A/N: Really rough draft and not beta-read. All mistakes are mine. Feedbacks would be appreciated. Here goes!!!
Till Death Do Us (Not) Part
Chapter 1
If Wishes Were Ghost We'd All Be Haunted
If he was any other kind of guy, Seth would probably be delighted waking up to see two girls fighting over who would have his body.
If he was any other kind of guy, Seth would probably be screaming his lungs out when he figured out that he could actually see through both girls.
But he wasn't any other kind of guy, he was Seth Matthews, designation: Reaper, so when he saw the two girl-ghosts smacking the hell out of each other, he reacted like Seth would do: he blinked, yawn, scratched and thought about breakfast. He reacted like this because of two things: firstly, he was used to this, secondly, he knew one of the ghost-girls. He watched the two girls rolled over the carpet, passed through his desk and his wall. A second later, the ghost that he didn't know ghosted through his wall to skid over his floor and landed with her head out of the far wall.
Seth whistled and the girl who ran through his wall toward her opponent grinned at him. "Morning, Matthews." She pulled the other girl by the hair and dragged her to the middle of the room. Compared to the faded grey of her opponent, Darling was vivid in color, her brown hair glowed and so did her cheeks and the pale tone of her skin. Ghosts usually faded in color the longer they stayed in this world after they die but since the very first time Seth saw Darling which was 9 years ago, she blazed brightly and she’d become even more vivid after she hung around him and his siblings.
She beamed at him, her cheeks flushed as if she’d just come from her morning exercise. “A little help here?”
Seth yawned again and flexed his left hand; it was covered in black ink from his left pectoral to the tips of his fingers in writings: ancient spells and quotes from holy books in ancient languages from Hemetic to Hebrew to Sanskrit to Hieroglyphs to Arabic, passages from every holy texts that speaks of death. They swirled quickly until becoming a quick blur across his pale skin, his hand trembled and he gritted his teeth when his skin heated.
He fisted, his fingers clenching tightly and an area around the two ghosts glowed brightly, forming his sigil; a ring of clockwork gears working together, sliding clockwise than counter-clockwise, a ring of silver and gold. The ghost other than Darling's body clenched stiffly and fell to her hands and knees with a loud crack and thump, like iron meeting magnet, bound to the sigil. For the moment that she was inside the sigil, she has weight and a solid mass again, she can feel fear and pain. She screamed, her voice piercing his brain and crashed inside his chest, her eyes wild and panicked.
“Move back, Darling.”
Darling stepped back, her eyes, as always when she was in his sigil, worried as if she wasn’t sure whether she could step out of the circle or not. Whether she would be trapped there like thousands of fractured souls she had seen--and helped capture.
Seth, keeping his left fist clenched, his tattoos blurring so fast that you could no longer see his skin, slid out of the bed. He reached inside the bedside table and got out a mirror-small enough to fit in the palm of his hand. At the corner of his eyes, he saw Darling flinched and a pang of displeasure curled inside his chest, but he held out the mirror facing the other ghost and as her eyes reluctantly focused on her reflection, she hissed before her edges flared and softened, her face warping until she looked like she was melting.
There was a flash of light and then she disappeared—into the mirror that was previously clear but now a smoky color. He unclenched his left hand and the sigil on the floor faded. He rolled his shoulders, his tattoos slowly winding down and smoke rose up from his skin, he shook his hand against the pins and needles feeling and fought against the rush of adrenalin and power that rippled up his spine. Too many reapers got themselves hooked on that feeling, and he had enough problems without being a junkie.
Darling was watching him quietly as she always did after one of his sealings, her expression curiously blank. She always enjoyed a a scuffle, and she enjoyed being useful and having a purpose, but she seemed to have a problem about his part of the deal: the capture and the sealing of ghosts. She didn’t consider prisoning ghosts inside a mirror was fair or humane. She didn’t understand that ghosts were only a fracture of the human they were once was, just a little part of themselves that clung to life too tightly to disappear. It was a creature made of want and desperate hunger for life that if left alone too long would be dangerous. He’d tried to explain it to her years ago but she couldn’t understand, couldn’t because she wasn't like that, she wasn't just a small piece of herself. Either than that small problem of her being invisible and incorporeal, she was herself, the same person she was before.
But that was because she wasn't actually dead. At least that was his theory was, Darling couldn’t seem to remember what happened to her when she appeared to him eight years ago, and she still couldn’t remember. Back then he figured she was just unconscious and waited until she woke up for her ghost to disappear but she hadn’t. When she stayed, Seth figured she must be in a coma, so he taught her to find her body. She found it and yes, she was in a coma but try as she might, she couldn’t return to her body.
There was only two possible reason for that to happen, that Darling was going to die and her body was too weak to receive her, or that she was so traumatized by what had happened to her that she instinctually refused to go back to her body. Seth had tried to get her to tell him her real name so they could figure out what had happened to her, or for him to find out where her body was but Darling refused to tell him anything about herself.
Darling sometimes disappear for a day or two, visiting her body and as the year past, she adjusted her visual image to her body as it grew. She was the same age as him, 17 years old with a body bordering on thin and big black eyes, she was pretty with an ethereal air about her that if she was alive would fool people into believing she was delicate. Maybe she was once upon a time, before she ended up as a dissociative soul, but after spending 8 years of protecting his sleep from other ghosts that wanted to possess his body, she had toughened up considerably.
“Where were you?” He asked. “I didn't see you last night.”
Darling was his bond-ghost, being a Reaper—one who has an Affinity for the dead, mainly ghosts—Seth’s power was also the thing that made him vulnerable. Being able to see and feel and touch ghosts was a double-edged sword; ghosts were also able to see and feel and touch him. His ability to mediate between the living and the dead also made him easy to possess and take over, which was why Reapers employ a bond-ghost, a sort of guardian that watches over their bodies, the ghost that was tethered to their soul, the only one who was trusted to slip inside their bodies and guard it if necessary. Reapers don’t mess around with choosing their bond-ghost, some wait for years to actually make the bond. Darling has been his bond-ghost since they were 8—an age that was unheard of.
Darling didn’t look at him, she always had trouble looking at him after a sealing, she was always careful and silent, as if she was afraid that he would do to her what he did so easily to others. As if he could. Seth wasn’t sure what would happen if he tried to capture and seal a dissociative soul, a soul whose body was still alive. It would be fine or it would totally backfire, he never felt the urge to find out. And she should know better to actually suspect that he would ever do that to her.
Darling walked to his bookshelf, she enjoyed reading and back when she was still weak, she cajoled Seth endlessly to turn the pages for herd. Her steps echoed inside his chest like all the sounds coming from purgatory—the ghost dimensions, strangely he could only hear her or other ghosts when he sensed they were there. She skimmed his collection with a long tapered finger but said nothing.
Seth knew he could wait until the sun burned into a mere spark and she would still stay silent. He knew what that silence meant: she had visited her body. A quick glance told him that she was wearing new clothes: a white see-through blouse with a faded purple tank top beneath it that matched the flirty skirt that came down to her knees. She had a thing about dressing up as her corporeal body was dressed. She had an anklet on her left foot, a delicately spun chain made out of silver and probably pixie dust. Whoever had dressed her unconscious body had feminine taste and an unlimited supply of money. Taking care of coma patients needed a lot of money and whoever was taking care of Darling was loaded.
She picked up a book that he had left opened last night and stared sightlessly at the page. She always came back sad after one of her visits and Seth considered comforting her. But she wouldn’t want him to besides what could he say that he hadn’t said already? He didn’t understand this side of her, he didn't understand why she was so secretive. A familiar bite of frustration sparked inside his chest which he quickly suppressed, they've been through this fight over and over again and although he wasn’t satisfied with how the situation was, he couldn't do anything about it. Sure, she was bonded to him, but that didn’t mean he had every right to poke his nose into her business or to tell her what to do. Bond-Ghosts weren’t servants or employees, they were a Reaper’s partner. They guarded the Reapers against possession while Reapers shared their life force, making them stronger and more life-like than other unbonded Ghosts.
He could offer comfort through touch and he was one of the humans who had the ability to do so but although Reapers have an ability to touch ghosts, the one ghost they couldn’t touch was their Bond-ghosts.
Besides, Darling wouldn’t want it anyway. That was made clear enough in the past that Seth, without saying another word, walked to the bathroom.
It was better than waiting for an answer that would never come.
