'Names are given as gifts, as a reminder, or honor. Names can be given as curses. And names can be forgotten until another tongue speaks them loud and reawakens them.'


They don't restrain him, but they as well might. The people that have brought him here have turned from guards protecting him to guards protecting the world from him the second they step on the beach. It is subtle. But he knows the language of a fighter, the alarm, the edge. The expectation.

The Ghost does not struggle. He only steps into the sand, feet soft, sinking deep. The water doesn't cleanse him, it never does, It did not cleanse and set him free as he jumped from the bridge. It won't do so now. The smell of salt in his nostrils gets washed away and replaced, drowned by the raindrops from the sky.

Water and Fire. Killing him again and again. Surrounding him while pondering and while stepping onto shores.

He walks in a straight line between guns for three paces along the beach before stopping. His ribcage blisters and screams underneath his clothes. The pain is still excruciating, but it keeps him sharp, it keeps him grounded. The guns are pointed at him. He takes one more step. He counts the way he breathes and the world responds in a shower of movement just as tiny as the raindrops, but just as heavy, boots that move around him ever so slightly but in a well ordered, drilled manner.

Marching, feet in a line, a distant shout, and guns at the ready, and there's sweat on his brow, and he hates himself for it but he can't stop thinking-

His muscles between the broken bones twitch, hardening on his face with the mist of water flowing over his ruined clothes. Rain, wind, mist, and the world clogged, surrounded by something grey. Seasons turn by and days loose meaning for the Ghost often. The wandering has done that. And whatever lies buried and tries to break free from his past.

His eyes catch below the buildings that stand between the soft curve of hills. He can recognize the shapes. The soldier and the fighter pump and pulse the recognition into his head. Barracks, a dock, a hangar.

One of the men that have brought him here gives his shoulder a low touch to keep him walking.

He stares straightforward. It would be in vain to hide his face. He doesn't lower his head.

He stares at the guns, the faces behind them, but they blur into a mass of dead soldiers and fighters left behind.

What keeps a good man from dying? Nothing, all dead, dead, the good die first, and everything keeps dying, why does everything keep dying- the blood is too hot, and the sounds are ripping his eardrums apart if he could scream he would but he never can and so he doesn't-

Pain still blooms in wild tangled vines around his chest. It sets his head straight. The group departs deeper into the island. He keeps his head up and his hands in front of his body, for everyone to see. Surrendering, for now. If he didn't surrender, that would not be buying anyone's trust.

A weapon is obedient, after all.

And he is so used to the indifference that nothing in their eyes could hurt him studying his face.

There are few things left in this world that can hurt the Ghost, move him. One is recognition. And all of these people are strangers.

He gets shoved inside a small room. It's too bright and stale, and he might as well be chained to the chair. The Ghost can barely think in the small room, head pounding and racing, blood deadly hot, pain barely keeping him from shaking, and a part of wants to be in the middle of the swaying grass in the hills he observed.

Someone steps inside with the Lakelander. A moot nickname, the Ghost realizes later. Most of them are Lakelanders. But they are blurry and they stay blurry scratched out faces of people he used to fight on a valley of ash.

Norta. Lakelands. What does it matter?

Silver is silver and red is red, and blood is blood and it flows in rivulets and explosions, in violence from hands that wield their obedient servants, friends, their weapons that are trustworthy-

Water drips in puddles down his jacket. Someone hands him a blanket. The Ghost looks at the fabric between his scarred , firekissed hands. A curteous question about his pain. He deflects it with a simple shake of his head.

"Trust me, he means that, he's a monster when it comes to pain," the Lakelander mutters.

The Ghost sits in silence.

A monster, what does make a monster?

What makes a good man, Thomas?

Loud, snapping, metal sounds, boots ripping over a corridor, a hallway filtered with guns and lights.

The Ghost still only waits. He looks at the water drops. Reflections of nothingness. They weep and waver on the ground when the door gets opened again.

"It's time to answer some questions," The Lakelander says as his farewell. As if he wants to prepare the Ghost of Thomas for what is to come. Then he stands straight to attention. "Colonel."

The Ghost whips upwards, and he stares into one good and one bad eye, a face that shares some sort of malformation left by a fight. Military man by nature, hard stone and hard hands, the Ghost knows the type.

"I was assured a dozen times we wouldn't need a cell."

There is no indifference in the Ghost. He just stares at the man that they call the Colonel. He doesn't salute. But he doesn't insult him.

"I only kill silver," The Ghost answers as if that explains anything. "And someone may say I owe you for saving my life. I would be dead if your people hadn't fished me out of the water."

Or would he be dead?

Unable to die, always coming back, back, BACK.

"I didn't have a word in your rescue mission," the face is still hard and harsh. Unimpressed by the scars or the endurance. The air stands between them with the soaking smell of a dirty body drenched in sea and rainwater. "But you did plenty of work in the woods."

Interceptions of messages, dead soldiers, dead officers.

Miserable weather and faces, a vengeful spirit in a stolen uniform haunting them.

"I come as an asset. I do what people tell me. Ask your questions, Colonel. If you want to put me in a cell. Just do that."

A weeping, screaming, familiar weapon weighted in a hand, waiting for a command.

The Colonel almost seems pleased by that notion, just the smallest difference in the way he looks down at the Ghost of a boy.

The Ghost just waits for another swing, another accusation or another question.

Instead, the interrogation turns another way.

"Thomas-" The Colonel says, and for a fearful second, the maws are close. They want to snap shut. They have been waiting for many, many long days, months, painful nightmares and hours of fighting to keep them at bay.

"Just Thomas." The Ghost interrupts. The good eye watches him cautiously.

"Sir." He adds. Out of a polite and deeply embedded memory.

The sea serpent that has lurked in the shallow water waits.

Suddenly he wishes someone had chained him to a chair because he wants to leap up, fight a restrained state of mind, keep himself together, can't let the maws devour him. Through the fog, more distant memories.

For a heartbeat, there is nothing, not even air inside his lungs, or in the room, a vacuum produced by the sucking, sick motion of a dead name and a dead boy attached to it. Then he pulls himself together.

"It has changed a few times, but that one stays," the Ghost whispers. A name stays like scars, bestowed by pain.