'Give a man a shovel, he either digs a well or a grave.'
The people are like the water that he has watched the whole day, but they drown in each other. Barely any command rings through the noise. At first, he doesn't want to even step further than over the edge of the sand. It marks one more step toward talking, it marks another step forward into something unknown. A moment, the Ghost remembers Jon's fortune glazed red eyes in a murder of crows, his reassurance that this is the better version of the future. A thing that ultimately shouldn't be for one man to decide.
"Fog," Someone next to him says.
A few people push onward, toward and through the mess that is unfolding. Chaos needs to get organized, and the Ghost imagines that the Colonel is just glaring daggers out of his good eye at the unexpected wave of strangers on the island.
"Hey fog, you need to keep the way clear," the voice says, pulling at his arm. The touch triggers his body to fly around and fight whatever has decided to disturb him.
It's a relatively known face, fresh in his memory, for escorting and welcoming him on the island.
"Lakerlander," The Ghost greets and pulls his hand back. The fingers uncurl from the fist they made.
"I told you my name a hundred times," The man huffs.
The Ghost just looks back. "What is going on?"
"The lightning girl, that silver prince and a few others brought back a shitload of prisoners, that is what happened. Look, there's even silver ones, but that's not the wildest part."
The Ghost forces the inquiry out of his dry throat. "What is the wildest part?"
"They brought the corpse of the queen, and they're going to roll the cameras on it."
Quite the message to test the boundaries of provocation. And also, that has to be said, it is quite clever.
He imagines for a moment that this could have happened earlier. If he had pulled the trigger, there'd have been a hole in her head. But her body would have been procured and she would have been revered. A dead body in the hands of enemies, and their will to show it off is worse than a precise headshot. It is like the bodies dangling on gallows.
The roaring sounds of bodies in disarray is too much. The island is too small for so many people, at least for the Ghost, because it means he can't flee and hide.
"I'm usually in for a break, but it's all out and crazy right now. Me and another are told to bury the body after they finished shooting the material. Not looking forward to it."
"Can I help?"
"Do you know how to break into the broadcast system so everyone will see it?"
"No."
"Do you know how to organize a whole lot of former prisoners that are just being brought into a top-secret base?"
"No."
The Lakelander curls his mouth into a knowing expression. "I don't think we will shoot or stab anyone. They all are injured and starved. And you're still not on the height, even if you are really good at hiding it, you monster."
He lets that slide. The Ghost doesn't have time for pondering about insults when his head is trying to wrap around every new sensation tingling on his spine. Watching and waiting, carefully closing in on the buildings, just enough to see the tip of the mess. "I meant if I can help you. The whole base in on their feet and I am not doing anything."
"I'm not that high in rank, but they need every hand, and no one really cares who does it as soon as they are done. Some are not looking forward to being next to that silver corpse. Heard the smell is bad."
"I know how to dig a hole." And in this whole mess, in the whole amassed misery and the screams, cries, barks, everything reeks of the war and everything reeks of the pain and the loss. The Ghost blinks into the sun above his head, a full plate of gold in a sky blue and carefree freckled with clouds.
The Lakelander stares at him. "Just follow me and be quiet. What do I tell you? You are always quiet."
It's a quality of the dead and the lost ones, the Ghost thinks but doesn't say it.
A figure catches his eye when he follows the Lakelander into the hangar. A tall dark-skinned girl dressed in a scowl and block letters.
They stare at each other. He instantly recognizes her. He watches and waits.
"The Reader." Is all she says.
She remembers. Maybe it was the little stalemate between their hands hissing under the buckle of each other's weapons. Perhaps it was the night spent in silence, but relatively safe in a barn. Most probable it is just his scarred and burned face.
Whatever reason, it almost feels welcome to have someone remember him just as he does her. No hard feelings. No association to harm one another.
"The girl that wanted to die in the Choke." He acknowledges back. "I guess it didn't work out the way you planned it to."
Life seldom does so he should not be surprised.
He is, however, surprised by the answer he gets. "And you're here because yours worked perfectly?"
There is no need in lying about it. "Someone else finished my job today- so no."
She makes a low sound in the back of her throat. Her dark clothes are smeared and battered in the way a fight leaves you. Debris, death, blood, bruises.
"Fog," the Lakelander ushers him further. "You can snuggle up later. Come on."
The Ghost lurks behind and out of view of any lense that could catch him. As if the camera is a glass to catch a bug, only that it would ban his essence and send it across the country.
He doesn't need to be in the focus. They have their lightning girl back, and she willingly has done deeds bigger than whatever his gun can achieve. Or his face.
He looks at her body half-hidden under the sheet, burned and broken. Swapped roles now. He doesn't laugh when he inspects her body on display. He doesn't feel anything. He has seen too many corpses to be dreary about another.
After the images are captured, Elara Merandus is still just a corpse on a stretcher, and she doesn't suddenly raise again when his eyes linger.
She smells burned. It is the smell of flesh sizzling and hair searing.
The smell reminds him of his own death, in some way. Not quite the linger longer fire, but close enough. Out of practical reasons someone will have to get rid of the corpse soon, so that's what they do.
Her blue eyes are glaring senselessly up. It's a custom to close someone's eyes to find peace.
But no one closed the eyes of the soldiers that got eaten by crows. No one closed the eyes of the scorched bodies before or the ones of the men dying in the mud along a woodland stretch with a trench.
The Ghost slowly leans down. He is very aware people are watching. Feet shift. Guns do too. Hands clenching tightly, the Ghost just pulls the sheet over her again.
"Where do we carry her?"
The official statement for that is 'Who cares'. And so that's what happens. Far away from any building or any gravestone already standing on the uninhabited part of the island, three men dig a hole.
A grave is for the dead and dying, but they aren't the ones that have to shovel it.
The Ghost of Thomas volunteers to help to shovel now. He doesn't feel anything digging. Perhaps he simply volunteered because he still remembers her sitting beside his bed.
You poor boy- A sigh, a single heave of a chest dressed in a dark blue and white jacket- erase what was-
She wasn't a kind woman. She didn't offer him things out of gentle nature. He could have been the one to kill her if he had pulled the trigger in Archeon. Oh, the possibilities and ironies. Jon must be so very proud of his net of the future woven and laid out before his feet. They are all just fish in it, desperately wiggling up and down, trying to free themselves.
There is always some form of necessity behind a hole in the ground. To bury a body and not be able to suffocate the memories.
The hole for Elara Merandus body is barely more than something a dog would dig into the soft ground. It is a hole made by people that don't care about the body they toss inside. It's no different from a mass grave filled with red corpses. Maybe it is just another form of trenches and puddles filled with mud or ash.
No one comes to watch the unceremoniously burial.
No one sings an ode. Poetry seems far off.
As someone that has died, the Ghost isn't too fond of overblown burial rites anyway.
He digs the hole. They toss her down. He starts shoveling again.
The crunching earth is the only sound between the breath of their bodies. No one speaks.
With every shovel of earth, every drop of sweat, it gets heavier. Until nothing is left.
Even Queens, it seems, are in the end not immune to the weight of an unmarked grave and an ungraceful end. He wonders. How anyone will remember her. How long it takes to be forgotten for a Queen.
