who had been dead for hundreds of years and were convinced no time had passed despite all the changes around them.
“Lucy?”
She turned away from the window, “You can see me?” She slowly shook her head, “I’m dead. How can you see me? And how do you know my name?”
“Yes, I can see you,” Cole started, his voice low and gentle, “My name is Cole Sear. We were both in the same graduate psychology program about 10 years ago. We used to study for Developmental Psychology together,”
She intently studied him for a moment. His beard had started to gray since the last time they’d talked, “I remember you now. We used to have debates about Piaget and Erikson. But how can you see me?”
“I don’t know honestly. It’s just something I’ve always been able to do,”
“You can see and talk to people who are dead,”
“Pretty much,”
She gave him a slight smile, “So I guess that was the main reason you moved from Philadelphia?”
He smiled back, “No, it wasn’t, but I couldn’t tell you the reason I left was that I was tired of having conservations with the founding fathers,”
“True,” The smile left her face, “So am I stuck here forever? I mean I spent the last four years playing with a little girl not even knowing I was dead,”
“Not necessarily. Most people have to find their own closure before they move on. You were playing with a young girl? She could see you?” That intrigued Cole greatly. He’d become a child psychologist in the hopes of being able to help a kid who was struggling with the same things he had struggled with. It was his way of continuing a legacy.
“Yes. A daughter of some friends. I guess she was born the day I died. They named her after me. That should’ve been a big clue that I was dead. I should’ve known-”
He shook his head as he cut off, “No. Most dead people don’t know they’re dead. I’ve interacted with people who have been dead for hundreds of years and they have no clue. The idea of being dead is hard to work through,”
She nodded, “That makes sense actually. Most people have very strong beliefs about what happens after they die and then to find out it’s all false. Their consciousness or spirit or whatever is probably avoiding the truth as some type of defense mechanism,”
“I don’t know that those beliefs are false. Once they have their closure they just disappear. I like to think that they go wherever they think they should,”
“I don’t want to disappear for good, but I also don’t want to be stuck in this limbo,” Emotion saturated her voice, tears gathered in her eyes, and the restaurant grew colder, “I just want my life back, but that’s just not possible,” She sat up straighter and looked him in the eye, “So what do I need to do to move on,”