'Lives are like rivers: Eventually they go where they must. Not where we want them to.' Richard Russo


The digging takes less time than expected. Three people for one corpse is a doable task. He chooses not to talk to the men, and they choose the same.

Afterward, he wanders away like he always does, leaving a shovel and a grave behind.

His spot in the barracks are crowded now, every square of space is accompanied by new faces and former prisoners, ragged figures dressed in starvation.

It's easy to just take everything he deems valuable and flee.

He flees to a spot in between the crossing hallways, out of the way of anyone watching, with his pockets full of briny shells and dust from the beach.

It starts to encompass him, that smell, and it drifts around him in a foreboding cloud.

Just as he hides, another restless soul drifts by and finds him again.

Just as they almost killed each other in a stalemate, both their hands fling over to invisible weapons or form fists now. Only for a moment, only to be careful. Then the girl with the block letters lets her first line of physical defense sink, and he does the same. A few hours and she is, of course, unchanged, but he takes his time to look at her.

This time, he takes care to introduce himself.

"My name is Thomas. Just Thomas."

Her eyes are still cautious, even in blinking recognition. He thinks that that is a valuable trade. It is strange, that one girl the same age made him a friend by being gentle and this one could be far more than the opposite. But he respects that. Something in him can connect to it. And a part of him is strangely glad that she did not march to the Choke, or that the jet did not take her into some cell or to the mouth of a gun. "Cameron Cole."

He hobbles his arm forward in a handshake. That is appropriate for a more formal introduction he owes. Her fingers are as rough as his, hands of labor, hands that have built and torn things apart, but they are warm to the touch. Not incorporeal as he feels himself.

"Did you learn how to shoot yet?" He asks her.

"I have learned some." Her eyes still stare him up and down. "Do you offer to teach?"

"No. I am not a good teacher." He whispers. "I'm waiting for someone. Do you want to wait with me? No need to talk."

"No talk," the girl with the block letters says. The Ghost of Thomas blinks and has to force his head straight, right between the lurking monsters and the haze.

Her name, the Ghost has to remind himself, is Cameron. She told him. He imprints the name and makes sure he doesn't forget it. Names suddenly need to stick again. After all the time avoiding them, it feels strange.

Another thing he owes Gisa Barrow.

It doesn't take long. They stare into the ceiling together, and it doesn't feel half bad to have company if only to bark the shadows off that slowly creep up. It is a good thing the Ghost is amazingly prepared to stand still and wait for things patiently. Ambushes do that to you, and his muscle memory is the best thing he has.

The ghost shifts on the wall, arms crossed. He expected a brother, Bree or Tramy, or in the worst case her parents. They are patient with him, if only because he is sure Gisa has put in a good word, or Bree told everyone how he wanders around mostly harmless.

If they knew he sleeps with a knife under his pillow and that he has shot multiple people in their heads, would it change?

"Who's that one, Miss Cole?" His body points toward the other figure with Gisa Barrow, blonde, scarred, trashed in the same way fighting leaves everyone.

Her face blurbs in a short grimace at the polite address. "Farley?"

"Ah. Yes."

He heard the name a few times, the last weeks. Up in the fog, between the trees in his mind stealing the light of the day he was blissfully unaware. This is not the right moment. A part of the ghost wants to congratulate anyone that has just made it out alive this day, but given the funeral mood that swings in the air like an axe lumbering over a piece of firewood, it feels tasteless even for him. Not today.

"I have to say something, I feel like it may be my last chance to do so." His head cracks a little when he gives the girl with the block letters and crooked warm hands a nod.

"Tuck's small, see you around," She nods back. "Just Thomas."

"I liked "The Reader" too," he mutters before he forces the muscles in his legs the same way forward that a surprise attack after waiting for the ambush would do.

A man in a forest dies or breathes the same as a man in another city.
People die all the time. But now, staring at both their faces and the streaming off restless remains of a family, he is reminded that in face, even if they die, even if they fall. They mean something to those left alive. Most of them. Some, like him, just get lost in a stream of letters and a body that won't die as a tomb. Some like Elara, get tossed away in a hole by gravediggers that do not even blink.

"It's fine, it's just Thomas," Gisa says, hand retracting itself from Diana Farley's back. "He's a friend."

What is a friend worth? What does it even mean to be friends with someone? They worm themselves into your heart and they break it to pieces or set it ablaze, and you lose them and it hurts- it hurts like a landslide of blood, ash that is like snow, it hurts like flames sizzling on your hair and burning it with ease-

"I didn't know your brother." Words are meaningless when you lose something of yourself and other people. Feelings are always coming out in a stream of unarticulated sounds for him, and he coughs and chokes on them like tears made of ink, dripping from a piece of newspaper and drowning in a puddle. The faces that dissolve steady, the feelings that lurk in the distance. His body falls and rises, growing and shrinking, it is the numbness of toes in shoes too small, curling them together, squeezing and rubbing in blisters. "But I learned that good people die first."

Something in the face of the blonde, older one, cracks. Diana Farley stares at him in scars and scrapes, and for a moment he wonders if she can see he just means it and that he is never good at expressing gratitude or pain.

Just tell her the truth.

That was one of Jon's riddles. He can't make out who 'she' is, but it seems obvious now. He didn't want to be in the cameras or ever in any spotlight. He is a weapon best used on the field, he is not a prop to show off in a film, not the corpse of a queen, just the ghost of a boy.

Just. What does that mean?

It means all that remains, and it means all there was a moment ago. It means being fair, and being right, being morally high, and whatever else want the rebels? They want to be just, don't they? It means failing and dying, it means eyes getting eaten and bodies rotten in the ground- falling , dying, in pain and scorn and with the last words of no please don't-

The two of them are still staring at him.

"I would ask you where your sister is, but I don't know if I have the right to speak to her right now. She doesn't know me. And neither do you." His scars tingle when he forces himself to look over to Diana Farley. His voice gets lost on him. "Gisa, I am sorry for your loss. I've seen many people die. It doesn't get easier."

Just tell her the truth. No. Jon can take his premonitions and keep them. The Ghost has not stayed dead, and the ghost won't repeat the shot in Archeon for his pleasure. Someone else is much more appropriate to talk to.


The Ghost remembers little about the older brother, but what little he remembers doesn't hurt him and doesn't need to be isolated at least. It is only a small sample of his past self, and the sea serpent that guards the memories lets it slip past for now.

He has followed the trail of news that have scattered the past month until they have been ended in a circle. They didn't paint a good picture of Tiberias Calore, traitor, murderer, and exile. Not that a Ghost cares too much about any kind of words spoken. He follows them with the same impending feeling of numb doom that tingles along his spine whenever he sees people suffer, lie, and bleed.

The thing about words, not questioning if they are true or fake, smooth or rough, is, that they are mostly spoken to be heard. A message from the Guard ordering is as much to be heard by some small ears like the voice of Maven Calore on a video feed telling the world about the traitorous intent of a girl with red-colored blood conjuring lightning.

A boy named Thomas rarely met him enough to understand the difficulty of the relationship between brothers, and in war times stress and harmful words can be attributed to the circumstances of blood and death easily.
The Ghost could let him pass. He doesn't need to reveal himself from a safe position. For now, he could silently watch whatever chaos, misery and plans unfold. He could only follow orders again.

With one swift jump, he leaps in the way, boots cluttering on the ground.

Everyone seems old and drained out of color in these times. Even an exiled prince is no exception. There are shadows under his eyes and a stubble on his chin.
He blocks the path effectively, and he knows in the way he straightens his back and moves his arms, he could be in for an attack very soon. He expects the Ghost of Thomas to bite.

There is no recognition, and the Ghost doesn't blame him. His eyes fly over his gloved hands, the dark clothes fluttering on his wiry muscles hidden under strained flesh, the scars on his face. As a burner, he knows the way of fire, and he can see how it has eaten itself into the flesh of a boy, melting his skin and destroying the smooth surface, warping it to something else that is like the crater of a grenade thrown into a trench.

"You don't remember me." The Ghost says. The blunt delivery seemingly isn't anything new to the exiled prince. And it isn't anything new for the Ghost not to offer sugar and honey in his words. "I can't blame you. I used to be something else. Just...Just a red boy named Thomas. And it has been a lot of years."

The eyes are a mix of doubt, bronze and brass a moment, and the Ghost just lets them pass by. And then his eyes glide over the fire kissed skin again and he remembers some spark, about a boy that has long since died, and despite the fact they both know it shouldn't be possible for him to walk and talk, he does.

And then something else settles. The Ghost can watch memories burrow through his brain, memories of younger times, some conversation, some half-hidden unimportant detail.

"Thomas?" He asks. Not sure. And it stings and feels wrong, because in the weak lighting and fractured shadows he resembles someone else, not too much, but enough to make it hurt.

And they don't say the rest. How he is sure that his brother told him he was dead if he talked about him at all.

"I just can't seem to die." Is the only answer he has to that.