{Kids} That {I} Once {Knew} ~ Ghost!Damien Oneshot

[Ally is tentatively back]

[bg=FAFFD7][atrb=border,0,true][atrb=cellSpacing,0,true][atrb=cellPadding,0,true][atrb=width,520,true][atrb=style,width: 520px;] DAMIEN TYSON DEMPSEY

[bg=FAFFD7][atrb=border,0,true][atrb=cellSpacing,0,true][atrb=cellPadding,0,true][atrb=width,520,true][atrb=style,width: 520px; padding: 10px; border:10px solid #EF5D02;] You know you're not the only one When they all come crashing down, midflight, You know you're not the only one. When they're so alone they find a back door out of life. You know you're not the only one. I have been dead for decades. It's a fact that's still hard to process, a fact that hurts something deep in my gut. (Hurts like the memory of a knife in the ribs and my knees giving out and staggering home and the shockshockhorror on Todd and Ambrose's faces.) I've seen the time go by, seen the ripples caused when I went out (Not with a bang but a whimper, and isn't it hilarious that I always loved that poem?), seen Ambrose start clawing his way out of the pit that we were born into, seen Todd hurl himself into a deeper one of his own making. (I've barely talked to him since he died, I can't help but be angry, because he was always meant to be better than that.) I've seen each of my nieces and my nephew be born and grow and change while I stay the same, a month over seventeen forever. I've raged when they've gotten hurt and cheered when they were happy. After Kendra's death I hovered anxiously around the house I grew up in (The house I died in.) and tried to tug Todd out of the whiskey bottles he'd thrown himself into even further than he had eleven years before, tried to make myself known at least enough to be comforting, to either my brother or my nephew. (Tried to stop my heart hurting so much for Kaelen, because I know what it is to have one parent gone and the other withdrawing because staying hurts too much, and this kid doesn't have the luxury of two big brothers who are going through the same thing, isn't part of three people all trying to keep themselves afloat, keep each other afloat, he's got Ambrose trying to help, but we're all so broken and an uncle isn't a soothing enough balm, not for this.) (Tried not to remember the young couple I'd teased so much, Toddy on his guitar and Kendra on her piano and both of them happy and in love and parts of my family, and ripred's sakes I just miss everyone.) After Todd's death by his son's hand, I just sat and looked at him and tried not to scream at him because, dammit, we all hated our mom for what she became and then he turned out to be fifty times worse, so bang-up job, brother mine. "I missed you." "So you pushed everyone else away?" After the earthquake I spent all my time for a long time sitting by Siberia's bedside or in Ambrose's house yelling at him, "She's not dead, you can find her! Just look harder!" until I would've been blue in the face if I still needed to breathe. After Kiera's death (Not with a whimper but a bang.) I spent a week comforting her, and then I trailed after my oldest brother wishing desperately I could just cross back through the veil, bring everyone with me, Kiera and Todd and Kendra and everyone any of us ever loved, because why's it always us, huh? (It's not, it's always Ambrose and shit, if there is some higher power, give him a minute to breathe.) Todd and Kendra spent a week ignoring each other for the most part, hovering around their son. (I walked in on one of the few times they were both acknowledging that the other was there and I stood in the doorway as Kendra screamed about "Don't fucking act like you care about him! I know what it was like in this house after I died! Don't act like you're worried about

[/i]my son!"[/color] and Todd replied in his soft voice, the one that's scarier than any yelling, "Don't act like you weren't being selfish, too, Kendra."[/i])

Kendra's been crying since her boy had his heart broken, and I see too much of Todd with his life crumbling around his ears in the kid.

But it's this, this moment, that makes me freeze up and feel cold steel in my lung and my breath bubbling through the blood I drowned in and I'm stumbling and sitting down with my back against an alley wall I can't feel and Todd's shown up now and his eyes are the size of dinner plates and he's shaking.

Aurora's breathing like she's drowning because she fucking is and all I can think about is an alleyway twenty-five years ago.

When I finally get myself out of the twisting corridors of my mind, Todd's shaking my shoulder and I'm suddenly desperately glad that spirits can make contact with each other because fuck if I'm not about drifting away because this can't be happening again and it takes me a minute to hear "...to the hospital, Damien, c'mon, Ambrose'll be freaking... ripred, this can't be happening, not again, not her. Shit. We gotta-" I nod, hurriedly, get up, will myself to the hospital, and there's so many people not there that should be, Kaelen and Moira and Blair and Siberia, but Cora's there with her eyes empty and Ambrose and Laurna are curled around each other, she's crying but he's just sitting and clutching her close and I can practically see his thoughts whirring and I don't need to guess about their direction. Kiera's sitting on the other side of her parents from her sister, looking like she's going to explode and like she wants them to see her and I want to tell her it'll be okay, but I've got something to do first.

I start off down the hall and look around and see some nurses wheeling Aurora into a room and the relief is crippling. I supervise for a minute, watching them get her settled and leave. And then I sit at the foot of the bed and hover my non-tangible hand over her foot because I can't be any more comforting than this. "You need to make it, kid, you aren't allowed to go out like this." Like me.

And then I head back to the lobby and sit next to Kiera and mumble "She'll be fine, it's okay." and wishing I could tell everyone else in the lobby the good news, but Kiera calms a little, and Todd's shoulders drop before he walks out of the hospital, so it'll have to be enough.

I've been dead for decades, but I won't be having another member of the family join me for at least that long, not if I can help it.

So afraid to open your eyes, hypnotized.
You know you're not the only one
Never understood this life.
And you're right, I don't deserve
But you know I'm not the only one.

[/color][/size][/td][/tr][/table]


[/center]