Summary: A little boy all in white stood by the station. Out of place. It wasn't like him to venture outside, and alone. And yet, and yet... the bells were sounding, the ghosts were calling. (Post-canon oneshot.)
A/N: So this just... happened, today. I had to get it out when it hit. An important death-anniversary is coming up for me, and apparently I'm addressing it via fanfiction. Take it as you will.
It's practically a prose poem, so yes, weird grammar happens. It's on purpose, trust me.
Ghosts
A little boy all in white stood by the station. Out of place. It wasn't like him to venture outside, and alone. And yet, and yet... the bells were sounding, the ghosts were calling.
He wasn't as little as he looked. But he carried himself like a child, ignored the passersby like a child, clutched a toy like a child and let it safeguard his ticket like a child. A few concerned looks were passed, nothing more. He looked like a child, traveling alone, but seemed to know where he was going.
The train was calling now. It had a dozen hungry mouths to swallow people up. Impersonal, apathetic, it cared not for precisely which people it ate. He was swept inside with them, on a wave of dull complacence.
He sat beside an old woman and a diaper bag full of yarn and buttons. She smiled and asked his name. When he didn't give one, she began to hum a nursery song to the click clack click of her knitting needles.
Twenty minutes later, she dove into her well of yarn and fished out a hard candy.
By the time the candy in his mouth had all melted away, she was gone. She and the yarn and the city.
The passengers got fewer and fewer with every stop, and hardly a new soul arrived. No one else sat next to him.
The world outside seemed still, though the train rushed by. Fields and sleepy villages, going nowhere. People working slowly, nowhere to go. An hour went by, and all in eerie stillness.
The bells rung clearer away from the city, the ghosts called louder. His pale forehead rested on the frozen window. He was tired, so very tired, of listening.
He was alone at the last stop. The train shut its mouth behind him. It didn't care why he was here. It only wanted to keep the cold out.
He walked, clutching his toy. Wind whipped white hair into his face. Wind and white hair stung at his eyes. He walked on. The wind was carrying the bells, the ghosts were beckoning.
The gate was wrought iron, huge and unguarded. He put the toy down on the frosted dirt to open it. It took his whole body, cold black bars like teeth eating into him. The ghosts on the wind helped ease it along.
He took back the toy and took to the hill. Wind pushed him up it, wind with chilled hands and bony fingers and the tinkling of bells and chains.
He found them, and the ghosts seemed to sigh away, the bells soft and sweet.
Four graves in a line, marked with tiny letters near the ground, easy to overlook and soon to be overgrown. The grass was parted in the cold. Two letters gathered moss. Two shared a letter, and were new enough for the etching marks to show. These ghosts were the loudest.
The wind resumed. Tiny white petals fell upon the graves from an early-blooming tree.
He murmured something to them, something he had never said while they still lived, something he knew he would never say again, to anyone. Something of thanks, of regret, of love, of goodbye.
He thought he heard an answer, whispers of familiar voices on the breeze. Voices he missed hearing. Voices he missed far more than he'd realized. Voices he would never hear again.
Gingerly he placed his toy on the first of the fresher graves. He leaned it against the granite marker, beside the tiny M, and left.
There was no wind to carry him back down the hill, no ghosts to help him close the gate.
He walked, empty-handed. Tiny white petals fluttered off his white clothes as he walked, like pieces of him falling away.
A little boy all in white stood by the station. Some little white petals still sat trapped in white hair, some little white tears stung the backs of black eyes. The ride back would be too quiet.