Fic: Counting the Days, Chapter Two
Title: Counting the Days [2/9] [ Other Chapters]
Rating: PG
Genre: Adventure/Supernatural, I guess. And humour.
Warnings: None... but perhaps general silliness at some points. :)
Summary: Post-AWE. Beckett has one chance to avoid going to the Locker for all eternity. But it’s not going to be easy. Imagine everyone Beckett has ever sinned against-and now imagine the task of having to make them all happy. Every single one.
Comments: Second chapter. As weird as the last. Lovely icon by Isaviel. :D
TWO: DAY OF LEARNING
Beckett breathed in the fresh sea air, sucking it into his lungs, feeling the first rays of sunlight on the back of his head... lightly. Amazing. He was back... he was back in the land of the living! Yes! He looked around himself, realizing that he was floating over the ocean, in the middle of god-knows where. He looked into the ocean. This was where he had died, he guessed.
He could see the waves undulating through his feet. His feet were translucent. He was a ghost... a real-life ghost. Well, real-life may not be the right word... he looked around him. A lone vessel lazily moved by, but apart from that, the sea was empty to all of the horizons.
How long was I gone? It had felt like barely half an hour... but not a vessel was in sight. He turned to watch the sun rising slowly for a moment, before panic seized him. I have five days to redeem myself to everyone on my list! Aaauuuugh!
Impossible. It was completely, utterly and totally impossible. There was no chance whatsoever that he was going to accomplish this task. There were... thousands of names. He was never going to do it on time. Sighing, he decided to try some transportation. He pedalled his legs on thin air, and went absolutely nowhere... much to his annoyance.
After a few minutes of attempting swimming, running, flapping his arms and other such things, he had still gotten nowhere. He felt annoyingly silly. Go forwards! He thought in frustration, and suddenly, he propelled forwards... rather a lot. So this is a mental sort of thing, he mused, looking around himself as he flew through the air, one finger on his chin, not a single body part moving as he swished, upright, over the ocean.
Another few minutes later, and he had mastered moving around... a little, in any case. He had to think about which direction he wanted to go in-but not too hard, or he would overshoot and end up flying several feet in the wrong direction. He swept around in a few circles, went up and down for a bit, and admitted to himself that-though tricky-this was actually great fun.
Now to stop wasting time. He looked towards the boat, and decided that he might as well get on there. It was called the Truthful Liar... he supposed that that was the shipbuilder trying to be clever. They really should leave that to the genii (plural for genius, of course), such as himself.
Soaring quickly to the ship, he landed down on the deck-or tried to, apart from the fact that his feet went right through it. He looked down. Deck, he thought, you are there. I can feel you. Be there. This seemed to work; as long as he thought about the deck, he could stand on it. He wandered over to a crate and sat through it. He then corrected himself, and sat on it. Pursing his lips, he pulled out the list.
Unrolling it slightly, he looked at the names at the very top of the list-the very first people had had sinned against. Good times! Verna, the pigtail girl. Johnson Bradley; he’d given him a black eye, aged eight. And a girl called Fiona Wembley... so telling a seven-year-old that fairies didn’t exist was a sin now? Psht! As he went through the list, he recalled several good memories.
I need a quill, he thought, to cross out all of the people who are dead. He stood up, and walked through a wall, through a few rooms, and arrived proudly in the captain’s cabin. He’d managed to walk! Great! He rolled his eyes, wondering how it was that he had ended up having to learn to move. It was quite a regression. Walking over to the desk, and carefully thinking about the quill, he picked it up, dipped it in an inkwell and tried to write on the parchment-with a splat, ink dropped onto the desk.
After various tries, it became clear that this ordinary ink would not do for the list. He tried to cross them out with his mind (it all sounds very ‘use the force’, doesn’t it?) and with his finger, but nothing. Suddenly, a man walked into the cabin. Beckett assumed he was the captain, and stepped back.
The man suddenly began rifling through the drawers, muttering. Beckett realized that he was dressed much too raggedly to be the captain. Theft! A bad deed! He could correct it!
Jumping at the chance, he grabbed a hold of the drawer that the man was looking through and with a flick of a wrist, closed it hard, trapping the hand inside and making the man shout out in pain. Beckett picked up a paperweight-which the man stared at in horror-and aimed a shot at the thief-man. He dodged it, and ran to the door, where the (real) captain had appeared.
There was a minor scuffle between them, but Beckett was staring interestedly at the paperweight. A green spark drifted lazily from it, and suddenly shot towards him. Beckett blinked; eh? Was this it?
That was a good deed! Beckett nodded, I’m certain it was. So...? He held up the orb. In the very middle, a tiny grain of green had appeared. He grinned; yes! He looked at the list... a name had been crossed out. Frederick Davison. A man who Beckett knew was dead-but this ‘good deed’ had counter-balanced his sin against him! (which, in case you’re interested, was when he had accidentally hit him with a dart. And then blamed it on someone else.)
Feeling somewhat hopeful at how easy his first grain of goodness had been to achieve, he shoved the list back into his pocket, and thought about what to do next. He supposed he should find Verna Price and apologise, or whatever he had to do.
How do I get there? How on earth am I supposed to know where Verna is? Beckett thought to himself, massaging his temple... when suddenly, he felt everything around him changing. He glanced around, and realized that he was standing in the dining room of a rather lavishly decorated manor... and, sitting at the grand table, was a woman; the adult form of the girl. He barely recognized her-she looked fairly old, and somewhat gaunt. The years had not treated her kindly.
“Verna?” he asked. There was no response. He walked up to the table, and decided to take a seat opposite her, thinking about the seat all the while to prevent himself from going through it. “Verna!” he waved a hand in front of her face. She continued eating, her expression lifeless, unseeing. Though there was that usual hint of a haughty sneer on her face.
Beckett got the all-too familiar urge to grab a chunk of her hair and pull. Instead, he took a hold of the bowl of porridge and pulled it away from her. Verna’s spoon stopped halfway to her mouth, and she stared at the bowl for a moment. Beckett looked from her gaze to the bowl, and moved it again. She seemed horrified. His annoyance gave way to amusement as he waved the bowl around in the air.
Verna uttered a small squeal, and leapt up, her chair falling with a clatter.
“It’s me,” Beckett said, though she didn’t look at him, “It’s Cutler Beckett. Look. Verna? See me.” At his last words, Verna suddenly seemed to realize that he was there. She backed away from the table, staring at him. Beckett decided to remember the words ‘see me’. “Verna,” he said.
“Who... who’re you?” Verna asked fearfully, as three servants rushed into the room, wondering what was the matter.
“Are you alright, miss?” a little cook’s boy asked, bowing slightly. Verna continued to stare at Beckett.
“Only you can see me,” Beckett said calmly, getting to his feet, “We need to talk. Do you mind?” He gestured out of the room, looking pointedly to the servants. Verna didn’t move, just gawped at him. “Tell them you saw a rat! Come on,” he pointed out of the door. There was a pause. Beckett rolled his eyes.
“I-i-it was a rat,” Verna finally managed to stutter, “Excuse me,” she quickly swept out of the room, Beckett following behind her happily. He was getting used to this! As soon as they were out of the room, Verna turned towards him, shaking, and spoke after taking a deep and shuddering breath, curling a light brown strand of hair between two fingers nervously. “Who are you?” she asked, her voice quivering.
“Don’t you recognize me?” he smiled, “It’s Cutler Beckett.” Verna’s breath appeared to catch in her throat, though she tried to hide it.
“But you’re dead,” she said, “You died, three days ago. They found your body. Are you...” She looked at his translucent body, and seemed to change her mind. “You’re dead, aren’t you? A ghost?”
“Yes. Thank you for reminding me,” Beckett said, a touch acidly.
“What are you doing here?” Verna asked breathlessly, “I haven’t seen you since boarding school!” Ah. The honourable institution for the training of young gentlemen and ladies that they had both attended. Some good times, he had had there. He’d lived there from the age of six to sixteen (sheltered childhood? Hardly... ever been to boarding school?).
“That’s what brings me here,” Beckett sighed, “I have to make you happy. To pay for what I did in school... which was to pull your hair,” he rolled his eyes. He hadn’t been very gentlemanly as a child-in fact, an absolutely spoiled brat would probably be a better description. Well, he knew better now, of course.
“Make me happy?” Verna asked, fearfully.
“Don’t be so scared, I’m not going to kill you,” he folded his arms, “That’s hardly going to help my chances of getting into heaven, is it?”
“That’s what this is about?” Verna asked, blinking.
“Just tell me to do something that’ll make you happy, if you please,” Beckett waved an arm, “I have a lot of people to see to, and no time to waste.” Verna pouted at him, but finally nodded a few times, regaining her old spirit rather suddenly.
“Well, you can help clean up, then,” she said.
“Pardon?” Beckett blinked, thinking, I must have just heard you wrong, because nobody in their right minds would ask me to do something like that and expect me t-.
“Help clean up the house. Do it.”
“What is this? National ‘Let’s All Pick on Cutler’ day?” Beckett shook his head, exasperated, “Is this your idea of revenge?”
“Yes,” Verna said sharply, “Now do it before I get upset, because that makes you evil.” He stared at her for a moment. Touché.
“Fine,” he said, “I’m doing it, alright?”
And so, Beckett spent the next half-hour with an extremely dour expression on his face, half-heartedly throwing items into cupboards and pretending to scrub. Verna followed him around, seeming to be having the time of her life. At least the green sparklies were cashing in. After about that time Beckett decided that he had done about enough to cross her off of his list.
“Done,” he said sourly, floating upwards so that he was towering above her, “You’re a strange woman. You could have asked me to do anything,” he said. Then he blinked, “But that’s you off of my list. I still don’t like you, by the way.” Verna just smiled a satisfied smile.
He vanished from sight, leaving a fairly content Verna Price standing in her hallway. That had made her day. After a moment, she shrugged and walked back to breakfast, feeling strangely calm for someone who had just been visited by a ghost.
After this, Beckett picked a random spot on his list, and blinked as he tried to recall the name. Oh, names. It was that bunch of Christmas carol-singers that he’d slammed the door on last Christmas! Certainly, it had been evil, but it had been worth it-just for that fraction of a second that he saw their faces. Christmas was about the only time he enjoyed answering the door himself.
Beckett poofed from view, not yet knowing that his next task would strongly involve the word ‘piggyback’.