A thing counts as valuable when people make it count.
The days that follow the fall on the dune of sand are strange. They pulsate with some eclectic energy, the leftover of piquing curiosity. The Ghost can't remember the last time he was curious. Curiosity deals with cards that don't fit in a hand, and it leads to losing more often than not.
The fog land soldier was never curious. He just did what people told him, moved on, and ignored whoever tried to be personal. Whoever tried to be close would be dead, and he didn't need to know their names.
He does learn the names of everyone in the base around him now. Even if he keeps forgetting, sometimes, they blink into existence like a treasure chest just waiting to be opened.
Every name is a coin, and they clink in the mental space of the Ghost's brain whenever he turns his head and watches someone.
Some names stick better than others.
He remembers Bree Barrow, after being pulled off the ground and dragged into the barracks. His protests didn't mean anything when his legs betrayed him, and so all Bree had to do was to gather the bundle of flesh and bones that he is.
He remembers him also because he keeps greeting him whenever the Ghost chooses to break the tired haze of sleeping and wanders. His ribs are still broken to shards, his bruises are fading like love letter's ink melting in water. He wanders into the sand again, but he also wanders around the few buildings that are open to public access, the small hallways between the barracks and quarters.
He sometimes sees more of the Barrows, but only in the distance at first, because he cautiously stays away. He learns the names, and to his surprise, the coins clink loudly every time he sees the faces. They aren't as hazy and foggy as his own, not as burned as his, not as dead. Everyone is still far away, and he prefers it this way.
Then, something changes again. It's because there is a girl with reddish hair and a maimed hand.
It's just the smallest movement of the nitid head when they pass on the barracks. He glowers over her like a broken spire, and she doesn't look up, because her hands try to hold something. It is a box that topples with her nitid skin and hair tumbling in ripples.
He stops. He doesn't know why. The box is straight below his toes in the shoes.
His ribs seem to break again when he pauses and leans over. Not crawling today but still walking bed over like an old man in a younger skin. Their heads almost hit each other when he leans forward.
He can see how the bones in her hand must have been smashed. They don't bend or move in the half concealing bandage. It is the skin of someone that has felt violent deeds. Punishment.
Because that is what they do. They kick and punish and break.
Military is hard, they say, you are not here to dawdle, they say, function or fail, function or fail and rot- law is law, you are red, you are useless if you don't work-
People get broken, and the good ones get hurt until they perish. The good in this world is a stasis that gets broken and withers, it burns and it drowns, it breaks and it falls.
He lifts the box. It isn't heavy, paper-thin wooden material with different needful things for daily survival inside. It's still big enough that a small-sized person with only one hand might find it uncomfortable to carry.
"Thank you."
She stretches the functional hand out. He does not give the box back and just stares at her face. Her expression is slightly closing, questioning. She stares at his scarred face the same he stares at her hand.
No judgment, at last not visible. Not the hushed rumor of half the base or the soothing, too tight-knit talk of a medical professional.
"Can I have that back?" She asks.
He still doesn't hand it back. Instead, his fire kissed hands are clawing inside the chipped wood until a splinter breaks into one of his fingers.
His voice stumbles out of his strangled throat in a puzzle of an offer that he hasn't expected to ever say again. "Do you want me to help you? I can carry it."
Something in his words hits the wrong side of her soul, her face still looks friendly, but something inside scratches at her. It burns inside her dark eyes and bellows under her skin, beneath the lambent and scintillating color, like a rainstorm, faint in the distance.
He realizes it must have sounded like pity, like he underestimated her, and that it must be degrading.
Function or you are worthless, faster, now, you rat, faster-
"Not because I don't think you can't carry it," the Ghost adds. "Just because I have nothing to do."
The rainstorm is gone, the face is clear again. "I know. I see you wandering off every day. Bree says they need to catch you sometimes."
Catch him, like an animal, like a monster, not like a normal, like a person, catch him like he is not just floating beside them in a mortal vessel made of bones.
"I don't like sitting around. My body is my tool, and I can't use it anymore."
He still stares at his hands. His breath heaves a little, the box pokes at a cracked bone. He wouldn't tell her.
"If you want to, you can carry the box, but it isn't that far," she decides. "I'm Gisa. And you're Thomas, right?"
And because that is the fundamental truth not deniable, he just looks at the box. The splinter digs into his skin, but it doesn't matter. "Yes."
Gisa Barrow moves around him slowly after that, always careful not to make him jump. She acts as if she is a stranger in the woods, slowly getting the wildlife accustomed. She acts as if he is a stray cat. Her hands are never hectic, her voice is always friendly, and her face is never judging.
Most days, she finds him wandering around the beach, or sitting in the sand, digging his hands into it. He lets the sensation of the fine grains fall against his skin.
It's a wave and a shout, it's a human ocean, and the bodies fall like flies in his unit- they are sand that fumbles and falls, sand in an hourglass and no one ever cares-
Sometimes the wind is too heavy and it blows up wave after wave of water on one side, and sharp intervals of sand on the other. Other times he almost sits too close to the water. He doesn't dip his feet inside. He just watches the water, the ships that come and go, get hidden and carefully brought away. The mismatched, tiny fleet of Tuck.
"You need a better jacket," she tells him.
"I'm not cold." Because he doesn't feel the cold the same as everyone, because it sometimes helps to steer clear and away. To keep an anchor and don't wade too deep, to not wake the serpent. It's so close, too close.
They stare at clouds together, or at driftwood. The skeletal bleached pieces that remind him of bare-bones and splintered skulls.
Sometimes she finds a shell or a small stone, an interesting bit of wood, and she points it out to him.
He wouldn't tell her, but he keeps everything she points out. It's strangely relaxing in his fingers, with the numb nerves slowly coming alive to feel the rips. The corners, the smoothness. When there was only a knife under his pillow before, the smell of the ocean now turns the small space of his cot and bunkbed to salt and seafoam. The gun and the book were memoirs of a dead man. The remains of beach mornings in a cot are something else. He doesn't know what it is. Or why it calms him.
Sometimes she brings one of her brothers, and even if the Ghost remains silent and invisible somewhere behind them, they sometimes turn to look at him, or they ask him things he has no answers for. They tell him things. And even if most slip out of his head, some stay. It is about family, about parents, about a missing brother and sister. They avoid the news that chime from the propaganda channels, and the Ghost is glad because he couldn't look at a certain face without revealing something he doesn't want to.
"Where is your sister?" He asks her one day.
She surely has heard that question before. "I don't know. None of us do."
"Do you think she will come back?"
It leaves a split feeling of hope and misery on the shore to ask that question.
Of course, there are days he doesn't show up, or she doesn't come over, but all in all, he can say something about Tuck he couldn't say about any other place before. He never had friends, never even comrades. But if the girl with the broken fingers and the bright spirit has something to say, he has now. Gisa Barrow is a friend, and that is the strangest realization he has made.
The physical recovery continues, the blur stays. Sleep is still unpleasant. Everything goes by, and the Ghost doesn't ask for names. But people keep telling him.
That is until the day prisoners get poured on the porch of the mismatched quarters and the hangar of the Scarlet Guard.
