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Willie doesn’t know what he’s waiting for.
He doesn’t know what he’s doing here at all, really—it’s not like there’s a shortage of other things he could be doing. He could be hiding. He could be celebrating. He could be tracking down the hundreds of freed souls displaced when the Hollywood Ghost Club went down.
Instead, Willie is sitting on the windowsill of a hospital room, watching Nick sleep.
He’s been here… he doesn’t know how long—days, maybe. Doctors have come in and out, to check Nick’s vitals and read his chart and mutter questions to each other that usually begin with, “How is he alive?” and end with, “if he wakes up.” Two men, who it didn’t take long for Willie to gather are Nick’s fathers, have visited too, more times than Willie can count. Sometimes they bring a little girl with them—Nick’s sister, she must be, though they don’t look anything alike—and they cry more than they do anything else. Carrie Wilson comes almost every day, sits at Nick’s bedside and tells him things Willie doesn’t think anyone, much less a ghost, is meant to hear.
Even Julie’s stopped by on a handful of occasions. She sits by the door and tells Nick about her day, or reads to him passages from her school books or the lyrics of new Phantoms songs. She never once mentions the months Nick spent trapped inside his own mind, or the lies she believed for much too long. Willie likes seeing her here, likes knowing someone he can trust is also keeping an eye on the situation, even if she doesn’t know he’s there.
Because despite Alex’s greatest hopes, Julie still can’t see him. Though Willie’s soul may be free, he is still a ghost, and not even the strange workings of Julie Molina can make him visible to lifers again. Not with Caleb gone.
Although maybe that’s why he’s here, keeping watch over a teenaged lifer in a coma for minutes or hours or days on end. Maybe Willie’s convinced, despite everything, that when (if) Nick does open his eyes, they’ll glow purple, and he’ll sit up and stare right into Willie’s soul and say, “Hello, William.”
Maybe Willie doesn’t really believe Caleb’s been defeated. Because he was the one to do it in the end, and if it were that easy, why couldn’t he have done it decades ago?
When Nick finally does stir, he does so quietly, without a sigh or groan or even a ruffle of the bedsheets. Willie doesn’t even notice at first, in fact, because he’s watching the steady zigzag of Nick’s heart monitor and trying to remember if Caleb’s possession would have stopped Nick’s heart.
But he jumps, attention snapping from the machine to the bedridden boy, when Nick says, “Why can I still see you?”
He sounds awful, voice a mangled croak from dehydration and lack of use, and he doesn’t look much better. Willie desperately scans his pale face and sunken cheeks for any sign of Caleb’s smirk, strains his senses for any hint of ghost magic in Nick’s soul, and finally forces himself to meet the boy’s eyes, but they’re a clear, if pained, blue.
He opens his mouth to address Nick’s question, but what comes out is a small, scared, “Caleb?”
Nick’s eyes go a little wide, and he starts to speak, but then the door bursts open—they both start. Willie shrinks in on himself, a futile gesture since he’s invisible to everyone but Nick, as the room fills with doctors and nurses, all bustling with concern.
As Nick does his best to answer all their frantic questions (“My name is Nicholas Danforth-Evans,” “It’s… 2020, right? Fuck… 2021?”, “My head hurts, and I’m thirsty as hell, but otherwise I feel okay”), Willie watches, and listens, and feels for any smidge of evidence that Nick’s not the one in control.
“As soon as visiting hours start in the morning, I’ll contact your parents to let them know you’re awake,” a doctor says. “Until then, try to get some more rest.”
He starts to go, but Nick grabs his arm and, with a quick glance at Willie, says, “Please. What happened?”
What happened is that people finally started noticing, eight months after Alex played the Orpheum, that Nick didn’t look so good, that he was losing weight and skipping classes and snapping at people he’d only ever been kind to. What happened is that Caleb Covington came to Willie in a new body and tortured him with all his old tricks for daring to defy him, for trying to help the love of his life cross over against his employer’s wishes.
What happened is that Alex wanted to rescue Willie and Julie wanted to save Nick, and Caleb was just too damn powerful for any of them. Until Willie stood before him, terrified and in unimaginable pain, and said, “Shut up, Caleb. I’m talking to Nick.”
“You’ve been in a coma for a little over two weeks,” the doctor says. “And you were missing for a few days before then. If anyone knows what happened, it’s you.”
Nick shakes his head, looking stunned, and with a disappointed frown, the doctor bids his goodbye.
When the door closes, there’s silence for thirty seconds, a minute, two. Nick doesn’t sit up or roll over or even look away from the door. And then, he says, “I’m dead, right?”
Willie hops down from the windowsill onto the floor. “What?”
“That’s why I can see you?” Nick looks at him—his eyes are so blue. “I dreamt up the whole hospital thing, and you’re here to tell me I’m dead.”
Willie doesn’t know what to say. He still can’t be sure whom he’s talking to. “I don’t… you’re not—”
“It’s Willie, right?”
He blows out an unnecessary breath. “Yes, Nick. My name is Willie.”
“You worked at the… you were his…” Nick’s eyes flood with tears. “Did he send you here?”
Willie doesn’t make the conscious choice to move closer, but suddenly, he’s at Nick’s side, standing over the bed close enough to touch him. He doesn’t dare to try, just hovers his hands where Nick can see them and says, “He’s gone, Nick. You’re not dead, a-and I don’t… I don’t work for Caleb anymore. You’re safe.”
“Safe,” Nick repeats, his eyes fluttering closed in relief. Tears spill down his cheeks, and the sight sends a pang through Willie’s chest that he doesn’t know how to identify. Nick takes a slow, shaky breath, and opens his eyes again. “You saved me?”
“I—” Willie starts, then stops. His first and strongest instinct is to vehemently refuse the credit—it was Julie, after all, who brought Luke, Alex, and Reggie to the brink of life; Alex who found Willie’s prison in the Dark Room on the Other Side and dragged him feet first back into reality. It was Nick himself who dealt the final blow, expelled Caleb from his body and brought the Hollywood Ghost Club crumbling down around them.
But Willie helped. Willie ignored the voice in his head telling him to give in at every turn, to save himself the pain. He stood up to Caleb, stood against Caleb, breathed past the flickering that threatened to tear his very soul apart and said, “Nick. I forgive you, man. I know you’re a good person. You didn’t deserve what he’s done to you. You deserve to live.”
He wasn’t trying to give Nick the power to take control back. He didn’t even know that was possible. He’d just wanted to do something—to stop being a coward for once—before Caleb destroyed him and everyone he cared about once and for all.
“You saved yourself,” he says now, because that’s what’s most important, and because it’s true.
The look Nick gives him is deeply exhausted, and once more on the verge of tears. “And—” His voice breaks. “Did I save you, too?”
It’s those words, more than anything, that let calm sweep over Willie’s skin, that convince him fully—finally—that there is no more trace of Caleb Covington inside this boy. Because Caleb wouldn’t have asked. Caleb wouldn’t have let Nick ask. He’d have known, and he’d either be furious that Willie managed to escape his clutches, or he’d gloat that Willie didn’t.
This is just Nick. And Nick wants to know if Willie’s been saved.
“My soul is my own,” Willie promises him. “Caleb’s gone. And I’m free.”
Nick starts crying harder now, silent but unceasing, like he just can’t help but let the tears flow. Willie can’t even imagine what kind of stain Caleb’s possession must have put on Nick’s brain and body over the last year—enough to put him in a coma the second Caleb was exorcized.
“You should get some sleep,” Willie says, and starts to step away.
But Nick gasps, “Please don’t go!” and grabs Willie by the arm.
Impossibly, the touch connects. Willie and Nick both stare as a glow spreads from Nick’s hand on Willie’s wrist up Willie’s arm and all across his body, until Willie feels warm and solid for the first time in thirty-five years.
Nick holds Willie, and as he looks at Nick, Willie’s heart starts to beat.