Archive of Our Own ^beta

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She wakes to cold silence, gasping as feeling floods back into her limbs - but it’s not the warmth of blood rushing through her, it’s something colder and darker and chilling her to the bone. Somehow she finds the energy to sit up, and pain hits her in full force. She slumps back into a lying position and closes her eyes, a million thoughts whirling together in her head. Why am I here? Where is here? What happened? Who am I? It feels like she’s forgotten something important.

“Hello?” A voice, worried and desperate. “Chell?”

Is that her name? It feels foreign, unnatural, and yet unmistakably hers. She winces as another twinge of pain shoots through her chest and risks cracking her eyes open a slit. There’s a man crouching above her, tall and gangly and with nervous wide blue eyes. “Can- can you say something, love? You can still talk, can you? Just… say apple. Easy word, that, remember? Apple.”

Her voice comes unstuck somehow, and she manages to gasp out a question. “Who… are… you?”

His face falls, then relaxes into an expression of mild sadness. “It’s me, remember? Good ol’ Wheatley. Don’t worry, you’re- probably going through a bit of shock, here, happened to me when I- well. Being dead and all, affects the memory a bit, ohhhwhydidIsaythatIshouldn’thavesaidthat-“

She lurches upwards, grabbing him by the shoulders. He’s cool to the touch, but no warmth leaves her hands. “What?” She says, desperate. “What did you say?”

His eyes are sad. “I’m sorry, Chell.” He looks down in shame, flinching as her fingers dig into his shoulders. “I wasn’t fast enough- I thought you didn’t want me around, by the time I heard, I couldn’t get in-“ Something brushes her neck, light and gentle, and she shudders as pain lances through it. She stumbles backwards, away from this stranger who she doesn’t know but somehow does at the same time, and storms out of the room.

A mirror stops her in her tracks. Shaking, trembling, hair soaked with red, bleeding gashes scored down her burned arms, a figure gazes back at her from the mirror. She lifts a hand and touches the frosted glass. Is that me? It doesn’t look like her what do I look like it doesn’t feel like her because she would never look so defeated and tired. The revelation hits her like a truck - she’s dead, it’s why she doesn’t feel warm anymore, why the pain from all her wounds is already faded and distant. She kicks the wall in anger, feels nothing, slams it again. I failed, she realizes, and then the tears are in her eyes before she can hold them back.

His arms wrap around her, and she sinks into his embrace, sobbing and spent and broken for the first time in her life - well, death now, she knows with a chilling certainty. “It’s alright, love,” he murmurs, stroking her hair. She cries, and he holds her, and they stay like that for a long, long time.

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His chest feels crushed, things rubbing against each other in all the wrong places. The floor burns into his back, freezing and numbing, and he groans as a fresh twinge of pain shoots through it. There’s something on top of him, and he shoves at it with a cry, trying to get it off. Surprisingly, it moves - he moves - and then he realizes somehow he’s free, standing.

Then he sees the body on the floor - sprawled under a mass of metal - and it’s his face.

His dead self looks bloody awful, he does, red pooling out from ripped clothing, smudges of what looks like salt speckled here and there. Eyes open, staring, shallow closed blue devoid of life. Wheatley gasps in shock, falls over and scrambles backwards out of the room, tripping over a mishmash of things on the floor - a radio, a book, sage sticks. He rubs his eyes frantically, opens left then right in turn, but the horrifying image doesn’t disappear, and even if it did it would linger, cemented in his vision.

He yells hoarsely, just to hear his own voice, just to confirm he’s not dead, even though he knows he is - and to his surprise, the sound issues from his mouth, loud and clear and filling the room. He startles into silence.

For a while he sits there, staring at the image of his ruined self just behind his eyelids, before the gravity of the situation hits him and he thinks oh no, no, I’m a ghost, just like Her- and at that thought he’s in hysterics again, the words branded into his memory spilling out of him in a mad rush. He cries, retches, sputters to a stop before he realizes She’s not even in the room with him. Off to find some new victim to torture, he suspects, if anyone’s mad enough to walk through the door.

He forces his legs to move, dragging himself upright, and stumbles his way through the house, he has to get out, out, out- and he bursts through the door, it’s dark outside, and finds himself smashing straight into the very hard and unforgiving trunk of a willow. His legs buckle, of course they do, they’re useless, can’t even keep himself standing, just like him, useless, useless, useless.

A quiet sob fills the air, and it takes him a moment to realize it’s his own. Another moment and he senses he’s curled around himself involuntarily, pressed up against the bark of the tree, eyes clenched tightly shut. He must look a sight, out here, shredded clothes and bloodied face, if whatever he looks like now is anything resembling the poor slumped shape on the floor of the boiler room. Another piece of information coming back to him in shards. He shivers - it’s the middle of winter, how could he forget?

He doesn’t want to go back, because he knows She’ll be waiting, even if She can’t hurt him anymore. He sits under that tree for days, slipping out of sight whenever someone passes by, watching when later - a long time later - people walk up to the porch and wonder out loud why nobody answers the door. He’s watching when they carry him out. Nobody familiar, he notes, and it wears a small hole in his heart.

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She has been trapped here, in her own home, for a long, long time.

Ironic, isn’t it, that Moloch’s taken her form, used it to terrorize everyone who sets foot in this godforsaken manor. She recalls the panic she felt when she awoke that first time after death, the rage that burned through her chest when she realized what had happened, the agony of knowing that what she had done hadn’t been enough. She should have known, but it’s too late now.

Sometimes she closes her eyes and saps a little bit of the demon’s power and reaches her consciousness out, past the iron gates and into the town, around every living person she can feel and even those newly dead, laying in the cemetery. She has watched many people die, fading away in old age or with breaths stopped too suddenly to be natural, crying out from torn flesh and sinking slowly into oblivion. She used to reach out to the ones who didn’t come back of their own accord and whisper for them to wake up, used to see their souls unfurl and step out of what’s left. It’s a beautiful thing, to see a ghost wake up for the first time, and yet forcing it feels unnatural, disrespectful.

The first time she pulled someone back from the nothing, it was a little boy. She doesn’t know why she did it - maybe something about the way he died, pushed by some drunk onto the road, felt unfair. Loss of life so young. She’s never had any children herself, will never have any, but she’s always been inclined towards them. That, she tells herself, is why she called to him, not the eerie feeling that he will play a part in the future. He blinked eyes open, shivering, scared, and she sung him a lullaby. Singing’s always been something she loved. He walks the graveyard, now, watching things happen, watching people come and go, and sometimes she wonders if he knows far more than what he lets on.

The second, third, fourth times came in a rush, each one only a few years apart. A sick library worker who couldn’t afford to pay for her medicine. A kindly old man who had died holding his grandchild’s hand. Another child, older this time, who jumped in a river for a dare and drowned before his friends could do anything. His sister that dove in to try and save him, who didn’t need her help to wake up. Her heart broke for them all.

The fifth and last time had been just after a roaring fire, burning down a house. People went in and didn’t come out, and afterwards she tugged at one of the burned, ruined corpses, felt the man lurch back into the world. She listened to him ramble furiously about how she’d stopped him, evidently unaware of his situation, and stumble away. After that, she stopped trying. Was it really a kindness, to tether someone’s soul to the world after death? To leave them wandering the surface with the knowledge they’d never be able to talk to their loved ones again?

Today, she watches resignedly as the current resident is targeted. She recognises him, distantly - he left flowers at her grave, a touch of kindness she always thought was sweet. A kind soul in an unkind world. When he falls to the floor, crushed and suffocating, the light in his blue eyes growing dim, she feels a pull. One she hasn’t felt in a long while. Something tells her this man will be important. He can’t do anything now, but he will do something in the future, help someone who will come here, be integral to some central plan, like the keystone in an arch.

She reaches out, and wakes him up.

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“Stay away from me, you crazy ghost!” He yells after her, and she melts into the shadows of the graveyard. He blinks, rubbing his eyes - was she even there in the first place? - then shrugs, stumbling back in the other direction. Is the fire still burning? He can’t see from here, and anyhow he’s not entirely sure how he’s ended up in this place. The rusted iron gate looms just ahead of him, and he reaches out to open it before an overwhelming feeling of dread sends him reeling back, tripping over his own feet.

“Get a hold of yourself, Rick,” He mutters, reaching out again, before the same paralyzing fear washes over him. He strains forward, trying to just touch the gate, and he’s driven back by a shock of unseen force and clenching in his gut. He can’t get any closer no matter how hard he tries, his body won’t listen to him, and eventually he swears, kicking a rock, and turns back the way he came. There’s got to be some other way out.

There is, in fact, no other way out.

Day five of being stuck in the graveyard and he’s sitting on a headstone, staring at the same obnoxiously closed iron gate. He’s not an idiot - he’s figured out he’s dead, died in that fire, but he’s stubborn to high hell and he’s going to figure out how to get out of here. Today’s the day, he can feel it, and his hopes rise as he catches sight of two figures in the distance.

“Hey!” He shouts, striding towards them. “Can ya hear me?”

They turn towards him. One’s tall, with neat hair and round thin-framed glasses, and the other’s short, a kid, with messy blond hair. The kid waves, and Rick recognises him with a start. “Neil! What are you doing here-“

It’s a dumb question to ask, and he knows it as soon as the words are out of his mouth. A shot of guilt hits him right in the heart - that fire a month back. He wasn’t fast enough, wasn’t fast enough to save the energetic kid he’d met when the fire brigade went to the primary school for their annual visit. Neil had wanted to be an astronaut. Now he never would be.

The other ghost is unfamiliar. Maybe Rick’s seen him somewhere, a nameless face on some painting, the cousin of someone-or-other. His attention is diverted as Neil dives at him, wrapping him in a hug, and he slings an arm around his shoulders, grateful for a friendly face. “We can both go to space,” the kid declares, pointing energetically up at the sky. “Ghosts don’t need oxygen to breathe. Heinrich said so.”

Heinrich. That must be the other guy.

Rick’s suddenly conscious of how he’s hugging Neil. He drops his arms, sticks out a stiff hand to shake. “Name’s Rick. Rick Banks.”

The other ghost studies him for a second, then shakes. “Heinrich.”

“Got a last name?”

A frown in response. “Last names can be traced to the Middle Ages, and are trivial in death.”

Alright. One of those kind. Rick forces a smile, internally rolling his eyes, and turns to the rest of the graveyard. Gray. Blank. Nothingness. He wonders how many people he’s seen dead or dying will be here - hopefully not too many, he never did pay that guy back - and suppresses a shiver.

He glances back at Neil and Heinrich. Doesn’t look like they’re leaving anytime soon. Maybe it’s strange, but he doesn’t really want to be alone again, in this empty husk of a place. He doesn’t feel like leaving Neil by himself either.

Looks like he’ll be staying here a while.

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They have one goal: get out of here. Why is it so hard to reach?

First test - opening the gate. Of course, the obvious way of escape doesn’t work. They try reaching out for it, only to be driven back by that inexplicable fear. Rick yells about that for a while, complaining that he doesn’t fear anything and there’s no way he’s terrified by a gate, but it doesn’t change the outcome.

Second test - over the walls. The stone is too smooth to scale, too high to jump and grab the top of. Neil tries standing on Heinrich’s shoulders, and barely manages to get an arm over the top of the wall before he slips, falling. Rick barely grabs him. Heinrich suggests finding a ladder or something to climb onto, but they find nothing.

Third test - under the gate. Why didn’t they think of that in the first place? They nick shovels from the groundskeepers, trying their best to keep out of sight, and attack the ground again and again. Slow progress is made during the night, and then in the morning they find the holes have been filled in, the shovels returned to the toolshed. The back-and-forth goes on for a few days, until the head of grounds determines people must be sneaking in to dig as a prank and assigns a rotating guard, all the way through the night, and that’s the end of that.

Fourth test - sneaking out while the gate is open. Neil isn’t fast enough, and it’s just their luck that the somber-eyed lady entering the graveyard is his aunt. She screams, tries to attack him with a purse, and Rick and Heinrich have to dash in and bundle the kid away before she does any serious damage. Sure, they’re ghosts, but they’re some of the more material ones, and after Rick dislocated his shoulder trying to climb the walls - Heinrich gave him a long talking-to for trying that endeavor again - none of them want to risk putting Neil in any kind of danger.

Fifth test, sixth test, seventh test. Rick snaps one day in a spat with Heinrich and ends up storming off in plain sight of anyone walking by. It’s not the first time it’s happened, and it seems they’ve pushed the line too far - the groundskeepers don’t return the next day, leaving the iron gate firmly shut, and any chance of leaving through that particular route is gone.

Later, a long time later, long enough that the gate has rusted shut and tangled weeds have sprung up over the graves, a trio of teenagers climb over the wall, laughing and joking and glancing furtively around even though there’s nobody there to catch them. They linger a while until one of them kicks a gravestone. Unfortunately for them, its owner is the one ghost unhinged enough to straight-up attack a living being, and the kids escape over the wall clutching bleeding noses and bitten arms.

Rick goes hunting for answers while Heinrich keeps Neil distracted. He’s the one who learns that spirits can possess people, although there isn’t anyone around to try. He’s the one who sits down in front of his grave and decides a chance of getting out is worth a little pain. Neil goes ballistic when they propose the idea to him, crying and sobbing, and Rick and Heinrich share a glance and decide they can wait a little longer for a first attempt.

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He lies awake at night, staring out the window. The stars are pretty from here, nothing like the big city where the sky is bright all the time and you can’t see the Milky Way and the moon and all the galaxies far off in the distance. Is something beeping? He can hear something beeping. Maybe it’s his alarm clock, but that can’t be right, because it’s not light yet. He doesn’t want to go to school, not when the stars are still here for him to see.

Something is definitely beeping. He sits up and looks around, annoyed, and then he catches sight of the smoke leaking in under the door. Panic seizes him, sudden and sharp, and he tumbles out of bed and sprawls on the floor, tangled in the sheets. After a brief struggle, he runs to the door, tugs at the handle. Locked. His fault, for sneaking out one too many times to go stargazing in the fields.

He shouts something, not really forming words, then coughs. Just once, at first, then his chest tightens and he’s on the floor, curling into himself, coughing uncontrollably. Where is everyone? Flames are licking at the door now. He doesn’t want to die. He wants to go to space and be an astronaut. Space. Stars. Space police.

The beeping is getting louder. Bright lights flash outside the window, the sound of approaching sirens. He drags himself away, as far from the door as he can, still choking on smoke, and peeks outside. People are running. He coughs again, head feeling light. Maybe this is all a dream. If he lies down, he can go to sleep, and then he’ll wake up in the morning and go to school and look at star maps and planets and play with the spinny solar system on the teacher’s desk.

He can’t see anymore, his eyes are stinging too much. Pain, everything is painful, burning into his skin, burning away. Maybe someone’s shouting, but he can’t make out separate words. Hands encircle his arms, lifting him up, carrying him, and then the uncomfortable warmth is gone and he’s lying on what feels like wet grass. There’s definitely someone shouting now. He blinks a few times, focuses on the face in front of him. Familiar. Crying.

It’s one of the firemen. The nice one. The kind one. The one who smiled at school. The one who never complains when he shows up to say hello at the fire station. He wants to reach out and say he’s okay and make him stop being sad because you aren’t supposed to be sad when you can see the stars-

-and then something shifts, and he’s floating.

He looks down at himself, then over at the smallest shape on the grass. Burns cover his arms, his face, charring the star-covered set of pyjamas to black. Unmoving. Is that him? It has to be. His knees give out, he crawls closer, maybe if he gets close enough he can get back, wake up, but it isn’t working. It isn’t going to work.

It’s raining. The colors dim, bright red and gold and flickering orange going dark, as the fire recedes. He drags himself over to the fireman and throws his arms around him, desperate, trying to make him see I’m still here, stop crying, look at the stars- but there’s no response, and his arms pass through like mist.

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Rick is leaning against the gate smoking a cigarette when Heinrich shows up.

“Kid’s asleep?”

“Yes.”

He smothers the flame with a hand, relishing the burning feeling. Even though it’s been who knows how long since he figured out how to interact with things again, his senses are still dulled. Anything that cuts through the haze of blankness is a relief.

They walk to his grave quickly, silently. It’s not right, what they’re trying to do, but right now it’s the only escape route they can think of and Rick doesn’t think he can take another day of waiting. His headstone’s still there, of course it is, crusted with several decades’ worth of moss. Boring and uninteresting. He kind of dislikes it. At least they bothered to put an inscription.

Nobody has come to visit for a long, long while. Rick knows why, he’s seen the stone wear away, seen his younger brothers and sisters grow older with the passage of time, but it still wears a hole in his heart.

“Are you ready to start?” asks Heinrich, flat as ever.

“Do I look like I’m not ready?” Rick snaps. He’d never admit it, not in a million years, but the fear’s getting to him. Heinrich pauses next to the grave, giving him a long look, then bends to pick up the shovel.

The first jab at the soil hurts. Rick flinches involuntarily - it feels like he’s been socked in the gut. It’s almost like he can feel his old body bruising under the pressure, bones splintering and skin tearing as the shovel drives deeper into the ground. It’s ridiculous, most of it has probably decomposed long ago, but whatever strange force strikes fear into his heart when he set foot near the iron gate before is sending shards of pain through his chest now.

Heinrich shovels out another load of soil, and Rick grimaces as a flash of muted white shines out from the open grave. The moonlight turns the bones a pearly white, shreds of dirt and worse things clinging to the edges. He shivers. It’s not every day you get a nice good look at the remains of your rotted corpse.

A sudden, biting pain scores its way across his side. Rick doubles over, gasping, glancing down at himself. There’s nothing there, but he can feel metal sliding through his flesh, scraping against nonexistent bones. The pressure suddenly lets up, and Rick looks up sharply. Heinrich offers no apology - Rick doesn’t think the man’s even capable of being sorry - but his face is twisted in an odd expression. Something closed off, detached, uncomfortable.

“Keep going,” Rick chokes, and then Heinrich stabs the shovel down again and his vision blacks out.

He falls, knees slamming into the ground first, then the rest of him. Everything’s on fire, burning. Rick curls into himself, clutching at his side, feeling it tear apart under his very hands, but it’s fine, nothing’s there, but it’s not, it hurts, it hurts. He coughs once, twice, then rolls over and dry heaves again and again, trembling uncontrollably. He cracks open one eye, it still hurts so bad, needles are stabbing him everywhere, his chest feels caved in, crushed, so Heinrich must still working away at his grave, at himself-

No, he isn’t there anymore, the shovel lies discarded on the ground, and arms are encircling him, pulling him to his feet, helping him balance, wrapping around him and holding him steady. A memory comes back to hit him, hard, guilt, shame, flashes of one of his teammates pulling him up, away from a small blackened body - it’s dark, why does it have to be dark, why does it have to be like then, it hurts, it hurts - and he yells furiously, lashing out. His fists flail wildly before one lands, and the other ghost lets go, startled, and steps back.

He limps towards the gate, struggling to stay upright. His foot catches on a stone, and he collapses forward, a fresh round of pain rushing through his body. No, come on, it’s so close! Heinrich has fallen back, is watching him silently - what is that idiot doing, can’t he help? - as Rick drags himself closer, inch by agonizing inch, and strains a shaking hand out towards the bars.

It doesn’t work. It never does.

Chapter Text

The bridge is quiet, as usual. Faint starlight shines down from above - it’s dark, the new moon just a faint white ring in the sky above, the only light from his heavy-duty torch. His supplies go to the side like always, and he picks up a small neat brush for highlights and dips it in white. He pauses to admire his work and allows himself a grin before setting the brush to the wall.

It’s taken so long - months, at this point - but he’s almost finished. Tonight is the last night he’ll have to creep out here to paint, and then he can set foot on the dirt path in the morning and walk under the bridge and see the final finished artwork as the cars whizz by. It sends a burst of warmth through his chest as he highlights the bold oranges and blues, the hints of green and purple, the other colors whirling into the mix.

Months of sneaking out after sunset, grabbing the paint and brushes from the garage, painting until the sun creeps over the horizon and the first early cars come speeding down the highway. Technically it isn’t allowed, but the local police don’t mind the art. They’ve even complimented him a few times when they see him, the comments always accompanied by a wink. As long as they don’t catch him in the act, he’ll be fine, and he doesn’t intend to get caught. Not for this. It’s the largest project he’s ever worked on and definitely the best. He’s proud. 

He stops for a rest, turns off the torch, leans against a dry finished section of wall. It’s tiring, yeah, but it’s worth it, it’s going to be worth it. He gazes at the mural, a figure running across a road trailing forests and cities and ocean waves in beautiful overlapping trails, green and gray and bright cobalt blue. It looks a little bit like him, and he smiles, trying to imagine what it would be like to travel. He’s never been anywhere else, but he’s seen pictures of rolling mountain ranges and golden beaches and turquoise lakes. Maybe one day.

Black creeps at the edges of his vision, and dizziness crowds behind his eyes as he rubs them, yawning. Huh. He must be more tired than he thought. The brush slips from his hand, rolls onto the road, and he groans. He might not be able to finish tonight.

White is splattered across the road where the paint splashed. He bends to pick up the brush, and his knees buckle, sending him to the ground with a muffled yelp of pain. Agony shoots up his left ankle, sharp and biting, and he closes his eyes, lying there and trying not to make any noise. Tears splash on the ground, and he bites down hard on the sleeve of his jumper to muffle a scream because he can’t risk getting caught. He’s so close, so close to being done-

-and then a light flashes and tyres screech and a car barrels off into the distance and it’s dark, dark, dark, and there’s red streaked across the road, just like paint.