Chapter Text
Deep down, they all thought Holtzmann would be the first. Holtzmann especially, mostly because she didn't want to contemplate living a day without any of the three people who'd become her family. It was easier to be the first one to shuffle off the mortal coil.
“I’d haunt the fuck out of you,” Holtzmann said. “Especially when you're in the shower,” she added. She winked at Erin and the physicist blushed.
They hadn't gotten the blush right. Alive Erin’s cheeks were a warm, orangey pink when she was embarrassed, but on the still Erin in the box the rouge they'd used was too blue. Holtzmann noticed and went to Duane Reade and stood in front of a long display of Covergirl and Revlon and Rimmel, overwhelmed by tubes and little boxes of things she didn't understand. That’s where Patty found her, sitting in the middle of an aisle surrounded by twenty different shades of blush from a dozen different brands.
“I don’t know which one,” she said plaintively. “How can I not know which one she used?” Holtzmann pressed her eyelids in an effort to keep the tears in, but then she felt Patty sit down next to her and wrap an arm around her and the dam burst.
“I got you, baby,” Patty murmured. She went to work with her free hand, eliminating blushes that were too dark, too red, too neon. Once she’d narrowed it down to three possibilities, all of which were close in tone, she studied them and chose the one in the smallest package. “It’s this one,” she said with a confidence that she didn’t actually feel.
Holtzmann nodded, took the tiny pot from her, and shuffled up to the checkout. They went back to the funeral home together and stood in front of their friend in silence.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” Holtzmann said, offering Patty the blush. Patty took it from her and gently applied it, even though she knew the blonde engineer meant more than just the makeup.
“Is Abby coming?” Patty asked quietly.
“I haven’t heard from her.” The words were clipped, sharp around the edges, and they made Patty wince.
“Holtzy—“
“Stop. I know what you’re going to say.”
Patty sighed. “Baby… she’s hurting too.”
Holtzmann chewed on her lower lip. Her eyes stayed focused on cheeks that were now the right color. Fixing it hadn’t made her feel more at peace with any of this.
She closed her eyes and tried to conjure up an image of Erin alive. Erin covered in ectoplasm. Erin in her tiniest bowtie. Erin in Holtzmann’s bed, breathless and staring at her like she’d done something extraordinary.
Holtzmann pushed the memories aside and opened her eyes. After a last look, she turned to Patty and shrugged.
“She should be hurting,” Holtzmann said, heading for the door. “This was all her fault.”
—
They buried Erin. That night, Holtzmann waited up. She sat on her bed and watched the foot of it, hoping (and yet not hoping) that she’d see the shimmer of a familiar form.
She didn’t know how it felt to be a ghost. She only wanted to see Erin there if it was pleasant, or at least not painful. Holtzmann didn’t want to think about her friend (“friend,” she thought bitterly, because they hadn’t gotten around to defining it any other way) suffering, even if it meant she got to see the physicist again.
Holtzmann spent four nights at watch before Patty stopped listening when she told her to go away. On the fifth night, Patty crawled in bed with her and pulled her into a tight embrace.
“You can keep waiting for her to show up,” Patty said. “I know you need to. But I’m going to be right here until further notice.”
Holtzmann didn’t have the energy to argue. She’d spent all she had keeping her tired blue eyes focused. Eventually she couldn’t fight the exhaustion anymore, and she nudged Patty.
“What if she comes and I’m asleep?” Holtzmann shook her arms as if they’d both gone numb. “I can’t stay up much longer, Patty. What happens then?”
Their resident historiansat up with her back against the headboard.
“I’ll watch. And I’ll wake you if she shows up.”
Within minutes a grateful Holtzmann was curled up with her head in Patty’s lap, snoring quietly. Patty was pretty sure it was all for naught, but she kept watch until dawn anyway.
—
It took five weeks for Holtzmann to give up on Erin’s ghost. It was probably better, she decided. This meant Erin had moved on to whatever came next. Nothing bound her to the living world.
The thought that Erin had no unfinished business stung more than Holtzmann wanted to think about.
It took another month before the tiny engineer found herself in front of a familiar apartment door. She tapped it a few times.
“You got here really fast— Holtzmann?” Abby stood frozen. Her hair had grown in two inches of white at the roots and she was dressed in threadbare pajamas.
“Hey. I’m still mad. Just not at you anymore.” Holtzmann shrugged. “It could have been any one of us in your shoes. Or hers.” She took a step forward, forcing Abby to step back into the apartment as the door swung open.
“Holtz…” Abby tried to find the right words, but eventually she gave up. She flopped down on her couch and gestured for the other woman to join her. “I’m still mad at me,” she said quietly after a long silence. “And I’m pretty sure she is too.”
“What makes you say that?” Holtzmann tried to keep the hope out of her voice, but it leaked in anyway, like light through the cracked frame of a basement window.
Abby took her PKE meter off the coffee table and handed it to Holtzmann, who flipped it on. Instantly the arms began to spin into a pink blur. Holtzmann’s hand shook as she turned to Abby, eyes wide.
“I was looking in the wrong place.”
—
It was Erin, but it was less of her every day. Holtzmann wanted to find a way to press her energy back into a corporeal form, but they all knew it didn't work that way.
They couldn’t communicate. Not with words, at least. The first night Holtzmann fell asleep in Abby’s bed, she woke up to lips on her jaw, kissing a trail down her neck. She was happy for a brief moment, and then she remembered. She sat bolt upright with the horrified thought that it must be Abby, but she was alone in the room.
When Holtzmann went to the bathroom to splash water on her face, she saw a line of red marks from her ear down to her clavicle. They looked like burns, but Patty took one look and declared them frostbite.
It took three weeks and a lot more frostbite before Holtzmann was ready to let go. She didn't want to, but she could sense that Erin needed her to.
“I love you,” Holtzmann said quietly. (They hadn’t said it, but she should have, because it was true.) “You are— you were? Are, were, except there’s no real line between them, is there? Just because you don’t— you’re not in a body, but does it mean that— I guess it doesn’t matter. I love you, and I don’t know where you’re going or when I’ll get to go— IF I get to go, because between you and me, I know where you’re going, if such a thing exists— and I hope it does, I hope, but then maybe I won’t get to…” She squeezes her eyes shut and holds her hand out in front of her, fingers splayed. She feels them start to ache with cold and takes a deep breath. “I hope you’ll be waiting for me. I mean, I’ll understand if there’s some really hot, like totally banging’ hot angel or something that you wanna… Anyway, leave the porch light on, babe, because you know how reckless I am. Can't imagine you’ll be waiting long.”
Holtzmann felt one last rush of cold that seemed to go through her entire body. For a second she couldn't breathe, but then the ice let go of her. She dropped down to her knees on the hardwood floor. She felt like she’d run a marathon as she curled up and let herself cry.