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It was tense. The amulet had fallen to the floor as Angel ripped open the packet and who had materialized was...well, they didn’t really know.
The woman said nothing, eyes flickering between the room’s occupants as she surveyed her surroundings warily.
‘Where am I?’
Angel took a step forward and the woman instinctively moved back.
‘Wolfram and Hart,’ he explained gently, ‘do you know who you are? Where you’re from? How you got here?’
The woman stilled her roving eyes to fix him with a glare.
‘Does it look like I know where I am or how the fuck I got here?’
Angel looked back at the others.
‘What’s your name?’ tried Wesley, coming up beside Angel.
‘Shaw.’
‘What was the last thing you remember?’
Shaw was wandering around the office slightly, walking to the desk behind her though still warily eying the others.
‘Death. Mostly.’
Shaw reached to touch the desk but her hand seemed swallowed by the wood and a weird sensation ran through her body. She pulled her hand back and turned to look at the group.
‘Care to tell me why I’m a ghost?’
Wesley looked at Angel.
‘We...don’t know. We were hoping you could tell us.’
Shaw looked at them before apparently making a decision, turning and walking through the nearby wall into the main lobby.
‘Anyone got any idea who she is?’ asked Gunn.
‘None. Fred?’
‘I don’t know,’ she moved to pick up the amulet, ‘I’d guess this facilities her recorporealisation. She must be tied to it somehow.’
‘What the fuck is this place?’ demanded a voice and the gang turned to see Shaw standing halfway through the door.
Fred smiled sympathetically.
‘I think it’s best if we head down to the labs.’
Shaw stood patiently as Fred ran her tests, scanner after scanner as Wesley studied the amulet. As for the others: she had no idea why the hell they were standing around watching.
‘Who’s the green guy?’ asked Shaw, and Fred looked up from her readings.
‘Oh that’s Lorne. He’s a demon from an alternate dimension.’
‘Right.’
Fred smiled sheepishly.
‘Sorry. You get used to it.’
‘Well the amulet seems void of anymore magical properties so I’d say we’ve exhausted its surprises for now,’ Wesley made her way over to where Fred stood next to Shaw, both staring at her like a specimen, ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if the amulet binds her to this city, or even building, depending on it’s radius of influence.’
‘You telling me I’m stuck here?’
‘For now. It would be best if you stayed under our protection for the immediate future in any case until Fred can work out what’s happened.’
‘I’m a fucking ghost that’s what happened. Work out how to kill me again. Simple.’
‘I’m afraid it’s not, you see-’
Shaw’s eyes flashed in dangerous anger and she wondered if she could punch something in this state. Fred chose that moment to step in.
‘Perhaps its best if you all go upstairs. I’ve got this one.’
‘Are you sure? We don’t know who she is or what brought her here: for all we know she could be dangerous.’
Shaw shot a look at Angel.
‘Dangerous and unable to interact with the material world.’
Fred felt the hints of a smile.
‘I’ll be fine Angel. Really. No threat.’
After some significant glaring at each other, Shaw unflinching from his hard stare, Angel nodded.
‘Any trouble-’
‘I can handle it!’ called Fred as they left her lab, watching them go. She turned to Shaw and placed down the current scanner she was holding.
‘Sorry ‘bout that. Angel’s a little...’
‘Paranoid.’
Fred smiled in a way that said she agreed before picking up her clipboard.
‘Okay well you’re not a normal ghost. No endothermic reaction to your surroundings, no dimensional transfer residue picked up on the scanner and no tell tale signs of teleportation. You’re a black hole.’
Shaw raised an eyebrow.
‘I mean…well, you don’t exist. According to these sensors you’re not even here which either means you never existed in the first place and we’re having some mass crowd hallucination or...’ Fred trailed off as Shaw slowly faded away into the ether, looking calmly down at herself as she watched herself disappear, ‘...you’re fluctuating between planes.’
‘So what do we do with her?’ asked Angel, ever practical.
The group (minus Lorne. Something about the Olsen Twins.) sat in Angel’s office, Fred standing in between where Wesley and Gunn sat, cupboard clutched to her chest.
‘There’s nothing we can do.’
‘Do we know who she is?’
‘I looked through Wolfram and Hart employment records up to a century back and found no reference to any ‘Shaw’,’ supplied Wesley.
Gunn nodded in agreement.
‘Nothing on the legal side of things either, demon or otherwise. As far as I can tell, Wolfram and Hart have no idea who she is just as much as we do.’
Angel sat back in his chair.
‘Until we find a way to fix her onto this plane and materialise her, all she can do is-’
‘Float around like a ghost, right?’
Angel looked up to the bookcase on the other side of the room, the trio following his gaze as Shaw stood in the shadows, studying her surroundings. Fred walked forward.
‘Do you know where you went?’
‘Dark, black. A lot more peaceful than here.’
‘Okay look, I don’t have time to babysit a ghost.’
Fred whipped round.
‘We can’t just leave her to slowly fade into nothingness.’
‘Then what do you propose we do Fred?’
‘Let me work on it. Give me a few months at least to establish whether or not we can help.’
‘Fine. What do we do with her until then?’
‘Leave me alone?’
Angel blinked.
‘Well..yes. And...you..stay out of our way,’ replied Angel, a little put off.
Shaw mock saluted as she walked through the wall behind her.
‘She seems to be adjusting well to ghost-hood,’ remarked Wesley.
‘So you’re the scientist?’
Fred jumped, yelping slightly and standing up straight. She turned around, adjusting her glasses.
‘Yes...yes I am.’
Shaw nodded, but said nothing else.
‘Was there something you needed? Any further developments?’
‘I can go.’
‘No! No it’s fine it just...you startled me and people don't usually come down here unless they want something.’
Shaw nodded once, walking over to the large machine positioned in the wall.
‘That’s uh…that’s dangerous you might not want to-’
‘Can’t touch anything. Remember?’
‘Oh. Oh. Oh, well then go ahead. Just try not to accidentally let through a legion of evil demons here to launch an apocalypse,’ grinned Fred.
‘That happen a lot?’ asked Shaw, still walking around the room coming to stop before a filled whiteboard.
‘You’d be surprised.’
Fred watched Shaw stare at the board, before slowly returning to her own work on the case at hand. Shaw let her eyes wander over the mathematical constants, understanding some with her chemical knowledge but largely skimming over what seemed like the theoretical basis for a functioning DeLorean.
She came to stand on the opposite side of the bench Fred was hunched over, scribbling on the paper. Shaw saw a pen by her hand, looked at her hand, thought about it a bit before reaching forward and touching the pen. Shaw smirked.
‘Here,’ said Shaw, holding the pen out in front of her and Fred’s eyes looked up, slowly widening.
‘How...is this new? How did you...’ Shaw’s image began to flicker and the pen slipped through her fingers, ‘Shaw!’
‘Work it out.’
Fred stared at the empty space for a long, long time.
It took an embarrassingly large amount of time before Fred noticed the eyes on her back and she whipped around, jumping slightly at Shaw’s figure in the doorway of her office.
‘How long have you been standing there?’
Shaw shrugged, eyes trailing the walls.
‘Run out of paper?’
Fred followed her gaze and looked sheepish.
‘No I...it helps me think.’
Shaw nodded.
‘I worked it out. I think.’
Shaw watched, waiting, so Fred continued.
‘I ran through numerous scenarios with dimensions and string theory and molecular interference but um…ultimately I think it’s more of a will-power thing-will-power being the electrical power of the brain because if you think about it all things are made of atoms, even the things in the other dimensions so even if you’re fluctuating you can still interact with both dimensions provided you know how and those atoms are held together by energy and harnessing that energy is something you know how to do instinctively because you can walk no problems. You just figured out to harness it consciously!’
Fred finished with a smile, waiting on Shaw’s response. She had stood, watching as Fred’s hands gestured as she explained her theories: she was impressed.
She let a small smile tug at her lips and Fred grinned in response.
‘Sameen.’
Fred blinked.
‘My name. Sameen Shaw.’
Fred smiled.
‘Winifred Burkle. I would shake your hand but...’
‘Nothing comes up under Sameen either. It’s like she’s never existed,’ complained Wesley.
Fred and Wesley sat on the floor of the archives, files scattered around them.
‘She has to be someone,’ declared Fred, still rooting around in the files.
‘Fred,’ began Wesley softly, ‘she might be no one at all. For all we know she could fade into the void without a trace.’
‘And you’d be fine with that?’
Wesley leaned back from the look in Fred’s eyes.
‘Well...we don’t know who she is I can only say that was does happen was destined to happen. Something interrupted her journey to the afterlife. We might just have to accept that she’s going to end up where she was headed all along.’
‘If she’s going to die, the least we can do is give her an identity.’
Wesley sighed, watching as Fred already lost herself in the files before her.
Fred let her head fall to her desk with a thud.
‘I bought Chinese.’
Fred slowly tilted her head up to see Shaw stood in the doorway, two bags of Chinese food in her hands.
‘Are you an angel because please tell me there’s chow mien.’
Shaw walked forward and Fred sat up as she set the bags on the desk. Fred reached in and pulled out the first container, moaning in happiness as she early opened it and dug in. Shaw pulled a chair and began eating her own order.
The two sat in silence as they ate vigorously: Shaw might have been a ghost but once she had the art of eating down she wasn’t going to give up one of the few things she liked in the world. Had liked.
Shaw was surprised to see Fred eat with almost as much gusto as herself and soon every bite of food was gone.
‘Thank you Sam you have no idea how much I needed that.’
‘You look tired.’
Fred sighed.
‘A little.’
‘Where are your lab staff?’
‘The day officially finishes at 4 and I’m left with paperwork, three dead bodies and a magically infused grenade that could go off at any moment.’
Shaw raised an eyebrow.
‘Grenade?’
‘Angel thought it would be a good idea to bring back to the lab for examination but I have no idea how to disable it. It seems to be some sort of incantation or inscription, or even a puzzle but the magical energy it’s emanating is off the charts. If I could isolate the-’
‘Where is it?’
‘I uh...oh it’s,’ Fred stood up from her desk, leading the way down into the main lab and to the bench where it lay, ‘can you disable it?’
Shaw shrugged.
‘I can try.’
Fred took a step back as Shaw picked it up, twisting it lightly in her hands examining the metal before pulling a small pin at the bottom causing the disconcerting amber glow to fade into darkness. Shaw set it down.
Fred came up behind Shaw’s shoulder, hair brushing Shaw’s cheek and Shaw stayed where she was unmoving. Fred turned her head to look at her, wide smile on her face.
‘How did you know?’
‘Didn’t. Guessed.’
Shaw acquired a routine, which largely consisted of helping Fred in the lab. It was comparatively quiet to the rest of the building, out of the way of any curious employees and she sort of...enjoyed Fred’s company.
Shaw didn’t remember much. She remembered her name, that she was in the military, that she had been shot in the basement of a building three times but this world was not her world. Demons and dimensions and magically-infused grenades were not something she had ever encountered before but considering she was dead it wasn’t as if it particularly concerned her, any of this.
So she elected to help Fred. Upon finding her proficiency with weapons she was tasked with developing a new arsenal for the Scooby Gang upstairs (the gang Shaw took great pains to avoid, and they her) and occasionally scrubbing up on her autopsy skills. The other lab techs seemed content to ignore her presence and in turn, she ignored them.
She still periodically disappeared and where she went it was cold and dark and unmemorable. Re-materialising in Fred’s presence was like seeing sunlight after being trapped in a cave for months and Shaw found it harsh, but pleasing the way her words seemed to run on like they were meant to.
Shaw was finding, to her initial reluctance, that she had found a small place at Wolfram and Hart, in the shadow of a tall Texan Physicist named Winifred Burkle.
‘...and the secondary diversion would be too much of a collision. Run it through the specs again.’
Shaw caught the tale end of the order as she walked into the lab bearing two coffees. Shaw came behind Fred as she addressed Wesley.
‘If we can isolate the trigger mechanism-’
‘It won’t be able to sustain itself Fred.’
‘It can if we put an elliptical cross bearance in-thanks Shaw- loop with the dimensional stratofier.’
Shaw set down the now empty coffee holder as she sipped at her own drink.
‘Tell Angel and have them down here in 30 minutes.’
Wesley nodded and left though his face looked skeptical. Fred let out a sigh of relief.
‘Wesley again,’ supplied Fred.
‘What did he want?’
‘He thinks it won’t work and won’t let me try it. I think though, this one is up to you,’ explained Fred, sipping at her coffee.
Shaw waited for an explanation and Fred eventually met her eyes.
‘I’ve been working on solving your ghost problem and i think i’ve developed something. It’s risky and dangerous and stupid but if I can utilise the same energy you have to interact with our world on a massive scale I can materialise you completely in our plane. Or I could blow a hole the size of LA in the Earth. Or I could turn you into quarks and sub-quarks and sub-sub-quarks. Or-’
‘Fred.’
Fred stopped, smiling.
‘Sorry.’
‘Let’s do it.’
‘Are you sure I mean it could all go-’
‘To shit. Yeah well. A month ago I found out I was a dead ghost at a law firm for demons: I won’t be losing much if I get dusted.’
‘Sam...’
Shaw quirked a smile and placed down her coffee.
‘Only one person was ever allowed to call me Sam...’ she began, trailing off as she walked away to the center of the lab.
Fred’s eyes followed her before her brain caught up and as Shaw turned back around Fred was already standing close in front of her.
‘I...’
‘I trust you.’
‘Don’t!’ yelled Fred, but it was too late as the technician dropped the vial, ‘clear it up, now!’
‘How was the med bay?’
Fred turned to her left and offered a blinding smile, shoulder gently brushing Shaw’s lab-coated one.
‘Fit for duty.’
Shaw nodded once.
‘Fredikins! And Shaw!’
Both turned around, Shaw’s jaw tightening slightly at the irritating tone of Lorne’s voice. She had nothing against the demon, right up until he made her sing for him.
‘Angel wants us all in the office for a team meet.’
‘We’ll be right up.’
‘Wouldn’t rush. The boys are arguing over who would win in a fight: astronauts or cavemen.’
‘Astronauts.’
‘Cavemen’
Replies the two women instantaneously, looking at each other in surprise. Fred opened her mouth to launch into a verbal assault and Shaw allowed herself a grin, one that Lorne no doubt saw, but didn’t care.
Sure she had died. And then been a ghost. And seen demons and werewolves, and someone finally decided to tell her Angel was a 200 year old vampire but she didn’t really remember much of her old life and frankly, she sort of liked this one and the people in it.
Well. One in particular.