Who: Scott and Malia What: Scott sees an old ghost When: Oct 29 [Backdated] Where: McCall Pack House Rating: low
Movie night. That was what he and Malia were about to have. Scott had been working a lot all week finishing up some stuff with animals at the shelter, but also completing some pretty intense and taxing stuff at school. He was really looking forward to tonight.
He set down the third bowl of popcorn and finally took a seat on the couch. “It’s your turn to pick. You have a movie in mind?” He really liked the whole streaming thing - it made movie nights like this a lot easier. Any genre at the tip of your figures.
–
Malia liked having nights like this with Scott. Between him having school and work, and her also working, it made their schedules a little more complicated than they had been back in Beacon Hills. She missed that relative simplicity to some things.
“Nope,” she said with a shrug, looking over at him. “Maybe we should just make other people decide for us or something.” It would probably be one of the most normal things she’d texted David in the few weeks she’d been working for him. She was pretty sure he was used to it by now.
Pretty sure.
****
Scott chuckled softly. “Yeah, okay. Why not?” Since Scott was only getting marginally better at the whole pop culture thing, he wasn’t great at picking movies. He often did what you weren’t supposed to do - judge a book (or movie) by its cover. Sometimes it worked out for them. Other times not so much. He reached for a bowl of popcorn to sit in his lap. He told himself he wasn’t going to eat it all before it started, but he wanted a taste.
“Dear God, this must be Hell.”
The sudden and unexpected voice had him turning so fast on the couch that the bowl of popcorn fell from his lap to the ground. RIP popcorn. Scott felt his chest leap out of his chest at who he saw.
“M-Mrs. Argent?”
***
Malia was in the middle of texting David and telling him to decide when Scott jumped. “Uh… Scott?” she said cautiously. “What’s wrong?”
Her money was on “seeing things” – especially since he’d said Allison’s mother’s name – but that encompassed a whole lot of things in this town and trying to figure it out too much tended to just earn one a headache.
All the same, she didn’t think she liked whatever was going on.
***
His first thought was ‘why’ and then ‘how’ and then ultimately it landed on ‘did this half to be me’ and ‘did I do something to make the Dome mad at me’. It was a whirlwind of thoughts, really. Ultimately he landed on ‘why’, but only because of Victoria was here, why not go to Chris or Allison? It made no sense.
“So… you can’t see her?” He looked at Malia briefly before looking back at Mrs. Argent like he was worried she’d attack them or something. Scott was, in fact, worried about it.
“I’m dead, you idiot.”
Well at least it was obviously Victoria Argent. Scott glanced back to Malia. “Allison’s mom is… in our living room. And a ghost?”
Victoria rolled her eyes at Scott.
–
“That sounds way more normal than it should,” Malia said, looking to the spot where the woman was presumably sitting. And if she was on edge in all the ways Scott was used to, well, so she was. Whatever was going on here was something bad. Or at the very least, not good. And yes, in Madison Valley those were often distinctly different.
“Any idea why she’s in our living room?”
Probably not.
***
Scott looked at Victoria like she had to know the answer to that. When he stared long enough, Victoria gave a scoff and then gestured. “I don’t know. Do you think I’d pick you to appear to?”
“Okay… good point.” Scott looked to Malia and his expression was confused. “She’s not sure… which I guess means this might be the Dome?” It seemed most likely even though he had no idea why or how.
“And before you ask, no, I can’t just leave. Trust me, I’ve tried. But I’m stuck wherever you are.” Mrs. Argent did not seem thrilled about it.
“She says she can’t leave.. Like she’s tethered to me?”
–
“I mean, that’s not the weirdest thing we’ve ever heard,” Malia pointed out with as much optimism and ability to look on the bright side as she possessed. “And with this place the way it is, that actually kinda makes sense.”
Which didn’t help them with the fact that Mrs. Argent was sitting there, judging them both. Not that Malia gave a crap what the woman thought of her, but she knew it would bother Scott.
***
"Yeah but why me? I mean -" Scott realized the problem the moment he started to say it. He shouldn't have 'outed' people who were here. His expression said 'oh shit' to Malia. Scott knew he had to finish the sentence even before glancing in Mrs. Agent's direction. "...Allison is here." He thought it might be safer to say Allison over Chris. Was Chris seeing someone here? He didn't know for sure.
Cue the barrage of questions from the ghost. Scott looked at Malia with a look that said he wished she could help him, but suspected she had little ability to do so. Then he went into a spiel on answer questions like yes, no, good, yes. He avoided several with 'I don't know' because he had no idea how to explain to Allison's mom about Kol.
Eventually Scott brought a hand to his head. "Are you going to let us watch movie night?" God he hoped so.
—
Malia didn’t know what Mrs. Argent was asking, but she could make a guess on some of them – the woman would want to know about her family, after all; from what Malia knew, for all the woman’s considerable faults, she had loved her family fiercely. That much was something Malia could understand.
“Maybe you could figure out some way to help her,” Malia suggested, largely just wanting to find a way to make the woman leave them – well, Scott – alone. “Later. I’ll even help you figure something out.”
It was the best she had.
***
He nodded. Yeah, maybe he could. Maybe he could talk to someone about helping her. There were people here who had a lot of experience with ghosts. There had to be something.
“Okay… let’s watch a movie and try to relax.” He almost tried to lie and say that Victoria gave them her blessing, but, well, Malia knew them both well enough to know it’d be a lie. He just planned to ignore her as much as possible.