I started reading the fics long before I ever saw the show.  And I'm up to episode eight of season one.  So yeah, OOC here and there and possibly screwing around with ghost canon.

It's a long time before she figures out that she's dead. So long by herself in this place that she loves (never past tense, she'll never stop loving a place she fought so hard to make her own), she goes through the motions of her morning routine before going back upstairs and finding her body on the bed. It looks asleep. Peaceful in a way she hasn't known for a long time. She doesn't know what else to do, so she stays here and wonders how long before someone finds her.

Eventually someone comes, a petty thief. She watches and waits, curious to see what he'll do. That lasts as long as it takes for him to get to the bar and reach for the crystal glasses on display. At that point she throws a chair at him. He's stunned at first that someone caught him, and then terrified when he realizes that someone is kinda see-through. She doesn't think she's seen someone run that fast since she chased her brother off the property.

After the thief come the cops, and then the ambulance to take away her body. She considers following along, but what would be the point? If she's to be a spectre, she likes the idea of staying in her bar more than wandering circles around her grave. She understands a little when someone comes to box up all her belongings, her tools of the trade, but she only ever lets one person do it, some slip of a girl who reminds her of her sister- a mean little firecracker who doesn't let the idea of ghosts frighten her out of doing her job.

Time goes on, or she supposes it does. She counts time in the number of would-be thieves, frat pledges on dares, real estate agents looking to renovate, hopeful entrepreneurs hoping to use the prime location. All but the pledges stop coming by the time the dust covers every surface of the place, and she imagines the air might be heavy and stale. It isn't as though she needs to breathe.

One day she throws a glass (forgotten, but she likes to think the slip of a girl left a few on purpose) harder than she expected and the pledge bleeds to death right outside. She doesn't think she cares.

Someone does, she supposes, because two young men with salt and iron come not long after that. The shorter one blinks and she doesn't blame him. She met the last pledge at the door with a good solid glass, after all. This time she's just sitting on the edge of the bar. "You're the ghost?" he asks. As if she'd let any other spirit stick around, and says so. "You are... refreshingly not homicidal."

His companion (friend, brother, lover, she can't tell) looks to the ceiling for guidance, something which she knows from long experience isn't coming. "Why did you attack all those people?"

"They wanted what was mine," she answers and feels the familiar surge of anger at the thought of someone taking this place from her. It's the only emotion she has known lately.

He settles on the bench built into the wall, not minding the dust and leaning forward to ask, "This is yours?"

A glass breaks next to her. That happens lately, too. "I fought for it when no one else would. Kept it together when everyone else said it would fail." Even if it did, in the end.

"Because you love this place," he says and she nods. The next question startles her. "Do you remember why?"

She starts to answer, and then stops. She doesn't remember, only knows that she will drive away anyone who would take it from her. "It's 'cause you're losing parts of yourself the longer you let yourself stay here," the shorter man informs her. She'd forgotten he was even there. " Pretty soon all you'll be is anger, and I don't think any of us wants that. So why don't you do us all a favor and tell us where you're buried."

She stares. "...why?"

"So we can help you move on," the other one explains and she thinks she likes him better anyway. It helps that he isn't the one with the gun.

The clipping with her death announcement and funerary arrangements is right where that slip of a girl left it- tacked to the wall next to the bar. "If I move on, someone else will take this place," she says. "How will I know they'll treat it right? Love it like I do?"

The gun-toting one snorts. "Lady, I hope they don't love it like you do. You just hope they like it enough to not burn it to the ground around your ears."

She hadn't expected good reasoning from someone who looks so trigger- happy and says so. The seated one snorts and smiles and takes the clipping from the wall himself. "He's a real gem, isn't he," he says.

"He's a keeper," she replies.

"Every frickin' town," the gun-toter bitches and they leave.

Sometime after, she does, too.