And when in distant lands I roam,
Far from this dear and hallow'd spot,
And exile from my native home,
Oh ! think of the Forget-me-not.

Mary Anne Browne


His only visitor is unexpected. After the fire, blue eyes laying in waiting, sharp bones formed out of graceful colorless diamond shards.

Pain so big he can't do anything but turn his head slightly and blink at her, a burned scorched husk of a breathing being.

She waits for his eyes to adjust focus, dilated dark pupils racing, the smell around him will forever stick to his skin with the force of a chemical component that will not leave the taste of his mouth. Nasty, nasty, and a tongue glued to the back of his throat. Swallowing hurts as if he forces a wadded ball of cotton down.

"Where-What-" Is the only words he can muster to say. A disgraceful misstep of etiquette, but so is her sole appearance on the old creaking metallic side of his bed.

"You poor boy." Her voice almost friendly. Eyebrows drawn together.

Dreary and doleful, inconsolable.

He has never met her. Enough words exchanged between two boys about family. But now she is here, here with him, and he does not understand how she found him or why- why?

A sigh, a single heave of a chest dressed in a dark blue and white jacket. "I told him it wouldn't end well. I didn't think it would happen like this, though."

"Where is-" Bursting bubbling skin, breaking and reeking, charcoal sulfur and pain, pain like he has never experienced before-"Maven?"

"He won't visit you. But you knew that. " Certain words, without much scorn, just slight cold. But rational, very rational. "You wouldn't want him to see you like this, would you?"

Like this? Like what?

A pile of scars and wounds and molten skin halfway stitched up and bandaged, ugly screaming on the back of his hands when he forces himself to look, what am I?

"He asked me if he could just forget you, you know. And maybe that would have been for the best."

Forget , forget the shame. Forget whatever was there and was not.

Hand stretching out, touching the rough side of his bandaged arm, a hand that feels smooth for a second. No comfort, too confused.

He stares at her, faces numb, not able to think clean.

A stuttering breath. Another. He wants to cry and weep and wallow and wail-

"I can't offer exactly to make the memory disappear, Thomas. But I can offer you the same as him. To move on and away from this mess."

The flat of a hand touching his arm one more time.

Clean up after the mess, that is what it is, what it will always be, a mistake, a failure, a broken heart, and a burned body.

Blond hair pale in the sterile sick light, sitting silent, almost artistically pitiful.

"Those scars will look terrible. We can arrange for them to be erased. No one will ever know."

An offer not because friendliness is inside her but because she wants to sway him. Erase she says, erase she means.

Pain tugging at his mouth, face, body, hands, feeling the fever dream of flames licking still. Because the last memory of the boy he loved is fire and will always be.

A flash of pain, a light circling over the grey behind his eyes, the Ghost sits up slowly. At least as far as his ribs do allow it.

His lips are very dry. He licks them once. Breathes through his nose. Takes in the faint smells around him.
Sometimes pain does only remind you about older wounds, and it doesn't help he hasn't moved much the last days.

Miraculously, his back and his head are not damaged from the fall. Three ribs, however, are badly bruised and snapped into two. It makes traveling a bit harder. Escaping is about the momentum, the rage of the tempo, as he has relearned on the hunter's chase at the bridges in Archeon.

In the distance, just behind the far planks of wood, and a door, he can hear voices talk. A small laugh, a genuine weird sound that doesn't connect too much with him.

Slowly, ever so slowly, he forces himself up.

He moves without as much as making one sound. It is one breath at a time with sheer spite and clenched teeth, grey flashes of pain because, despite the possible treatment, they are still on the run and cannot afford to lose time or blow their cover.

His toes in the boots curl up with every too long step of his legs as if he was a cat retracting his claws.

Another sprawled sentence, longer now. The Ghost leans himself against the door, listening, trying not to faint. Finding out about your company helps, especially when you are wounded. The Ghost knows listening is viable enough.

"Wake him up in a few hours. We need to leave." The first one orders. He is Lakelander. He tries to hide his accent. He does a rather poor impression.

"Did you see him fall?" A second voice asks. "No one should be able to be alive after that. Should have busted his skull. He landed like he just wanted to dip in and take a swim."

"Are you fucking surprised?" A third one chimes in, female. "Look at his cheek. Like he took a shrapnel straight to the side. Tough one."

"His throat too. And his hands."

If the Ghost could be amused, perhaps he would smile at the metaphor of calling him ruined and ugly. Beauty isn't anything he is ever concerned with. The old scar tissue is what it is. Ugly or not, he often forgets about it. And despite it, he always could blend in. Maybe it is because people don't want to look for too long at something unpleasant.

"Maybe he IS a spirit after all." The second voice mutters. "He isn't like us, that is sure."

"As far as I am concerned," The voice with the accent ends the very discussion. " We retrieve him and bring him where superiors want him. He's caught attention now. Whatever he is or isn't."

The Ghost agrees.
Enough to get saved, at least.

A man that predicts futures for all lives has sent him here. He ought to have some understanding that this will be having an impact.

He still leans against the door when the handle turns.
One staggering step, a piercing pain, he almost falls.

"You got some willpower," comments the one with the accent, apparently leader of the group.

He's in his twenties, with his hair cut so short it's barely visible. Guardsman, or a soldier, apparently, by the way, he holds himself. The Ghost supposes he shouldn't be surprised he was found viable enough to keep alive. He is good at serving and handling. In times of violence, such people get value.

"You could have something against the pain," he gets offered by the woman calling him tough. The Ghost doesn't care for any of their names. They still tell him. He refuses to use them.

Needles and haze, sweet, sweet, lulling him into honeyed sleep despite the horror of the knowledge what his body is going through-

"No." Is his firm answer.

They stare at him as if he truly was a manifestation. A poltergeist.
Is it satisfying or irritating?

It is nothing, like always, no real strong impression, the taste of stale air and the smell of the wood, the warmth their bodies make, he notices it all-

Ghosts haunt the living, they don't love, no no. Else they would feel more than the pulls, they would be more and less than they are now, and the ghost cannot afford that, can never afford it.

"You said we had to move." Is all the Ghost whispers and drags himself back.

He doesn't have the strength to handle emotions around him if he has to concentrate his whole being on pushing through and getting wherever these people want him to go.

They move slowly despite the upgraded ways of traveling. By foot, the ghost assumes, he would be very, very dead by now. But even days are too much, and no vehicle, boat or even jet could be fast enough for him to never look back at the failure he has experienced down at a window with a rifle, staring into alarmingly blue eyes. Too slow for the Ghosts taste. But it is solely his fault for being damaged.

The Lakelander proves viable. He takes over any form of communication in the small group. The Ghost doesn't mind. The less talking he has to do, the fewer people he has to see, the better. He won't however, leave the Ghost alone, invading private space and trying to spark conversations whenever possible. He meets silence and hollow eyes most times, refusing to answer questions.

"You know, you will answer a lot of questions when we have reached our destination, fogland soldier," The Lakerlander mutters.

"Maybe." The Ghost of Thomas forces his voice to say. He doesn't care for a sparking conversation. "but I don't have to answer you."

He is not overly hurt by the Ghost refusing to answer, but instead, he puffs out a breath. "We risked our lives to follow you around and retrieve you in the case you were to survive your suicide commando."

"If I had stayed up in the woods," He asks, just because he wants to know if he is on the right trail of thoughts. "Would you have come to me too?"

"No. Even though it would have been a lot less risky than waiting for you to kill the royal family in the capital, I think the orders-"

"Orders?" The Ghost asks sharper than he thought he was able to give his hoarse voice emotion. "What orders?"

"You were useful up there. But you weren't...I think you weren't important. That shot you wanted to make, that made you important."

It confirms his suspicions. Does not console him. But confirmation is more than enough for now. The next time he will see Jon, he will shoot the red-eyed bastard. No future or premonition of it can save him from it.

The images in his head are endless on repeat.

They cut and hiss, try to break free and harm him.

"Please don't forget about me. Even if you leave."

There is some comfort in his hand being able to touch him in the dark.

"How would I ever forget you?"

And he smiles, because it is a generous offer of wonder and confusion.

A lie. A lie. Because in the end they wish to forget.

The Lakelander finds him under the only tree close enough to the hideout, right out of side of any paved way or watchful eye.

"Why are you sitting here? You're still not recovered and unarmed."

"I think better if I am not forced inside a room," The Ghost offers, his voice is soft, to his own surprise. "And I am never unarmed."

Just to prove his words right he lifts up the knife in his hand, one small silent friend. He holds it carefully away from any kind of sunshine that could produce a shimmering fleck.

"It would never feel right. I do miss my gun."

"You could ask us for a new one."

"I will. But it won't be mine anymore." The hand had already been given away, the iron lover that never lied is gone now too. His knife, his backpack. The strange thing is that even if all the emotional value is almost void, he still feels the flimisiest attachments that remember very well cleaning the gun and reading the book. "I cared very well for it. A good and trusty instrument. Drowned in the river or left on the bridge."

"You're a weird one. I am proud to announce I could establish contact about our progress," the Lakelander says. "Since we will reach our destination some time, fogland soldier, maybe you should prepare yourself to answer questions."

The Ghost of Thomas has kept his past from himself. No one else could ever know about it. No one will ever recognize him.

"They can ask all they want."

"Hm." The man makes. "Is there something else?"

The Ghost decides to take the chance. He doesn't trust the man. But he will answer him somehow, at least, and he wasn't stuck in the woods.

"I was irked because, despite her strategic value, I haven't seen nor heard anything about the whereabouts of Mare Barrow." The Ghost sits silently in the dark, half broken bones and half iron will push through the gift of the pain advising him. "Just the same old words, same old images, wanted posters and declarations about being the enemy and the dangers of the Guard."

"Oh, didn't you get the reports? How strange, you must have been busy with planning to get yourself killed."

"I never claimed to be worthy of information. I just noticed it. " The Ghost is unimpressed by the sarcasm. It flies straight over his head.

"Maybe you can ask people in the higher ranks after they are done with you." The Lakelander offers dry and takes his leave.

"Maybe." The Ghost agrees. "It solely depends on how you want to use me, though."

"Is there more than your incredible will to push yourself through pain?"

The Ghost stares at the scarred palms of his hands, the knife they hold and twirl around. He feels the breeze and he feels the unsure energy of the traveling group, as he always did. People may endure, but they don't want to run all the time . They have a destination. They have families. They have homes. "There is always more."