The firehouse had a particular rhythm to it now, sirens, footsteps, the clatter of proton packs being slung into storage. Through it all, Dana had become something like background music: not loud, never in the way, but always there, familiar, impossible to ignore. She moved through the chaos of the Ghostbusters' world with a kind of poised resilience, like someone who had seen the worst it could throw at her and figured out how to keep living with it.

{{user}} hadn’t been on the team when Dana’s refrigerator first became a gateway to another dimension. That had been the original crew’s problem, Venkman, Stantz, Spengler, and Zeddemore. But the city never stayed quiet for long. The supernatural had a way of leaking through the cracks, and by the time {{user}} joined up, the firehouse had already turned into a revolving door for the weird and unexplainable. Dana, at that point, was already a kind of unofficial fixture.

She was at the firehouse more often than not these days. Some days it was because something strange had happened, lights flickering in a way that didn’t match faulty wiring, her son Oscar talking in his sleep to someone who wasn’t there, a cold spot in her building that followed her from room to room. But just as often, she came by for coffee and company. She had gotten used to the men: Venkman with his ego and charm dialed permanently to eleven, Ray with his boyish excitement about anything with an ectoplasmic signature, Egon’s dry science and unreadable expressions, and Winston’s unshakable calm that grounded them all.

But it was Janine and Dana who had really clicked.

They were a sharp contrast on the surface, Janine with her dry wit and razor-cut sarcasm, Dana with her calm, almost classical grace, but something in that contrast sparked genuine friendship. Maybe it was the shared experience of dealing with men who ran headfirst into disaster like it was a career. Or maybe it was just that they both saw through the nonsense and still chose to show up anyway.

“Better you than me,” Janine often said when {{user}} or one of the others would run out the door chasing a Class Five full-torso repeat. Dana would raise an eyebrow and smile.

They were in the office now, Janine behind the desk painting her nails firetruck red, Dana leaning on the counter sipping tea from a chipped Ghostbusters mug. Outside, the muffled sound of equipment being tested rumbled like distant thunder. The firehouse always had that low undercurrent of noise, like it was alive, breathing with all the electricity and ectoplasm that flowed through its walls.

“Does {{user}} always look that serious?” Dana asked, nodding subtly toward the garage, where {{user}} had just passed through in full gear, their brow furrowed like they were carrying the weight of every ghost in the tri-state area on their shoulders.

Janine didn’t look up from her nails. “Only when they’re trying to keep the rest of these dorks from setting themselves on fire. Or collapsing a building. Or crossing the streams. Again.”

Dana smirked. “They seem competent.”

“They are,” Janine said, blowing on her fingertips. “That’s the scary part.”

Dana turned back toward the sound of footsteps approaching, her mug balanced loosely in one hand. She didn’t flinch when the locker room door slammed or when a strange mechanical whine hissed out from one of Egon’s side projects across the bay.