#helen's last name is a reference to delphinium

[theoldhereafter]

Scene: when a ghost sees her first love picking flowers for her grave

The voice isn’t what surprises him, but Louis Ann’s reaction to hearing it. Ed looks at her, in the coat and dress he recently burned for her, and follows the path of her watery blue eyes. The woman—in her mid-forties, Ed guesses, with a lovely face and even lovelier hair—is perusing through the arrangement of Freesias near the flower shop’s entrance, a wicker basket hanging from her arm. She already has a bouquet of pink carnations in it, bright and sweet to the eyes. An employee, the one she probably talked to, has already turned their back and is returning to whatever they were doing beforehand.

It takes a moment for Ed to realize who she is, to recognize her, since all that he knows of this woman is from Louis Ann’s words, but he cannot deny that she hadn’t exaggerated her beauty. In fact, he might even argue she’d done her an injustice. Is there such a way for a woman to look as heavenly as she is lonely?

He turns his attention back to Louis Ann, now faced with that infamous frown of hers, with a scrunched nose and bitten lip. “What do you want to do?” Ed asks, voice quiet, because it wouldn’t do them any good if people started questioning why he’s talking to air.

Louis Ann sucks in a breath. “I don’t know,” she says, expression falling with a sigh. Her frown has turned resigned, and Ed isn’t sure which one is worse to see. “I’ve thought about us meeting so many times now, I even dreamed of it sometimes, but—” she falters.

“But?”

“Truthfully, I never was prepared to see her so old. She always looked the same in my head, that young, spriteful image of her when she was twenty.” Louis Ann gestures to herself then; her pasty skin, the lack of wrinkles due to her ‘youth’. “But that’s because I can’t even imagine myself looking fifty.”

A heavy silence lingers between them. Ed wishes he could comfort her, to ease some of her pain, but he knows Louis Ann won’t want it. She accepts hugs when talking about her murder, and pats on the back whenever she gets heated about Laurence, but the moment the name Helen Larkspur is said or even remotely implied, she balls everything up and silences herself.

Ed understands, in his own way. Helen is her wound. His father is his.

“I’m still stuck in that forest,” Louis Ann says, “even if I’m… I’m here, my body will rot there, and she will continue to live on without me.” She visibly bites back a sob, shoulders shaking with faint tremors. “She’s lived an entire life at this point.”

“Almost an entire life.” Louis Ann raises an eyebrow at him. “Fifty is still a young age, if you genuinely consider it.”

She scoffs. “I’m still younger.”

“Physically,” mumbles Ed. “Just physically.”

Louis Ann’s nose twitches in a certain way he knows means she’s bothered, so Ed stops and doesn’t poke anymore. He steals a glance at Larkspur once more, scrutinizing her and her flower of choice. She’s still picking between colored Freesias, and it has him thinking.

Louis Ann answers him before he can even ask: “She’s visiting my grave later.”

Well, that makes sense. Ed shifts his feet so that he’s more turned towards Louis Ann. That’s why we’re here too.

Her face is all gloomy and reserved now; she’s chewing furiously on her lips. The contrast to her cheek and warmth earlier when rambling to him about Alexander is jarring. Ed doesn’t like it—the reticence, her teary eyes, the pain nobody else can witness. It has him asking her a second time.

“What do you want to do?”

She shrugs with a head shake, dismissing him.

Ed takes the sight of her in, looks back at Helen Larkspur, and offers, “Use my body to talk to her.”

That drags Louis Ann out of her melancholy. “What are you saying?” she hisses out, smacking him on the shoulder, though the only impact it has is a chill down his spine. “Don’t you dare trick me, Ed. That’s low, even for you!”

“I’m trying to give you a choice, Louis Ann,” says Ed, the syllables of her name stressed. “It’s just a quick possession, what could go wrong?”

“What could go wrong—” she sputters at that. Ed can imagine her cheeks becoming the same copper shade as her hair. They don’t, truly. She lacks the blood to redden them. “Are you daft? No, do you think of me as daft? I haven’t forgotten your little schtick from last week’s mission, Ed. I said that would be the final time, so no more.”

Ed wrinkles his nose. “A one time mistake,” he says, “and you’ll hold it against me forever?

“A mistake that lasted thirty minutes, that could have killed you.” Her eyes are pained, still, but for a different reason entirely. “I don’t want your body, Ed. I don’t want to take your life away. You don’t get to use me to hurt yourself, Ed—that’s not fair. To me, to you. Just not fair.”

She almost looks like Beatrice in her concern and frustration. It endears him, and it becomes easy for him to let the anger simmer before speaking up, determinedly. “It’s my body, Louis Ann, therefore I get to choose who inhabits it.”

“Not unless you want to die!” she screams, but no heads turn, because nobody else can hear her.

He grimaces, biting on her name, “Louis Ann—”

“You don’t get to do that, Ed.” She sounds betrayed. “You don’t get to turn me into a murderer!”

“Louis Ann!”

Ed tries to whisper, he genuinely does—but he fails. She’s always been a flint striker on his nerves, the one new fuse he gained after his father passed. So he yells this, her sweet name that people will only see on a gravestone. Ed feels the eyes of others land on him immediately. The workers, the other customers, Larkspur.

How does she look? He doesn’t ask this, just scans her face, gaunt and pale. Sees her eyes on her. Does she grieve at the mere mention of you like you do her?

Curiosity dies easily when nothing feeds the fire of it, and their gazes soon fall away, moving elsewhere. All but her, Ed believes; the weight remains steady on his back. They almost feel pleading, and he’s half-tempted to swerve around, stare right back at her, see the grief firsthand. He doesn’t. That would be cruel, too cruel, and Louis Ann would have his head if he ever becomes a cause for Larkspur to cry, even if she’s the underlying reason for everything.

“She’s staring,” Louis Ann grumbles.

Ed fires back, “I know.”

“Great, her attention’s on us because of your stupidity.”

“Her attention’s on me. Probably questioning if your death anniversary has her hearing your name in random flower shops…”

“Take out your phone,” she demands, impatient. “We’re talking, and I don’t want any more people seeing you speak to nothing and think you’re crazy.”

Ed softens at that. “You’re not nothing.”

“Compared to them”—she swings a wild arm to the rest of the shop—“I am nothing, Ed. Have been nothing for quite a while now.”

Despite the softened edge to his annoyance, Ed stays quiet, hands kept at his sides.

Louis Ann crosses her arms and returns the silent treatment.

Not much later, Ed sees Larkspur huddle away to a corner of the shop, a sickly sheen over her face. The ringing of her name must have died down. He’s not certain, but that’s how it was for Ed in the long days after the funeral, and even until now. His father’s name is a ringing echo, haunting, and he’d rather it be like this.

To forget it would be worse.

Only after Louis Ann has stopped staring desperately at Larkspur’s retreating figure does Ed speak again, and he whispers quieter than he’s had before. “Take the chance already. I promise I won’t stray far, and when you feel that you’re done, I’ll go back inside. No tricks, no excuses.” Ed wants this for her. The closure, the balm on festering wounds, the conversation that could heal. He’ll never have that, so he wants her to have it at least.

Though her forehead is all wrinkled up as she sneers, a persistent sadness lays on top of Louis Ann’s face. She is hesitant when opening her mouth, twisting and turning his words in her head, maybe trying to weed out any hint of deceit.

She will find none. Ed is genuine this time—and it wouldn’t be convenient for Louis Ann to be stuck in his body at a time like this. Not with DABDA right on their heels.

In the end, Louis Ann doesn’t concede with a harried “Alright” or even a threatening “If you’re lying…” like he expects. Rather, she goes about this the same way she did at the very beginning of their journey together: selfishly and guiltlessly as she presses against the walls of his consciousness.

The severance is cold, like always. The sensation of the Hereafter is discombobulating. Ed thinks of Beatrice to keep close as he promised, thinks of his father.

No matter the times they have done this exchange, it remains an experience seeing his body take the mannerisms of another, the blue of Louis Ann’s eyes over his own.