He didn't have answers for her right then. James had ideas, certainly! Anna needed to train somehow, to practice so she could gain control and discipline her powers. Right now they were too tied to her emotions, and that could lead to serious difficulties in the near future if they didn't find a way to curb it. James was fairly positive that her emotions were the power behind her abilities, that the stronger the emotions then the stronger her talents would manifest themselves; only she needed to find a way to focus that power and channel it at her will. He needed to do what he was best at: research. He also had to figure out how he was going to do that research when he could't touch anything...

The feel of her again his corpus was heavenly, a warm summer's breeze that chased away the cold that continually surrounded and filled him. He closed his own eyes, only to realize that he could still see anyway. It was all... an illusion, he realized. His body, his clothes, his voice... These were things that didn't really exist while still managing to cling tenacious to his soul, a memory of what he had been that still clung to him. Was this what ghostly life was like? Were there other ghosts? Or was he some twisted manifestation of her powers, trapped by Anna unintentionally. There was another possibility, his mind whispered to him, a horrifying idea that he could only pray was only a passing fancy.

What if he wasn't James at all? What if he was only a memory of Anna's given awareness by those very same powers that killed everyone else? 

He violently pushed that fear away, concentrating instead on awkwardly trying to hold what he couldn't touch. Anna needed comfort more than he did right now anyway. Besides, he was dead. What comfort could there really be for him?? Obviously Heaven was not an immediate option and Hell was thankfully not present either. "No," he whispered back soothingly, "It's not your fault. They'd been killing me for years even before I even met you, Anna. All they did was finish the job."

A thought struck him then, causing him to laugh bitterly. "Fuck. You know... all those times I wished I was dead? All those times I failed to kill myself? All those times you and I talked about what it would be like to be dead so we wouldn't suffer anymore? And just when everything was finally looking up... Poof." James fell silent in her embrace, sorting through the emotions that began to wake up and war within him. "It's not like what we talked about, you know? Remember how we always hoped it would be like a long, sleep where nothing could touch us or disturb us ever again? It's not like that at all, Anna. Now I'm nothing but awake. It's like I've forgotten how to sleep. I don't think I can sleep. There's no escape from everything, no downtime, I don't think. I'm like a lightbulb that's always on but can't turn off."

He pulled back out of her arms to look at her, and then found to his surprise that he *could* pull back! For a moment, he had felt tangible resistance in the motion. "What the-?"

Looking down at himself and then back at her, his eyes grew wide. "Anna? Where's the blood? On your arms, you were scratching yourself up and bleeding and now..." Sure enough, her arms were clear of blood now. While the furrows that she had rent into her own flesh were still painfully visible, they were dried and weeping a healing plasma now instead of streaking bright red. Her self inflicted wounds weren't healed or closed by any definition of the word, not even scabbed over, but they were certainly not bleeding anymore. A thought that had escaped James' attention earlier returned as he stared at her forearms. Blood, something about blood. It always came back to blood, he remembered, and now here Anna was with arms as clean as though she had washed them and him slightly tangible just for a moment.