A terrible sound, a terrible darkness, and then something - light in white and ruin-red, pressure and the promise of maelstrom - happened. The world was being torn apart down to its bones, the sky was falling and above there was a color that didn't exist, he could feel the equator of the universe splitting into abyss and then there was soft earth and grass beneath his feet, and someone was asking him something. The hammer of his returning senses drove the thought from him for a moment; for a moment he was only there, empty and fragile as a blown-glass bowl.

Tristan looked around. He felt like he should be screaming, or drawing huge ragged gasps of air, but he wasn't. Everything was calm. Even his mind; he'd appeared absent adrenaline, absent anxiety, his heart beating steady and slow. It was only speeding up now, his overwhelmed thoughts slowing, two briefly separated dancers now approaching equilibrium once more.

His gun was gone.

[color=82ca9d]"Fuck,"[/color] he said. [color=82ca9d]"What the fuck. Fuck."[/color]

Will's proximity suddenly registered and Tristan moved back unconsciously, seeking space. Nothing he was seeing made any sense, and yet here it was. The others from the station and the thing that had taken the shape of the Ghost Girl. He didn't feel dead, and the tableau was too far from his conceptions of death, but he'd blown his brains out. 

[color=82ca9d]"...Tristan. Christ, you don't work at Johnny's too, do you?"[/color] Tristan shook his head and looked around. [color=82ca9d]"Actually, nevermind."[/color]

[color=82ca9d][i]I'm alive.[/i][/color] He couldn't have given voice to the feeling the thought engendered; some strange and coiling thing, blue and green, its contours unfamiliar to him. But there was a lightness to his body wholly unrelated to its restored physical condition. It hadn't been his own, but he'd seen a second miracle: he'd seen faith rewarded. He couldn't tell if he should laugh or cry, so he did neither, his eyes lingering instead on the living cop, the hopeful killer, Tabitha, the array of employees and the rest of their newfound fellowship. He didn't look at the Ghost Girl.

The mask was in his hand. His fingers traced her - [color=82ca9d][i]her?[/i][/color] - sharp carbon edges idly as he turned back to the boy, raising his voice to carry past the two of them and make it an open question: [color=82ca9d]"So...what happens now?"[/color]