Disclaimer: I don't own Psych or The Crow: Stairway to Heaven. If you want the full author's note, it's at the bottom. PLEASE read it. It has some important stuff pertaining to this one-shot(about if you want it to be more than a one-shot), and about me not updating my other two stories for FOREVER.

A cry, a thump, a crash, a gunshot. Dodging, rolling, running, jumping. Another gunshot sent shockwaves, but this one stopped short.

A wet squelch, a shot of pain, a splatter of blood, and shattering glass.

Falling. Down down down, he was falling!

A crunch of bones, tearing of skin, splatter of blood and gore.

But he was still awake, still alive. Still there to feel the pain that was white-hot.

Then they were by his side, crouching by him, shouting to him, shouting into a phone.

But he couldn't see. His vision was dimming, growing darker, blackness encroaching.

Bleeding, blood pouring from the bullet wound in his chest, from the gaping tears in his skin from the fall. Arteries were torn, blood was pumping, heart slowing.

Bright, flashing lights shone into what remained of his vision.

Red blue red blue red blue red blue red blue red blue red blue!

It never ended, and how he wanted it to end. How the repetitive light in his sensitive eyes hurt so!

They were screaming, telling him to hold on, that somebody was going to help him.

But he hurt too much, his body ached.

The pain was ebbing, now, and the tickle of blood pouring from his body was starting to slow.

His breathing hitched, he began to gag.

How had he even gone on this long? Shot near the heart, then thrown from a multiple-story window? How?

His vision was pinpoints now, bright light shining through. They were begging, pleading for him to stay awake.

But he was already falling again. Down, down, down. He was falling and he couldn't stop.

Through the veil, he was slipping through the cracks. Falling inside the black.

He was spinning, and how it hurt!

He was done. He was throwing in the blood-soaked towel. His vision faded to the same, migraine-inducing flashing of twin lights.

Red blue red blue red blue red blue red blue…

They started to blend together into a sickly purple, and he closed his eyes while someone screamed.

"SHAWN!"

:::Land of the Between:::

For the second time in minutes, he slammed into the ground, but this one didn't hurt. "Dammit!" Shawn Spencer cried, clutching his chest where the bullet had entered. The hole was still in his shirt, the blood was still present on his shirt, but the bullet hole in his chest was…gone?

Indeed, it was gone. Healed over. Vanished. All that remained was a bullet-hole-sized scar that went through his body, a little left of his heart; only by millimeters.

Shawn looked up, his eyebrows raised in confusion. He had just been in the middle of a city, bleeding to death after being shot, the recoil sending him out a nine-plus story window, right? So why was he suddenly here, in the middle of a forest?

A cry off to his left shook him out of his confusion. Good, somebody was here, too! They'd know where he was…hopefully. Unless they were as lost as he was. After all, the cry he had heard had sounded as confused as he felt. Still, Shawn pushed himself to his feet, his knees wobbling slightly as he tried to remember what it felt like to stand; one fall had knocked the knowledge out of his mind.

He stumbled forward, slowly regaining feeling in his legs.

KOWW! KOWW! A piercing call from above nearly shattered Shawn's eardrums; it was so loud, and so close. Shawn grit his teeth and looked above, into the branches. A slightly larger-than-normal black crow with neon-green eyes and a bright green hue to his black feathers sat on a low-hanging branch, his head twisting to inspect Shawn from all angles.

"Uh…nice birdy?" Shawn offered with a nervous chuckle. That beak of the bird looked perfect to peck somebody's eyes out…

The bird spread his wings and shrieked, and shot into the air, wings stroking at the air powerfully. Instead of screaming and ducking, like Shawn would have, he stared at the bird in confusion. When the bird had took the skies, he had felt…something.

The bird wanted Shawn to follow him.

For some reason, he didn't question the feeling he got. After all, his father had drilled into his head that instinct was one of your best resources in some situations, and this situation called for nothing other than instinct.

He pushed his way through the brush, following the sound of the bird's beating wings as another pair of wing-beats joined the his own crow. His crow? Where had that come from? As he pushed through the brush, he found a…bridge?

Just a random bridge in the giant forest, and standing in the middle, was a man, a nearly crazy look in his eyes. He had chin-length long black hair, and dark eyes, and looked to have Asian roots. Clinging to the rope that helped form the bridge, was a crow, his eyes a dark blue, with a blue hue to his feathers.

That's not my crow… Shawn though, his head cocking to the side in confusion. Where had his bird gone?

KOWW!

"HOLY CRAP!" Shawn yelped as he ducked, his crow skimming the top of his head, his talons flicking at his hair as he passed. The man and the blue-tinged crow both turned their heads to Shawn and his green-tinted crow in unison, looks of surprise and confusion taking over both their features.

"Another crow…?" The man in his early twenties muttered, watching as Shawn's crow landed lightly on the bridge next to Shawn's left arm. Shawn glared at the bird next to him.

"Don't do that!" He whined, and reached a hand up to pat at his hair. "You could have messed up my hot hairdo! It takes me hours to make it like this in the morning!" He got the feeling that it wouldn't really matter anymore, though. The feeling came from the very bird that had led him to the bridge.

"You have a crow as well…do you know what that means?" The man asked, his eyes darting between Shawn and the greenish crow while the bluish crow slid slowly towards the other, his eyes curious, with a hint of recognition.

"Not really, no." Shawn responded, before looking around. "Where are we, anyway? I'm not really one for the entire 'randomly wake up in the middle of the forest' deal." Shawn faked a gasp. "I bet it was Lassie who did this! Oh, Lassie-Face, how I annoy you so! But still, I didn't think that he would go so far as to drop me in the middle of the woods in some random place without any way of finding civilization…okay, maybe I did think he would go so far-"

"You're dead." The man cut in, making Shawn stop with his mouth open in mid-talk. His smile slowly fell from his face.

"…dammit…" He muttered, his normal, cheerful façade falling quickly. "I…was kinda hoping I dreamed that part up…" He glanced down to his bloodied shirt. "The blood thing makes sense, then…" He pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers. "Daaaaamn it." He threw his arms in the air in frustration. "And I was about to crack the biggest case in the frickin' history of California!" He wilted. "I hate my life. Afterlife. Whatever." He straightened. "Does that mean you're dead to?" The man nodded.

"My fiancé and I were killed…I was stabbed then thrown out of a really tall window…you?"

"Shot near the heart, and then my death follows the likeness of yours." Shawn responded. He looked to his crow and the other crow, that sat side by side, each staring at their individual humans. "So you know what's up with the crows?" The man nodded, and got along to explaining slowly and in an even tone. At the end, Shawn just stared.

And stared.

And stared.

And stared some more.

"Bullshit."

:::Hours Later, Land of the Living:::

"Would you just-"

"Bullshit."

"Shawn, you need to-"

"Bullshit."

"We're already back-"

"Bullshit."

"But you should-"

"Bullshit."

"You're back in the Land of the Living-"

"Bullshit."

"Shawn, would you STOP SAYING BULLSHIT?" Eric Draven, the only other brought-back-to-life man other than Shawn – that they knew about, anyway – and the one that Shawn had met in the Land of the Between, shouted, making the other man stop and looked to him, his eyes wide an innocent. "It's been, what, four hours, and the only thing you've been saying since I explained was 'Bullshit'! Even to my question of 'what's your name'?"

"So then how'd you figure it out, Eric?" Shawn asked, an eyebrow raising. Eric paused, before shrugging.

"I don't know, I…I just know it. The same way you knew my name a second ago, even though I never told you." Shawn scowled, but turned and kept walking.

"Bullshit." Eric groaned, and stormed after the other man. "People don't just come back, Eric! There's Nothing, Life, then Death! Nothing afterwards!" Eric stopped with his own frown, his arms crossed.

"Says the man who claimed to be a psychic for the past two years of his life." Shawn spun around and pointed.

"I didn't tell you that."

"I just know it, like how I knew your name." Eric answered. "I think it might have been when you punched me in the jaw after your fifteenth 'Bullshit'." And damn, did Shawn have a wicked left hook. "Like, a transferring of information or something. I learned your name and a little of your past, and you learned my name and a little of my own past."

"That doesn't happen, Eric! And you said it yourself! 'Claimed to be a psychic'. Which means I wasn't, which means that there's nothing but death! No lingering spirits, no paranormal impressions, and NO. COMING. BACK."

"Why can't you just accept it?" Eric demanded.

"Oh, and you do?"

"Yeah, I do." Eric answered, his expression dark. "I was told by my fiancé that the crow would bring me back because I brought along a sadness into death. That I was to right the wrongs. And I believe in her."

"Well, I've never met this 'Shelly' girl-"

"I never said her name, either."

"-so I don't believe in her. Death is death, Eric. Nothing less, and definitely nothing more."

"But this…this thing…whatever happened to us…it's not less or more. It's still death. It's…just a different way of getting around to it. We're not alive, Shawn. But we are back. But we're not completely dead yet, either. We're...we're…"

"If you say 'Aliead' I'm going to punch you again." Shawn warned.

"I wasn't going to." Eric grumbled. "We're somewhere in between life and death. We obviously can't return to life; our time is up. But we can't go on to death yet, either. And, come on, you can honestly tell me that you don't have regrets. That you don't have 'unfinished business' or whatever. That you don't want revenge, not even a little bit." Shawn didn't respond.

"Maybe I'm willing to believe this. Maybe." Shawn said, and then looked up to Eric, looking like, for lack of better words, a lost and confused child. "How do we get our unfinished business finished?" Eric shrugged, and Shawn groaned. "I'm doomed to living for eternity!" He cried to the skies, before looking back to Eric with a giant grin. "At least I get to keep my devilishly handsome looks." Eric snorted and rolled his eyes. "But seriously…where do we start?"

"How about we figure out the date, and where we are?" Eric responded as he picked up a newspaper that was carelessly thrown onto the sidewalk that they were walking on. He scanned the paper, and his eyes bulged out of his head, his jaw dropping.

"What, what? Lemme see, lemme see!" Shawn cried, jumping like a hyperactive kid to look over the taller man's shoulders. Eric slowly handed the newspaper to Shawn, who frowned as he stared at the paper. "We're in New York?" Shawn muttered. "How'd I get teleported across the country?"

"I'm from New York…" Eric replied, finally pulling out of his stupor. "It's where I was killed…I jumped through the Life-Death World Rift first, so it must have locked onto where I died, and just pulled you through when you jumped as well…"

"More like you and the crows pulled me in after you." Shawn muttered.

"But it isn't really where we are that has me so…shocked." Eric said, and then pointed to the date. "I died on October 31 of 2010, and today's date is-"

"Whoa! I died five years before you!" Eric looked at Shawn like he had grown a second head.

"You died in 2010, too, Shawn."

"Oh, really?" Shawn cocked his head. "See, this is why I was going to buy a pocket calendar." Too bad he kept putting it off until he died.

"…anyway, today is October 31, 2011. I died a year ago." Eric said. Shawn gaped.

"And if I died on June 14th…I died over a year ago!" Shawn threw the newspaper down onto the sidewalk, and ground his heel into the paper to smother out the name. "Bullshit!"

"Oh no, we're not starting this again." Eric said with an air of finality, grabbing Shawn's arm, dragging him away. "But now that we know where we are, and what day it is, I know exactly where to start." Eric said, following a route that was familiar to him from years of travelling it. He suddenly stopped at a fork in the road, little cars zooming by in this mostly-deserted part of town; it had become a slum for petty crimes and such in the past year, and not many had the guts to go through it now. Eric looked up the tall building on the other side of the street, his eyes locking onto the shattered, circular window at the very top of the building.

"What is that place?" Shawn asked.

"That, is where Shelly and I lived." Eric whispered. "That's the window I was thrown from." Shawn whistled in grim appreciation of the fall that had killed the man beside him.

"Damn, I'm pretty sure that was more than I fell." Shawn said. "So why start here?" Eric pointed, to where the two crows – their crows – were circling the spire on the top of the building, their wings beating in unison. "Oh. Good reason." The crows, he had learned quickly, knew where they should he heading when it was something important. Shawn pulled away from Eric, who had still had a firm grip on Shawn's sleeve, and held his hand out. Eric stared at the offered hand in confusion, not sure what he should do with the appendage.

"We're going to be helping each other, right?" Shawn questioned, even though both of the brought-back men knew the answer. "Then we should be properly introduced. I'm Shawn Spencer, former 'Psychic' for the Santa Barbara Police Department, recently deceased, and freshly brought back as a…a…" Shawn looked up to the birds circling the building, and smiled lightly. "…a Crow." Eric raised an eyebrow, but let his own smile form. He took the offered hand.

"I'm Eric Draven, former lead guitarist for Hangman's Joke, recently deceased, and freshly brought back as a Crow." He introduced himself. "Of course we'll be helping each other. Us Crows have to stick together, right?"

"Indeed, Sir Draven!" Shawn said, lowering his voice and puffing out his chest, before strutting like a chicken towards the building that the crows were circling.

"You know," Eric mused, following after his new roommate at a more normal gait. "I think the proper term for a group of Crows is a 'Murder'."

"Well isn't that irony at its best." Shawn snorted, before looking to Eric with a grin. "We can be a Murder! But I ain't preening your feathers or whatever."

"…do I want to know if you were implying something?" Eric asked slowly.

"No special hugging! No special hugging for us!" Shawn chanted.

"Ew. Just…gross."

"What? Does liking another man scare you? Or does it not scare you…and does that scare you?"

"I'm regretting this 'helping' thing already."

...Ih sowwy. :( For those of you who read my story Vulpes Alveus, anyway. Ih SOWWY! I know, I know, I should be updating THAT after my however-month-long absence, but as is obvious, I have a problem. I know what I want to happen, but I just can't get it down right. I have quite a few drafts of the chapter, but none of them are…right. The other chapters I always have the feeling that they're ready for the internet, but I just can't get this one right!

Frickin' plot/typing bunnies. SHOOT 'EM! ()_()
(x . x)
( u u )o

Damn evil...*clears throat* Anyway...Since the typing bunnies have infested Vulpes Alveus and mated the way only typing bunnies can, I decided to see if I could scare them away with intimidation; namely, typing this one-shot. I hope to be updating Vulpes Alvues soon, and as for Demon's Shadow…yeah, I'll get around to that eventually.

AS FOR THE ONE-SHOT THING. Yes, this is a one-shot, so yes, it is done. BUT. I'm going to be nice(since I got away from the typing bunnies long enough to type this thing out, I'm feeling giving tonight.), and give YOU, the READERS, the CHANCE to make this a full-time story. As in multiple chapters, and a storyline that answers the questions this fanfic didn't. I have an idea for one, but I don't know if I want to continue this or not.

SO TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK. PM ME, WRITE IT IN A REVIEW, I DON'T CARE. JUST TELL ME IF YOU WANT THIS TO GO FROM A ONE-SHOT TO A MULTIPLE-SHOT.

If you have any complaints, comments, or whatever, drop me a PM. I'll try to respond. 8D

~Kitsune-242: Who is now once more hiding from the typing bunnies who have FOUND. HER. P.S. – If you randomly find the word 'stegosaurus' in this story, it is NOT. MY FAULT.