Chapter Text
The apartment was too quiet.
The kind of quiet that follows a magical explosion—the sharp, ringing silence that settles into your bones like fallout. Every light had burst. A haze of smoke hung low in the air, acrid and heavy. The chalk lines of the summoning circle were scorched black, spiderwebbed with cracks that radiated outward from ground zero like fractures in time.
And Bob’s skull was gone.
Harry stumbled through the smoke. His head pounded, vision swimming. Somewhere behind him, a table smoldered quietly, and the wall bore a fresh scorch mark that hadn’t been there ten minutes ago. But all he saw was the empty shelf.
The binding circle was splintered. The ancient runes that once held Bob tethered to the world were now shattered, burned through with raw necromantic energy that had surged too fast, too hot, and too wild to contain.
“Bob?” Harry rasped. “Bob!”
No glowing amber light. No sarcastic voice from the ether. Nothing.
The silence was absolute.
For one horrifying second, Harry thought he’d lost him. That the backlash had severed the soul tether completely—no spirit, no return, just obliteration.
He took a step closer—and heard it.
A gasp.
Wet. Guttural. Human.
Harry spun toward the sound and froze.
Something lay crumpled in the center of the summoning circle. No—not something. Someone.
A man. Curled half on his side, half sprawled, face down against the cracked floorboards. His clothing—if you could call it that—was in tatters. A scorched linen shirt hung in bloodied strips off his back, sleeves torn to the elbow, and his trousers were singed at the hem. One boot was missing. The other was blackened, half-peeled from a burned sole. He was covered in ash and blood and something older, something colder—like he’d been born from the storm.
And he was breathing.
“No way,” Harry whispered.
He crossed the circle in two strides, dropping to his knees.
“Bob?”
The man groaned—soft, disoriented. He shifted minutely, flinching at the movement, fingers splaying against the scorched floor like he couldn’t quite remember how to hold his own weight. His face was half hidden beneath a fall of white hair, damp with sweat and soot. But Harry knew him.
Even before he opened his eyes—those unmistakable pale blue eyes, wide and dazed and startling against the soot and blood—Harry knew.
It was him.
Bob.
Alive.
“What the hell—” Harry breathed, hands hovering. He didn’t touch. Not yet. “Hey. Hey, look at me. Can you hear me?”
Bob’s gaze struggled to focus. His lips moved, soundless for a moment. Then— “Harry…?”
The name sounded like it scraped its way out of a tomb.
Harry’s stomach flipped. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m here. Jesus, Bob—what the hell happened?”
Bob blinked again, his brow drawing together in a confused line. He coughed—harsh and wet—and pushed against the floor as if trying to sit up. His arm buckled instantly.
Harry caught him before he hit the ground again.
The contact was electric.
Warm skin. Solid weight. The kind of realness that wasn’t supposed to exist. Bob’s shoulder was lean and shaking beneath Harry’s arm, his breath ragged against Harry’s collar. He smelled like smoke and old parchment and something coppery beneath it all—blood, probably. His shirt clung in places, dark with sweat and torn open along the side. His skin was ice-cold.
Harry’s coat was already coming off before he even realized he was doing it.
“Hold still,” he murmured, wrapping it around Bob’s shoulders. “You’re freezing.”
Bob didn’t answer. His fingers clutched weakly at the coat, as though grounding himself with the sensation. He was trembling hard enough to rattle his teeth.
“I…” Bob’s voice shook. “This—this shouldn’t be possible.”
“No kidding.” Harry shifted to brace him more securely, trying not to stare. Bob looked younger than Harry expected—still mature, still carrying that timeless gravity, but less ghostlike. Human. His skin had a pallor that came from years of absence, not illness, and his jaw was dusted faintly with stubble like the start of a beard. “Do you remember what happened?”
Bob’s eyes unfocused. “The summoning. The backlash. The runes were cracked. And then—” He closed his eyes, swallowing. “Pain. Light. I thought I was—gone.”
“You were,” Harry said before he could stop himself. “Or you should’ve been.”
Bob didn’t answer.
“Come on,” Harry muttered, helping him to his feet. “Let’s get you cleaned up before you pass out on my floor and I have to bribe my upstairs neighbor not to call the cops.”
Bob swayed as he stood. Harry pulled him in without thinking, looping an arm around his waist. Bob stiffened at the contact, only for a second—and then leaned in.
It was all wrong.
The Bob he knew was weightless. Ethereal. A whisper behind wards and parchment, clever and untouchable. This Bob had mass. Heat. Presence. He fit under Harry’s arm too well. His heartbeat thudded against Harry’s side, arrhythmic and alive.
It was terrifying.
The bathroom lights flickered as they entered. One overhead bulb had survived the explosion by some miracle. Harry eased Bob onto the closed toilet seat and turned on the sink faucet.
Bob watched him with the wide, slightly stunned expression of someone seeing water for the first time. Which—yeah, in a way, he probably was.
Harry wet a towel and returned, crouching down. “Let me—”
He hesitated.
Up close, Bob looked wrecked. The cuts were shallow, but they dotted his skin in strange places—forearms, cheekbone, shoulder. One of his hands had scraped raw where it hit the floor. But the worst part wasn’t the blood.
It was the look in his eyes.
Bob wasn’t just injured. He was frightened.
Not of Harry—no. But of what had happened. Of himself.
Harry moved slowly, gently dabbing at the grime on Bob’s temple. The soot came away in streaks.
“You’re real,” Harry muttered, half to himself.
Bob’s lips twitched. “That makes one of us.”
It was the weakest attempt at sarcasm Harry had ever heard—and it still made his chest ache.
He worked in silence for a while, cleaning away blood and ash. Bob didn’t flinch, didn’t speak, just watched—like he didn’t trust his own senses to hold.
Bob looked down at himself for the first time. He frowned, slowly flexing his fingers.
“This shirt,” he said quietly, fingering the scorched linen. “I owned this shirt. Before I died.”
Harry’s hand stilled.
“I remember the seam. I had it mended—there.” Bob traced a torn stitch near the shoulder. “The day before they executed me.”
Harry didn’t breathe.
“…Bob.”
Pale blue eyes lifted to meet his. They were clear now. Sharp. Haunted.
“I don’t think this is new,” Bob said. “I think this is me. As I was.”
Harry swallowed hard. “That’s not possible.”
“Neither is any of this,” Bob whispered.
Silence.
Then—“Can you stand again?” Harry asked. “You need rest. And a shower. And probably a sandwich.”
Bob hesitated.
“I’m not sure I remember how to… be.”
Harry offered his hand. “I’ll help.”
The bathroom steamed behind him, and Harry stared blankly at the closed door as if it might evaporate and make the whole damn situation go away.
It didn’t.
Instead, the sound of running water continued: steady, hot, too long. The kind of shower a guy takes when he hasn’t felt water in six centuries. And Harry just… stood there. Barefoot in the hall, jacket ruined, magic still humming in his veins like a barely-set bone.
Bob was in his shower. Bob, who had once lived in a skull. Bob, who used to float around like a smug torchlight with an attitude problem and a terrifyingly encyclopedic knowledge of human anatomy and death. That Bob had collapsed against Harry not fifteen minutes ago with torn clothes, pale skin, and eyes like a forgotten god finally waking up.
Harry ran a hand down his face. “What the hell is happening.”
The answer didn’t come. Just the distant creak of pipes and the muffled sound of movement behind the bathroom door.
He thought about giving Bob some clean clothes—but stopped himself. What the hell was he supposed to bring? A hoodie? Pajama pants? Boxers? Boxers.
Nope. Bad idea. Abort.
He grabbed a pair of black sweatpants and an old long-sleeved thermal shirt that had survived many winters and three exorcisms, and set them on the floor outside the door like an awkward gift offering. He knocked once—softly—and cleared his throat.
“Clothes. For, uh… your new meat suit.” Way to make this more awkward, he thought to himself.
There was a pause.
Then, Bob’s voice—quieter than before: “Thank you.”
Harry blinked at the closed door like it had spoken a second time. The gratitude was strange. Hesitant. Not performative or arrogant like Bob’s usual flair. This wasn’t the Bob he’d known as a spirit—brilliant, snide, performative. This was something else. Something stripped bare and real and fragile.
Harry didn’t like how it made him feel.
He returned to the living room, now dim and smelling of fire and ozone, and flopped onto the edge of the couch like a man who had just committed a magical felony and was trying to decide whether the universe was going to smite him immediately or wait until he’d ordered takeout.
The skull was gone.
He looked at the now-empty shelf and felt something twist in his chest. That old hunk of bone had been his sounding board, his nightlight, his friend. And now… it was just wood and silence.
But Bob wasn’t gone, was he?
He was in the next room. Solid. Real. Human. And the shower had stopped.
Harry sat bolt upright.
A moment later, the door creaked open.
Bob stood there barefoot, towel-dried and changed. The clothes hung slightly loose on his lean frame, sleeves pushed up, the collar of the thermal shirt stretched as if it had never seen a washing machine. His hair, lighter now without the soot, framed his face in disheveled waves. Clean, he looked less like a revenant and more like a painting—a man pulled out of time, sharp-featured and impossibly ancient behind pale blue eyes.
He didn’t speak. He just looked at Harry—tentative, silent, unsure.
“Feel better?” Harry asked.
Bob gave the tiniest nod. “Warmer. Clean. Tired.”
“That tracks.”
He stood awkwardly by the edge of the room, not quite crossing into it, his hand brushing the wall as if anchoring himself to a physical reality that didn’t entirely feel stable yet.
“You can sit, you know,” Harry said. “I don’t bite.”
“You do glower,” Bob said, the corner of his mouth twitching just slightly. “It’s a start.”
Harry almost smiled.
Bob crossed the room slowly, each step deliberate. He looked like a man learning to walk again. And maybe, in a way, he was.
He sat on the opposite end of the couch.
Silence settled again.
The kind Harry usually filled with snark or magic or microwave pizza. But not this time.
Now it felt heavy. Fragile. Almost holy.
“So,” Harry finally said, “you’re mortal again.”
Bob nodded once, gaze fixed ahead. “Apparently.”
“You feeling… okay?”
Another pause.
“I don’t know what okay feels like anymore.”
Harry swallowed. “Fair.”
More silence.
“I’m… tired,” Bob said, quieter this time. “But not in the way I remember. This feels… deeper. Like gravity exists again.”
Harry nodded, his fingers twitching with the urge to do something. Hand him tea. Cast a diagnostic spell. Say something smart.
But nothing smart came.
“Do you remember being human?” he asked instead.
Bob looked over. “Yes. In pieces. Mostly sensations. Pain. Shame. Hunger.”
“Hunger?”
Bob nodded slowly. “They starved me. The last few weeks before the execution. Bread, if they remembered. Water, if they were merciful.” He looked away again, voice soft. “I haven’t felt hunger in over a thousand years. I’d forgotten how…” he trailed off, making a vague gesture in the air.
Harry stood without thinking. “I’ll get you something.”
He returned with what little he had—a sandwich, a banana, two apples, and a bottle of water. Bob stared at it like it might vanish. Then reached—slowly, reverently—and took the sandwich in both hands.
He hesitated. Then bit into it.
The look on his face wrecked Harry.
It wasn’t dramatic. No moaning or ecstasy. Just the slow, stunned realization that taste still existed. That it could be had. That it belonged to him again.
Bob took another bite. Then a sip of water, eyes closing like it hurt in the best possible way.
Harry turned away, suddenly too aware of the lump in his throat.