This time, Jamie didn’t even try speaking to Laurel. He had tried, over and over again, during the day with Jenna, desperate to make any noise. Eventually, though, high school physics had caught up with him, and he had remembered that sounds were vibrations in the air, and he was now a ghost. He couldn’t affect anything, not even something as simple as the air. That did not mean that nothing could affect him. He heard Laurel’s words as clearly as he heard anything, and he felt the guilt burn as hot as the bullet that had struck his forehead. Somewhere along the way, he couldn’t even consciously remember where, maybe it had only been moments ago, Jamie had forgiven Laurel. She might have been the one to pull the trigger, but she had not stolen his life from him. Fate, or whatever its equivalent might be, had done that. She was right. She didn’t deserve this. For a moment, as he watched her, he almost let that drive him away, for good. But then he remembered why he was there. Jenna and Derek were not going to be so quick with their forgiveness, and they had something planned. Jamie knew both of them well, and it would be easy for someone who didn’t to find themselves falling right into whatever trap they had built. If Laurel didn’t deserve anything, she didn’t deserve that. If he intended to protect her from that, he would have to stay. He wished he had some way to hide himself from her, but there was nothing he could do. No way he could make it easier on her. For a further moment Jamie continued to stare blankly at her, before he shrugged noncommittally. He turned away, carefully walking towards the far wall and seating himself on one side of the couch near the window. He turned his back on Laurel, and did his very best to assume a posture of indifference. He poked the couch curiously, watching as his finger passed right through. For a brief moment he distracted himself by wondering what the couch actually felt like. Since he had left his body, Jamie had never been uncomfortable. He could remain perfectly still indefinitely, without discomfort. He could sit in the air, in the floor, or on any surface, and, as far as his mind was concerned, it was all the most comfortable chair he had ever experienced. Once he would have envied such a complete absence of tension. Now he missed sensation. And then Jamie remembered Laurel, an he forgot what he was thinking about. It was going to be a very long evening.

Nothing happened for a while. Laurel just stood there, breathing shakily and staring at James. Or James's ghost. Or her hallucination. Whatever he or it was. And James stared right back at her. She was typically fairly adept at reading people, due to the years spent in law enforcement that had honed the skill. Laurel couldn't read him, though. He was just...standing there and looking at her.

Then he made a movement. A shrug. She blinked in response to it. He was turning away from her, moving across the wooden floor, util he stopped in front of her couch and took a seat on the furthest cushion so he was close to the wall. James turned his back on her and then was motionless.

Laurel stood there for several long moment, staring at his back in disbelief. For another moment she wondered what she was supposed to do, since she sure as hell did not want him there in her apartment. She didn't want to see him, she didn't want to be aware of his presence. She wanted to be completely alone. But she couldn't throw him out, he wasn't even real. Just a figment of her imagination. She couldn't just grab him and drag him to the door and push him into the hallway before slamming the door in his face.

Taking what was hopefully a calming breath Laurel decided all she could do was ignore him and pretend he wasn't there or real (which he wasn't). Then maybe he'd fade away forever. It was her turn to turn her back, and she went over to her bags of groceries, quickly stowing them away before forcing herself to do the thing she really didn't want to do: fill out the incident report.

Earlier that day she had learned that James's lawyer girlfriend was just a paralegal, and it had taken all of her self control to not punch a wall over the fact that she had allowed herself to be intimidated by a paralegal. But Laurel still took the report seriously, was still wary of Virginia. She may be just a paralegal, but to work at Gibson Dunn meant she must have had some serious skills, and undoubtedly friends in high places. So Laurel took her time with the report, probably more time than was really necessary. She recorded everything that had happened the evening of the shooting, no matter how much she didn't want to think about it, dotted every I and crossed every T, and then proofread it about a dozen times until she was satisfied that it was without flaw. Saving the file so she could print two copies at the office the next day (one for her bosses, one for Gibson Dunn), Laurel shut the laptop and closed her eyes. Letting out an exhausted sigh, she rubbed her eyes before peeking to her right to see if James was still there.

He was. Goddammit.

She was seated in one of her chairs, pulled as far from the couch as she dared, and after stashing the computer on one of her end tables Laurel stood and moved to the kitchen. She had changed into pajamas before starting on the report (blue and white stripped pajama pants and a overlarge band t-shirt that had belonged to Ben), and she was now ready to start her pity party for one. She preheated the oven for her take and back pizza and poured herself a glass of her cheap wine. It certainly tasted cheap, and she hoped it would wash the taste of bitter guilt and despair away.

Hating the fact that it was not yet late enough to slink off to bed without looking suspicious, Laurel seated herself back in her chair and sipped at the wine. After a few moments a glancing over at James's form again and again she finally had enough and turned on her tiny television to distract herself. "Hope you like reality television," she said out loud. She eyed him for a moment before looking back at the screen. "Because I love it."

It was a lie. Laurel did not love reality television, in fact there was a very long list of things she would rather do than watch reality television. But if James was just a figment of her imagination than maybe she could force him out by watching some. It was worth a shot since ignoring him and hoping he'd go away didn't seem to be doing the trick.

"Yep," Laurel continued, sipping at the wine. "Love it. Can't get enough. Watch it whenever I can. I always love seeing what those crazy Kardashians are up to, don't you. Now is it krazy with a K when it refers to the Kardashians? I can't figure it out? You got any ideas?"

Just as Laurel tried to forget about Jamie, Jamie did his best to forget about Laurel. Her apartment, although small, felt comfortable. He was sure it was a warm location, with soft, well worn furniture that was comfortable from use. Under any other circumstances, it would not have been a bad place to wait indefinitely.

But this was not any other circumstances, and Jamie was uncomfortable. Not physically uncomfortable, as that was impossible, but uncomfortable through anxiety. Not only did he hate the emotions he could feel coming off of Laurel, and the anxiety it was causing both of them, he hated the wait. He had no idea what was coming, or even when.

Part of what made Jenna and Derek such a fearsome duo when they finally decided to work together was the fact that they were polar opposites. Despite being only a paralegal at the moment, Jenna was a lawyer at heart, and that made her wonderful at planning. She was a strategist, able to take in massive quantities of information and synthesize them into almost anything she wanted. Derek, on the other hand, was a doer. He took very little time to plan, but acted on gut instinct and the luck that seemed to have followed him his whole life. He made half a plan that felt right, and then he followed it through to the end, somehow managing to pull everything off despite the improbability of the whole situation. For this reason, despite the fact that he had carefully observed both Jenna and Derek, trying to figure out what they were planning, Jamie knew very little. His observation had been intense, in his attempts to distract himself from the decisions he had to make about Laurel, and though both of them had done a lot of things, none of them seemed to relate to the FBI agent.

Derek was going to be the one who actually executed the plan, whenever it actually happened, and Laurel hadn’t pressured him for the exact details, or any details, of the plan. It was obviously partially because she knew trying to pin down Derek was like trying to catch a wasp, and partially because she trusted herself enough to take whatever he did and spin it to her benefit. Derek was, of course, as impossible as ever. People respected and feared him, and no one questioned the things he had told them to do. The only way that Jamie knew he had actually given the orders for the plan that he would attempt was when he came to a rest, because Derek would not have stopped until all the balls were in motion.

Now Jamie could only wait, going over all the little details in his head again and again, and hope that he would catch what was happening before it was too late to stop it. Of course, even if he did catch it, how could he possibly stop Laurel from walking into the trap? He couldn’t make a sound, couldn’t touch anything, and Laurel was doing everything in her power to ignore him. Of course she was. She had no way of knowing that this strange specter was actually the consciousness of James Weller, and not just some figment of her imagination. He would never have believed it, were their situations reversed. Her silent frustration shouldn’t have surprised him.

Of course, that was the moment that Laurel spoke. Had he been in his body, Jamie would have flinched. Her communication was that unexpected. Instead, all he did was turn his head, staring
at her blankly.

What did he do? Did she actually want to interact with him? The strange, strained tone of her voice led Jamie to believe that, no, she didn’t. She wanted him to go away, and she was willing to do anything to achieve that. Even try acknowledging him. But Jamie wasn’t in a position to be particular. Anything to make this situation more comfortable. Anything to make it so that, when the moment came, she might be willing to listen to his advice.

He stood up, carefully, walking over towards her. He tried to look comfortable, but moving his body had been so automatic that he had never thought about it. Now he had to move each part of his spectral “body” through the power of his mind, and even if he got the general idea correct there were tiny things that he missed. Consciously, Laurel would never be able to pick them out. Subconsciously, though, she would see them, and it would only serve to make him more unnerving. Somehow, though, he figured it was better than the leaping “movement” that felt so natural to him now.