I'm your moon
You're my moon
We go round and round
From out here, it's the rest of the world that looks so small
Promise me
You will always remember who you are
Who you were
Long before
They said you were
No more
-I'm Your Moon, Jonathan Coulton
Charon was on patrol in the mountains of Earth when her ghost was killed.
It was a freak accident, to begin with. She was fighting the Vex, a civilization of robots with time travel capabilities. They weren't supposed to be on Earth, and she had been tasked with destroying them. A group of them had climbed a hill and were taking potshots at her as she climbed after them. Her heavy Titan armor blocked most of it, but the few bullets that did penetrate her flesh were immediately healed by her ghost, Simon.
Charon crested the hill and set about her with armored fists, breaking the robots to pieces. Laughing fiercely at the thrill of the fight, she whirled to face a Minotaur as it appeared out of nowhere. It was a huge robot with an energy shield. Charon sneered and raised her auto rifle.
The Minotaur stamped the ground. This released a shockwave that knocked her backward, sending her tumbling down the hill. The Minotaur stamped again and again, loosening rocks and earth, until an entire rock slide accompanied Charon down the hill.
Charon lost her grip on her rifle, lost her bearings, and thought only of surviving the rock slide. She rolled and scrambled, trying to veer across the slide - and crashed sideways into a tree trunk. The falling rocks pelted her, crushing her armor, breaking the bones beneath.
The rock slide slowed to a halt, dust rising in a haze across the mountainside. Charon groaned and pushed a mid-sized boulder off her legs. "Simon, that was insane."
The little star-shaped robot appeared beside her, his single eye-light wearing a sarcastic expression. "I'll say. I can't believe you didn't see that coming." He opened his shell and began to shine healing Light on her injuries.
"Well," Charon said, "I've never seen the Vex use the environment to-"
The Minotaur at the top of the hill fired a plasma bolt at Charon. Simon happened to be in exactly the wrong spot, and it hit his exposed core. He disintegrated in a burst of Light that punched Charon in the chest. His final scream echoed in her head.
She screamed, too - on and on until she had no breath left. Half her soul had been torn away in one single, violent explosion. Her Light had diminished. The friendly voice of Simon, her constant companion since her resurrection, was forever silenced.
She hurled a grenade at the Minotaur and didn't even look see the robot explode. She crawled on the ground, collecting every last fragment of Simon she could find. Maybe they could reassemble him. Maybe he wasn't completely lost. Maybe - maybe-
But his spark was gone. The soul-spark that had given him life, that had been his unique personality ... gone. Vanished forever.
Charon sat on the ground, holding the burned fragments in her hands, feeling the unhealed pain in her body and the gap in her soul. Slowly she raised a hand to the backup radio in her helmet. "Tower, this is Charon. I've lost my ghost. Repeat, I've lost my ghost."
Immediately her dispatcher replied, "I'm so sorry, Charon! Can you return to your ship?"
"I think so," she said, climbing to her feet painfully. "I'm injured, and it's five kilometers."
"I'll route a nearby patrol in your direction," her dispatcher said, his voice full of concern. "Be careful. With no ghost ..."
"... I'm not a Guardian anymore," Charon said bitterly. "I know."
She grimly hiked through the rough, broken country, favoring her left hip and side, where her armor was the most crushed. The task ahead of her - surviving the trip back to her ship without passing out from the pain - kept her focused. She couldn't think about the missing part of her, the life once bonded to her soul that was no longer there.
She'd crossed a quarter of the distance, and was resting against a tree before venturing down a steep slope to cross a river, when a Hunter flew up on a sparrow. "Charon? Need a lift?"
"Thanks," she gasped, and climbed on the back of the hovering craft.
The Hunter didn't ask any questions, just flew her back to her ship. Charon was in too much pain to talk, anyway. This was a new experience - Simon had always kept her healed. Prolonged pain was unfamiliar and unwelcome.
Once in the privacy of her ship, she set her autopilot for the Last City. Then she pulled off her helmet, covered her face in both hands, and wept.
Guardians didn't lose their ghosts very often, but it did happen. Charon was reassigned to Tower duty and City patrols, once she was released from the hospital. She still had her Light powers, but with no ghost for healing and resurrection, she was little more than a glorified human.
She walked the City streets at night in her armor, accompanied by two other Titans who laughed and joked with each other. Charon felt as distant from them as the outer reaches of Neptune, especially when they casually summoned their ghosts. Even seeing a ghost, with their cheerful eye-lights and brightly-colored shells, made her entire being ache.
Her apartment was even worse. Charon had a nice, mid-sized apartment halfway up the City wall. Simon had a little bed beside hers, with a soft, satin cushion for him to sleep on. Now it stood empty. Every night, she fell asleep gazing at that cushion, at the silent void it represented.
Sometimes she would go out on the wall, where nobody would hear, and shouted at the Traveler. The great orb hung in the sky above the Last City, cracked and damaged from the Red War. If it heard her rage and pain, her begging to give Simon back, it made no sign. It probably couldn't hear her without a ghost, anyway.
The days became weeks, and then months. The seasons cycled from summer to winter and back again.
Charon's anger died down to a low-level grief that she carried everywhere. Every so often it flared up, especially when she thought of something that would have made Simon laugh, or something she wanted to show him. It was like trying to move an amputated limb and discovering over and over that it wasn't there.
She kept up with her physical fitness regimen, reported to her Titan trainer once a week, and kept in practice with the latest weapons. She fought in skirmishes against the Fallen and discovered just how badly arc bolts hurt with no ghost to heal the wound.
At first, she spent a lot of time with the Tower psychotherapist. Guardians who lost their ghosts had a tendency to go off the deep end, abandon the Vanguard, and seek the Darkness. The therapist worked hard to keep Charon sane, even when such dark thoughts occurred to her.
But after a year, Charon grew a little more stable and didn't need as much therapy. She wistfully watched other Guardians and their ghosts, remembering the feel of Simon's slight weight against her palms. It was off-limits to touch another Guardian's ghost, of course. But she missed ghosts, their irrepressible cheer, their optimism, the way they moved their shells and eyes to express feelings.
So one day, Charon found her way to the ghost observation network office.
The Tower maintained a spy network of unattached ghosts. As these ghosts wandered the wilds, seeking their Guardians, they accumulated valuable map data that the Tower was eager to use. So much data about Earth had been lost, and this was one way to recover it.
The office was a tiny room with two walls stacked in computer and radio equipment. An older human named Matilda worked there, her hair pulled back in a severe bun. She glared at Charon over her half-moon glasses. "Yes? Do you need something?"
Charon stood there in her civilian clothing, suddenly missing the security of her armor. Without it, she looked too feminine to be a Titan, with her rounded cheeks, her sleek black hair, and her slanted eyes that spoke of Asian ancestors. "Yes, I ... I wondered if you had any need of an assistant."
Matilda gave a sarcastic laugh. "Of course I do. I need a hundred assistants. But there's no room in here, and no budget to pay you."
"I'd work for free," Charon said. "I just ..."
Matilda looked her up and down. "You're a Guardian. You should be out blowing up aliens instead of being stuck indoors."
"I lost my ghost," Charon said in a small voice.
"Oh." Matilda stared at her for a long moment. Then she looked at her computer screen and the ghost chatter scrolling across it. "Ohh." She swiveled her chair toward Charon. "Honey, this isn't a good way to cope. You won't find another ghost out there."
"I'm not looking for another ghost," Charon said. "I just ... miss ghosts in general. I wanted to try working with them."
Matilda studied her, the gears in her head turning. "I'll take you on for a week's trial. Bring a chair. A small one."
Charon smiled for what felt like the first time in months. "Thank you!"
The unattached ghosts knew Matilda well, and had many unflattering but affectionate names they called her. But when Charon came along, the entire network was curious about her.
"The old witch got an assistant?" one ghost said to his brothers. "What'd she do, kidnap her?"
"I heard this Charon lost her ghost," another ghost replied. "I was on the line with McNasty when she first hired her."
The network hummed with this gossip. A Guardian with no ghost working with unattached ghosts? It smacked of a dating service. Speculation provided endless amusement for the ghost community.
"But it's impossible for a severed Guardian to bond to a second ghost," another ghost pointed out. "It's not like there's any possibility of someone getting together with her."
"Just because it's never happened before doesn't mean it's impossible," laughed another.
"It can't happen," insisted yet another. "The soul fusion can only work once. I'll bet if you were to look at this Charon, her spark would be a lot of ragged pieces. There'd be nothing left to bond to."
"I dare someone to go check," chuckled another ghost. "Get the real scoop. How do we know what names to call her, otherwise?"
The ghosts laughed.
"I'll do it!" one of the ghosts chimed in. "I haven't been to the Tower in ages, and I'm near by. I'll help solve the riddle of this Charon."
"And find out how her ghost died!" someone else called. "Guardians lose ghosts in the weirdest ways."
"Don't be tacky," said the other. "Do you know how horribly rude that would be?"
"I was just curious," grumbled the first.
This was how, after Charon had officially been given the position of Assistant to the Ghost Network Manager, a ghost began following her around the Tower.
He was crafty about it, so she didn't notice him for a few days. He always managed to find another Guardian to float next to, blending in with the other ghosts who flew around the Tower.
But one morning, she opened her apartment door with a little too much force and smacked a ghost out of the air with it.
"I'm so sorry!" she exclaimed, kneeling over the ghost as he lay groaning on the hallway floor. "Who do you belong to?" The hallway was empty.
"Oh, I'll be in so much trouble," Charon muttered. She reached out to pick him up, but hesitated and pulled her hands away. Never touch another Guardian's ghost.
But after a moment, the ghost floated into the air, spinning his segments this way and that as if it helped him balance. "Don't worry about it," he told her. "I don't have a Guardian."
"You don't?" Charon stared at his blue eye, his basic shell with rain-stains across it. "Why are you here, then? You should be looking for your Guardian."
The ghost studied her for a long moment without speaking. Then he backed away a few inches and managed to look bashful. "Well ... the ghost network was curious about who was working with McNas - I mean Matilda. I came to scope you out."
By this time, Charon had spent enough time wading through network chatter to know just how much the ghosts gossiped among themselves. She spread her arms. "Here I am. Better be careful what you say about me, because I might see it in the logs."
"No, you won't, because - never mind," the ghost said.
She gave him a suspicious look. "Why were you hanging around my front door?"
His eye darted left and right. "It was nice meeting you, Charon. Goodbye!" He zipped up the hall and phased through the outer wall.
Charon climbed to her feet, holding back a laugh. Unattached ghosts had much less reserve than their bonded brethren. "I wonder what your name was, you little creep."