Cycles [A Charlie & Elizabeth AU]

Chapter 3- Late Night Meetings

 Charlie snapped awake. There was a crash, followed by Sparky barking in the living room. Charlie quickly untangled herself out of bed and practically ran down the hallway into the living room, where Sparky continued barking. Without looking at anything else, she swiftly scooped it up into her arms and began to stroke the top of it's head. Sparky's barking trailed off, until it just sniffed and sat still in Charlie's arms.

Charlie looked around her, and her eyes widened. Around her, sitting on her living room furniture was a group of small ghosts, 5 of them, all staring up at her. Of course, she had seen all of them before, but they hadn't visited her all at once in years. Charlie's heart immediately tightened, and then she noticed the end table knocked completely over, with a vase in pieces all over the ground. She gently set Sparky on the ground, who slumped down on the floor. Charlie slowly turned around, looking at all of her ghost figures, and gestured at the broken vase.

"Anyone... wanna explain that... or why you're all...here?" She simply asked, keeping her voice down as not to wake her Aunt. She glanced at the clock. It was 3 am. Charlie sighed.

Susie, who was sitting on the far side of the sofa, piped up. "Hi Charlie!" She waved.

"Hi, Susie." Charlie responded with another sigh.

Susie looked up at Charlie with a wide grin, however she sat straight holding her hands tightly, and her eyes looked...somewhat troubled with something.*

The ghost sitting on the other side of the sofa began to speak. She had short black hair and light blue eyes.

"What do you want explained first, the broken vase or the reason we're here?" She asked, her voice sour. She locked eyes with Charlie, and the spirit's blue eyes practically glowed in the dark and stared through Charlie's soul.

Charlie didn't address the girl's snarky nature, she just blinked and searched her thoughts. "The vase." She whispered, "What happened with the vase?"

"Oh, well that's easy, two idiots got into a fight and knocked it right over-"

"Cassidy, that isn't what happened!" One of the other ghosts, sitting on an armchair in the corner yelled. He had deep red hair with freckles everywhere, and, like Cassidy, always wore a sour expression.

Cassidy raised an eyebrow at him. "Oh yeah? Then what did happen, genius?"

The boy said nothing in response, but clenched his fists and leaned forward quickly.

"What happened was that Fritz couldn't take a simple joke and lunged at me." Another ghost, a boy with black hair and glasses, explained in a somewhat-monotone-yet-still-malicious voice. He sat in the opposing chair across from Fritz.

Fritz stood up quickly. "That wasn't a joke, Jeremy!" He yelled.

Jeremy didn't seem fazed, and looked at Fritz in the eye, "Even if it wasn't, it didn't deserve to start a fight."

Fritz opened his mouth to retort but was cut off by another voice.

"Guys, please calm down." The last of the five, a boy with light brown skin and chestnut coloured hair said in a calm tone. Both boys immediately cast their gaze to the ground.

"Sorry, Gabriel..." they both murmured almost in unison.

"Well, that settles that, I suppose...?" Charlie whispered confusedly, she instinctively went to brush back her hair out of her face when she paused.

"Wait... why are you all here?" She asked, and everyone refused to meet her gaze.

Susie, however, once again spoke up: