Chapter Text
Always, it seems, on the most mundane of days does one’s life change irrevocably and dramatically, in the most wonderfully unprecedented of ways.
The afterlife isn’t so bad, Scratch recalled thinking absently to himself on one such day.
He couldn’t quite remember anything prior to it, but he had few complaints. He kicked a stray pebble on the sidewalk, ambling down the liveliest street of the Ghost World. There were tacos, and scaring the pants off of people, and…no, no, that was it. That was enough, though. So what if it was lonely? Scratch liked being alone. He didn’t need anybody else. Who needed people—er, ghouls—who claimed he was the worst of the worst anyway?
He shoveled one more taco in his mouth and chewed as loudly as he pleased, without care for the ghostly citizens who wrinkled their noses and turned away, whispering to one another some undeniably unsavory things about him. Yes, Scratch the ghost’s afterlife was exactly as he liked it, and nothing nor no one else could convince him otherwise. There was nobody to hurt you when you spent all of your time in solitude, after all. That was the mantra he had a feeling he adopted even in his past life.
That was precisely when it happened.
Something yellow and bright frantically sped past his vision—something bright that caused him to instinctively squint and shy away. Bright things didn’t often come by this plane of existence, he found. No ghost’s mind nor eyes were used to them, and he was no exception.
A variety of vibrant flora in colors he’d never seen before sprang to life in the thing’s wake and covered every nearby surface imaginable. Several ghosts groaned and shook their fists, others making every effort to shake sparkling petals from their cutie-bits, as if they burned like acid on skin.
The entire street around him erupted into commotion as one, two, three notably less-bright blurs whizzed by in pursuit. “Get it!” some ghost or other yelled, eyes blazing. Scratch furrowed his brow, mouth still full with half-chewed food.
Get what-now?
He happened to glance skyward, eyes finding a billboard with a big, bold, red “WANTED” splattered across the top. At the bottom, a yellow…something or other. The depiction was too blurry to tell.
Right. That’d been there for a short while, hadn’t it?
Scratch’s attention returned to the street when a chorus of several other disgruntled mumbles sounded. “Ugh, the worst,” grumbled one bystander still picking buds out of their ectoplasm.
The worst, echoed a strange voice in Scratch’s mind. He looked down the path, the one all other civilians were backing away from with disgust written all over their faces, as if it were a foul poison that might infect them all should they get too close.
A strange invigoration filled him, however. Joy. His goal was to eliminate joy. Get it, they’d said, hoping someone might spring into action. Who said that couldn’t be him? He had to do his civic duty; he’d find it, and he’d eliminate it. Then, he’d no longer be the worst.
Never mind the fact he’d always been apathetic toward such a goal prior to this very moment.
With only one beat’s more hesitation, Scratch raced in pursuit, spitting stray flowers from his mouth as he barreled down the path built from the very essence of that which all ghosts detested. He’d no longer be the worst. He’d show them. He’d find that little bundle of joy, and then…then, he wasn’t quite sure. One or two more steps he’d figure out when he got there, but after that, oh, after that, he’d show all of them. And the entirety of the Ghost World would hoist him on their shoulders and sing his praises and everything in his afterlife would be just dandy.
Scratch belted down the trail faster and found himself pleasantly surprised at his own speed. Sure, clearly, his past bones had been a little, well, old, but perhaps it was the sheer determination that held him back none as he went.
The members of ghostly law-enforcement were nowhere to be seen. Was he on the wrong path, perhaps? The flowers and the brightness were quickly fading, making it nearly impossible to tell what kind of twists and turns the Joy-Spreader had taken, but Scratch simply followed his instincts, whipping down side streets and backways wherever his body—or lack thereof—willed him to.
He was beginning to think that perhaps this hadn’t been his brightest idea after all when he caught it: a glimpse of some warm light bouncing off the brick of a winding alleyway, gleaming so unashamedly bright it was impossible to miss. In an instant, Scratch took off after it.
Blue pursued yellow as the ghost’s own ectoplasmic glow stained the immediate vicinity behind the Joy-Spreader. His blue got closer and closer with each bend Scratch rounded, nearly swallowing the now-weakening yellow light. The blasted thing flickered, small and yet so quick, but in its panicked frenzy, one wrong turn was all it took.
Scratch came upon a dead end, but that meant so had the Thing. He screeched to a halt. He had it cornered.
His chest heaved with breath he didn’t need in unison with the Joy-Spreader’s, two sets of gasping the only sounds preventing total silence. In the brief moment of respite where no one said or did anything, Scratch took in the sight of the…he wasn’t sure what.
It—no, she?—looked like a ghost. In fact, a little too much like one for comfort. Except, she was yellow—did ghosts even come in that color?—and, eugh, she reeked of joy. He had the urge to recoil, to blanch, to something, but all he found himself doing was staring back into wide, fearful eyes.
Scratch shook his head, to hopefully extract himself from his stupor. Just turn the blasted thing in, he nearly said out loud, moving to do just that. When she—no, he had to stop doing that, it—flinched the moment he reached for her, for whatever reason, he stalled.
Well, maybe I’ll just leave it instead, he tried, but he didn’t budge. It wasn’t his business anyway, and Scratch was just fine the way he was—no need nor desire for foul joy, or yellow things who happened to look suspiciously like his own kind.
Scratch dared to lock eyes with her, and wasn’t comforted by what he saw.
She was not only yellow, she was also…small. So small. And so scared. He could deny it no longer—he’d thought this was an it, but no, she was quite real, and strangely more alive than anyone else in this forsaken plane of existence. In her wide eyes, he saw a tiny piece of himself—a small, scared child that resided inside of him from a time in his life he no longer remembered.
The worst, said the voice in his mind again.
“What in the hey are you?” is the thing that Scratch finally found himself saying, and he intended for it to come out a little more intimidating or accusatory, but instead, he ended up sounding almost soft.
“I don’t know,” the tiny yellow ghost replied back, looking just as, if not more bewildered than he.
Suddenly, from behind him, voices; authoritative, ghostly law-enforcement voices, looking for—her. It hit him then: he had a decision before him; one that might alter his afterlife far, far more than he ever thought a day such as this one might.
He wasn’t sure whether the yellow ghost heard the voices or sensed the tension in the air and in his mind. In response to either, she instinctively surged forward, latching onto whatever parts of him her shaking hands could reach, and when she came into contact with him, he didn’t spontaneously burst into flames, or start rotting from the inside out, or turn into a useless puppy dog with a wagging tail. He simply felt…warmer.
The voices grew louder, and her grip tighter, as if she knew that, yes, this was her only option, but also…
She looked up, gazing into his eyes; they were lost, confused, but Scratch wasn’t sure that anyone had ever looked at him with so much complete, total, and utter trust before—not in this lifetime, nor the last one. He’d never been so needed.
It was now or never: take her in his arms, or throw her away.
”Hey! What’s that, down there?”
A few desperate moments passed. Her hunters were dangerously close now. Scratch’s gaze hardened.
When he tightened his hold on her and sped away, even as several other ghosts immediately came hot on the blossoming trail behind him with shrieked demands to stop, he did not. He knew his decision had been made; nothing would ever be the same again.
Scratch was never one for change, but his facing it head-on was one of the many happening to him in this very moment, he supposed.
“I guess we’ll find out, then,” he told the fragile being in his arms, heading straight for his home in the Ghost World at a pace that was, without a doubt, the fastest he’d ever flown. When he felt the smallest of hands grip tight onto his ectoplasm in response, something profound shifted inside of him. “In the meantime, no one’ll get to ya,” said Scratch, meaning it. “Promise.”
The bundle of Joy buried her face in his shoulder, and from then on, for all eternity, she was intrinsically his, and he was intrinsically hers.