Fic: Light of the Moon
Title: Light of the Moon
Fandom: AU
Rating: PG-13 (I think)
Pairing: Jim/Bones
WARNINGS: MAJOR CHARACTER DEATH. Suicide. Ghost!Jim. Angst. Lots of angst. Alternate happy ending linked at bottom.
Summary: Leonard doesn't believe the ghost stories on campus. Not until he is confronted with reality and falls in love with a ghost.
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters and I don't even own the ghost story this fic was based on (it is a real ghost story on my college campus, though I tweaked a few details).
It was late on Halloween night when Leonard looked up from the book he was reading to find someone else in the deserted hall where he was studying for an exam he had the next day. He grumbled a bit; he’d come to this hall precisely to be left alone, for no one would study in here anymore for fear of the ghost that supposedly lurked within the walls.
It was said that a young man had killed himself in the bathroom a long time ago, worried over a test he was convinced he couldn’t pass, and that his ghost would approach studiers, leaving those who were having hard times alone and chasing away those who were confident in their knowledge. Len didn’t really believe it, though; it completely went against everything he’d learned and believed as a scientist. So he was shocked when he saw that the young man’s feet were hovering about an inch off the ground; the technology to hover like that wasn’t very good yet, and if he was using that then he should be wobbling and making a lot more noise than he was.
“So, how’s the studying going?” the young man asked, walking--no, floating--over and looking at his textbook.
Len may have been a skeptic, but he was always careful. “I have no idea how I’m going to pass,” he said with a small sigh.
The young man made a sympathetic noise and began to move away when an idea struck Len. “Hey!”
As the ghost--for he could no longer call the young man a man--turned back briefly, he held up the book. “Do you think you could help me study? I work better when I study with someone else,” he lied smoothly.
The ghost snorted. “And that’s why you came here, huh?” At Len’s raised eyebrow he continued. “You know as well as I do no one studies in here unless they really want to be left alone; no one comes here anymore. It was actually getting a little lonely for a while.”
“Well, maybe so,” Len conceded. “But now I’ve seen you, and I have to admit I’m curious. So you helping me study is actually me getting a chance to know a little more about you, and there’s a fair chance it might actually help.”
At that the ghost chuckled. “You’re honest; I like that. So what’re you studying, anyway?” he asked, bending over to read the text on Len’s PADD. “Xenobiology? Looking to be a doctor?”
“Tryin’ to be,” he said. “So, what’s your name, anyway?”
With a laugh, the ghost admitted, “It’s been a long time since someone asked me that. You can call me Jim. And you... you have ‘em, so I’m calling you Bones.”
Mildly irritated with the nickname, Len asked, “And I don’t suppose telling you my real name’ll change your mind?”
“Nope!” Jim cheerfully shouted. “Now tell me about this alien and, more importantly, whether or not I could fuck it.”
“Jim, you’re a ghost.”
“So?!”
“You can’t fuck anything.”
“Shut up!”
~*~
Len really wasn’t sure what guided his feet to the abandoned hall the next evening, but he found himself opening the door and softly calling, “Jim?”
A joyful cry echoed through the hall. “You came back! No one’s ever come back, not ever!” Soon enough, the ghost flickered into appearance before him. “So how’d the test go?”
“Oh, horrible,” Len said flippantly in keeping with the old legend.
Jim chuckled, evidently in a good mood. “So you aced it, then. I can tell you’re smart; you don’t have to lie to me. You came back, so I’m not about to chase you out.”
Len grinned. “Just how long has it been since you actually talked to someone, that you’re so willing to haunt someone like me?”
“What do you mean, someone like you?” Jim asked. “You’re the most interesting person I’ve seen in the entire century I’ve been here! You’re smart, you’re funny...”
“Bitter, sarcastic...” Len murmured under his breath.
“But that makes you real,” Jim muttered wistfully, looking down at himself.
Len decided not to comment on that, not knowing what would be polite to say about reality to a ghost. “You’ve been here a century, then? So what have you been doing, apart from scaring poor students witless?”
Jim scraped a translucent foot against the tile of the floor, shamefaced. “Not much,” he admitted.
“What?!” Len exclaimed. “You could do all kinds of things here and never get caught, and yet you do nothing? That just doesn’t match up with what I know of you.”
“Well, moving furniture around got boring after the first ten years, and I can’t seem to wander freely around campus,” Jim defended.
“When was the last time you tried?” Len asked.
“Oh, I think it was about... twenty-five years ago?” Jim said, head cocked thoughtfully to one side.
“And what happened?”
“Nothing. I just couldn’t leave.”
“And do you want to?” Len questioned.
Jim thought about it for a moment before nodding. “This was a beautiful hall, once. Now it’s been shut down, and there’s nothing left here. I want to see if the rest of campus is as beautiful as it once was.”
“Then come with me,” Len said, standing and offering a hand to the ghost.
“You know I can’t actually take that hand, right?” Jim asked, looking skeptically at it.
“I figured as much,” he said, “but Mama raised me polite.”
At that Jim smiled, laying an ethereal hand barely over his. A chill ran through his arm at that, though he felt no pressure from the hand. “What if it doesn’t work?” Jim asked, looking almost fearful.
“Then it doesn’t work. But at least we tried, yes?”
Jim nodded and together they stepped through the door. Len smiled when the ghost looked around in wonder. “It worked! It worked, it worked, it really worked!”
“So what do you want to see first?” Len asked, gesturing around at the campus.
~*~
It was a week into their arrangement, and Len wanted some answers. All he had to go by were the legends, and he figured those were half true at best. And so when he returned to his dorm room after dark to find Jim sitting at his desk he asked, “So what happened, anyway?”
“What do you mean?” he asked, looking up.
“How...” Len trailed off before deciding to go for it. “How did you die?”
Jim sighed. “You really want to know?”
“Well, I can’t see how it could be much worse than the tale of you hanging yourself over grades,” Len replied.
Jim shook his head. “Well, you have half the story.”
“What’s the other half, then?”
Jim was silent for a moment, then began his tale. “It was in the middle of the Eugenics War,” he started, pausing as Len winced. “I told you it wasn’t pretty. Anyhow, in those days, if you weren’t perfect, you were subject to experimentation and then killed. I... was less than perfect, and it was only a matter of time before I was found. Hiding again wasn’t going to work.”
“So you took matters into your own hands,” Len summarized.
“I didn’t want to fall into theirs,” Jim defended. “I figured anything was better than that.”
Len looked at the saddened ghost still sitting at his desk. “This is the point where I’d be giving you a hug... if, you know, you had a body. No offense meant.”
“None taken, and thanks.”
“For what?” Len asked. “I didn’t do anything.”
Jim smiled softly. “You listened, and you wanted to know. That’s more than enough for me.”
~*~
After a month of exploring the campus by night and hiding his yawns by day Len realized he was falling in love with a ghost. There was just no other explanation for it.
Every morning he woke up early for his first class, quickly struggling through his homework as Jim rested or did whatever the hell the ghostly equivalent of it was. He did most of his studying in the afternoon, when Jim wouldn’t dare show himself, just so he would be done enough by evening to carry out yet another adventure with the ghost. He looked forward to their nightly misadventures with an anticipation that just couldn’t be healthy, especially since it was directed toward someone who was dead.
Len sighed. He should’ve known he’d do something this unhealthy; he’d had it coming for quite some time.
When he returned to his dorm room after class, shutting the blinds and turning off the lights because he knew those were Jim’s preferences, he noticed the ghost looked particularly despondent. That in and of itself was unusual, since Jim was remarkably hyper despite his age, but he was sitting on Len’s bed, clutching one of the sheets in his hand as if it had done him some particular harm.
Concerned, Len asked, “What is it, Jim?”
Jim shook his head. “You don’t want to know; not really.”
Len sighed, “Jim, tell me.”
“Fine!” the ghost exploded. “I love you!”
Len raised a single eyebrow. “And why’s that so depressing? Why wouldn’t I want to know?”
“Because how could you possibly love someone who can’t even touch you?” he asked, reaching a hand through Len’s arm. “How could you love someone most people don’t believe exists? How could you love someone who’s already dead?”
Jim sighed gustily. “Forget it,” he muttered, a single tear falling from his face but never quite reaching the ground.
“Jim,” Len breathed. “I love you, too.”
“Don’t say that!” the ghost snarled. “I know you don’t mean it!”
Doing the only thing he could, Len stood and hugged the ghost as well as he could, looping an arm around his shoulders and the other around his waist and holding them there despite the lack of presence to keep his arms there. “But I do. I do mean it.”
“So?” Jim asked bitterly. “It’s not like that changes anything.”
“It does, Jim. It means I’ll do anything I can to be with you, whether you see it that way or not.”
“There’s no way, Bones! I’m dead, and you’re not, and I very much want it to stay that way!”
“We’ll think of something,” Len placated, hoping he would indeed think of something.
~*~
Except there was nothing.
The academic year was almost up, and Len was at his wit’s end. His grades had suffered immensely because of his extensive research on ghosts and the supernatural, and people were starting to question his sanity. People these days just didn’t believe in ghosts, and that was that.
Finally believing that Jim was right, Len remembered that there was one thing. I’m dead, and you’re not.
Walking quickly toward the abandoned hall because it was the one place they had never gone back to, Len made sure to make the journey in broad daylight where Jim wouldn’t follow. He quickly locked himself in the bathroom and created his plan.
The last thing he heard was a scream of “No!” coming from the ghost he loved.
~*~
Leonard McCoy was buried one evening in the April of 2255. He had been found dead in the bathroom of an abandoned hall on campus with a peaceful smile and a note that read “He made me do it.”
No one was quite sure what to make of the note, and his family and friends attributed his death to stress from his worsening grades. While stories were exchanged about the haunting of the hall he’d been found in, no one really believed them.
No one saw a transparent being standing right in the moonlight next to the coffin, crying tears that never quite hit the ground. “Why?” it asked. “Why did you have to go to the one place I can never follow you?”
Then it walked away.
~*~
Link to alternate ending: http://imagined-haven.livejournal.com/2591.html
Fandom: AU
Rating: PG-13 (I think)
Pairing: Jim/Bones
WARNINGS: MAJOR CHARACTER DEATH. Suicide. Ghost!Jim. Angst. Lots of angst. Alternate happy ending linked at bottom.
Summary: Leonard doesn't believe the ghost stories on campus. Not until he is confronted with reality and falls in love with a ghost.
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters and I don't even own the ghost story this fic was based on (it is a real ghost story on my college campus, though I tweaked a few details).
It was late on Halloween night when Leonard looked up from the book he was reading to find someone else in the deserted hall where he was studying for an exam he had the next day. He grumbled a bit; he’d come to this hall precisely to be left alone, for no one would study in here anymore for fear of the ghost that supposedly lurked within the walls.
It was said that a young man had killed himself in the bathroom a long time ago, worried over a test he was convinced he couldn’t pass, and that his ghost would approach studiers, leaving those who were having hard times alone and chasing away those who were confident in their knowledge. Len didn’t really believe it, though; it completely went against everything he’d learned and believed as a scientist. So he was shocked when he saw that the young man’s feet were hovering about an inch off the ground; the technology to hover like that wasn’t very good yet, and if he was using that then he should be wobbling and making a lot more noise than he was.
“So, how’s the studying going?” the young man asked, walking--no, floating--over and looking at his textbook.
Len may have been a skeptic, but he was always careful. “I have no idea how I’m going to pass,” he said with a small sigh.
The young man made a sympathetic noise and began to move away when an idea struck Len. “Hey!”
As the ghost--for he could no longer call the young man a man--turned back briefly, he held up the book. “Do you think you could help me study? I work better when I study with someone else,” he lied smoothly.
The ghost snorted. “And that’s why you came here, huh?” At Len’s raised eyebrow he continued. “You know as well as I do no one studies in here unless they really want to be left alone; no one comes here anymore. It was actually getting a little lonely for a while.”
“Well, maybe so,” Len conceded. “But now I’ve seen you, and I have to admit I’m curious. So you helping me study is actually me getting a chance to know a little more about you, and there’s a fair chance it might actually help.”
At that the ghost chuckled. “You’re honest; I like that. So what’re you studying, anyway?” he asked, bending over to read the text on Len’s PADD. “Xenobiology? Looking to be a doctor?”
“Tryin’ to be,” he said. “So, what’s your name, anyway?”
With a laugh, the ghost admitted, “It’s been a long time since someone asked me that. You can call me Jim. And you... you have ‘em, so I’m calling you Bones.”
Mildly irritated with the nickname, Len asked, “And I don’t suppose telling you my real name’ll change your mind?”
“Nope!” Jim cheerfully shouted. “Now tell me about this alien and, more importantly, whether or not I could fuck it.”
“Jim, you’re a ghost.”
“So?!”
“You can’t fuck anything.”
“Shut up!”
~*~
Len really wasn’t sure what guided his feet to the abandoned hall the next evening, but he found himself opening the door and softly calling, “Jim?”
A joyful cry echoed through the hall. “You came back! No one’s ever come back, not ever!” Soon enough, the ghost flickered into appearance before him. “So how’d the test go?”
“Oh, horrible,” Len said flippantly in keeping with the old legend.
Jim chuckled, evidently in a good mood. “So you aced it, then. I can tell you’re smart; you don’t have to lie to me. You came back, so I’m not about to chase you out.”
Len grinned. “Just how long has it been since you actually talked to someone, that you’re so willing to haunt someone like me?”
“What do you mean, someone like you?” Jim asked. “You’re the most interesting person I’ve seen in the entire century I’ve been here! You’re smart, you’re funny...”
“Bitter, sarcastic...” Len murmured under his breath.
“But that makes you real,” Jim muttered wistfully, looking down at himself.
Len decided not to comment on that, not knowing what would be polite to say about reality to a ghost. “You’ve been here a century, then? So what have you been doing, apart from scaring poor students witless?”
Jim scraped a translucent foot against the tile of the floor, shamefaced. “Not much,” he admitted.
“What?!” Len exclaimed. “You could do all kinds of things here and never get caught, and yet you do nothing? That just doesn’t match up with what I know of you.”
“Well, moving furniture around got boring after the first ten years, and I can’t seem to wander freely around campus,” Jim defended.
“When was the last time you tried?” Len asked.
“Oh, I think it was about... twenty-five years ago?” Jim said, head cocked thoughtfully to one side.
“And what happened?”
“Nothing. I just couldn’t leave.”
“And do you want to?” Len questioned.
Jim thought about it for a moment before nodding. “This was a beautiful hall, once. Now it’s been shut down, and there’s nothing left here. I want to see if the rest of campus is as beautiful as it once was.”
“Then come with me,” Len said, standing and offering a hand to the ghost.
“You know I can’t actually take that hand, right?” Jim asked, looking skeptically at it.
“I figured as much,” he said, “but Mama raised me polite.”
At that Jim smiled, laying an ethereal hand barely over his. A chill ran through his arm at that, though he felt no pressure from the hand. “What if it doesn’t work?” Jim asked, looking almost fearful.
“Then it doesn’t work. But at least we tried, yes?”
Jim nodded and together they stepped through the door. Len smiled when the ghost looked around in wonder. “It worked! It worked, it worked, it really worked!”
“So what do you want to see first?” Len asked, gesturing around at the campus.
~*~
It was a week into their arrangement, and Len wanted some answers. All he had to go by were the legends, and he figured those were half true at best. And so when he returned to his dorm room after dark to find Jim sitting at his desk he asked, “So what happened, anyway?”
“What do you mean?” he asked, looking up.
“How...” Len trailed off before deciding to go for it. “How did you die?”
Jim sighed. “You really want to know?”
“Well, I can’t see how it could be much worse than the tale of you hanging yourself over grades,” Len replied.
Jim shook his head. “Well, you have half the story.”
“What’s the other half, then?”
Jim was silent for a moment, then began his tale. “It was in the middle of the Eugenics War,” he started, pausing as Len winced. “I told you it wasn’t pretty. Anyhow, in those days, if you weren’t perfect, you were subject to experimentation and then killed. I... was less than perfect, and it was only a matter of time before I was found. Hiding again wasn’t going to work.”
“So you took matters into your own hands,” Len summarized.
“I didn’t want to fall into theirs,” Jim defended. “I figured anything was better than that.”
Len looked at the saddened ghost still sitting at his desk. “This is the point where I’d be giving you a hug... if, you know, you had a body. No offense meant.”
“None taken, and thanks.”
“For what?” Len asked. “I didn’t do anything.”
Jim smiled softly. “You listened, and you wanted to know. That’s more than enough for me.”
~*~
After a month of exploring the campus by night and hiding his yawns by day Len realized he was falling in love with a ghost. There was just no other explanation for it.
Every morning he woke up early for his first class, quickly struggling through his homework as Jim rested or did whatever the hell the ghostly equivalent of it was. He did most of his studying in the afternoon, when Jim wouldn’t dare show himself, just so he would be done enough by evening to carry out yet another adventure with the ghost. He looked forward to their nightly misadventures with an anticipation that just couldn’t be healthy, especially since it was directed toward someone who was dead.
Len sighed. He should’ve known he’d do something this unhealthy; he’d had it coming for quite some time.
When he returned to his dorm room after class, shutting the blinds and turning off the lights because he knew those were Jim’s preferences, he noticed the ghost looked particularly despondent. That in and of itself was unusual, since Jim was remarkably hyper despite his age, but he was sitting on Len’s bed, clutching one of the sheets in his hand as if it had done him some particular harm.
Concerned, Len asked, “What is it, Jim?”
Jim shook his head. “You don’t want to know; not really.”
Len sighed, “Jim, tell me.”
“Fine!” the ghost exploded. “I love you!”
Len raised a single eyebrow. “And why’s that so depressing? Why wouldn’t I want to know?”
“Because how could you possibly love someone who can’t even touch you?” he asked, reaching a hand through Len’s arm. “How could you love someone most people don’t believe exists? How could you love someone who’s already dead?”
Jim sighed gustily. “Forget it,” he muttered, a single tear falling from his face but never quite reaching the ground.
“Jim,” Len breathed. “I love you, too.”
“Don’t say that!” the ghost snarled. “I know you don’t mean it!”
Doing the only thing he could, Len stood and hugged the ghost as well as he could, looping an arm around his shoulders and the other around his waist and holding them there despite the lack of presence to keep his arms there. “But I do. I do mean it.”
“So?” Jim asked bitterly. “It’s not like that changes anything.”
“It does, Jim. It means I’ll do anything I can to be with you, whether you see it that way or not.”
“There’s no way, Bones! I’m dead, and you’re not, and I very much want it to stay that way!”
“We’ll think of something,” Len placated, hoping he would indeed think of something.
~*~
Except there was nothing.
The academic year was almost up, and Len was at his wit’s end. His grades had suffered immensely because of his extensive research on ghosts and the supernatural, and people were starting to question his sanity. People these days just didn’t believe in ghosts, and that was that.
Finally believing that Jim was right, Len remembered that there was one thing. I’m dead, and you’re not.
Walking quickly toward the abandoned hall because it was the one place they had never gone back to, Len made sure to make the journey in broad daylight where Jim wouldn’t follow. He quickly locked himself in the bathroom and created his plan.
The last thing he heard was a scream of “No!” coming from the ghost he loved.
~*~
Leonard McCoy was buried one evening in the April of 2255. He had been found dead in the bathroom of an abandoned hall on campus with a peaceful smile and a note that read “He made me do it.”
No one was quite sure what to make of the note, and his family and friends attributed his death to stress from his worsening grades. While stories were exchanged about the haunting of the hall he’d been found in, no one really believed them.
No one saw a transparent being standing right in the moonlight next to the coffin, crying tears that never quite hit the ground. “Why?” it asked. “Why did you have to go to the one place I can never follow you?”
Then it walked away.
~*~
Link to alternate ending: http://imagined-haven.livejournal.com/2591.html