Archive of Our Own ^beta

It took her an inordinate amount of time to realize that something was off about her shivering. It was a drafty old house in desperate need of new windows, after all, so it was probably just the chilly air blowing in from somewhere they hadn't gotten around to fixing.

And at the end of the day, it was haunted. Not quite what you would expect from your regular old haunted house, but hours of frantic Googling in the wake of the incident seemed to indicate that a sudden drop in temperature was a telltale sign of a ghostly presence hovering over your shoulder. Of course, most of that was rubbish, but you could never know what nuggets of truth could be found buried in all the nonsense.

Having thoroughly inspected all the fixtures and found nothing to explain the persistent chill, Alison stomped downstairs. It would never stop being disconcerting, she thought, to find her basement chock-full of the departed souls of medieval peasants standing shoulder to shoulder around the old boiler, but such was life at Button House, and she wouldn't trade it for the world.

"Right, you lot, if anyone's been using heretofore unknown powers to mess with me, you better cut it out, or—"

She didn't even have to come up with a credible threat – or what? It wasn't as if she could kill them again – before she was met with earnest expressions of confusion on their plague-ridden faces.

"Who, us?"

"Jemima's the only one—"

"Wasn't me!"

"Ring-a-ring o' roses—"

"Shut up, Jemima, I wasn't asking—"

"All right, all right, jeez! It wasn't you! Sorry for jumping to conclusions, guys."

"No, honestly, it was a fair assumption."

"Can't blame you."

"We do look the part."

"Speak for yourself, John, I've got a face like an angel."

"With angels like that, who wants to go to heaven?"

"Right, so if it's not the windows, and it's not any of you..." Great. Fantastic. Just peachy. As if it weren't hard enough to keep this circus up and running on a good day. "Mike, where's the thermometer?" she shouted up the stairs, hating how the effort tickled her throat.

The plan, in theory, was to make her way upstairs and not emerge from her cocoon of blankets for the foreseeable future, but no plan ever survived contact with a motley crew of hopelessly bored ghosts on the prowl for a way to pass the time. It was impossible to go from point A to point B without having to turn pages, press buttons, settle disputes, and generally keep the peace; by the time Mike met her halfway through her perilous journey to the bedroom, thermometer in hand, she was ready to explode.

"You okay? Sorry it took me so long, but do you have any idea how hard it is to walk around without knowing if you're walking through somebody?"

"They dodge, Mike. They like it even less than you do."

"Oh, okay. Cool. I mean, not that it's cool that they have to—will I get used to it when we're eighty, do you think?"

"You're plenty used to it. Most people would have run on day one."

"Mmm. Not that I don't enjoy the mental image of Kevin McMahan peeing his pants and running, but are you feeling alright?"

"Not really, I think I might be running a fever—and you are not carrying me bridal style the rest of the way, Mike Cooper, I can get to bed on my own two legs."

She never noticed the click of painstakingly polished uniform shoes, the eruption of whispers, the TV one floor below turning itself off. As the thermometer beeped its inevitable response, the ghosts of Button House were in a full-blown emergency meeting.

"Right. Everyone accounted for?" asked the Captain tersely. "Humphrey—where's the part with a brain?"

"We'll catch him up later," said Pat. "Now what's with the general summons? We had a really good round of 'Grandma Went to the Shops' going."

"No way to soften the blow, I suppose. Ladies and gentlemen, I've just received intelligence that Alison has fallen ill. Now, I'm sure that the progress of modern medical science—"

But they were no longer listening; he might as well have dropped a bomb in their midst.

"It's happening!" Thomas strategically scooted over to the nearest armchair in which to fall into a swoon. "Heaven help me, it is finally happening! No—don't try to stop me—I shall be at her bedside day and night, awaiting the moment she breaks free of her earthly form—"

"Guys—" Pat tried, but he went unheard.

Mary was trembling like a leaf, wringing her hands and muttering prayers under her breath.

"Not on my watch, oh no. Her fellow has a perfectly good pair of hands if I can't use my own, just you waits."

"Eh, it happens," Robin shrugged. "Worst part is walking through stuff. Me teach her."

"She might not—" Julian put in, but they were utterly deaf to any reassurances.

"What happens to the house now?" lamented Fanny. "She may not be the most... dignified, but she is a Button; is the place to fall into ruin without her?"

But Kitty's wails were all but drowning her practical concerns. "What if she doesn't become a ghost and we lose her forever?"

Pat and Julian's gazes met across the clamoring crowd, finding a moment of perfect harmony that hadn't happened in at least a decade.

"Order! Order!" Julian shouted in vain, but their chatter was somehow more irrepressible than all of Parliament at its worst.

Pat proceeded to insert his fingers into his mouth and produce a flawless whistle so loud and piercing it brought everyone to a standstill.

"Worked with the kids," he replied to Julian's raised eyebrow.

"Has any of you overly dramatic dunderheads considered the possibility that it might not be serious? People don't die at the first sneeze in this day and age! New slogan: find out before you freak out!" Julian paused, impressed by his own moment of brilliance. "Hey, that didn't sound half bad."

"I don't hear an ambulance," Pat noted. "Mike must think this is something they can handle for themselves. I say we go upstairs and—"

Most of them were already spilling out of the room, through the walls where the narrow doorway wasn't enough, before he'd even finished the sentence. The only straggler, to their surprise, was Fanny.

"Not so fast!" she barked, stopping them all in their tracks with ease. "The last thing she wants is a crowd, poor girl. We mustn't excite her. If we had known she was of such delicate constitution..."

"Very well, then. We shall do it alphabetically—"

"Not on your life!" Thomas shouted over the Captain's sensible suggestion, seemingly oblivious to the fact that the expression was rather obsolete when they were all dead. "I refuse to let the arbitrary whims of grammarians hold me back from—"

"Save the fancy words for when we asks for them," said Mary, who seemed to enjoy the general stunned silence as if being listened to were a rare treat. "She needs us, and these squabblings be no help. Now, if you've gots nothing better to do than fight like dogs with a bone, I be going, and darn the alphabets. Never got the hang of it anyhow."

And she bustled away, blissfully unaware of the devastation she'd left behind as the others all stared, wearing identical looks like thoroughly chastised schoolboys.

"—only to be expected, I daresay you have a sanguine temperament to begin with, it was only a matter of time before the imbalance of the humors—"

"Humphrey, slow down. It's even weirder when I can't see you. How'd you roll under my bed anyway?" said Alison tiredly, only emerging from her pile of blankets from the nose up.

Her body ran paradoxically hot and cold; every muscle ached as she futilely chased the perfect temperature and forever failed to find it, shivers burning as they skittered along her spine.

"How long has he been under our bed?!" squealed Mike. "Please, for the love of all that is good and holy, tell me he didn't hear us last night."

"Er—hang on..."

"Tell him to relax, I was on guard duty on the roof."

"... no."

"Phew."

"So where do you keep your leeches?"

"My what?"

"What? What'd he say?"

"Ugh, stop, stop, one at a time, I can't keep up," she pleaded, her head pounding. "We don't have any leeches, Humphrey."

"Well, then how do you expect to get better? Even the King's physician used to say the root of a fever is an excess of hot humors such as blood—"

"The operating word being 'used to'," said Alison. "I am not—" her words were interrupted by a violent fit of coughing, "I am not going to sit there and let a bunch of leeches have me for dinner, I'm just going to take some ibuprofen and sleep it off like a normal person!"

"Eww. Did he seriously just suggest—"

"Well, I hardly enjoy it, you know. Bloodletting's nasty business, I can't look."

"You've got to be kidding me."

"What? God, I hate being out of the loop."

"The guy can see his own spine and he says he can't stand the sight of blood. This is a madhouse."

"Yep. This is our life now, apparently," said Mike, sounding seconds away from a nervous breakdown. "Look, I—I appreciate that you're trying, but if we call a doctor, it will be a doctor from our century, all right?" he said to empty air, looking completely in the wrong direction.

"He's literally under the bed, Mike. How come you always look up when you're trying to talk to them?"

"Oh, um, sorry," he said sheepishly, bending down in a clumsy attempt to look Humphrey in the eye. "Ooh, that's a lot of dust bunnies for company."

"I'm used to it."

"He's used to it," Alison dutifully parroted, wanting nothing more than to burrow further into her blankets and not have to play interpreter until tomorrow.

"Is he under there, then? We've been looking all over."

Alison groaned, peeking out of her soft cocoon to see Mary standing in the doorway. Honestly, their concern was touching, but if she had to act as the bridge between Mike and their crazy band of roommates much longer, she might fall apart at the seams.

"Hey, there, Mary," she said feebly, at once greeting her and warning her husband of the newly arrived company. She coughed, turning instinctively the other way before realizing she could hardly pass along the bug anyway.

"Ooh, that be a nasty one," she commented almost gleefully. "Can't even touch you and I can see you're burnings up."

"Gee, you think?"

"That's barley soup and elderflower wine for you, young lady."

"That's, um... surprisingly mild, coming from you."

"And asses' milk for that devilish cough of yours, and—"

"Okay, that's a bit more complicated. You realize we don't have a donkey, right?"

"Doesn't matter. If you've gots no milk, you boils some barley, then you takes hartshorn, and the shells of some snails—"

"Mary, honestly, I appreciate it, but words cannot describe how much I do not want to do that. Long story," she added in the general direction of Mike's puzzled face.

"Well, it's not supposed to be tasty, now is it? Take willow bark, for example. Bitter as anything, but—"

"Hang on, isn't that like aspirin before they had aspirin?"

"Oh, I don't know that word," said Mary, shrinking in on herself.

"Right, sorry. What I mean is... do you know a lot about this stuff? Plants and home remedies and things?"

"No more than any woman ought to know," she shrugged.

"Oh, Mary."

"What?"

"Nothing, just... I'm impressed," she said lamely, her brain too foggy to find a gentle way to point out that the poor woman might as well have had a bullseye painted on her back.

"Impressed?" she giggled. "Don't think anybody's ever said that to me before."

"And no wonder," grumbled Humphrey from his hidey-hole. "Proper medical science says—"

"You and your royal sawbones kill more than they cure," Mary snapped back.

"I'll have you know that—"

"Guys! Guys! 'Proper medical science' in any century says I need you to shut up, all right? I can't deal with this right now."

"Sorry," they chorused, one bowing her head, the other, well... probably wishing he could.

"For what it's worth, I'll... consider the barley soup, okay?"

"Good enough for me. I'll bring news to the others that you be still among the livings."

"That I—what? Mary, honestly, it's not that serious, I... and she's gone," Alison sighed.

"I hate how I'm always missing half the conversation," said Mike sadly, staring at where he guessed she'd just disappeared. "You make her sound like quite the character."

"She is. I'm discovering that more and more every day. It's just that her remedies are a bit..."

"Worse than the disease?"

"You could say that, yeah."

"Get some rest if they let you, I'm gonna go raid the bathroom and see what we have, okay?"

It was a testament to the madness of Button House that he felt the need to add 'if they let you'; Alison braced herself for a procession of visitors coming and going from disparate pages of the history book, half craving the company, half dreading the strange ideas they'd bring.

"Alison! My goodness, you look awful!" Well. Trust Kitty to blurt out anything that went through her head with absolute candor.

"Yeah, I don't feel so great," she said, barely pushing the sentence out before another coughing fit overtook her.

"You poor thing. Oh, I do wish I could touch things like Julian can, I'd be the best nurse ever." Maybe she was just delirious, but a part of her actually believed it. She certainly had an ever-smiling bedside manner that nothing could possibly crack. "I'll just stay here and keep you company for a bit."

"In fairness, I'm not exactly alone," said Alison, extricating a hand from under the covers to point under the bed.

Kitty bent down, which was quite the feat of engineering when you had enough skirts for three people, and beamed at what she found.

"Oh, hello, Humphrey, I didn't see you there! Do you want me to get you out? Is the bedside table all right?"

"Yes, please, that would be lovely."

"All right, up we go!"

And she plopped him down on the table like placing a vase of pretty flowers, admiring her handiwork as if a disembodied head definitely added a little je-ne-sais-quoi to the decor of the room.

"Weirdest alarm clock I've ever had," Alison deadpanned.

Kitty sat primly on the edge of her bed; she felt no added weight pressing down on the mattress, which made the whole thing feel rather like a fever dream.

"You know, when our mother fell ill, I was the one who attended to her the most. Eleanor kept the herb garden, but it was only hers in name, really, we had a gardener to do the dirty bits, and she was never in her chambers long. Did a number on her nerves, she said. I can't say I blame her. It wasn't all cool baths and teas—Father's physician was the sort who had you purging at both ends, if you know what I mean." She giggled like a schoolgirl caught saying something shockingly dirty. "I never knew what was in his powders and pills and things, we were too young, but for all his science, there was nothing he could do."

"I'm so sorry, Kitty."

"Likewise. She sounds like a lovely woman."

It was astonishing how lightly she said these things, almost as if they'd happened to somebody else; she couldn't have been much older than Alison had been when she'd lost her father, and that ache, like a piece of her being ripped out of her chest, was still there to this day, like an old injury that liked to act up when it was about to rain.

She had a vague notion that she should return to Cornwall one day, just in case, but she knew deep in her bones that nothing would come of it. What did she expect, to find him beaming at her on the same shore where they'd taken that picture, not a day older, resisting her embrace as if she were trying to hug smoke? No. He had lived a full life; how she knew, she could not tell, but none of his beloved places held her father's ghost.

"Don't be. She wouldn't want you to feel sorry. Did you know she told me never to lose my smile?"

"And you've done a splendid job of that."

"Oh, I know. And if you don't turn out to be a ghost, I'll try not to lose it either."

"What—Kitty, no, what I have isn't that serious!"

"Oh, so it's like Julian said. Honestly, I thought it was callous even for him, but if you're sure... still BFFs, then?"

"I'm... frankly scared to know where you learned that expression."

"Oh, no, did I use it wrong?"

Alison suppressed a laugh. "No, Kitty. You used it exactly right."

"Do you think my mother could have been cured, if she'd had medicine like you have today?"

"I don't know, Kitty. I'm not a doctor, I can't tell what she had from just the bits and pieces you remember. Had she lived today, she might not have caught it at all."

"What do you mean?"

"If I say 'vaccines', does that ring any bells? Or were you a bit early for that? Ugh, I should dig up my old history books."

"I know the word, but only from after I died, I think."

"Remind me to explain it when I can actually think straight, okay?"

"Sign me up for that too. I can give you a lecture on the evolving styles of footwear any day, but I can't say I've been keeping up with modernity very much otherwise. Shoes have rather gone to the dogs if you ask me—"

Mike's triumphant "Got it!" put an end to what would surely have been a riveting speech. "The medicine cabinet's a right mess, always takes me ages to find anything. What'd I miss?" He carried a glass of water in one hand and rattled a box of over-the-counter medicine with the other, aiming exactly for where Humphrey's head was sitting.

"No!" Alison squeaked. "Kitty's rescued Humphrey from under the bed, you would have put those right through him."

"O... kay..." said Mike slowly. "Give me coordinates here, is the other side all right?"

"Other side's all yours," said Alison, pointing at each ghost in turn. "Humphrey... Kitty... and that's it for now, though the others can't be far behind."

As if she'd summoned it, a soft singing voice came echoing down the hall, heard before it was seen.

"Ring-a-ring o' roses, a pocket full of posies—"

"What the—" Mike yelped.

"Atishoo! Atishoo! We all fall down."

"What? Oh, that's just Jemima from downstairs, I forgot that you can hear her."

She did cut something of an intimidating figure, standing in the doorway with long, scraggly curtains of hair hanging down her plague-marked face, but one got used to anything, given enough time.

"What's up? Did they send you?"

"They didn't send me," she said barely above a whisper. Alison did wish she could put a little more... enthusiasm in things from time to time. "I just sneaked upstairs while they were arguing about who to send. We just wanted to tell you there's room for one more if we really squeeze together."

"Oh, for the love of—does everyone in this house want me dead?" A cough rather ruined the effect of what she was saying. "Tell them I'm not coming, and they can have Betsy the boiler all to themselves!"

"Oh, I see it now. Your face looks alright, and when you coughed, your hand came up clean. Nevermind. See you when the hot water runs out."

And she left as abruptly as she'd come, leaving her entirely uncertain as to the cause of the shivers running up and down her body.

"Er—I take it all back, I'm entirely too happy to have missed that lovely conversation." Mike sat, deliciously solid, on the opposite side of the bed from Kitty, one hand over his heart as if to calm it down. "God, that's creepy."

"Alright, I'll give you that. Sometimes I think even the other ghosts are nervous around her."

"Who, us?" Humphrey deflected. "Can't imagine why."

"I don't think she knows how she comes across, really. I wish I could be heard by the living when I sing, you'd never shut me up," said Kitty dreamily. "A Captain bold in Halifax, who dwelt in country quarters—my sister would always sing it to try and spook me, imagine that. If only she knew!"

"Do I hear my name being called?"

Alison resisted the urge to shrink away from the Captain as he stood at attention in the doorway where Jemima had just been. It felt wrong, somehow, to appear as a miserable bundle of blankets, her hair a rat's nest, in front of a figure as perennially put together as he was.

"Cap's here," she warned. Mike shot a quick salute in what he hoped was the right direction.

"Sloppy form, but I'll take it." Alison prudently chose not to repeat his feedback. "Status update?"

"If that's your way to ask how I'm feeling, still not great. Please tell me you're not here to give me a whole step-by-step plan for when I die."

"Oh, no, I have every faith you'll pull through, you've proven time and time again you're made of sterner stuff than you look. Have you taken your quinine yet?"

"Quinine?"

"Precisely. Mix it with gin to make it a little friendlier, if you can't stand the taste."

"Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that for malaria?"

"If it's good enough for the boys wading through mosquito-ridden swamps, it's good enough for you!"

"Thanks, but I think I'll stick with this," said Alison, pulling herself to a sitting position to reach for the medicine Mike had brought. The motion alone sent a wave of pain pounding through her head. "Ow, ow, ow."

"Who's calling it a swamp?" came Fanny's usual dulcet tones, nearly sending the pill down the wrong pipe.

She mouthed her name at Mike and got a raised eyebrow in response, hidden under the guise of the doting husband taking the empty glass off her hands. It was getting rather crowded in here.

"For goodness' sake! Out! Out! The poor girl's nerves can only take so much!"

The Captain was the only one who seemed appropriately cowed by her formidable presence.

"I'll be taking my leave, then. Katherine?"

"But I want to stay," Kitty whined. "Please? Alison doesn't mind, does she?"

"I would, but... no legs, remember?" Humphrey pointed out.

"I was rather enjoying the company, actually," said Alison as the Captain clicked his heels and disappeared out of sight. "Sure beats staring at the ceiling."

"Fine, then, on your own head be it!" said Fanny, sounding rather miffed that her strict regime was being thrown into disarray.

"Excuse me, that expression is a bit—"

"Never mind that now," she snapped, throwing Humphrey a dirty look. "Where is everything?"

"Define—" Alison tried, but a cough cut through her words. "Define 'everything'."

"Honestly, what do they teach you in this day and age? The mustard plasters, the beef tea..."

Alison dropped back against her pillow and groaned. "Please tell me you did not just put all those words together."

"Trouble?" asked Mike, looking around the room with a clueless look written all over his face.

"I wouldn't call it trouble, just... Fanny's idea of a cure sounds like the world's worst sandwich."

Mike snorted with laughter, entirely oblivious to the scandalized face of the lady of the house.

"Well, if none of that is good enough for you, I suppose you'll want to rely on Dr. Bateman, then?"

"Who's Dr. Bateman?" asked Alison, her brow furrowed. "Did I somehow miss a whole other ghost all this time?"

"You didn't, did you?" Mike's eyes roamed around as if he expected something to jump out at him any minute.

"My dear girl, I'm afraid the fever's got you talking nonsense! Bateman, as in Dr. Bateman's Pectoral Drops? They'd do wonders for that cough, I'm baffled that you've never heard of them."

"Sorry, doesn't ring a bell. And no, Mike, Dr. Bateman's not a ghost, or is he?"

"Well, if he is, he certainly isn't residing at Button House, so that's neither here nor there. Have they really pulled them off the shelves in your time?"

"Well, they must have, because I have no idea what you're talking about."

"I know them," piped up Kitty. "One of Father's friends used to take them all the time; he died with an empty bottle next to his bed, or so they said."

"Er... that doesn't exactly paint a reassuring picture."

"Mind you, the after-effects were said to be quite something," said Fanny. "Perhaps they fell out of fashion."

"No offense, Fanny, but it sounds like that's one fashion we really shouldn't bring back."

"If you say so."

"I do. I'll be fine, honest, it's lovely that you all want to check on me, but you've got to understand this is no big deal. Haven't Pat and Julian explained it to you, seeing as they're a bit more recent? The flu is hardly life-threatening."

"The flu? Short for influenza? There was talk of turning Button House into an infirmary just for that, you know, not a decade into my afterlife; had it panned out, we'd have ended up with the upstairs as crowded as the downstairs." Fanny shuddered at the prospect.

If nothing else, living shoulder to shoulder with a bunch of ghosts was turning Alison into something her old history teacher would have been proud of; even through her foggy brain, something glimmered with recognition.

"You mean the Spanish flu? I promise you, this isn't nearly as serious, okay? We can handle it."

"You have remarkable confidence in modern medical science. I'll leave you to your rest."

She was gone in a swish of grey skirts, but her promise of rest was short-lived. Kitty couldn't let the silence stand without filling it with her excited rambling about half-understood things she'd seen on TV, Humphrey was still baffled by how a tiny pill taken with plain water gave her such faith that she'd be right as rain, and as if that weren't enough, the fairy lights strung along the headboard suddenly decided to flicker and buzz of their own accord.

"Robin!" she groaned.

"Heh. Thought it was funny," he said, sticking his hairy head directly through the wall with no regard for the more convenient door right next to him.

"Can you not? Head's pounding enough as it is."

The corners of his mouth turned down in concern as he pushed the rest of the way through the wall. "Head hurts? Where's the—" His wellspring of words suddenly dried up. "You know, the—"

What followed was the entirely baffling spectacle of a caveman imitating a buzzing, whining noise while doing something with his hands that if Alison didn't know any better, she would have called finger guns.

"You lost me."

"Don't look at me," said Mike, raising his hands in surrender. "I'm starting to feel like I'm lost by default."

"It's just that Robin's going 'bzzzt, bzzzt', and I have no clue what he's getting at," she said, joining in the charade for his benefit.

To her surprise, he seemed to have the answer to the riddle. "Oh, my drill? He must have seen me messing with it. Pew, pew, pew! King of DIY!"

"Robin, I'm almost scared to ask, but what on earth do you need with a drill?"

"Drill make holes," he said as if it were the simplest thing in the world. "Make hole in head, bad stuff come out, and you all better."

"Robin, for God's sake..." In through the nose, out through the mouth, and count to ten before you say something you regret. "Can I ask you a question?"

"Uh, sure."

"When you were alive, did any of the people with holes in their heads actually get better?"

"Sure did! For a couple of days. And then they died."

"Yeah, I figured. Thanks for trying, but I usually stick to methods that don't involve Mike's toolbox."

Robin frowned, which gave his face a more ape-like quality than ever.

"Then why ink?" he asked, gesturing at the inside of his wrist, in the same place where Alison sported the tattoo that had so scandalized Fanny upon her arrival at Button House.

"My tattoo? What's that got to do with anything?"

"We put it where it hurts. Thought you hurt arm before you come here."

"Oh... no, Robin, I just put it there because I think it's meaningful and pretty, not because I hurt my wrist. Things have changed a bit."

"So... no holes?"

"No holes. Please."

"Okay. Hope you get better."

"Huh. Most of you guys sound like you're expecting me to drop dead, I would have thought the oldest, of all people..."

"Eh. Maybe you do, maybe you don't. Friends either way," he said with remarkable composure.

"Yeah. Friends either way," she said, shaking her head at his retreating back.

His unique blend of utter idiocy and profound wisdom always managed to stump her, somehow. It was as if the intervening years, unbearably long as they had been, had created two entirely separate Robins: on one side, the simpleton from the Stone Age, and on the other, an unfathomably old creature who could give the finest philosophers a run for their money.

Alison couldn't shake the feeling that something big was missing, but then again, her brain wasn't exactly firing on all cylinders at the moment. She must have slept in fits and starts, because at one point, she turned around to find that the spot where Mike had been sitting was empty; when she came to again, sticky from sweating off her fever, it was to the sight of her husband on one side and Kitty on the other, massaging her fingers as if in discomfort.

Alison pulled a sweat-slicked strand of hair from her forehead and didn't miss Kitty's small huff of frustration.

"There. I wanted to do that and I forgot I couldn't," she pouted.

"It's the thought that counts. What'd I miss?"

"Pat dropped by, but he didn't want to wake you. He's mostly been busy telling the others you're not on your deathbed; I think they all got the message by now, except he couldn't find—"

"My sweet, I have come for you at last!"

Oh, God. Alison wasn't entirely certain she had the mental fortitude to deal with this. With Thomas, you had to appreciate the sentiment, but that sentiment tended to be expressed in a whole flowery sentence where a single word would have sufficed.

"Alison! Heavens above, you look ravishing. Even in the throes of your malady, your beauty surpasses that of a queen lying wrapped in the finest silks—"

"Doubt it, I probably look a mess."

"Ghosts again?" asked Mike, following her gaze to try to guess at where he was standing.

Thomas soldiered on as though he hadn't heard a word, undeterred, pausing only to shoot Mike a most displeased look that seemed to say his presence hadn't been part of the plan.

"I would have been here the minute I heard, but I dared not show my face without laying a worthy offering at your feet, and alas, my muse eluded me." He cleared his throat and stood up straighter, clearly ready to launch into one of his bombastic recitations. "Bit of an audience too, that's nice," he said, nodding at Humphrey and Kitty.

"Lovely she lies, and though the noxious dart of Leto's child doth pierce her noble breast, still she endures, and turns her fevered gaze upon me, servant of Apollo's art, that when her mortal body's laid to rest, I may instruct her in the spectral ways—"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, stop right there. I'm sure the rest is... erm, just as lovely, but I don't know if they told you—"

"But look at me, reciting verse when we should be making plans!"

"Plans? What plans? Thomas... Thomas, this is not a sentence I thought I'd ever say, but why are you sticking your head through my wardrobe?"

"Why, to plan for the rest of eternity!" he said, his voice oddly muffled from where he was sinking up to the shoulders into the wardrobe door. "You stay as you die, that is the universal rule, as you very well know from the vestige of the wound piercing my side..." The apparent discomfort of remembering it was enough for Thomas to pull back into full view.

"And how exactly does that justify your snooping through my clothes?" Honestly, you had to admire his persistence, but he had very little concept of personal space.

"I should have thought that was obvious! If you are to join me in walking the ghostly path, you must do so at your most radiant! Of course, your face alone is such a heavenly sight that I would not mind spending eternity with you even if you were wearing—may I be so bold as to ask what it is you're wearing underneath the bedding that so cruelly conceals your divine form from my eyes?"

"Er... fluffy pajamas?"

"... even if you were wearing fluffy pajamas, but since we are being given the unprecedented luxury of choice..."

"Ooh, yes, yes, yes, let's do it!" squealed Kitty. "I mean, she says she's not going to die, but it's a fun game to play anyway. It's like the opposite of 'What Would I Wear If I Could Today'. Come on, Alison. If you had to wear only one outfit forever and ever, what would you pick?"

"Er... well... I've never really thought about it... and I never will, because I'm not dying, all right? It will pass. I know that most of you come from a time in history when getting sick meant you were very likely going to die, in fact, I don't think I'd fully appreciated how sad a prospect that was until today, but it's just not the case here! It's just the sniffles! I'll be okay!"

A sound of slow clapping made her head snap towards the door.

"Been trying to tell them that all day, but it seems they needed it straight from the horse's mouth."

"Julian! You startled me."

"Part of the job description. See that you get back on your feet, it's been a bloody circus without you. I hadn't seen such a commotion since—"

Pat's head popping through the wall prevented him from launching into another saucy anecdote from the height of his dubious career.

"Hey, you're awake. Feeling any better?" He stepped in the rest of the way.

"I will be, thanks. Honestly, you've all been so sweet, and I'll be right back to popping in discs for Film Club soon, just... just tell them to go easy on the treatment plans, because I've heard some weird ones."

"I can imagine," Pat chuckled. "It's just that ghosts can learn new things after death, but at the end of the day, we're all a little bit stuck. Set in our ways. It's hard to keep up with a changing world from here, you see."

"After today, I think I get it. Between all of you, that was quite the crash course in medical history you gave me."

"And I think it's safe to say you passed with flying colors," said Pat. "Although, honestly, the only passing requirement was hearing it all without vomiting."

He extended his empty hand as if offering something invisible.

"Make-believe badge?"

"Of course. The highest honor."