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[phantom-spencer]

lazarusdoe​:

It’s a fucking weird feeling, being touched by a ghost. They weren’t really one to rule out any sort of supernatural shit, being the person who came back from the dead, and has resurrected other people, too, but with no prior encounters of a ghostly nature, they hadn’t been sure what the hell to expect with any of this, hence all of the gear they had dragged up to set themself up for the best chance at accomplishing what they need here. Now, it feels like it goes far beyond that, though, beyond just needing the information, beyond just figuring out who the hell is a fucking liar and murderer in their midst. Now, they want to do what they can to give Spencer something, too, give him the chance to be known in a way he hasn’t in decades maybe, as a real person, with a name, and thoughts and feelings, not some long forgotten idea of a man, or a gust of wind knocking over bottles every now and then.

It’s even weirder to feel a sort of understanding with someone they can’t even see, but they do. And they can tell that he gets it, too. Hell, he says at much after a second, says that no one should be forced to feel that and live with it, and, fuck, if that doesn’t hit. They might not have experienced it in the same way, but they were both stuck with that feeling, the knowledge of that darkness sitting with them for as long as they were stuck on this earth. They know their own situation isn’t near as bad as his, at least they came back, at least they have some kind of life still, are living and breathing, won’t fade away as people die and forget them, but they still know that feeling well. Understanding goes a hell of a long way, when the experience is something so unheard of, and they think that’s the case here.

They think that might be part of why they can hear his voice so well now, much less far off, even if it still has a sort of ghostly echo to it. What matters is it’s working, though. They can hear him laugh, a bright, emotional sound, and it makes them smile, too, tentatively, still a little unsure of what they should be doing to help further, but open to it all. His touch moves, that’s something they can feel, even if they still can’t see him, from the back of their hand, to their wrist, sending a chill up their arm again, hair on the back of their forearm standing up, as he says he wants to do anything besides just watching now. They just have to hope he still feels the same when they tell him what they need to know.

But first, there’s another step. The phantom touch moves to their forehead, and they think that must be an indication of whatever it is he needs to do to be seen. It’s chilling, physically and metaphorically, but they’re not afraid of death, so intimately acquainted with it. If connections make him stronger, make it possible to speak like two people, then they’re willing to do it.

They don’t know what it means let him in, but they know they need to do whatever they can to give him enough energy to show himself, to be able to have a full conversation as two people sitting, looking at each other. It’s a way to gain his trust, to help set up to find the whole story that they need, but also they think they would do it even if it didn’t feel like life and death in a whole different way. Because everyone deserves to be someone to another person, everyone deserves to be seen, and they want to give that to him, after fucking decades of being nothing more than a faint wind, with no real name to any of them. Lazarus nods, before they can think about it any further, bracing themself silently for whatever it is he’ll have to do to make himself seen. “Yeah, whatever you need, do it. I wanna have a real conversation with you, hear you, see you. Whatever it takes, you can do it,” they nod, a little breathless with it, trying to prepare for what’s to come.

...

In the long-ago times when Spencer was still coming to terms with everything that happened, he hadn’t even needed to think about manifesting, most of the time. He had done it unconsciously, before he even realised that he was dead and buried six feet under ground. His memories had been spotty then, when it came to the circumstances of his end. And he had been able to fuel himself on everyone around him. His powers didn’t die with him. And he could project, manifest, be almost as solid as a living thing. People had been able to see him, talk to him. They could look into his eyes and smile. They could squeeze his shoulder in a comforting grasp. They could hold his hand and help him feel like he was no longer alone in the world. If it hadn’t been for the aching lingering cold, the stain of the dark, he would have felt almost entirely alive in those days. It was easy to feel vital and real and compelling when you were solid enough to be loved. 

The creeping reminders of his death had come in slowly, for him. He wasn’t sure why he could be touched, but part of him wondered if it wasn’t a trick of the mind for everyone involved. They knew what a touch was supposed to feel like, he knew what a touch meant. He could remember being touched and feeling the warmth of other people’s skin. Maybe he had been telepathically projecting it all the time, the phantom feeling, the sense-memory. But when he tried to smoke the cigarettes that The Kraken gave him sometimes, his lungs wouldn’t take in the smoke. He didn’t need to eat, he didn’t need to drink. He didn’t need to do any of the things that meant you were really living. No matter how badly he wanted to feel the sting of smoke clouding his lungs, the fact of the matter was that he didn’t have any. Nothing to inhale with, nothing to sting, nothing to breathe out plumes of smoke with. 

He hasn’t used his powers to delve into someone else's mind fully in a long time. It must have been decades. He barely even did it back when he was alive. He was too afraid of himself. It had too large an impact on him. He had been plagued by stray thoughts for years, before he learned to build a barrier for himself. Hearing so much, feeling so much, and they said it made him crazy. But he wasn’t crazy, he was just powerful. Powerful and misunderstood, and so damn scared of being overrun by everyone else. But he knows that delving further into Lazarus will help him create a link, something that will help him manifest more truly in the world. So he’s glad that Lazarus agrees to it, agrees to let him in. He would never connect with someone who didn’t want it, no matter how badly he needed it. No matter how much he wanted someone to be able to look into his eyes and see him. But Lazarus takes it in stride, and agrees to connect. Spencer lets out a small sigh of relief, when the words come out of his mouth, smiles a sad smile. Because no one has been around to want him there in longer than he can even comprehend. It’s just been him and Clarissa, trapped, leading these half-lives. 

“It won’t hurt,” He promises, whispering quietly. “It won’t even feel cold.” And he hopes that last part is true, hopes that Lazarus doesn’t have to deal with more death, compounding on top of the trauma that’s already sitting so heavy on their chest. He doesn’t want to hurt them any more than they’ve already been hurt, and doesn't want to make them feel the sting of it again. But he should be able to protect Lazarus from any of the cold, and the dark. 

He closes his eyes, when he starts to try. Reaching out with the weak tendrils of his power, of his own mind that linger in the air. He remembers connecting with other people, tries to remind himself how it works, how it feels to be lingering half inside someone else. He thinks about letting his mind brush up against Ramses, tucking himself close against the bright bloom of Eurydice. And the warmth of the memories helps him, when he feels his mind brush against Lazarus. It makes him imagine sitting with Lazarus in the attic, but the attic of his own childhood. So warm, and so bright, and so cosy. The corner where The Kraken and Yperite used to hide away to have those conversations of theirs, the places that he had made his own, the floorboard that Miss Mayhem carved her name into so all the world would know she was here, that she existed. He can feel Lazarus then, so bright and so intense, with the cold that goes along with them as well, the clinging remnants of their own traumatic death. He tries to envelop Lazarus in the warmth of his memories, to protect them from it, but it might be a fool's errand. He can’t be sure. 

But he opens his eyes, to look at them, and lets out a soft sigh of a gasp, feeling stronger already. He feels like he has a better grasp on it all, on the world, on them. “You’re looking for something,” He says, knowing it almost as soon as he connects, saying it almost against his own will. “Something more than just an old ghost.”

[phantom-spencer]

lazarusdoe​:

They can’t tell if it’s working or not, nothing seems to be changed about the room at large, or what they’re feeling in it, but they’re ready to keep rambling if that’s what it takes. Before they can, though, they feel something a little strange, hear something strange. It’s like an echo of a whisper, only half there, not strong or loud yet, be something. They can hear the words don’t and sorry, can hear Bert, and being nothing, and that’s enough to fill in some of the blanks, to know that he’s responding to them. That makes their heart beat even faster, wanting to give more, somehow, figure out how to give him enough energy to speak to them, really speak, but this seems like a good sign that they’re already here after only just starting a few minutes ago, strong enough that they can hear the whisper of his voice on the wind.

He’s telling them not to be sorry about not knowing he was real, making the whole Bert thing a running joke with Dark Wing. They can fill in the blanks enough to get that he’s telling them that being something is better than being nothing, and, fuck, does that make their chest feel tight, make their heart hurt for him, wishing they had known sooner, wishing that he hadn’t had to be alone for so long, feeling like nothing.

It makes them wish they had a better conversation to offer him once they do find a way to actually talk, that they weren’t going to have to force him to relive the trauma that put him into this position for eternity in the first place, but they hope that they can make it clear to him that they don’t plan for this to be their last moment talking. And that they’ll do what they can to make sure it doesn’t happen to anyone else ever again. 

And they suddenly feel a spot of cold against the back of their hand, even colder than they already are, like someone’s pressing an invisible ice cube to the cracks in their skin, and it sends a chill through them, because they know that’s him, that he must be right in front of them still, touching them. This time, the voice is stronger, they can hear the entire sentences, even if it still sounds echo-y, a little far off, otherworldly.  Hearing their name makes them let out a breath, looking wide-eyed at the air in front of them, wishing desperately they could see him, but knowing he’s there, focusing so hard on where they know he is right in front of them. The understanding is clear, and they think it means he knows that they get it, too, knows how deeply that stays with you, even if you move on in some ways.

Lazarus is surprised to find that their throat feeling tight at the words. They haven’t admitted to anyone since Matteo that they saw that darkness, because up until now he’s the only person they’ve ever spoken to who could understand that. Maybe this can be something good for them, too, as they try to help everyone at large, and help Spencer, too, giving him a voice again. “It’s okay…it’s, uh, kind of a big deal meeting someone else who understands what death feels like. I wish you didn’t. Hell, I wish I didn’t, either, but I guess we can’t change the past,” they say, feeling a little less weird talking to thin air, even if it’s still strange to some extent. The emotion kind of outweighs feeling awkward about it, though. “I’m hoping we can change the future, though, as cliche as that sounds, now that I know you’re Spencer, not Bert.”

...

Spencer can see it in their eyes, that they feel the contact. The slightest point where skin meets not-skin and life meets death. They know the cold of this other life, it’s touched them so intimately that they can’t escape it. They know the pull of the dark, deep and cloying and intense. They must be freezing, all the time. And its laughable, because their skin feels like fire under Spencer’s ghostly touch. They feel so alive that it makes something in him ache, a deep wanting, a pull that he hasn’t felt for so long. The warmth of tangiable humanity. There were times, early on in the days of his death, when Spencer hardly even felt the cold. There had been days piled on days where he didn’t even know he was dead at all, with the odd pattern that his departure from the land of the living had taken. He’d been so wrapped up then, in the humanity of the manor, that he had been real enough to touch. 

Or maybe people just remembered what it had been like, to touch, and filled in the blanks. He isn’t sure. Not anymore, not of anything. There were times he wasn’t even sure who he was, other than a nothing. If he didn’t have Clarissa, here in this in-between void, he would have lost himself completely long ago. But they had always been good, at helping hold on to each other. The two Phantoms, calling each other back to existence over and over again. And he doesn’t feel like nothing now, with her prodding him forward. Not with Lazarus here either, this person who knows his name and has come to look for him. It’s been so long since he’s had a real visitor, someone in the room with him who meant for him to be there. Ramses used to seek him out, in the old days, but even that had stopped. Death could take even the greatest of people, even the most worthy of a long and immortal life. But Spencer could take comfort in the fact that Ramses had likely found more peace in the glory of the afterlife than Spencer ever would. No one else he knew had lingered here, after all, trapped in the very walls of the manor, the lands which they treated like a home. 

He draws on the rememberance, memories of love and life. He draws on the fact that Lazarus is here for him, with the will to sit there and talk to a man that they cannot even see. And god, Spencer wants to be seen. His whole soul yearns for it, for someone to look into his eyes and know him. If he could sob and beg for it, summon real tears, he would. He has to hold back a low, pleading sound, because Lazarus does something at least, because Lazarus is hearing him. It makes him want to cry, it makes him want to laugh. It makes him want to try and try until Lazarus can see him too. He wants to cry for them, too. This soul that has been through so much, the heavy weight of their half-remembered history lingering beneith the surface of their mind.

“No one should have to feel that and be forced to live with it,” He says, on the subject of the cold and the dark and the pull of death. It hurts him to imagine. But Lazarus is right, that it’s nice to meet someone else who really understands it. There’s a feeling of kinship blooming in his chest, a link that’s been hard to find as the years push on. 

But he does laugh, at the end, a little frantic. Because Lazarus wants to change the future. And it makes him more determined than ever, to be known. The laugh is thick with emotion, and he shifts forward, shifts closer to them, drawn to that wram light of humanity. He’s hesitant, but driven. He knows that he can get enough from Lazarus to manifest, at least a little bit. “I like the sound of changing the future, Lazarus.” He admits, as he ghosts a phantom touch along their wrist, before he looks deep into their eyes. “I like the sound of doing anything. Anything more than watching.” 

Spencer reaches up, then, and brushes a touch to their forehead. “Connections help. Make me stronger. I used to be able to reach out to so many people. So they could hear me. So they could see me. So they could touch me. I think, if you let me in, I can show you more. Can I?” And he tries not to sound desperate for it, because Lazarus doesn’t owe him more than words and a desire to be real.

[phantom-spencer]

lazarusdoe​:

For a long second, they’re convinced it’s not working. They think maybe they’d been wrong to think that this Phantom was here, that all of the little things that happened up in the attic that they and Dark Wing had labeled the marks of a very much not real ghost named Bert had been just that, coincidences. Maybe they were looking in the wrong place, maybe they should’ve tried to get more from Cap, in some way, a better idea of what Spencer was like, maybe, so they could sit in the middle of the hallway or some shit and try to call him to them, that the attic was a ridiculous idea. But that worry and the panic that comes along with it soon changes to something else entirely.

The planchette starts moving, and their heart starts racing, trying to beat out of their fucking chest, as the letters start spelling out a word. They grab the pen and paper to write it down, just in case it’s long, or in their excitement that this is actually working already, they manage to forget what he’s said. And it’s a simple sentence, but it’s clear as day. To help him be able to talk to them, they need to keep talking, which is something they can do easily.

Keep Talking.

It’s a big fucking start that he’d even been able to do that much, enough energy to move the planchette to spell out both worlds clearly, when they hadn’t even been certain they’d manage to get anything at all. 

And maybe they’re panicking a little, as they sit up straighter, and try to figure out what the fuck to talk about, like every topic of conversation, relevant and irrelevant has suddenly slipped out of their mind now that they’re being asked to keep talking to give him a chance at speaking back to them. So they just start letting it fly as soon as something comes to mind.

“Yeah, okay, definitely. I can do that. Uh…so Captain Covert, or, well, I guess you would’ve known them as Helm of Hades, or, wait, both, you probably knew them as both, they said Ramses always told them how you were doing even after they left. Whatever, what I’m trying to say is they’re the one who told me about you, that you might still be here, might be able to help me. And as soon as they said it, I knew it had to be you, Bert, the joke Dark Wing and I’ve been making for so long,” they start, and suddenly can’t really stop, feeling a little frantic with it. They’re afraid that if they don’t give enough, it’s not going to work, and so much is riding on this one conversation that they’re determined to make it happen somehow, whatever that takes if it can lead them to finding the way to stop this thing. 

But there’s something else there, too, though, something that they can recall seeing pretty damn clearly on Cap’s face when they had been talking about Spencer and what happened to him. A real, deep sadness, knowing that he’s been stuck here alone for decades, those who knew him having died, or at least moved on. That he was killed, and then condemned to this sort of half living, half dead existence where he inevitably will keep fading away over and over again. They silently resolve to make sure, even after this conversation, that that doesn’t happen while Lazarus is around, even if they can’t guarantee what will come after them. At least they can give him someone to talk to again.

“I’m sorry we called you Bert. I’m also sorry we didn’t believe you were actually here. I would’ve tried talking to you sooner, if I had realized. I’ve got a bit of a thing with death, you know. I know what it’s like to be dead, too. But all I felt and saw was darkness. I didn’t get pulled into whatever veil you did. I’m sorry this is where you’re stuck, Spencer. I’m sorry about what happened to you.”

.

Spencer can see the real surprise in Lazarus. when the planchette starts to move. Of course they would be surrpised. The ghost that lived in their attic hangout may have been a running joke for them and Dark Wing,  but Spencer knows that was all it was. A joke, to explain the soft ways in which his presence might have influenced the world, on his stronger days. An easy way to explain the way a curtain might have twitched, or a bottle may have toppled over without being touched. 

He settles there, in this metaphysical space before Lazarus, and looks into their eyes. He tries to remember how to connect to someone, how to reach out and draw power from their presence, how to make himself manifest just because of how badly he wants to be seen by someone. Now that he’s sitting there, in front of someone, he’s aching suddenly. His loneliness intensifies tenfold just as he waits for Lazarus to open their mouth and talk. It’s been decades since he had someone around who even knew to look for him. It’s been even longer since he could reliably be counted on to manifest in the physical world. He misses it, having friends, having people who looked around the room and wanted him to be there with them. He misses Jude, and he misses the whole world he used to live in. 

He can’t hold his breath, but the feeling is simmilar. And something in him shifts at the mention of Helm. Helm and Ramses. His heart aches, his chest clenches. His friends. Of course, it makes sense that Sam would be able to tell Lazarus about him. They were as stuck as Spencer was, in their own way. Unaging, lingering while everyone else left the world behind. And Spencer felt oddly bitter, sometimes, that Sam left him behind. At least Ramses had the excuse of being taken away by death –– the true, gentle death that other people got to have. Not like Spencer, who lingered and lingered and lingered. But the mention of it comes along with something a little bit softer. The way that Lazarus had instantly known it was him, instantly known that he was real. His presence had made some kind of impact. 

He was here. He was real. They felt him. He may have been a running joke, but he was part of their narrative. Spencer had affected the world around them enough to be noticed, to be made someone in their eyes. It’s a small comfort that they knew he was there, even in some small way. That Lazarus would never be able to forget that he was real. 

He shakes his head, for a moment, before he returns to looking at them. Reaching out with his mind, trying to make contact with them, trying to build a connection between them. He’s not weak enough to really do anything with his powers, right now, but maybe Lazarus can hear him, if he tries hard enough. “Don’t be sorry,” He tries again, the echoing half-there quality to his voice. “Being Bert is better than being nothing.” He knows it doesn’t quite land, but Lazarus might hear something of it, through the veil.

He feels a spark of something, distantly. Because Lazarus really does understand. They might be the only person who ever can understand him, because they’ve felt death too, they’ve been touched by it so intimately that they can never really escape it. They know the cold, they know the dark. He reaches out, then, to rest a phantom finger against the back of their hand. “Lazarus,” He tries, a little more firmly, the otherworldly echo still imbued in his voice. “I’m sorry about what happened to you too. I’m sorry that darkness touched you.”

[lazarusdoe]

afternoon, a few days after the tower shit, the attic ( @phantom-spencer. )

They know they can’t really put it off any longer. Even though they’d all manages to do what they could in the Tower, they hadn’t actually stopped anything at all. Sure, they had captured a few zombies, and taken a few “hostages,” but the big guns were still out there, probably planning phase two of their attacks on the Guardians and the Collective. It’s fucking selfish of them to keep waiting just because they’re dreading having to have a conversation like this, they’re aware of that, but that doesn’t make it any easier to kick themself into shape and get to it, when there’s so much else hanging over their head personally.

When it comes down to it, they don’t even know how this is going to work. Without a body to physically touch, they can’t very well do any of their healing, anything to give this ghost a voice, and as far as they’ve seen in their time spent with Dark Wing in the attic, Cap is right about Phantom apparently waning over time, stuck in a state much less tangible than the last time they saw him apparently. 

So Lazarus makes a weird bag of things they think might help to take up to the attic with them. They’ve got a notebook and pen, in case he can somehow figure out how to write, they have their phone, of course, thinking maybe he could type better. But they also have that book on Louisiana Voodoo they’ve been reading through to try to see if that’s connected to their powers at all, along with some incense and a ritual bag they ordered from Marie Laveau’s down in New Orleans, and a fucking Ouija board they managed to dig out of a seemingly long abandoned games closet, just in case something classic works a little better. Once it’s all together, they head up there hoping that they were right to think it might be him who they’ve been calling Bert with Dark Wing for the past few years.

And the attic feels utterly the same, when they make it up, and sit down on the couch, pulling everything out of their bag, laying it out on the floor. Lazarus had kind of hoped they might notice a difference, now that they’re aware, but nothing’s ever easy. So they put out the notebook and pen, leave their phone’s notepad app open, and set the Oujia board in a nice little line, before pulling out the stuff that feels a little more them. 

“Hey, uh, Phantom, Spencer…I need to talk to you, are you around? I’m Lazarus, but you might know that already…been coming up here with my buddy, Dark Wing, for a while. I think you’ve knocked over our stuff a few times,” they say, as they flip to the right chapter in their book, and pull out their lighter. It feels ridiculous, lighting the incense and the candle from the ritual bag, talking to no one, but they don’t really know where else to start.

“I brought a lot of stuff to maybe help you be able to talk to me…but I don’t know what you need. Can you show me somehow?”

[phantom-spencer]

The dull expanse of the afterlife is like a ride you can never get off. That is what Spencer has learned. A lesson that was hard to absorb. Back in the old days, in the earliest moments when he realised what had become of him, he held on to the fantasy that someday he would move on to the grand hereafter. And then he found comfort, in the company of his friends, the fact that he could stay by their sides through thick and thin and do everything in his lingering power to help them.

Eventually, the comfort and the hope had begun to warp. Spite seeped in to every aspect of his life. Hatred, for the people who had ruined him. Anger at the lies that he had believed for all of his life. The lies about his father, the lies about himself. Hatred added an edge to his existence, a fire to his eyes. It made him what the people in the movies imagined, when they thought about a ghost. A vengeful spirit. Flickering in and out of existence, in and out of death. He was a dual creature, so many things all at once. In one moment, he could appear as he always had before. A lively and sweet young man. In others, he was blood drenched and dark eyed, baying for the blood of his enemies like a rabid beast.

But even the anger had been better than the long wait. The stretch of years when his friends left, or died, or forgot him to the plague of old age. He grew weaker, as they forgot him. And he had a long time to think about why. He was a phantom, a memory –– a telepathic parasite, clinging on to those who knew him, held in place by his power and the fragments of his old life. And he had been anchored here, in a place he could never escape in his weakened state. When they left him, he grew into a shadow, and then he became nothing much at all.

It was just him. Alone. Alone with whatever remained of Clarissa as his only company, his only comfort.

So he sequestered himself away in the attic rooms. When he was young, and first came to the manor, the four walls of the attic bedroom were the four corners of his life. They were his safe space. They were the assurance of a home. This whole manor was a home to him, though it had become something of a nightmare. 

It was fitting, since this was where the man dressed as Fearmonger had led him to live out the short remainder of his life.

Loneliness remained, but he had visitors, every now and then. He didn’t gain much energy from Lazarus and Dark Wing, who knew nothing of him. But they felt his presence, and sometimes he was strong enough to almost affect the world. He was a joke, to them. But it was the best company he had in decades. 

He isn’t sure what to do, when Lazarus comes actually looking for him. He doesn’t know how to reach out and touch the world anymore, when no one knows him and no one loves him. But the Clarissa-Voice in his head prompts him forward, prompts him to give it the old college try. 

“How do I get you to hear me?” He murmers, barely feeling like he exists at all, in this shadow of a room. It feels like an echo in his chest. But Lazarus was linked with death, in a way people weren’t. And if anyone was going to hear him, they had a better chance than most. So Spencer surveys the assortment of goods that Lazarus has laid out before them, thinks about how hard he’s trying, to bring all of this ephemera all the way up the stairs. Lazarus is thinking hard about him. About Spencer. A boy they don’t even know. He needs more of that, he thinks. Talking to Clarissa, remembering her openly, was what gave her the scrap of strength it took for her to reach out to him and pull him to this place of lingering half-life. Maybe if they kept it up, he could latch on to them. 

He reaches out, and touches the Oujia board. He spells it out, short, and hopes they’ll get the message. KEEP TALKING.