an: well, i won't lie to you all. i'm nervous as hell about posting this. i haven't posted fanfiction in over two years, so this is a bit of a big step for me to take. i also have the terrible habit of not making much of an effort to read other people's fanfiction? but i'm really, really excited about this series, this ship, this everything. so who knows! i hope i'm not stepping on anyone's toes with this.
i won't do many authors notes before chapters if i can help it, but my nervousness leaves me anxious to make some clarifications before i let you begin. yes, i went with the pretty predictable 'liu' name for our favorite lieutenant. i want to press that this is not his given name, though i never plan on giving him a given name, so. it's an alias, and i'm sorry to be predictable. i will immediately clarify that this fic will live up to the descriptions, but i just need you to be patient. like i said, this is my first fic in a very, very long time. so be kind, and thank you for reading!
Loneliness wasn't even a term he understood anymore. How long had it been? Months, he knew that much. If he had to wager a guess, it had been just under a year since this cycle of self-alienation had started.
He was close in his assumption. It had been ten months since the Lieutenant had left the ranks of his once-brothers, ten months since he had addicted himself to the misery of loneliness. Not since the traitor had shown his true self had the once-lieutenant allowed himself proper company. He ate meals alone, spent his spare time alone, and made no effort to associate with his coworkers off of the work floor. It was not necessarily due to want of separation. He had once been a sociable man, content to waste hours away in company. But now...
It was a self-enforced pain; a masochistic punishment that no one but he believed to be deserved. It had him wake early in the morning and wander to the factory floor. It left him silent, only speaking when it was necessary to give or take direction. It left him tired from the effort of speaking. It kept him awake at night. It had him eat only what was necessary.
This evening, it had him returning wordlessly from his first meal of the day. The Lieutenant, whose lost name had been replaced with the shaky alias of 'Liu', pushed open the door. He followed the same tired plan of every day before, the same tired plan for these many months past. Enter, remove his boots, wash his face, read, sleep.
The plan did not continue this night, though.
A figure stood in the room, washing his face in the basin atop Liu's dresser.
Liu's pale eyes shot open to their widest, his breath caught hard in his throat. His first instinct, which he was barely able to overcome, would have been to attack. But his ability to act on that instinct had gone numb when the rest of him had. He followed the second instinct, his stress-hoarse voice calling out as sharp as it could.
"What are you doing in here?" The invader turned to respond, his tan face catching the flickering gaslight. Liu froze.
He looked like something between a memory and a ghost, though Liu could not decide which.
The resemblance was dreadful. It left his roughened throat dry and pained, breath barely escaping from him, a feeling akin to being choked. For that first couple of moments, he regretted with all of his heart that he hadn't moved to attack him. But as he began to breathe again, his mind caught up with his panic. The memory was dead. He knew that, everyone did. Even given the nature of the memory and his dishonesty, the fact that he had died was indisputable.
This was, in fact, a ghost. Granted, a ghost who resembled the dreadful memory to an uncanny degree, but there were, now that he had calmed himself, enough differences to nullify the illusion of identicality. The least of which were simple, changeable things. His hair was shorter and a different color, lighter than the memory's had been. His skin, tanner. Little things. But there were deal breakers, if only two. But they were irrefutable things.
Most notably, he was taller than this man. The memory had always been just a hair taller than Liu, and he would hear no argument. Though not much shorter than he, this straight-backed man hovered an inch or so below his own height. There was no way to falsify that. More hauntingly different, however, were the scars this man's face bore. Yes, he had been fooled last time. The memory had hoodwinked him with paint and powder playing the part of mauled flesh, but these awful marks were not only more obviously carved into his flesh, but their upwards protuberant edges were ashen and laced with the bluish forks of the veins below.
No, certainly, this was a ghost, not a memory. Merely an awfully close mirror of the hated, beloved memory. He did take a half-second to consider that maybe this ghost did not resemble the memory quite as much as he was seeing. It was very possible, as it had been with any crowd he'd seen before, that he was adding the deplored features of a dead memory onto stranger's faces.
Liu had become so lost in the comparison that he had not heard the ghost's response. He blinked hard and gave a hard clear of his throat, "I'm sorry- I didn't catch..."
The ghost's thick brows perched, the left-hand one lagging behind just a bit due to the scar tissue pulling the skin on that side tight. His voice, Liu quickly came to find, was also different than that of his deceased memory.
"I was assigned to this room… unless I'm in the wrong one?" His voice was graveled, but there was humanity to it that the memory had never shown, even in the most personal moments that Liu could recall. It gave him breath; every difference slowed his pulse and eased his head.
"No, no. You're in the right place, if they wanted you in this building. I have the only spare bunk." He could still feel a shake in his throat, but he was sure the cause had transitioned from fright to simple disuse of his vocal chords. His pale eyes swept the small room to take in any and all details that had changed with the arrival of this ghost, and, aside from the ghost himself, only two things had changed. The topmost bunk of the bed had been fitted with blankets, where it had sat bare and off-white just this morning, and, on the bottom rightmost post, a dusty brown bag had been hung, presumably, carrying the ghost's belongings.
"Well, then. That would be what I'm doing in here." His brows were still perched high, albeit uneven from the scarring on the left one. His tone, while not hostile, held a taken-aback venom in it. Liu's lips tightened and his head dipped in a short bow.
"I apologize. I'm not used to-"
"Company, yes, I've heard. There's no need to apologize, just try to refrain from assaulting me next time." Despite the dry statement, the ghost smiled roguishly. He had a chipped tooth, right under where the scars lay on his closed lips, and Liu's eyes couldn't help but glance before his mind corrected him. Staring was rude, as he'd been told too many times before.
"I'll do my best. Err, you've found your bunk, I see. Did they inform you on the curfews and rules?" His eyes fixed, instead, on the shoulder of the ghost's coat in a thorough attempt to not make a further idiot of himself. The ghost nodded, something he only caught to vague movement of from his perspective, but it was easy enough body language to figure out, especially for someone so trained in it.
"They have. Naturally. What I'm still in the dark about, though, is your name." Liu's eyes weren't on the ghost's lips, but he could feel his smile stretch further. So much from saving himself from further embarrassment. He parted his lips quickly, moustache giving a tough twitch from his growing discomposure. The ghost cut in, again, however, leaving Liu halfway without a breath and not a single word in his grasp, "Mine is Anisok, for future reference."
Liu's lips pursed together, and he came to the awful realization that his head had bowed down, once more, apologetic to this stranger for his cataclysmically awful lack of any sort of social self control. He snapped it upwards, immediately regretting not making it a subtle movement, and responded carefully, lest he stammer or whatever else would make it all worse, "I am Liu. It's... nice to meet you."
The ghost named Anisok gave a little chuckle and turned to approach the bunks, a noticeable limp in his step. Every time Liu resigned himself to stop staring, a new thing to look at would pop up. His nostrils flared in a muted sigh, thankful, at the least, that Anisok was at least turned away from him, now. As the other man approached the bed, however, and his limp demonstrated itself across the room, Liu's humiliated mind caught up with the situation. He stepped forward, rising a hand up, and piped, "Er, I don't have a ladder. If you wait just a second I can go get-"
Again, Anisok cut him off. He had grabbed the wooden siding of the top bunk and stepped on that of the bottom, "I'll be fine, Liu. I have a word of advice, however," he pulled himself up with unwounded agility, flipping over his own arms and rolling onto his back, and finally continued, "And it's to not worry yourself so much. It's unhealthy."
Liu swallowed and gave a disjointed nod. He resisted every temptation to apologize, but reminded himself that he had no need to, nor any responsibility to. He approached his own bunk, pausing by the light switch, "May I?"
"Mmhmm." Anisok, who had removed his boots and coat to sit in his dirty bag, rolled away from Liu and fell silent. Liu abused the moment to observe the back of the ghost's head. Yes, maybe, he was still unnerved by the resemblance. Maybe he was checking the facts he had read in every paper and heard on every street. Assuring himself that the memory was dead and gone, and this similar face absolutely could not be the same man. The Lieutenant had always been more familiar with the back of his once-commander's head, so in that second he observed it very carefully. The ear was so mauled that he couldn't compare its shape, but it was certainly tanner. And the hair… Certainly, it was a different shade. And inches shorter, and the angle now shoed him that some of it was completely gone where the scars were too deep to have been penetrated by hair. No, it wasn't, and couldn't be Amon. Who was dead. And gone. And he would know.
Nonetheless, as Liu flipped off the light and readied himself to sleep, he couldn't swallow the hard and inarguable desire that this twin of a ghost had never come to haunt him.