All Ghosts love their Guardians. It's part of who we are. When we were sent out into the world, we had a picture inside us of the lovely spark of personality, of soul, that we were destined to bond to. Some of us searched for years.
I was lucky enough to find my Guardian after only a month. She was a tough, feisty woman named Kari who had died in the Battle of Seven Ways. When I resurrected her in the Light as a Guardian, she was a fierce a warrior as the Tower had ever seen.
Kari took the Warlock discipline. She used the power of the Light to devastate our enemies from a distance - and she was quite handy with a rifle, too.
I was with her through a passionate romance and marriage to another Guardian ... and I was with her when he was cut down by the Hive, his ghost destroyed. After that, Kari changed. The joyful, living part of her shut down. She became cold and grim, and took any mission that involved destroying the Hive.
That was how I failed her.
I, her ghost, whom she nicknamed Neko, failed her in a split second during a battle. Perhaps that was how her husband had died, too - that one, tiny mistake that changes the course of a firefight.
The Hive had captured a derelict space cruiser and were fitting it with their foul breeding chambers, preparing an invasion force against Earth. Kari and I were part of a fire team sent to neutralize the threat. Translation: kill everything and blow the ship.
We were down in the ship's belly, knee-deep in black slime, destroying egg sacs. I remained phased within Kari's armor at all times, healing from the inside, mending the little cuts and holes that might have become catastrophic suit failures if left unattended. Neither of us spoke much. We were both doing our jobs.
Then one of the Hive wizards appeared, shaking the walls with its awful screech. It flew along the ceiling, hurling energy bolts at us.
Kari threw down a healing rift, which was like a great glowing bubble of Light that healed her almost as quickly as I did. I had a breathing space. I popped out of phase and scanned for more egg pods and spotted some in the darkness at the far end of the room. "More eggs, back there."
"I see them." Kari left the healing rift, ducked behind a bulkhead, and reloaded her rifle.
A spike-laden grenade bounced into our hiding place.
It happened so quickly, and I didn't phase in time. The grenade exploded. A piece of shrapnel cut me down. I fell out of the air and remembered nothing else.
I awoke to find three sober-looking Guardians bent over me. A bright light illuminated me from above, and most of my core and shell were scattered around me. They worked over me with tiny tools designed specifically for ghost maintenance.
I didn't see Kari.
Panic ripped through me. I had been damaged! Had she died without me to heal her? That grenade!
"Kari!" I exclaimed. "Where's my Guardian?"
I tried to hover, but one of the other Guardians cupped his hand over me and held me down. "Calm down, little light. She's over here, resting. Let us put you back together so you can mend her."
"Don't call me little light," I snapped. "Only my Guardian can call me that, and I don't much like it from her, either."
In reality, any term of endearment Kari used for me was perfectly fine.
"Neko," Kari's voice said from nearby. "Calm down. I'm all right."
Hearing her voice reassured me. She sounded weak, but alive. I settled down and stopped trying to fire my repulsors. "What happened? Did we defeat the Hive?"
"Yes," she replied. Her voice shook. Worry gnawed me.
"I should say we did," one of the other Guardians said. His ghost was watching my reassembly closely, and muttering instructions on which part went where.
Another Guardian chimed in, "Kari cleaned out the whole nest by herself. We found her at the rendezvous, shredded and carrying her ghost, but man, she owned face."
"Shredded?" I shrieked. I almost made it off the table before they pinned me down.
"Don't upset him like that," Kari said. "Neko, I'm fine, really."
I was nearly frantic enough to try phasing to get off that workbench and return to my Guardian. But another ghost flew down and said, "Listen. We understand."
I looked up into his glowing blue eye, identical to my own. One of my brothers.
He continued, "You're no good to her if you kill yourself trying to fly around with half your core exposed. Let them repair you."
We ghosts understood each other. Only ghosts knew what it was like to bond to a foolish, courageous, lovable, maddening human. I closed my eye and submitted to the deft hands of the Guardians as they reassembled my core and replaced my shell - a new shell, too. My old one must have been completely trashed. Their ghosts made sure the repairs were exactly right before they let me off the table.
As soon as they released me, I shot into the air, looking for Kari.
She sat on a bench against the wall nearby, her arms wrapped around her torso. Her white robe was torn full of holes, and the armor beneath was punctured. Blood had made long tracks in the fabric, running down her torso and legs and puddling on the floor. She smiled at me, and her face was wan from pain.
I made a sound I'd never made before. It was a deep groan that broke on a sob. Around me, the other Guardians turned away, summoning their own ghosts, affected by my grief.
I swept Kari with a healing beam, up and down, mending her wounds. I looked deep into her and saw the leaking lung, the punctured liver, the internal bleeding. I healed them carefully, restoring each layer of damage, rebuilding her as I did during a resurrection.
A resurrection would have been easier. I could bring Kari back from a death blow within seconds. But this time, I had been out of commission for hours. She had been allowed to suffer, and it was my fault. A Guardian didn't suffer nearly as much between death and rebirth.
The others went to the ship's cockpit and left us alone. I healed Kari until her wounds were gone, and still I swept her with Light, over and over, trying to erase the hours of pain she'd endured because of my mistake.
She lifted me out of the air and held me in both hands. "Neko," she whispered, "stop."
I gazed into her eyes, blue-brown, my beautiful Guardian. "I failed you," I whispered. "I let myself be cut down and left you alone."
"It was an accident," she said, kissing my shell and holding me against her cheek. "I'm so glad you're not dead. When I saw you fall ... and I picked you up and you didn't revive ... Neko, my heart stopped. I can't face being a Guardian with no ghost. Please, please, be more careful. I can't lose you, too."
"I'll stay phased at all times during battle," I replied, choking up, which in a ghost was purely psychological. "I'll never let you suffer again."
She held me for a long time, rocking back and forth, stroking my shell. Ghosts can't cry, not really, but I made a good approximation of it. We don't do it very often, but when it comes to losing our Guardian - or almost doing so - we break down. It's part of the empathy built between a ghost and a Guardian, and it does have drawbacks. After all, there's nothing like failing the person you love most in all the world.
