So,

This chapter ended up going in so many different directions over the course of my writing it that I finally got nauseous and had to get off the ride. So I've decided that if I keep dicking around with it I'm going to either really screw it up, or just throw my hands up in the air, shout "Fuck it!" and abandon the whole damn thing. I don't really want to do either of those things, though, so I hope the chapter isn't too awful.

My depression gets the better of me this time of year, so any constructive criticism, words of encouragement, or love is very welcome.

Love,

ssg.x.

-

Have you seen my ghost staring at the ground?
Have you seen my ghost sick of those goddamn clouds?

-

Something happened.

Despite Ezekiel’s arms around her they still struck Beatrice’s vanity with great force. Faye had closed her hand over his to protect it from further injury and cried out, feeling the crunching of her fingers between her abdomen, his knuckles, and the counter. She felt him pulling back with his hips, digging his heels into the carpet in an attempt to keep his weight from crushing her.

It all happened in seconds but for Faye it seemed to go on for much longer. She was in the middle of the thought that she may have broken her hand when her eyes met with Ezekiel’s in the mirror.

She hadn’t thought of her hand since.

There.

She was sure that her lips had moved but not if she’d spoken it out loud.

Right there.

-

She’d called him minutes before boarding the ill-fated flight. He told her that he would tag along with her family so that he could be there when she landed. Ezekiel would hold Faye’s hand while she told her parents about her desire to take a year off from school to travel with Ezekiel to the states. And he would let her hide behind him when they freaked out at the news.

I’ll wait right here, he’d said.

Right there, she laughed. Suddenly the trip she was about to take didn’t seem as scary.

Yeah, right here. I won’t budge an inch until it’s to see you.

-

Are you some kind of medicine man?
Cut the demons out of my head
You can’t kill something that’s already dead
Just leave my soul alone
I don’t need no surgery
Take those knives away from me
Just wanna die in my own body
A ghost just needs a home

-

Ezekiel’s hair is still damp from the rain but it slowly begins to spring back into dark curls hanging heavily in his eyes. When his chin drops it makes it almost impossible for Faye to read his expression.

In her mind’s eye and the distressed muscle that is her heart, the instant their eyes locked in the mirror Faye became witness to Ezekiel’s metamorphosis from memory to brick and mortar. Moments ago he had no real scent, blood or bones and now he’s nothing but. She suddenly becomes acutely aware of his legs reinforcing the strength of her own, and his breath in her ear.

He straightens his legs behind her and she lets slip a short, sharp breath.

“Spike,” she blurts out, startling them both.

To her relief Ezekiel gently removes his damaged hand from hers, taking a few steps back, releasing her back to her senses. She turns to face him, clearing her throat. Ezekiel leans over, picking Faye’s school book up off the floor. He holds it close to his chest looking as though he’s still afraid she might try to tear it to pieces again.

“Spike said you know who’s behind all this,” she says.

Ezekiel blinks and tips his head to one side. “I never said I knew anything for certain.”

“Well, what do you know for uncertain, then?”

“Have you gotten all your memories back?” he asks in return.

“Most.”

“The night we saw each other at the club, after we’d broken up... Do you remember that?”

Faye remembers. “You hit someone and the police took you away.”

Ezekiel looks at her carefully. “Do you remember why?”

The memory of the boy she’d danced with that night returns to Faye with surprisingly little effort. She remembers the boy trying to pin her arms to her sides, his hands like vices around her wrists. He forces his tongue into her mouth and drills a fist down the front of her jeans.

Faye swallows hard. “Yes,” she replies hoarsely.

“His hands were all over you...touching, grabbing,” Ezekiel’s knuckles are white as his fingers tighten around the school book. “I started to feel sick but I couldn’t look away and I saw you try to push him off you and... I lost it. I climbed down from the stage and he never saw it coming. I hit him -- I couldn’t help it. I didn’t even realize I still had the guitar in my hands until... And then it was too late.”

Despite the memory her voice remains surprisingly steady. “He was alright, though. It was on the news. I remember that. I remember watching the news and hearing about his needing stitches. Why are we talking about this?”

“Because he wasn’t alright. A few months later he had a stroke. I think it was my fault. I think I killed him. And if I didn’t then someone must think I did,” Ezekiel says. “It’s the only thing that makes any real sense. They got your father. They’ll get me, too. That’s why I need you to get away from here. If they can get a two-for-one deal, they’ll take it. They blame me for what happened to that kid, but they blame you, too.” His voice grows softer and more earnest. “It was a mean and misguided trick to play on you, hurting you to get you to leave... I could dig out my tongue with a spoon for saying those awful things to you. I’m sorry,” he whispers sorrowfully. “I’m so sorry.”

Faye feels her heart drop into her stomach like a stone into a well. Her head suddenly feels too heavy to carry.

They got your father.

“My father killed himself,” she says numbly.

“The accusations of embezzlement coming out of nowhere, the media getting involved -- that was all the Gate Corporation. Your accident was one of the supposed motives for the embezzlement; that your family needed the money to pay for the cryogenic procedure and your subsequent upkeep. Your father lost everything. And he’d already lost you.” Ezekiel sighs deeply, “He blamed himself, you know, because he bought you the ticket. You’d think he caused the whole gate incident himself the way he spoke about it. He killed himself, but I think the Corporation drove him to it. Your father wasn’t a criminal.”

“Who was this kid? Why did they want my father?”

He speaks slowly, sympathetic to her needing to absorb everything he’s just told her.

“He was the youngest son of the Gate Corporation’s head executive at the time. Your father is the one who got the charges against me lifted. It’s been more than fifty years and I’m still not sure what he said or did to make it all disappear, but I was released two days later and never heard another word about it. It had to be your father, though. That I know for sure. My parents left me in there but your father... he was a good man.”

Faye nods. She knew that. When her memories first began to surface she remembered him before anyone else, standing by the window of his study, silhouetted by the sunlight.

Ezekiel gently places Faye’s school book on Bea’s vanity, staring at it fuzzily. “He was the one who told me you were at the park that evening. He wanted you to have everything you ever wished for, anything you ever wanted.”

“And I wanted you,” she says brokenly.

Mending the tear in the web of the memories of her father, lamenting his death with someone who knew him -- it all makes it damn near impossible for her to deny the grief over losing her family a second time any longer.

The second she begins to crumble, Ezekiel closes the distance between them, wrapping her up in his arms and squeezing her body hard. She feels the beginnings of tremors running the course of her spine. She grips Ezekiel around his waist with both hands, the gravity of her misery pulling her to the floor, dragging him down with her. Ezekiel doesn’t fight it. He holds her head to his chest and cradles the rest of her in his lap. Faye’s cries cut up her insides, sear her lungs. She cries until her eyes are wrung raw.

In her dream, her mother had told Faye that fighting fate bore grave consequences. When you go against fate, the results are disastrous, she’d said.

“Is this all my fault?” she sniffles.

“No, of course it isn’t. For fuck’s sake, I hit the kid in the head with a guitar.”

Spike always joked that she was inadvertently going to get him killed one of these days and she’d always laughed it off. But Christ, he’s right. Spike and Jet could be next. All she had wanted to do that night at the club was punish Ezekiel for not loving her enough to be able weather his own insecurities. Her father, Roscoe, Bea, and even Ezekiel in a way. All of their lives lost, all of their blood on her hands.

They got your father. They’ll get me, too.

She burrows deeper into his arms and he rests his chin against the top of her head.

“I only danced with him to upset you,” she says, lamely.

“Mission accomplished,” he says, smiling sadly.

After a moment of silence she carefully takes his hand from him. She turns it over, staring thoughtfully at the bandage wrapped over his knuckles.

“Don’t do it again,” she murmurs.

Ezekiel looks puzzled. “Hit someone with a guitar?”

“No. Well, yes. But I mean hurt yourself. Don’t do it again. Please.”

“Okay,” he says.

Ezekiel’s crumpled letter is close enough now that she can reach out and grab it. She pulls the corners out flat and presses it to his heart, gingerly smoothing out as many of its creases as she can. He doesn’t say a word. He only watches curiously.

“You’d hate the person I am now. Maybe it’s better that you won’t remember who I was because you could never love the person I’ve become.”

She doesn’t tell Ezekiel that her motive for destroying the letter wasn’t solely to satiate her desire to hurt him. She wanted to destroy it because its message couldn’t be further from the truth.

“I don’t hate you,” she says.

He shakes his head, tears forming in his dark eyes. “Then you’re crazy.”

Faye chuckles softly. “So I’ve been told.”

-

Lyrics quoted are from Wintersleep’s Weighty Ghost. Please don’t sue.