Ponies and Blood

We carry more than we might ever think. Carry it on shoulders wide, head bowed under the weight of the unthinkable. We're built to break, some say, but we're built to last. Cracks and tears and bruises make us who we are just as much as the mending touch of hope and life.

"We're not going in there." Nicole scratched at her neck, eyes set on the tree line. She could see it clearly from all the way over here. Perfectly. The thick trunks. How they grew tightly together with nothing but shadows between them. Full of unknowns and darkness and grotesquely stitched together faceless threats. Her hand slipped forward, rubbed at the bridge of her nose. Yeah, she could see it all fine. From here to all the way over there. Even without her glasses. "Are we?"

The Ghost hung in the air in front of her, his back-half rotating slowly. A bit like her head still did, all spun down into hell from everything he'd told her.

"What? Of course we are! Someone might need help." He said all of that almost cheerfully. Like he was excited about it.

"Help?" she half croaked. Where he'd sounded excited, her voice hitched awkwardly, thrown by a sudden thought that she ought to be calling Helen since this kept getting battier and battier and Helen would like to hear all of it. They could make sense out of it together, she'd say. The strangeness. But Helen? Helen was dead.

From one heartbeat to the other, a pit tore open in her gut. Sucked that labouring heart in. She couldn't breathe through how heavy it was. Just. Couldn't. Breathe. There was plenty of air in her nose but it wouldn't go down.

No— no— no—

Windows shatter with hollow pops. Metal groans. Screeches. Cold buffets against her and for once she doesn't want to die.

"Guardian?"

She's made up her mind far too late.

"Guardian—" The Ghost's words hung up there, somewhere, overlayed by the din of a high pitched whistle. "Hey, Guardian, up here. Look at me," he insisted and so she tried to. Tried to come back. Even as darkness quivered at the edge of her vision. Tangible. Real. "You're not breathing properly, and you should definitely be breathing."

A wink of sharp light flicked over her eyes. Made her blink. Chased the darkness off. Focused her.

"In-and-out, you humans do it all the time. Yep, exactly like that. Do you need to sit? There's nothing to sit on— well there's the ground, but—"

Nicole folded forward, braced her shaky arms on equally shaky knees, and stared at her shoes. Which weren't even her shoes. She clenched her jaw so hard her teeth creaked.

Yay. Her eyes were all good but she still had panic attacks. How shitty was that?

At least he didn't ask her if she was okay this time. But he did hover closer than she liked, the constant soft whirring of his parts twisting not any less alien and out of place as the first time she'd woken. Good a thing as any to focus on though, right? With her eyes closed, Nicole listened to every chirrs and clicks and waited out the pounding in her chest until it'd settled into something less dizzying.

When she opened them again and stood straight, the Ghost was still there. Naturally. His eye flicked to her, then left and then right, and eventually he wobbled backwards and looked to the tree line and the smoke. She could smell the smoke now. It wasn't exactly wood in a bonfire sort of smoke…

"What sort of help do you think I could possibly be?" she asked, once her tongue stopped being a useless lump. Might as well pretend that episode there hadn't happened. "You go. Do your—" She shoved her hands together in a ball before expanding them, fingers wiggling about. "—thing."

"My thing?" He turned back to her, his shell folding together, squinting.

"Your thing. With the light."

"With the— oh. Oh. No can do." He bobbed closer. Nicole leaned back. "See, Ghosts can only heal their Guardians and no one else. Which, in my case, means you."

Even without a finger to point with, the way he swooped forward certainly made her feel distinctly… pointed at.

"That sounds like a load of bull." A spark of anger flared in her gut. For… reasons. God. She was a mess. "What are you good for then?"

His shell scrunched up. It clicked sharply and maybe whined a little before a frustrated grunt rounded it all up.

"Oh, I don't know, apart of the whole bringing you back to life thing?"

She bristled. The anger swelled. "Which I didn't ask for."

". . ." He spun away, trailing a quiet electronic whirr after him. "And I can scan for transmissions and signals in the area, which there aren't any of or we wouldn't be standing here in the open. That means whatever hit the settlement is gone. For now. But there might be people left in there. Hurt. Stuck. I don't know. And maybe they'll have a beacon we can use to contact the City, tell them what happened out here and to come pick us up. Unless, of course, you want to keep walking to…" He paused briefly, swaying. "Nepal."

"Nepal? That— that's—" Nicole's brain stalled miserably. "When were you going to tell me that I'm supposed to grow fucking wings?"

"Whenever it'd come up? But. No, I wasn't going to ask you to grow wings, I doubt you can grow wings— can you? I mean, I was going to find us a ship. Yeah. A ship."

"Ugh." Her fingers twitched. They wanted, badly, for a rock to fling at him, but lacking that had to contend with pumping into fists. Until each tight curl— open, close, open close —dragged the heat from her gut into her arm. Like fire licking up her bones. Exhaling sharply, Nicole splayed her fingers out. Tried to relax them. Wiggle the heat out, because that had felt weird. And kind of smarted.

The heat faded and her anger doused.

And maybe he was right? Ah, fuck it. What else was she supposed to do?

"I swear," she said, tucking her shoulders in and taking her first step forward. "My Roomba had more sense than you. And much better manners."

The Ghost cocked his entire shell sideways, floated along next to her, and asked, quietly: "What's a Roomba?"

They were halfway across the fields, following a dirt path lined by small, smooth rocks that'd been carefully set down at almost perfect intervals, when his Guardian broke the silence that'd followed his obviously very important (and unanswered) question.

"There used to be sheep here," she said, muffled. She'd pulled her shirt up over her nose, pinched it there to keep the smoke out, probably. Which came rolling down at them, carried by the wind after it'd changed direction. "And ponies. Shetlands. Really small ones. You-size, I guess."

"Hey."

Though that'd been a joke, right? A joke. She'd joked and joking was good. Especially after, ah, earlier. Ghost flicked his eye across the horizon, his background channel searches continuing to turn up only silence and old, decaying static. But for some threats you had to use your eye(s). Such as your Guardian having a panic attack. And eagles. Neither of which broadcasted themselves on invisible wavebands.

"It was nice here," she added as they passed a tractor. A broken down, ancient thing useful for nothing more than decoration, its frame flecked with colour and flowers growing in pots hanging off it. "There's still ponies, yeah?" Her voice sounded crooked. Carried a small, easily missed trembling if you weren't paying attention.

He was paying attention though. "Yeah."

"And sheep?"

"And sheep."

"What about dogs?" She glanced back at the tractor, before staring on ahead at the tree line and the narrow path cut through it. Around them, the smoke grew thicker. Weighed down the air. Now was a pretty bad time for having lungs, he figured.

"Lots of dogs," he said. "And cats."

Okay, this might have been a bad idea, he admitted the moment they were a few steps into the dark path. And not only because he couldn't pick up a single living thing on his scanners. Which he hoped would change and that he was just not being very good at this. She choked down a cough. Seriously though, he could have found them another settlement instead, one that wasn't on fire, preferably. He wasn't daft, after all. He knew what the smoke meant. Had seen it often enough. Countless times, really. Seen the seeds of what wanted to be a home, a village, a town, gutted. Back then, he'd always been helpless. Alone. Without a Guardian. And over and over he'd vowed that, one day, it'd be different. One day he'd not be alone and they—him and his guardian—they'd help.

He withered, his shell sliding down an inch, and thought that all of this? All of this kind of was terrible and he couldn't fathom where to even begin with fixing it.

His Guardian stepped on something. A twig, probably. She almost bounced off her feet when it snapped under her feet and clutched her shirt collar (still held over her nose) so tight her knuckles turned white.

But she kept walking. His Guardian didn't stop, and he'd be lying if that didn't make him proud. Even when he paused and waited, she shuffled on, right past him and out to where the trees gave way to what was left of the settlement.

Which wasn't much, by the way.

You're okay. You're fine. Count to ten. You're good.

She wasn't. Good. There weren't enough tens to count to help.

Nicole passed out from under the trees, her throat lined thickly with the oily shit clogging the air and her lungs and eyes on fire, and really just wanted to turn tail. Except she stood in a clearing maybe three-quarters of a soccer field across, one crowded with brick and wood buildings standing on hardpacked earth. Nothing rose above the tree line and most of it was either actively on fire or smouldering. Half a miracle, she thought, that the flames hadn't started eating the trees.

She threw the Ghost a sideways glance. He looked right back at her, briefly, before he shimmied off, his shell all stiff, and headed deeper into the smoke-choked settlement. Nicole followed him. And for every step she took, some through mud squelching under her feet, her sluggish mind put names to things she saw. Like it didn't want to, but it had to, because it couldn't keep pretending they weren't there. The flawless ground, for one, turned very flawed indeed. Tracks. Furrows. Deep ones. From vehicles, maybe. Footprints, too. Lots. Most of them too large for people and not from any animal she knew. There were also scorch marks. And bullet hole shaped… holes in brick and wood. A turned over wheelbarrow. Curtains on the outside, trampled and muddy. Thrown over crates, their contents spilt. Scattered papers.

Blood.

Everywhere.

She'd stepped into some. Turned out the ground wasn't muddy from rain.

Her stomach flipped violently. And when she noticed the first body, it made it all the way up her throat.

Okay-yeah-terrible-idea. You useless, rusty, shank.

His Guardian doubled over and heaved up her empty stomach. Because that's what you did when you saw a bunch of corpses splayed out on the ground or thrown against walls. Especially bloody and twisted and pale ones, with gaping holes where there shouldn't be any. They'd been there for a while.

After that, she tried very hard not to look at them.

"There isn't anyone left to help," she said. "Is there?"

He turned a perfect 360-degrees, scanning the battlefield (generous, this had been a slaughter), and then sunk a few inches, pulled down by the invisible weight of his horrendous decision. He should have listened to his doubt at the start.

"No." But this wasn't all lost yet. Another quick scan aaaand— there, the dull static of an idle comm relay. They always tickled a bit funny. "We can still call for help though. Come on, thataway."

She trudged after him, eyes glued to his back (as he noticed when he spun around briefly), and kept herself quiet as a mouse all the way until he found the station.

Miraculously, the equipment they needed sat on a crowded, dirty desk in a shack held together by enough spite it'd refused to catch fire. And it was about as dated as his Guardian and oh you stupid bulb that'd been a really horrible thing to think. His shell clicked together hard enough to squeeze and he had to shake it back out before beginning a cursory scan of the stack of gear.

"Okay," he said and his Guardian glanced up. First at him, then around the shack. She stood around with her arms folded, her hands tucked into them, and looked a whole lot as if she'd fallen out of a dictionary where she'd illustrated miserable. Dark eyes from not enough sleep, check. Light lines running down dirty cheeks from crying, check. Lips cracked, checked. Hair all over, check. Also, cold again. Or just shaking out of fear. Or both. Check. Check.

"Good news, the radio still works." Her throat jumped when he said that, regardless of how he'd made an effort to modulate his most confident voice ever. "More good news, there's a coat behind you that looks like it'd fit. And a rifle."

She turned around, stared at both. When she looked back he'd interfaced with the radio and it'd come on, its tiny lights flashing in reds and greens.

"It belongs to someone," she said. "And I don't know how to shoot."

Of course she didn't. This was getting better and better by the minute. "Believe me, you'll need it more than them."

A rustle of cloth and a quiet huff told him she'd grabbed it. "How'd you do that? Turn it on, I mean. You don't have hands."

"Don't need hands to be useful. And that's me, useful." He glanced at her. She didn't look convinced, so he drooped all over again and focused on his task: getting them out of here.

The Ghost had been wrong about the coat fitting. It was a few sizes too large and way too heavy, though she had to admit the weight helped. Almost comforting, really, how it dragged on her shoulders. Except nothing'd comfort the dead bodies away. Nicole sighed, threw a look at the rifle stuck to the wall, and felt useless.

While he began talking to the radio, she loitered with her hands in way too wide pockets. One of which had something in it, and when she pulled it out her stomach squeezed out a happy growl. It looked like it didn't matter how much time had past since she'd died, protein bars still looked like protein bars. She tore it open, stuffed the top of the wrapper back into the pocket, and eyed the Ghost, who'd identified himself on the radio with a long-ass number, over and over again, because apparently no one was picking up.

"Don't you like, have a name?" she asked after two bites. Gosh, that thing tasted like packed wood-chips flavoured by having been distant friends with a raspberry and yet it was probably the best thing she'd ever had.

The Ghost paused and he twisted around just enough to look at her. "Ghost."

She frowned. "You're a Ghost and you're called Ghost."

"Until my Guardian gives me a name, yes," he said. Tersely.

"Oh." She took another bite.

And then things went to hell.

The radio came alive. Between pops and static tearing through, a voice called out. Desperately. Nicole froze, the bar stuck between her teeth.

'Help', was the first word she understood. Most everything else was mangled and distorted — and in a language she couldn't place. Something-something 'trap' she heard though. And 'please' and 'wounded' and it wouldn't stop.

Trap?

She looked around. Had the walls just come closer? Nonsense.

"Slow down, slow down," Ghost said. "I can get a lock on your location, but I need to know—"

A blood curdling, stuttering cry cut the air. Not quite laughter. Not quite howl. Something in-between, torn out of an inhuman throat. It came from outside. Outside the shack. Silence swallowed the voice on the radio.

"Oh dear." Ghost backed away, his shell shrunk together tightly. "We— ah— we need to go. Like right now."

He zipped past her. Out the door.

And Nicole still stood there. Inside. Rooted to the spot. The stupid protein bar still in her mouth. She couldn't move. Again. Couldn't, period. Anything. Outside, the laughter-howl poured together. Swelled. It was everywhere.

"Guardian!" Ghost called. He swung into the doorframe, twisting back and forth wildly. "Oh for— Please. I need you to follow me— because we need to move and we need to move now. These are Fallen and they'll tear us both apart if they find us."

He came back, a panicked, jagged ball of high-pitched clicks and whirrs that danced in front of her nose.

"Nicole. Please. We need to go. Now."

That was her name. That was her. The froze-up-idiot.

She dropped the protein bar back into the pocket and ran.

Taffer Notes: This is now caught up with Ao3 - so the fic will begin to update once (maybe twice) every month from now. Knock on wood, anyway.