obligatory ghost prompt for a character and/or relationship of your choice
vaguely in continuity with this one; takes place early s17
Finn has gotten used to the ghosts, by now, by necessity — a season and a half and they show no signs of dispersing, though they don’t quite crowd the townhouse the way they used to. They give her and Kennedy moments of quiet. She’s not proud of the way she’d broken down and asked for the spirits to leave them alone, sometime around the end of last season, when Fish and Pedro had both been Elsewhere and the remaining Crabs had been spread thinner than ever before, but they’d listened, stopped startling her in mirrors and lurking in the corners of the bedroom. The shadows keep to the hallways, the living room, the half-distorted reflection in the fogged-up kitchen window.
It takes her a moment — exhausted after pitching a black hole game, the sort of exhaustion that only comes after a black hole, not just tiredness but the sense of missing some vital organ that you can’t quite remember the shape of — to notice the ghost sitting in the window nook, half-visible against the dark sky outside.
She squints to try and make out their features. Considers texting Ken about it, but — he can’t see them, when they aren’t possessing him, anyways, and it isn’t as if the ghost is doing any harm. “Um,” she says, brow furrowed. “Hello?”
And then the ghost looks up, and she can see their hair move glitch-choppy around their face, their eyes go wide, and suddenly Luis pops into crystal-clarity. More lifelike than any of the other ghosts have been — maybe because she hasn’t known any of the other ghosts, aside from Combs, who had already lived in hazy memory by the time Finn saw them burn. “Please don’t tell me you’ve forgotten me already!! I couldn’t take that!”
“Luis!” She’s launching herself at them before she thinks about whether it’s a good idea — whether they’ll be physical enough to do that, ghostly transparency emulating hardlight projection just enough that she forgets anything’s wrong, for a brief second. Wraps her arms around them, and —
She doesn’t go through, but it’s a near thing. Like they both have to put the effort in to imagine Luis’ form as actually present, to make it true. They’re uncomfortably warm, the same way they’d been on day one when Finn’d seen the instability hit them and had clung to them, just like this, for the rest of the game, like the umpires couldn’t set their sights on them if Finn was in the way, like that’d ever worked for anyone in the last sixteen seasons. They glitch around/through her arms where they press into their back, little pixels falling off like rainwater.
Face pushed against Luis’ shoulder, Finn laughs despite the tears in her eyes. “Could never forget you, you know that. It’s only been — fifty-eight days!” The math isn’t exactly difficult — today’s date minus two — but it still feels wrong, after it’s been said. Too recent and too distant and something that, altogether, should not have been said. So Finn rushes onwards: “Was starting to think you wouldn’t show up, you know?”
“I — didn’t realize it had been so long,” they say, apologetic. “Time! It’s all weird, and — harder to keep track of, in the trench, than it was here, and that’s saying something! You know how bad I am at that!”
“I know, I know. I’ve just — I’ve just missed you!” She leans backwards enough that she can look at them properly — blurred, because she’s definitely still crying, and they’re still faded and indistinct around the edges, but as clear as she’s going to get. “I’ve missed you,” she says again. “Not the same here, without you. Everything’s so different.”
“Mm. I — I don’t want to know anything, about who replaced me, I don’t think! Not yet, at least.”
“I wasn’t going to say anything, don’t worry!” Finn leaves out that she’s barely said a dozen words to Jon in the weeks they’ve been on the team; she’s done her best to welcome Chorby’s replacement, the triplets, but — it’s too much, being around the person who’d stepped up to the pitching mound after Luis had burned.
“Good, okay! Perfect.” They’re fading. Finn can see through them to the buildings across the street and the streetlights’ warm glow, and she’s having to squint to properly make out their features, again. She can see her own hands through their shoulders; feels like she’s dipping them in the ocean in the summer, that not-quite-there warm feeling of waves lapping against skin. “I don’t think I can stay much longer? But — I missed you, too, and I’ll —”
“Come visit more? Please?”
“Of course! Now that I’ve figured out how, you’re not going to be able to get rid of me. Pinky promise.”
“I’m holding you to that!” She laughs as she loops her pinky in theirs, sealing the promise with a last bit of corporeality. By the time she looks up from their joint hands, Luis has vanished entirely.
Another empty spot opens up somewhere in her ribcage, a museum in her heart for commemorating lost things: one for the black hole’s song, one for Luis. A matching pair. She takes comfort in the knowledge that both will be back, if she only waits long enough. Finn’s good at waiting.
