Daniel Altan Wing was no stranger to ghosts. In a rather short span of life he'd endured an impressive amount of loss. But it wasn't his father who had died when he was just a boy, or his mother who was gunned down outside his childhood home, or even his elder brother who sacrificed his life for him, that made him feel haunted. It was someone he didn't know, couldn't put a face to no matter how many times he dragged a pen against a scrap of paper absently. She'd come to him in pieces, a rough sketch of quizzical eyes, slender hands, or the delicate cupid's bow of her lips. But these details of her always came as separate, disjointed fragments. He could never meld the pieces together into a coherent whole. Occasionally someone he worked with would gaze at his rough doodles.
"You're good," they might comment. They didn't know that these lonely characteristics only served to frustrate him and his faded memories.
Day had struggled for years now with his lost memories. Some of them had slowly returned, but the specifics of many were fuzzy and whole chunks of time were still completely inaccessible to him. Many of them sat just at the periphery of his recollection, waiting for the perfect trigger, to bring them to the forefront. But none of them tugged at his limited consciousness the way she did. She was like a phantom limb that had been amputated. Gone, but still wholly there. Teasing the fringes of his memory.
He'd feel her standing beside him when no one was to be seen, her arm brushing his just barely. Sometimes he'd catch a scent wafting on the air. A scent that was strange and yet so familiar. Gentle and fresh, it transported him back to a grand hall crowded with well-dressed people. He knows he too is in overly stiff formal attire. He knows she's in the room too, but he can't find her. He thinks he catches a glimpse of her in a red dress, but she fades away before she ever turns to face him. In the early mornings and late at night when he still slips fluidly between the worlds of sleep and wakefulness is where she's the most alive. It is here that she feels less like a ghost and more like the real flesh and blood young woman he had to have known. He can feel his fingers sliding through long hair, the pressure of her cool hand resting against his chest and her head on his shoulder, the light puff of her warm exhalations against his neck. When he wakes he swears the other side of his bed is still warm, though he knows it must be in his mind.
His ghost, as he's come to think of her, is at once infuriating and comforting. The fact that he can never really see her or touch her makes him angrier about his condition than he ever is. How awful to have something taken away from you that you can't even remember properly enough to find. But she is also a comforting force, always at his side when he feels lonely, or frustrated, or irrational.
"It's okay, breathe, think, now act," she seems to whisper in his ear at every ill turn.
Once while out walking the pristine streets of Ross City, he paused to gaze at a young girl sitting on a bench, waiting for someone it looked like. He sidled over to her casually; she took notice, looking at him with a smile as he moved to sit next to her.
"Hello," she greeted in a friendly voice.
"Hi," he responded studying the girl. She had glossy dark hair pulled away from her face, a slender, tan frame, and large brown eyes. She couldn't be more than eighteen, probably younger than that. But something about her struck him as familiar. He wasn't sure if it was her looks, or the confident way she held herself, whatever it was, it had grabbed his attention.
"I'm sorry but, do I know you?" He asked hesitantly.
"No, I don't think so," she answered politely.
"Oh, I'm sorry," he added quickly, "you just look so…," he trailed off frustrated with his ineffective memory.
"You don't have to apologize, it's really fine," the girl replied.
He could tell it wasn't her now, the voice wasn't right, not in tone, not in quality. It wasn't the voice that he heard as clearly as his own conscience, the one that perpetually resided within his mind.
"You just look like somebody I used to know," he said feeling as if he should give the girl more of an explanation.
"Really?" She asked coyly, clearly enjoying his attention, "Good friend of yours?"
"You could say that," he answered. He was fairly sure 'good friend' didn't suffice to describe his ghost. But he didn't know how else to explain the wraith that had escaped from his locked away memories.
"What was her name?"
The question caught him when he was lost in his thoughts, and tricked him into honesty.
"I don't know," he answered simply.
The girl gave him a strange look and seemed to wait for him to go on before finally clearing her throat and moving away from their previously shared space.
For eight years his missing memories had taunted him, peeking out then hiding away again. Sometimes their slow creep back into his consciousness ran entirely dry and nothing new would surface for weeks or months. At other times they would seep in more steadily and with greater clarity than they had ever before. And he would think it was going to happen, that finally some memory would surface, something substantial about his ghost, which would leave his curiosity more satiated than piqued. But then they would once again recede into the darkest corners of his mind and leave him feeling emptier than ever. Finally he was convinced that his ghost was no ghost at all. The bits and pieces of memory he could gather weren't real. There was no girl, there was no red dress, he'd never sat with her in some sort of structure while what sounded like rain poured outside, or held onto her hand while on a street crowded with people for reasons he couldn't remember, nor had he ever laid in her bed with silky sheets brushing against his skin. None of it was real, it existed only in his mind, perhaps remnants of dreams he'd had while he spent months in a coma. And he had almost convinced himself of this when he finally saw her.
The Elector of the Republic was on TV making a public announcement about the consistently progressing peace talks with the Colonies. Daniel hadn't meant to see it, he'd merely been scanning through news in one of the public cylinders and suddenly there she was. She was older than he remembered but he supposed she would be. She stood stoically with several other officials behind the young Elector, dressed in formal military garb, straight skirt, jacket, extensively decorated with gleaming medals, and high heels with pointy toes. She looked so pretty and mature. Her hair was different. He couldn't remember how it used to be but now it was knotted into a bun at the nape of her neck, a military cap perched on her head. Still, he was sure it was her.
"Excuse me," he asked a passerby, "do you know who that is?" He pointed out the young woman in the background of the photo.
"Oh, that's one of the Republic's lead commanders, over all California units, I believe. I think her name's Iparis… bit of a tangled political history but from everything we've heard an excellent commander."
"Really?" he asked trying to make sense of the memories through the fog.
"I mean, from everything we've heard," the young man answered simply before moving on.
Daniel had a doctor who had been meeting with him sporadically over the years. She was meant to help him deal with his memory loss and evaluate whether or not he was adjusting properly as things slowly came back to him. He requested to meet with her as soon as possible. She sat across from him, a severe looking woman with a kind heart, nodding as he reminded her of the ghostly presence he had frequently mentioned in their sessions and recounting the discoveries of the past few days.
"Daniel, you know, if you'd like we could arrange for this young woman to come here or you could go to the Republic. If you want to meet her..."
"I just, I don't know who she is. To me, I mean. Why is she still with me?"
"Memory is a strange thing, but I imagine she was important to you, made an impact in some way."
"I did some research. She's a highborn kid from a gem sector. She was the Princeps Elect before she stepped down for a command position. There was rumor that she would marry the Elector and now she's a lead commander."
"You did do an awful lot of research."
"How did we even meet? I was a street kid while she was being groomed for military leadership."
"Daniel you were once integral to a Republic war victory. You obviously had a place in that government even if you can't remember it. I think it's safe to say she was there."
"My memories of her…she's…she's different now."
"So are you…"
Daniel looked at the woman and smiled, tapping his temple, "Not up here we're not."
The doctor sighed, "Whatever you want to do Daniel, just let me know."
That night he had the cylinder in his own room turned on. It was frozen on an image of her. Taken just a few months prior. It's from some sort of event in the Republic capital. She's in a green gown. The lace collar and the way her hair is cut, just barely brushing her shoulders, makes her look sophisticated beyond her years. He studies her face, in it is the feisty girl he knew, but now a layer of poise and professionalism veils it. But this was just an image, what was she really like? If he met her would he be disappointed that she wasn't exactly how he left her? Would she?
He clicks off the screen, knowing he'll never make arrangements to meet her. That meeting would be full of unknowns, dark things about his past that he isn't sure he'll ever be ready to face.
No, here he knows what ghosts wait for him in the dark. He knows that as he drifts off she'll come to him. Exactly as he left her. She'll circle her arms around him, long hair fanning out on his pillow, and her eyelashes brushing his cheek. In the morning she'll be gone, but he no longer cares. He's hers for the haunting.