All the Other Ghosts (Boyxboy Superhero AU Fanfic (Klaine))

Chapter 29

The Ghost doesn't know how a person can do this to another person. He doesn't know how you look into someone's eyes and look right past their humanity and just use them instead. He meets a lot of people in his work, he doesn't even know how many, he suspects by this point that they measure in the quadruple digits, all of the people he's been there with at the worst times. There's been a lot of tears and a lot of fear. And he doesn't know, he will never know, how you can look someone else in the eye and forget for even one second that they're looking right back at you, just as human as you are and just as capable of hurt . . .

He wets his lips, says, "What are you going to do to me?"

Schuester is checking his notes again, and he reminds the Ghost of himself, very young, only just learning to cook, following a recipe like it was holy writ; there's no actual innate sense of capability to him, like he knows what he's doing, like he understands the steps he's so mechanically taking. He's not a doctor, he thinks. He's not even a scientist, really. He 'adapted and refined' someone else's work. God, like it makes this better that I'm going to be pulled apart by an amateur?

Schuester says to his notes, "All you have to do is co-operate."

"I don't have any choice in co-operating, I can't do anything and you know it. You don't need her to be here. If this is going to - be unpleasant. She doesn't need to see it. Do you think this evening isn't hard enough on her already?"

Rachel grips his arm and whispers, "I am not leaving you on your own with them."

Schuester looks up at him. The Ghost looks back, and says, quietly, "What are you going to do to her?"

Schuester looks back down at the notes, and Rachel's hands have stilled on his arm. "People who don't have an innate super ability don't survive the procedure to draw latent powers out." Schuester says, too calmly, while Rachel hangs on to him and the Ghost stays standing because he has to, but god he could just lie down and . . . "The problem is that even when people do survive the procedure, whatever their powers turn out to be is unpredictable and it's usually something useless. I've only ever had one successful case of inserting an ability into someone who didn't already have the power inside them. I very rarely get true supers to experiment with, to draw the power out of to put into someone else. So we need someone to test your powers on before Ms Motta."

"You can't turn people into ghosts." he says, as Rachel's breath comes out shaking. "You don't know what it's like, you don't understand what you're doing. You can't do this to people -"

Schuester curls his lip. "And it's so hard being you, isn't it?"

The Ghost stares at him, then says, "After you're done with me the mob are going to murder me by inches. I don't know how you define 'hard' but if you wanted to swap lives with me then we could definitely discuss it about now."

"Because it's so hard being you. It's so hard being different and special and you get away with anything you want, you get to rescue people and the rest of us are just here to be rescued, we're just cattle, aren't we? You're the one with the powers, you're the one who put on the costume, you don't get to whine about how hard it is being you when all along you've been acting like you get to be special and everybody else -"

"You think I chose this? You think I thought, Hey, you know what would improve my life? If I had a superpower that everyone thinks is really creepy in a world full of people who hate supers! You're a super yourself, why the hell do you think I'm trapped here -"

Schuester's up and stabbing a finger at him, and his voice jars off the container's metal walls. "What part of me is super?" he bellows at him, and the Ghost doesn't flinch, just holds his eye, breath sucking in. "Any power in the world, any power I could have had and all I can do is make you normal like the rest of us, what the fuck gives you the right to walk through walls when all I can ever do is stop you -?"

His voice so barely shakes. "I didn't choose this any more than you chose that."

"I'm fixing nature's unfair allocation of privilege." Schuester spits, grabbing up a syringe. "All I'm doing is making it fair."

"Fair? You think - if you want the world to be fair then you fix education and social security and the justice system and the minimum wage, you don't experiment on people who can't help their own pow- no -"

Schuester grabs him by the face, grips his jaw and pulls his head sideways and holds the needle to his exposed throat inside the hood. "We can do this the hard way or you can shut up and do as you're told. You know you don't have a choice."

He stares at the wall, and he can't be touched.

He can't be touched.

He remembers those straps and chains.

He can't breathe.

It's Rachel who shoves Schuester back, chokes at him as the Ghost's breath startles back in again, "He can't do anything, alright, he can't do anything, you don't have to be such a jerk about it! He hasn't hurt anyone! All he did was help people and don't act like he's the one who ever did something evil, he used his powers to help people and what the hell are you doing with yours -?"

Schuester stands there, pale with rage, some trembling-mad light in his eyes on Rachel like he hates her; maybe he does, because he can reduce the Ghost to nothing but he can't do a thing to this woman. He runs his tongue across his bottom lip, and looks down at the needle in his hand, and lays it, with a careful click, on the table. He says, "This will be easiest for both of us if you just co-operate. Otherwise it really could get quite 'unpleasant'."

He feels shaky and sick and his head's too heavy, too light, for being touched. "This already is unpleasant," he whispers, and swallows, blinks it all back, holds his eye and his own head up. "I'm a person. I'm a human being, how - you can't do this to a person. Don't you care -"

Schuester walks back around the table to his notes. "I don't get many true supers to work with. You're a valuable resource."

"I'm a person, I'm not just a mask, I'm not just my powers, I have - a life, I have people I care about who don't know where I am or what's happening to me, I live just like you do, I make plans, I watch the news, I was halfway through a book. All those people - all those people you did this to, they were never just their body, they were never just what you were doing to them, they were people. You know what struggle is like," he says, and his voice is getting uneven. "You know what pain is like. Why would you put someone else through this, through something worse, you're using people like they're not people, they don't stop being people, not for one second, you're not doing this to a resource, you're doing it to me. And her, how can you hurt her, she's never done anything to you, she's a good person and you're not even looking at her, you're treating her like she doesn't even matter, she matters, we both do, everyone does, how have you got so far from understanding -"

Schuester pulls his hands hard through his hair, staring down at his notes. "Shut up while I'm working."

"- that everyone's just a person? I know the powers you get aren't something you choose, do you think I don't know that? But they don't make you any less human and they don't make anyone else less either, you could help people, you need to stop this, you still have a choice, you could help people with those powers, you don't need to help the mob to murder people, you could be making the world better for people instead of worse, don't you want to -"

One of the gorillas says, "You want me to gag him?"

His hands are shaking in the cuffs. He doesn't want to be touched. He desperately doesn't want to be touched. And his voice right now is the only thing he has, he can't do anything, all he can do is speak, desperately, he doesn't have many words left to him in this life, he thinks about being silenced before he's murdered and the fear fills his throat, the horror of it tightens his chest - because as bad as this is and as bad as it's going to be oh hell it can always get worse and his voice -

He feels like he's been gagged for half his life, and he can't face it again now.

"I want him to understand what's happening." Schuester puts his pen down again, stops the whirr of the spinning test tubes, picks one out and holds it up. "Do you know what this is?"

He swallows, and finds his weakening voice. "Is it your conscience?"

Schuester's hand tightens on it, and then he takes another syringe, presses it through the test tube's seal and drains the liquid inside. "We took some of your blood while you were unconscious." he says, which isn't remotely creepy and sickening. "I've been running it through certain chemical processes, isolating particular signatures in it. A transfusion of this, at this point, will give your powers to someone else."

He can't stop himself shaking but he is scared of not being able to speak, he has to find words because the idea of silence is as bad as death right now. "Then why the hell do you still need me?"

Schuester watches his face, not even like he hates him particularly, just sort of despises him a little bit for the Ghost just so not getting it. "I worked for the government during the registration period. I worked extensively with as much information on supers as anyone on the planet has ever had access to. Most supers begin displaying their powers in adolescence, a handful later on. In most cases their emergence is triggered by a traumatic event. The powers are an evolutionary mechanism, and when your body is put into enough stress to 'need' them, they activate as a form of self-defence."

The Ghost holds his eye, and Rachel's fingers press his arm. Triggered by a traumatic event. Like wanting to not exist more than you want to exist. Like wishing that no-one would ever be able to touch you again. Like wishing that your body just wasn't because as long as it is then something unspeakable can happen to it . . .

There are so many things he's never told Rachel, who holds his arm and he can feel her terror and her concern, too, for the things she doesn't know, thrust into his world and suddenly seeing what it's like.

Schuester holds the needle up. "You have mechanisms for controlling your powers. Your body and your powers are adapted to each other and you can control them, they're natural to you, they're a part of you. If I put your powers into someone else, there are a number of potential issues. Their body could reject them; I've had a number of experiments just die after the initial transfusion. They could handle the transfusion but fail to manifest the powers anyway. Or their body could accept the power but fail to control it. So tell me what would happen," he says, watching the Ghost's eyes watching his, "if someone were to take on your powers without being able to control them."

He breathes, slowly. Rachel's holding his arm.

Schuester lets his breath out through his nose. "I can make you tell me, you do know that."

He closes his eyes, and Rachel is holding his arm, and his breath comes out shaking. "Fall," he whispers, very dry. "You would fall. No solidity. You would just fall through the ground and keep on falling."

Through the deafening blinding suffocating dark, you would fall until the blackness pressed in on you and snuffed you out. He understands the threat that's being made if he doesn't co-operate. Rachel would fall through the dark and die his death, if he won't help them to work around it . . .

"If it's all so dangerous," Rachel says, in a shaky, angry voice, "why does she want it? If it could kill her anyway -"

"There are tests I can perform. Little inoculations." Sugar grins behind his shoulder, and snaps her gum. "If it's safe, we can follow the procedure through."

The Ghost swallows, says, "Did you dump those people in the river because they failed your tests? Or didn't you even bother with the tests for them?"

"That gag is still an option." Schuester says flatly, and puts the syringe down. "I need to work out what exactly controls your powers. There are things I can do to help bodies adapt to them if I understand how they work."

The Ghost doesn't look at the straps and chains on the wall. "How?" he whispers, very dry.

"It's nothing even unpleasant, this is the gentle part. That's an MRI scanner through there. I need you to behave while you're inside it, you know we can do anything to her if you don't, and I'll stand at enough of a distance so you can use your powers on command and I can read -"

A hole has opened in his head, his brain feels like it pours through it like sand, too heavy, plummeting through itself, and his voice comes on automatic; "No."

Schuester looks almost most weary than annoyed, and says, "I'm getting tired of running through this. You don't have a choice."

He stares at the machine, the hungry open mouth of the machine, and sickness rises in his guts, because of everything they could ask of him -

He tries to step backwards but he can't, he can't make his body move. He shakes his head. It's all he can manage. Desperately, fear like a hand closing on his throat, he shakes his head.

He'll have to lay still on his back half-inside a machine and trust them. That's what's making his knees weaken and his breath catch. The vulnerability of it. The helplessness of it. He's helpless already but he's on his feet and he can see them, in that machine he wouldn't know what was happening and he would have to force himself to lay still and do as he was told and the fear makes him want to gag, the fear -

His breath catches; the fear is pulling his breath like a fist, snatching it back into his chest so it can't escape.

He tries to say 'no' again but can't, can't get the breath in to do it, and Rachel's voice stumbles over itself before she manages, "Ghost -?" because he's slipping, under her arm, his body too heavy with lack of breath and oh fuck not here not now he can't breathe -

He can hear Schuester say, "What -" and the snap of the guns aimed at them again, and Sugar says, "Is he alright?" and his ribs jar with the impact, he's on his knees not-breathing at the floor and Jesus not here not this not now -

Rachel crouches next to him, catches his shoulders and whispers, almost whimpers, "Okay it's okay -" but he can't breathe, his eyes are watering and his head is pounding and his chest is as tight as if he's having a heart attack and he can hear everything too intensely, everything's so horribly clear including his own ugly, gulping attempts at forcing his breath, can hear one of the gorillas mutter, "Some fuckin' superhero." and Schuester murmuring, "He's having a panic attack."

He is, and there's no Blaine to fix him now. Rachel is still chanting to him, desperate with fear, that everything's okay while he can't breathe, the edges of his vision have tunnelled, his head just weighs too much he's going to go down and he can't, like this, the fear of what happens if he passes out just feeds back into the fear already suffocating him and he can't, can't -

Rachel rubs his back, whispers to him, "I don't know what to do I can't - don't touch him god just let him breathe -"

Schuester is crouching in front of them, as Rachel wraps her arms protectively around his shoulders and he's hanging from his own lack of breath, blackness swarming his vision, a swarm of locusts moving in. Schuester says, sounding mostly confused, "You can't be claustrophobic."

He can't explain it, he couldn't even if he could breathe to speak right now, that it's not anything that they think that's doing this to him, it's helplessness. And not just helplessness, not just that he's cuffed and powerless and trapped but that they're asking him to lay on his back and put himself utterly at their mercy and it's the cruellest thing they could ask of him, he can't. Nothing panics him more than his own vulnerability, and having to trust that vulnerability to anyone else. The only person it has ever been okay to be vulnerable with is Blaine. No-one else. Ever. He either can't trust that they wouldn't hurt him or else he loves them and he can't burden them with it, with how much of it there is. It's only Blaine who's ever taken the weight for him. It's only Blaine he can offer his throat to and know that it's okay. It's only Blaine who has ever, ever made him feel safe.

"You understand," Schuester says, his voice too-steady to hold the impatience down, "that this is going to happen whatever you do. You are going to co-operate with us. So the sooner you get this under control -"

"Give him the room to breathe you bastard, like you haven't done enough to him already? Get-"

Rachel's voice and breath stop in one second, and the Ghost hauls his leaden-heavy head up, tries to focus through the draining of his not-breath at the thing in Schuester's hand aimed at her neck, while he's got Rachel's head twisted to the side by the hair and her panicked hands don't know what to grab. Syringe. Syringe -

He just drained a vial of the ability to turn someone into half a ghost, and now he's got Rachel with tears in her eyes trying not to make a sound out loud, and he's watching the Ghost's eyes, while he tries to control his breathing and can't.

Except he can. He has to. Rachel. He has to.

He closes his eyes, hangs his head and nods his submission, and tries, tries to breathe. Schuester must have let go of Rachel because he hears his steps back off and she's holding his face through the hood again, saying so shakily, "It's alright, it's alright it is alright I've got you I've got you -"

Breathe, breathe, for Christ's sake just breathe fucking hell you're lungs it's what you're for -

Nothing else ever made him feel safe.

He thinks about Blaine. He thinks about Blaine's arms around him, how solid they were, how Kurt could close his eyes to the skin of him and god he looked like he should taste of caramel but he tasted so much better, tasted of Blaine, warm and smooth and real. He thinks about how Blaine's hands would run down his back, stroke the tension out of his muscles with a long rolling press, god he always was too good to be true, the physical therapist who knew just how to massage the muscles in Kurt's back to satisfied calm . . .

He thinks about his eyes dark in the lamplight before sleep, drowsy and peaceful on his, intent on him, watching him so Kurt was seen and safe. He thinks about his laugh, so easy to stir out of him, thinks about how his voice twisted a little higher whenever he was anxious, thinks about how it would fill lower when he meant something too much. He thinks about him huffing over his iPad, over god knows what nonsense on the internet, how funny and how sweet it always was. He thinks about the shape of him in the t-shirt he slept in, bend of his back, curve of his shoulders, sides running slim down to his waist.

(And his breath comes a little longer, a little longer.)

He thinks about how he kissed him, and Kurt had never known that a kiss was supposed to be like that. A kiss meant that you hadn't been able to communicate please don't touch me loudly enough to the guy you hadn't been able to communicate please don't get close to me to before; a kiss meant frozen, rigid panic-revulsion at someone else's mouth and skin and scent too close. No: a kiss meant Blaine, slip of his hot tongue, warm lips catching his, and his hands sliding around Kurt's body so he felt him all over, so his skin shivered the length of him with Blaine. Taste, scent, heat. A kiss meant his stubble in a morning and his toothpaste at night. A kiss meant Blaine pressing his mouth to every part of Kurt's skin, hungry during sex, gentle before bed, like he wanted to kiss every part of Kurt. Like Kurt was precious. Kurt was precious, once, when Blaine loved him.

And his breath comes slower, longer, easier.

Blaine loved him. It's the only thing he'll take to his death with him; Blaine loved him, he really did. Blaine actually loved him. Blaine loved him, that good, funny, gentle man who never wanted to hurt him, who came careening into Kurt's life like a miracle, just as unlooked for; Blaine loved him. With all his heart, Kurt knows it, he did.

And Kurt loves him so much it overfills his heart, he feels it spill over inside him, hard to keep the tears inside. He loves him and it's the only thing he has left. What is left of his life will be a nightmare, he doesn't need to believe in hell because hell is happening right now, but he loves Blaine. All he can do is think of that. Forget everything else. You can't save yourself and you can't help Rachel, not at all, you're nothing like a hero anymore. All you can do is think of him and let them do whatever they like. Think about how much he loved you, focus on the best thing you ever had, that he loved you and he let you love him. Because he's breathing, now, heavy and painful but almost normal, and Rachel is stroking his hair through the hood, and he swallows, swallows again and she lifts her hand to unscrew one of the water bottles, to offer him another drink.

He swallows it, and wets his lips. "I'm sorry," he whispers, head very low, they can't hear them down on the floor like this and it's hardly like it matters at this point anyway. His breath is rough, but it's there. "I'm sorry, Rachel. If I could have saved anyone I wish it was you."

"Stupid." she whispers, very raw, and caps the bottle again. "Do you think I don't feel the same?"

He wonders if she means that, if she understands what that means. He breathes, breathes. He's almost come down to calm enough. Calm enough to . . . "If they take my powers," he says, quietly. "They could do anything with them. This city . . ."

She puts the bottle down. "I know."

He looks at her. She's white-faced, drawn and exhausted and blank, like she has to hold her face blank. "They're going to kill us either way." she says, and swallows and shakes her head, Rachel Berry, the most stubborn person he has ever known, and he does mean that in a good way. "Not because of me. Don't let them because of -"

"Are you ready to go through with this yet?" Schuester says from the table, moving something that clinks. The Ghost just watches Rachel's eyes, because -

Because they both know that neither of them is walking away from this alive, whatever they do at this point. But they can't kill him yet, not until Sugar's father is ready for it. It's Rachel who doesn't mean a thing to them, they can always get someone else to use as a test subject, someone else to hold the life of over the Ghost's head to make him surrender. If he won't co-operate then she's the one who suffers, and this isn't a decision that can be taken back. If Rachel understands what she's saying - what the cost will be, what this could -

But they're already both going to die, that's been inevitable since the docks, they have no choice but in how they face it. Doesn't Rachel have the right to choose to meet her death in the eye, just as much as he does . . . ?

He murmurs, very low, "Are you sure?"

"Yes." Furious brightness builds in her eyes, tears of utter rage. "Fuck them."

He swallows. "You know - they'll make it - bad."

"Fuck them."

He draws his breath in, lets it all go. He nods. They'll make it bad. They'll make it very bad. They will do things to try to make them change their minds. It will be bad. But at least they'll die knowing that they didn't make anything worse for anyone else, because what the hell else can you do?

She helps him shift to a better sit, kneeling mostly upright with her support, so he can look up at Schuester and say, "Neither of us are co-operating with anything. I'll ghost for you when I'm dead, I'm not doing a thing to help you wreck anyone else's life."

He sighs so angrily, and lifts the needle. "Do I need to remind you -"

Rachel holds him with shaking hands and snaps, "Go stick your head in your own stupid machine."

Schuester strides at them, and the Ghost's jaw sets, if he can time his surge upwards right he should at least be able to break that fucking syringe of -

An alarm starts, somewhere outside the container, wailing in a lonely way out there in the huge high warehouse. Schuester stops, and voices start calling in panic outside, and then there's the sound of an explosion so loud Schuester stumbles back a step and Sugar jumps like a startled cat, and one of the gorillas behind them swears and runs out. "Stay he-" Schuester yells, but it's too late; the Ghost tries to look behind his shoulder but his multiply-battered ribs crackle pain at him, and he hunches again, hissing.

"What the fuck-" the other gorilla says, and gunfire rattles around out there, shouting and yelling, another boom like a bomb went off and someone yelps and wails in its aftermath. "The girl," Schuester snaps. "Get that gun on the girl before -"

The Ghost is between the gorilla and Rachel, with his hands cuffed behind his back, as powerless as any ordinary person, aching and battered and angry as all fuck. And here's the thing about the Ghost: for five years he survived the streets of this city on his own on a night, he fought people usually bigger and heavier and stronger than he was, usually armed, usually outnumbering him. And yes, he had his powers, and yes, there was a time he went to martial arts classes almost every night of the week. But the main reason he survived was that when things got bad, when it was his life on the edge of someone else's knife, he always had two things left to rely on. One was that they would usually underestimate him, because he was young and skinny and softly-spoken and they hadn't realised that he was more skilled than them and smarter than them.

Two was that when it really comes down to it, if he's fighting for his life then he's fighting for it for his dad, and he's fighting to win. Back to the wall, the Ghost fights dirty.

He's maced, tasered, crotch-kicked, throat-punched and on one early desperate occasion bit his way to safety in the past. He survives. He doesn't enjoy hurting people but he is not going to down to some pettily evil fuck in the night. He does what he has to do. He has people counting on him to survive, to protect them, to survive -

He has a fraction of a second to time this to, because he, and Rachel, will never get a second chance. So he judges the guy's step behind himself and slams his head backwards into his crotch with all the strength left in him, so hard his skull hammers off his pelvis.

Asshole pulled his hair.

The gun hits the floor and the guy goes down with an inbreath-noise like the Ghost just cut off the air in his throat, and Rachel shrieks and they're now down one gorilla making uhuhuhuhuh noises on the floor but there's still Schuester and Sugar and he doesn't have many options -

The gunfire's mostly stopped out there, but he can hear running feet. He shifts on his knees to be able to turn enough to see, throbbing head a little ducked in the hood, not knowing what this might be until he sees - that blond super, running - just running like a normal person, not zipping along like lightning chasing the earth - stagger up, panting, and he calls over his shoulder, "Here -!"

Schuester barks, "Sam, I need you to -"

"No go, doc, sorry." Sam says, as more feet run in their direction. "You're on your own."

Because -

iBorg clangs to the ground from mid-flight, and strides into the container with one wrist raised, aimed at Schuester, saying, "Stay seriously still or I will seriously kick your ass, dude." and running up behind him yelling, "Freeze!" is - Finn. Finn, who comes charging into the container aiming his gun at Schuester and then at Sugar who throws her hands up in surrender with tears in her eyes, and Rachel sobs, "Finn-"

"Rachel, Jesus-"

Rachel stumbles up and Finn throws his arms around her, they hug so tight it looks painful, and the Ghost blinks dazedly from his kneel, he doesn't understand - doesn't understand -

"Ghost -"

He looks up, and Phalanx runs into him so hard he knocks him back on his ass, arms snatching in around him, grabbing the back of his head to press him in close, dug painfully into his armour and his heart pounds its disbelief there. "Thought I'd never see you again," Phalanx chokes, chest jumping with breaths close to sobs jarring the Ghost's chest, as the Ghost stares disbelieving at his neck in extreme close-up. "Thought I'd never -"

. . . so hard to understand, this . . . he's not dead, he's not going to die, he's . . . Phalanx . . .

Here. Holding him. Here. He's safe.

He's safe.

His breath falls out of him into Phalanx's throat, and Phalanx squeezes him so hard it hurts and he can't care. "I thought I'd never, I thought-" Phalanx's hand finds his face, he manages to unpeel himself from his body just enough to check his eyes, he looks pale with terror, gasping at him, "Are you okay, you're not hurt, you are okay -?"

He just starts laughing. It jars his chest, every jump of it hurts enough to raise tears but he can't stop it, relief like he's hauled himself out of the dark, because he never has had much experience in being rescued, not by anyone but him. And Phalanx's thumb strokes his cheek, and he lifts the Ghost's face just enough to kiss his forehead, under the hood, and whisper, "Thought I'd lost you. I thought . . ."

"I'm okay," he whispers, the exhaustion really flooding through his body now, now that fear isn't keeping him manic on the edge of despair. Now he really feels the night; he's been drugged, knocked around, battered on his unhealed bones, terrified. He's so so so hurting and tired, but here's Phalanx, and it's okay, he's okay, they're okay . . .

Behind Phalanx's back, a voice he knows says, "Seriously, go right ahead an' move if you want to, you don't need your oesophagus for anything, right?"

He blinks, a little dazed and dreamy with how surreal this moment is (safe), over Phalanx's shoulder. At Incendiary, who's standing with the dangerous heel of her boot pressed over the throat of the gorilla on the ground, while Cheer Girl is leaning down to look into the Ghost's face before she smiles a happy little 'oh hi haven't seen you in forever!' greeting.

And his body is tense, and he doesn't understand.

He understands even less when Puckzilla walks in, human-formed, hands still fisting at his sides. "That's the guy?" he snarls. "That's the dick who did this to me?"

"Easy, lizard, he's going into custody." The woman who walks in beside him - it takes his now-panicking brain a second to place her - is the woman the Ghost saw in Puckerman's cell, what - ?

He whispers, very quietly, "Phalanx -?" because he's rescued him from the mob to dump him on the floor in front of a bunch of supervillains -

Incendiary glances across at him, leers, says, "Hey spooky, looking well." and Phalanx rubs his back, says, "Uh, they're on our side. They're um, reformed."

"Not so reformed I won't pound that bastard -" Puckerman snarls at Schuester, and the woman behind him says, "Down boy, don't make me drop you, he's coming in for questioning. Schuester. We do indeed have a very long list of questions for you."

Phalanx rubs the Ghost's back through his cloak, says, "Can someone - we need to get these cuffs off him, his arm -"

"I'm on it." iBorg says, lowering his arm from aiming at Schuester, who's got a roomful of angry superheroes in front of him and okay, they don't have powers around him, but the Ghost still wouldn't want to face Puckerman wearing that expression. "No probs."

"Careful," the Ghost says, suddenly panic-aware of those cuffs again. "Pressure sensors, if the pressure on them lessens I get -"

"S'cool. I'm good with technology like you wouldn't believe."

He hooks the Ghost's cloak out of the way, and Phalanx catches his face to kiss his forehead again, then whispers to him, "Jesus I thought they would kill you, I thought -"

He closes his eyes, hangs into the hypnotic closeness of him, safe, safe, safe. "Phalanx," he breathes, because he doesn't really dare to speak, not to say what he needs to, what the hell can he say after tonight - ?

Finn's voice says overhead, "He okay?" and the Ghost lifts his drowsy head, blinks, looks up at him, smiles.

"Officer Hudson."

He's got an arm around Rachel still, and her fingers are tight in his shirt. "You alright?"

"I've been better." Phalanx kisses him again, like he can't stop doing it, on the mask beside his eye. "I've definitely been worse."

"There you go." iBorg says behind him, and - his wrists slip loose of the grip of the cuffs, he braces for pain but nothing happens, and iBorg dangles the empty cuffs over his shoulder. "Clever. Even I wouldn't've thought of it. Someone really wanted to keep you in."

Phalanx helps to draw his hurt arm forward, rest it to his chest; the pain of the bending has to be endured but it's better when he can just press it there, and let his breath out. "Okay," Phalanx whispers, and would probably kiss him again except -

It happens behind them, so the Ghost doesn't see what happens, just the aftermath; Sugar staggering to the side with a syringe sticking out of her arm, and Puckerman punching Schuester so hard he bangs off the wall and hits the floor already unconscious. Finn has his gun up, iBorg's tense and aiming his wrist at Sugar again -

And a woman's voice calls from outside, "Agent Sylvester, my powers just cut back in, what -?"

- no.

The Ghost stares at Sugar, who, fingers shaking and suppressing little whimpers, takes the syringe in her hand and pulls it from her arm. It drops from her hand like it's too nerveless to grip it. And she says, "I feel -" and comes heavily to her knees, and it's Rachel who sucks her breath in and drops to her knees in front of her.

"God - oh god we need an ambulance, he just injected her with -"

(He'll never know why that man did that; spite, or to know if it worked, or just because he could - ?)

"S'posed t'do tests," Sugar mumbles. "'case it was danger- oh wow. Look."

Her raised hand is fading out of sight, and coldness grips the Ghost from low inside. "Look at that, oh my god," Sugar says, turning her hand about, beginning to grin. "Ghostette in the house, now I ca-"

She gives a little shriek as she first jolts down, looks down disbelieving at herself buried to the knees in the floor. "What -" she says, just staring, her whole body now a little faded, like a -

"No," the Ghost says, and turns properly in Phalanx's arms. Phalanx tries to grab him tighter but his powers are working again too with Schuester unconscious, and his hands slip through the Ghost's body like he's not even there, because the Ghost knows what happens next.

When his powers came in, they crept in bit by bit, and he had the time to adjust; he lost pencils and mugs through his fingers and he put his foot right through the stairs on a few occasions and tripped face-first, but he had the time to deal with things, he never just found his entire body intangible and impossible to keep from falling. What Schuester just put into Sugar has nothing natural about it, and -

"Why won't it -" she says, jerking down again, sinking and grabbing at the floor with hands that go through it, sliding lower. "Why won't it - ?"

"The hell is she -" Incendiary says, and then Sugar screams as she slides into a smoother fall, through the floor and gone, and the Ghost dives after her. He hears Phalanx yell. There's no time to reply.

Through solidity, black and pressing in, kicking himself after the route she fell. His flailing hand is reaching blindly for something else semi-solid, concentrating as hard as he can, feeling desperately for -

His hand swipes through something that feels different in the dark, and he alters his own solidity again, matches hers, grabs her hard. It's her arm. But then she's falling faster, jerks him with her - his ribs wrench - through into open air, oh, fuck.

He tries to grab on and hold them in this ceiling but his right arm -

He falls, ghosting, body stunned with pain, still holding her arm as tight as he can as she finally has enough air to scream. They hit solidity again and sink through it and he slows them, braces himself, hauls with all the strength he has back for the surface, for whatever space that was they just fell through, too dark to tell - but his right arm is screaming, useless, and she's kicking and fighting in panic even as he drags her back the way they came. No air left in his lungs he kicks, fights for the surface, feels the back of his head in open air, jerks himself higher and gasps a breath in, braces himself on his right elbow with no other choice and heaves.

It's all he can do to pull her up, she comes up flailing and panicking and wheezing, choking down air once he gets her head clear. "You have to concentrate!" he yells at her. "You have to -"

She grabs at him blindly, sobs, "Don't let go, don't let go of -"

"Kick yourself out. Make the soles of your feet more solid, kick yourself up -"

"You have to help me you have to pull me -"

He's shaking, there's no strength left in him, in the pitch black god-knows-where all alone with a mobster's daughter he doesn't even know if he can save or if his own powers will kill her down here in the dark. "You have to push yourself up! I can't -"

She grabs his shoulder and pulls rather than pushes, and his ribs would really rather that she hadn't done that. He grips her arm hard, clenches his teeth, concentrates on keeping both of them solid. He can make solid things intangible, he knows that; now he puts everything he has into making her solid, into making her exist, into keeping her from turning into a ghost in the dark.

"Oh god - oh god -" she pants.

"Where are -" he says, and feels - too much, too much pain, so much he's dizzy with it, he feels like his head is going to roll off his neck -

"Basement under - my dad, for storing - if cops come check -"

"Cell," he says, nausea rising. "Do you - ? You have to call someone. They have to get us out of -"

He has to stop speaking to lean over and throw up; he spits and swings clumsily back, startled, too dark to see, gripping Sugar's arm to keep her solid and weird white bubbles keep bursting in his vision. His teeth are chattering. Too much, he wants to say, but all he makes is a confused noise. Too much. The whole night's been too much. He can't -

Sugar's cell lights up, reveals the reinforced basement they're in, the stacked up crates and her face lit sickly green like this. "Are you alright?" she says, and then the bang of hitting the floor reverberates through his whole body, but he doesn't remember falling.

She's shaking his shoulder and yelling at him. He can't make the words out. Too much; the whole night's been too much.

Tell, he thinks. It's important that someone gets told something. Tell. Tell . . .

Dad?

Blaine, he thinks, and then it's just black.