'Who is more lonely? The man that denies the past or the man that denies the future?'
They run in circles through Norta. As someone used to the chase, and to wandering, the Ghost doesn't complain about the hiding, the routes they take for evasion. After all, the group is small, and they can't afford to catch attention.
A part of the Ghost is fine with the deliberation. It only steels his determination again. It helps to heal the broken wounds on his skin to new scars. That part is fine with the fact he can delay the necessary questioning.
The other part, the restless one, the one that fights shadows in every corner, wants to be delivered as fast as it can. And it wants to be out of reach to get captured.
Somehow, everything was easy as he decided to leave the woods and march to the capital, hopping on red transports, stealing papers and an identity, even a rifle. Now, the streets and towns are yelling nests, cautious with silver eyes and stops that halt their group when they have to use roads.
"I don't like this," The Lakelander whispers when they get to a nifty situation that involves a clogged road and a silver officer."I don't like this at all. There isn't supposed to be a barricade in this part of the road."
The ghost stares at the metal plank and the guns on point, precise and at the ready, with one easy move they can rip through a chest and destroy skin, muscles, nerves, and organs.
"We can move around if you let me find a way," The Ghost offers.
"You aren't going anywhere," He hisses back. "If I don't deliver you alive I have risked all of our lives for nothing."
The Ghost lets them. He simply sits back on his feet and weighs the knife between his fingers a moment.
They make it. And for the night, they hide in a shed. The ghost can smell the sea from here. Water wherever your eyes wander on the horizon. A boy named Thomas would have loved the sea.
The ghost doesn't care. He only wants to go further.
"Did you see how they stared at him?" The woman asks later. "They know."
"Well, he's not particularly inconspicuous with that scars."
The Lakelander blows out a stream of air and is offended in the ghost's place. "He can hear you."
All the Ghost does is standing up silently, broken skin and hurt flesh moving away from the rest of the group into a corner filled with shadow. The group splits and moves around the shed. He lies awake for the most part of the night, until his eyes betray him and he falls into a soft moment of weakness and blurry images.
A sound behind him wakes the Ghost from the memories that always disturb him.
No one else is in the small room decorated by cobwebs and yawning nothingness.
His hand wanders down one side to the handle of the small silent friend that is his knife.
"You won't use the knife," a voice explains. This time, Jon isn't announced by the song that the murder of crows sings.
"I should use it. I want to." The Ghost whispers with a voice that severs through the air and cuts instead of the knife directly burrowing into Jon's flesh. "You lied to me. I want nothing more than to stab you through your red eyes."
He wants to get up and run his fist right into the man's jaw, and if he can, he should end the unnatural madness of trying to control the future, playing the long term like life is not suffering already. One single timed stab will do. He knows where to slice to make it hurt and he knows where to slash to make it fast.
"I didn't lie. And you will never stab or shoot me," Jon assures him. For a second he almost looks like he cares. But what does a mountain care for the wind howling around it?
"You knew this would happen. Everything. You sent me into some mission, you made me bait."
If Thomas' Ghost is made of fog, Jon is made of whispers and shadows. He doesn't move, eyes somewhere lost in the bright or doomed versions of the world around him. "One way or another, Thomas, you would have gone. And believe it or not, this future is a better outcome for you than the previous."
The Ghost brandishes the knife ready in his hand. To his surprise, Jon simply sits down on the spot by the door. The ghost is very sure that his guards are occupied. No one will ever know that Jon has decided to slip in and out of this room.
"What were the previous?" The ghost of Thomas asks, voice hoarse. The prospect of more pain comes to mind, then the prospect of something else. Maybe something better. But what could be better? This is is existence, and he is a floating specter of pain since the first time he died.
Ash-Fire-Death-it repeats and repeats and it will never stop-
"It doesn't matter anymore what visions I had," Jon answers. "They are lost. I gave you the push to be on the window because I had to."
And what a push. A push to be faced with a face he once loved and a finger ready to pull the trigger even though something bloomed inside his chest, flowers of red blood and love, desperation and memories.
A push off a bridge. Sailing into the darkness of the water ready to be consumed.
The Ghost doesn't say it.
"It's lonely, isn't it? Behind the future?"
Just as it probably is in the past. Or the present. Who is the Ghost to dare and make one better than the other?
Jon is the same unmoving, unreadable creature he was before, and the Ghost is surprised they both continue this talk. "Don't mistake my visit for socializing."
"Am I endangering your future endeavors again? Am I off the road and too late again?"
Jon stares into nothingness for six long breaths, lingering, the Ghost counts them.
"No." He finally says. "For now it isn't you. Not quite. I just come to make sure you do not forget some things."
The ghost clenches the knife in his hand.
"You will be on the water soon. Make sure you don't fall. I have seen you jump, once, but right now, I know you don't consider jumping again. You will make it. It is only the first step. And if she asks you, just tell her the truth."
Nonsense after nonsense, images after images, and they all belong to some tangled strain of future possibilities the Ghost knows nothing about.
"I bet," The Ghost weights the words on his tongue, not sure why he still talks. "We had a talk like this often in your head."
"A few times," Jon admits. " I come to visit you here in every timeline. It doesn't matter. You want to know how it usually goes. What you ask and what I answer."
The Ghost huffs. He is surprised that he is capable of this amused reaction. "You tricked me once, I will not fall for it again."
He doesn't see The Ghost or the room he is in anymore. Gone again to the future, or whatever existence, the Ghost doesn't want to even try and understand and is far from caring. After all, even with intentions that aren't malicious towards him, the long term game of manipulating time is something that affects the whole world. A great responsibility, maybe a burden but a strong power to behold.
The Ghost is weary about big power. He is no leader and he doesn't want to be.
Jon's voice is forlorn in the space in between the barricaded window and the Ghost's body alone in the darkness. "Don't worry, Thomas. The flames won't eat you again. At least not for a while. But keep an eye out for lightning strikes."
The Ghost chooses to ignore the shadow moving behind him. All he sees is a dim frame moving, standing up.
"I will shoot you now. I am sick of your prophecies."
Jon doesn't answer.
Better that way, most likely.
The Ghost of Thomas leans back.
He could pursue and hunt Jon. He could at least attempt. But that is wasted energy. Jon knows where they both move and just as fog dissolves, this bird can outmaneuver most storm clouds easily.
Jon is gone. The Ghost of Thomas accepts that with a grudge. He should have proven the red-eyed bastard wrong and shot him. Some lingering warmth is the only indication he did sit behind the Ghost.
Jon is right. Naturally.
The boat is stolen, half camouflaged with makeshift colors, and it is big enough to transport them over a part of the sea, at least.
The Ghost spends the most time on board in a light sleep. He doesn't think about jumping off. Jon is right about that too.
The barriers sink low in his head, just like the slick boat sinks through the waves, and his dreams embrace him with the same foggy imagery that they always hold. The dreams ripple with force, and sometimes he wakes up hastily chest and ribcage burning.
As fast as the images sweep by, he repeats to himself what he knows, what he is, what he does.
I am Thomas, the lips say with a muted tongue, soundless for anyone but himself beneath the sound of an engine whipping the boat through the water.
Just Thomas?
Just that. I am the Fogland Soldier on the poster and in the hushed voices.
I am the Ghost. I kill silver with metal that has the same glint and color as their blood.
It starts to rain when the Ghost leans over the edge of the metal banister and looks at a small stripe of shore. The water lies in a thin layer over their clothes and soaks into their skin. It drowns their lips and seals them. He doesn't feel the cold. He never does.
"Welcome to Tuck, fogland soldier," the Lakelander answers.
The Ghost doesn't care for welcomes. Or farewells. He simply clenches the metal below his fingers and waits.
