There were a lot of downsides to being in love with a ghost. Scaramouche couldn't feel your touch, nor see your face.
But that wasn't a problem for him.
When he'd seen you in his garden all those years ago, he had fallen in love.
You, a pitiful human who had gotten lost in his property.
You, a mortal being who couldn't possibly have enough years in your life to spend with him.
You, the person who Scaramouche planned to turn into a vampire.
Or, at least, that was the plan.
When he swooped down to where you were sat, grabbing your neck and sinking his fangs in, he might have gotten a bit too carried away, draining you of too much blood.
So now you were a ghost. A ghost who particularly hated Scaramouche. And screeched outside of his room whenever he tried to sleep. And kept floating the tableware around. But a ghost he loved nonetheless.
So he decided to court you.
Now, you might call him crazy, but hear him out. In one of his ancient library books, he'd found a ritual to give a dead loved one their mortal body back.
It wasn't that complicated. Quite the opposite, actually, it was very simple.
First, he had to have some sort of personal relationship towards you, hence the courting.
Second, he needed about ten units of blood.
And finally, when the moon was at its highest peak, he would spill the blood into the dirt while repeating your name, pulling your soul back into a body.
Now, he just needed you to agree.
Apparently, you did not want to agree.
You were horrible about it, disappearing for a whole week without any of your usual antics.
Scaramouche didn't quite understand why you didn't want to marry him, but it was alright. After all, he has all the time in the world.
Sorry for who-posting in the year 2019 but the Doctor is actually so named because he wrote and successfully defended a dissertation at an accredited university whereas the Master completed a 2-year graduate program in his chosen field, which points to the existence of a third less-advanced and less-specialized counterpart, the Bachelor
My dad and I once had a disagreement over him using the adage "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger."
I said, "That's just not true. Sometimes what doesn't kill you leaves you brittle and injured or traumatized."
He stopped and thought about that for a while. He came back later, and said, "It's like wood glue."
He pointed to my bookshelf, which he helped me salvage a while ago. He said, "Do you remember how I explained that, once we used the wood glue on them, the shelves would actually be stronger than they were before they broke?"
I did.
"But before we used the wood glue, those shelves were broken. They couldn't hold up shit. If you had put books on them, they would have collapsed. And that wood glue had to set awhile. If we put anything on them too early, they would have collapsed just the same as if we'd never fixed them at all. You've got to give these things time to set."
It sounded like a pretty good metaphor to me, but one thing I did pick up on was that whatever broke those shelves, that's not the thing that made them stronger. That just broke them. It was being fixed that made them stronger. It was the glue.
So my dad and I agreed, what doesn't kill you doesn't actually make you stronger, but healing does. And if you feel like healing hasn't made you stronger than you were before, you're probably not done healing. You've got to give these things time to set.