Epilogue
A/N: Yay! I'm finished. I have officially finished my first multi-chapter fanfic. I'm so happy. Also, I'd just like to say thank you to everyone who has reviewed, it really does mean a lot.
Visiting hours were almost up, and just about everyone had been in to see Shawn. He'd been in the hospital for a little over a week (fully conscious only for the past two days) and the doctors had finally deemed him out of the red zone. His ankle was sprained, a few ribs were cracked, and he was still a little concussed, but he was going to be fine. Unfortunately, for Shawn, the doctors were determined to keep him in the hospital for at least two more weeks. It was as if they didn't trust him to stay off of his feet if they let him loose.
Stretching a little, Shawn laid back, and stared at the TV, he was currently watching his favorite cartoon sponge. It'd been a full day, and he was looking forward to a little rest. It was the first day that he had been given a lower dose of pain medication, so he had actually been able to interact with his visitors.
Chief Vick had been the first to visit him, early that morning. She had come baring news of the previous night's trial. It was official; John Glendale was crazy. In lieu of prison time, Glendale was going to be committed, and once given a clean bill of mental health he had two hundred hours of community service to pay off. Chief Vick had been a little worried of how Shawn would feel about that sentencing, after all, the man had attacked him brutally. But in all truthfulness, Shawn didn't care, he was just glad that that chapter of his life was over.
Shortly after Chief Vick left, Juliet came. She was also worried about how Shawn was going to take the ruling, and Shawn had been able to use that to his advantage, to secure a date (Juliet didn't call it that, but Shawn knew better) once he was out of the hospital.
To Shawn's surprise, around lunch time, Lassiter came to see him. He said that he was just checking up, so that Juliet would stop bothering him about it, but Shawn knew better. So, to make the visit less awkward, he teased Lassiter.
"You like me," Shawn said, smiling up at the sour-faced detective.
"You're still concussed, aren't you?"
"Don't play dumb. I'm psychic, I know these things."
"Goodbye, Spencer." There was only so much of Shawn that Lassiter could take.
"If you didn't like me," Shawn said, calling out to Lassiter as he left, "then you would have told the chief that I admitted to not really being a psychic."
Lassiter stopped, halfway out the door, and slowly turned to look at Shawn.
"Was that a confession?" he asked.
"Please," Shawn snorted, "it's like you don't know me at all."
Lassiter continued to look at Shawn, before shaking his head and leaving. It's not like the Chief would have held Spencer accountable for anything that he had said in his previous state of mind anyway.
Shawn smiled. Lassiter would probably never admit it, but Shawn knew that he cared. And that's all that really mattered.
Later in the afternoon, Shawn found himself in company with Cammy. Now that the trials were over, her parents were taking her on a vacation to take her mind off of everything that had happened.
Cammy had been extremely excited to see Shawn again, and had chattered on to him about this and that for about a half hour. At that point, the parents had stepped in and told her that they had to go, if they were going to catch their flight. Before they left though, Cammy pulled a long, familiar, pink ribbon from her pocket and gave it to Shawn. "So you don't forget me," she had said sternly.
"Thank you," Shawn had replied, taking the ribbon and then pulling Cammy into a hug. Even if he never saw or even talked about Cammy again, he wouldn't have been able to forget her.
As Cammy and her parents left, Shawn's dad had slipped in.
Henry couldn't stay for very long, but he had wanted to check in with Shawn, and Shawn's doctors. Which led to the questions of why Shawn's doctors were keeping him for so long and was Shawn planning on crashing at his place for the first few nights after his release?
The answers to the questions were a dramatic, "I don't know, it's still all so fuzzy," and a simple "Sure." Stupid medicine was affecting Shawn's wits. To make up for it Shawn hinted to his father that he knew that his dad did remember the dream in which he acted like a "soft and fuzzy cinnamon bear."
To that statement, Henry quickly denied any of knowledge of what Shawn was talking about, and stalked off muttering under his breath.
So now here Shawn was, alone, visiting hours almost up and Gus MIA.
A soft knock on the door, drew Shawn away from his musings, and he looked away from the television, over to the new visitor.
"And here I was thinking that you had been consumed by a rabid chinchilla."
"You're still on morphine, aren't you?" Gus replied evenly, stepping into the room.
"I'm on something," Shawn allotted, then he caught sight of what was in his best friend's hand.
Gus followed Shawn's eyes and held the cup out.
"Pineapple?" Shawn asked, taking the smoothie.
"You know it," Gus said, taking a sip from his own cup.
Shawn slurped up some of the liquid heaven through a straw and sighed contentedly. This was his first smoothie since he had come back from going crazy. Now all he needed was to get his bike out from storage and trash his apartment, and everything would be back to normal.
"What are you watching," Gus asked, sitting down in a chair next to Shawn's bed.
"Sponge Bob," Shawn replied, taking another drink. "I'm so jealous of him."
"Why?" Gus asked. Normally, he would only be half-interested in what his friend had to say, but right now, after coming so close to losing him, Gus wanted to know everything that his friend thought, and why.
"Dude," he said pointedly, "'who lives in a pineapple under the sea'?"
"Got it."
For a while, the two men sat in a companionable silence. But as the minutes ticked by, and the time for Gus to leave grew closer, he got a feeling that Shawn was wanting to tell him something. Several times the fake psychic…wait, that wasn't correct anymore, was it? Several times the psychic opened his mouth, as if he were about to speak, but then he would just close it and drink more of his smoothie.
"Hey, what's this?" Gus asked, catching sight of the pink ribbon that sat on the table by the bed.
"That's Cammy's," Shawn said, watching as his friend picked the ribbon up to examine it. "She came by earlier and gave it to me."
"Yeah?" Gus asked, setting the ribbon back down. "And how's she doing?"
"Fine," Shawn looked down at his hands. "Gus…there's something that I need to tell you."
"Yeah, what is it?"
Shawn continued to look at his hands, and took a deep breath.
"Shawn…?" Gus asked, a little worried about his friend's behavior.
"I don't see ghosts anymore."
"…"
"…"
"Are you sure?" Gus finally asked.
"Yes, I'm pretty sure. I have been in a hospital for a week and people do die in hospitals. Nothing," he shook his head.
"You've only actually been awake for two—three days Shawn, is that really enough time to make an accurate assessment?"
"Gus," Shawn said, finally making eye contact with his friend, "I don't feel their pull on me anymore. I don't know what you're feeling, beyond what you obviously display on your face, and my dad was in here earlier and I couldn't read his mind. Thank goodness," he added under his breath. "Besides, I took a spin around the hospital yesterday, just to test my theory, and I came up with no more than I used to, before all of this 'real' psychic stuff happened."
"You got out of bed?" Gus snapped.
"Yes… and in retrospect that's probably why the doctors are keeping me here the extra week, but that's beside the point."
"I can't believe you," Gus muttered, turning away from his friend.
Shawn allowed Gus the moment of anger, because even though he couldn't feel what the man was feeling, he still remembered all to well what it was like when he could.
"How do you feel about this?" Gus asked, turning back to his friend, anger replaced by concern for his friend.
For some reason, the question caught Shawn off guard. The powers had caused him a lot of trouble, but at the same time, he truly had enjoyed some of them. They had filled every bit of space up in and outside of him…suffocating him, and yet now, the air felt cold and empty without it.
"I haven't decided yet," he admitted, casting a quick glance at Gus's face to assess his reaction.
Gus simply nodded in understanding. It would take a while for Shawn to readjust.
"Sorry to interrupt," a nurse said, sticking his head into the room, "but visiting hours are up, and this man, needs to get some rest."
"Okay," Gus said, giving the man a nod and then standing up. "I'll see you tomorrow," he said, looking at Shawn, "I got most of my route done today, so my schedule's pretty much clear."
"Cool. You can bring Parcheesi and we'll make a day of it."
"Do you even know what Parcheesi is?"
"…A type of cheddar?"
"Goodnight Shawn."
Once at the doorway, Gus paused and turned back to Shawn, who was already laying back with his eyes closed and an empty smoothie cup in one hand. He really looked like he needed some rest, but Gus needed to ask one more time, "Are you sure that you're powers are gone?"
Shawn opened his eyes and looked at his best friend. "Yep," he said, "all gone."
With a nod, and one more goodnight, Gus left.
Sighing, Shawn leaned over, very carefully, and placed his empty cup on the night-table. As he started to pull his hand back, his fingers brushed across the silky pink ribbon. He looked back to the empty doorway, making sure that no one was there, and picked the ribbon up, gingerly between his pointer-finger and thumb. Sitting back, he ignored his aching sides and held the ribbon out, tightly, in both of his hands. Closing his eyes and taking a few deep breathes, he concentrated. Slowly, a smile spread across his face.
Well, not all gone.
End.
A/N: Muahahahaha. And you thought that Shawn was going to go completely back to normal. Nope, he can still sense people through their clothing or personal items. I know that in most fics that the characters end up completely back to normal by the end, but that was never really an option for me. For those of you who don't understand how I can logically let Shawn keep even a small part of his previous powers, is that when he gained them at the beginning of the story he had hit his head, and had been electrocuted. In the last scene, he had only hit his head. So, naturally, most of his powers could go…but not all of them, and I wanted him to be able to keep the most harmless of the powers (which was also the one that he had enjoyed the most.)
I'm sorry if you were disappointed in the ending, but I'm not sorry for how I ended it. ;) Don't forget to please review.
As another side note: I'm not planning on a sequel, but if any of you have any ideas for one I'd love to hear it. Not that any of you would necessarily want a sequel, but I thought that I'd just put that out there. Review!