#Stantha

[inevitablemoment]

A sample from my adaptation of the Collectors Arc for the Cathleen Lives AU, to hint at the seeds sown that bloom into the break-up of Peter and Dana before Ghostbusters II.

Also includes an allusion to another arc that I'm creating specifically for the Cathleen Lives AU.

Read at your own risk if you don't want to be spoiled, since I haven't written them yet.

Notes -- The apartment that Dana owned in Ghostbusters II was shared with Peter. After she married Andre, she moved in with him and sold the apartment. But after she and Andre separated, she found that her previous apartment was vacant again and took the opportunity to move back in there again.

Martha is an OC who will be part of the series for a short time, but she will have an important role. She is partially based on Jenny Moran from the comics, but her arc is created by me.

The hospital had cleared them to leave after two nights. It turned out that the cut above Peter's eyebrow wouldn't need stitches, but they still wanted to monitor him for a possible concussion. Satisfied that they could find no signs of one, they sent him on his somewhat-merry way back home with Dana.

She walked back into the bedroom with a bag of ice, covered with a washcloth. She sat down at the foot of the bed and pressed it against the goose egg-sized bump on his head.

"How's your head?" she asked.

Peter moved his hand over hers so that he could take the bag from her and keep it over the bump. "Still hurts-- still feels my brain and heart switched places when Egon detonated Ray's pack."

"I have a feeling that would happen to anyone trying to escape limbo," Dana said.

Peter found it in himself to laugh, and then instantly regretted it, the pounding in his head growing worse.

"Sorry," Dana apologized. "I shouldn't have--"

"No, no, it's okay," he tried to reassure her. "Not your fault-- just need to try not to laugh at anything for the next week. Hey, why don't you change the channel and see if a Kinison special's on."

Dana laughed, but in her brief moment of mirth, felt as if she were expelling the three months worth of tension and fear that she had carried. "I can go check the TV Guide."

But she didn't get up, staying in her seat on the bed. She smiled at him, the back of her eyes beginning to burn as tears formed.

Though she had cried numerous times in the past three months, she had found herself unable to burst into tears of joy when he had come back to her-- mostly because that they were otherwise engaged with trying to trap the Collectors. She hadn't cried at the hospital, either.

And now, she couldn't help herself.

She gripped Peter's free hand, and saw him smile back at her.

But...

No, she wasn't being fair.

His smile looked no more different than the one that he would wear when he came home from the firehouse. If anyone looked at him, they probably would have thought that it was all it was.

Just her needing to tend his wounds after a call gone wrong.

"Hey... come here," he wrapped his arm around her, laying the two of them back down on the bed.

The soap that he had used at the hospital had done nothing to wash away the scent of burnt metal on his skin, another consequence of his escape from limbo, but Dana could still smell his natural musk underneath it. It was subtler than normal, but it was there.

She nestled her face into the crook of his neck, feeling his hand reach up to run his fingers through her curls. She smiled brightly.

She had missed this so much. Moments like this, where the two of them could just lie in bed together, nothing to worry about.

Dana felt Peter press his lips to the top of her head.

"It's like I never left," she heard him say.

He couldn't see it, but her smile was slowly fading as she repeated what his words in her head.

Like I never left.

Like I never left.

Dana knew that it had only been a week for him, but she had lived without him for three months and twenty-one days.

They had only been together again for eleven days before they had been ripped apart again.

She had to step in his place to protect New York City, and to a larger extent, the world from ghosts or another Gozer situation while searching for him and the others.

She thought back to the day that Ray's asshole brother had shown up at the firehouse and pretty much demanded that they all just declare the boys dead. She had remained silent, but the others-- basically Cathleen and Janine-- had torn him a new one over it.

Despite the part of her that screamed that he was alive somewhere, she would grieve him as if he had been killed that night at least once a week, then splash water in her face, go on with her life, and the cycle would continue.

How could Peter have believed that it could be just like it was before?

For starters, one day, she had gotten so lost in her mind that she had decided to repaint their room. She had rarely picked up her cello unless she was rehearsing with the orchestra, which was rare in of itself with how many calls that she had to deal with

And people had changed, too.

Cathleen had been a mess. And who could blame her? She herself only had eleven days with her husband before he had been snatched from their own home as she had watched, leaving her to take care of a five-year-old and step in as de-facto leader of the Ghostbusters. She had thrown herself into work and raising Callie-- if she wasn't at the firehouse, she was close to tearing the world apart to try to find Egon. Dana was sure that if she and the other girls hadn't stepped in, Cathleen would have suffered a nervous breakdown.

Martha had been inconsolable at the beginning; she would retreat to the sleeping quarters upstairs and lie down in Ray's bed to cry. But, around the fourth week, when it became apparent that he wouldn't be back anytime soon, she had pulled herself together and stepped into her new role with ease. If anything, it unnerved Dana to see how calm Martha was at some times-- almost like a soldier.

Janine was more or less the same, personality wise, but the exhaustion that she always had on her face only grew more apparent as the months had gone on. She had gone from a receptionist to a receptionist/Ghostbuster/Cathleen's caretaker when Cathleen was overworking herself/Callie's part-time nanny.

Tiyah grew quiet... too quiet, as Egon and Ray liked to say whenever they wanted to tempt fate. She would often be found walking around the firehouse with a thoughtful and sad look on her face, or looking at the pictures of Winston longingly. And after Martha, she had been next to almost lose hope that the boys would ever return or be found.

And poor little Callie... her mother had missed a quarter of her last year before she began kindergarten, and her father had missed everything from her first day of school to Halloween to Thanksgiving. About three times, Cathleen had to pick her up from school because the teacher had called. Callie had broken down in hysterical tears, crying for her daddy.

But they did come back, all on their own-- not that Dana had ever doubted that they could have figured it out by themselves. And she had seen Egon and Cathleen's reunion.

How Cathleen had rushed to him and kissed him as if it had been three decades rather than three months. The look in his eyes as Egon had realized that they had been missing for three months. The way that the two of them melted into each other's arms as they talked about how much they had missed each other.

How was it that Egon, someone that everyone mocked for not understanding social cues and that some blinkered people believed to be unfeeling, was able to recognize how much had changed, and yet Peter didn't?

"Dana?"

Dana looked back up at Peter, seeing at he had set the ice aside, even though she had told him to keep it on his head for fifteen minutes.

But she didn't scold him about that.

"Yeah, it's.. you're right," she said instead, a very artificial smile on her face. "Just like it was before."