'One for sorrow,
Two for joy,
Three for a girl,
Four for a boy,
Five for silver,
Six for gold,
Seven for a secret never to be told'
The cruel weather creeps inside his inconspicuous coat, naked fingers that tingle him, leaving mourning kisses on his scars.
The weather falls in rain showers rolling off his hood. With his wet hair barely concealing the branded reminder of a long past murder, the dark rough fabric is the only thing that throws a shadow over them.
In the cascade of lights burning out to winter depression, the sky is as grey as every concrete block in the street.
The cloaked figure unfurls his hands from the pockets of the coat. The rain reminds him of the start of this trip. It reminds the waging, wailing part of his soul that something has to be laid to rest soon. And that another has formed. A conscious being that is neither one thing nor another.
Neither fully Thomas, neither fully the ghost, still both. And not any of them.
The faces on his way made sure to tell him that.
Your choices, Thomas, you are full of potential, look at yourself, what you survived, if you can find yourself practice- useless, fruitless, not enough time, it is a waste, he ought to tell them that, he is already combat-proven, he knows now, he knows what he can do, what he is able to-
They tried to convince him to more and different ways and strategies.
A confession, how brave, a videotape, an insurance, or a letter, something, anything, just make him uncomfortable- no no you just want everyone to know you have me, I am not good at this, how will this even help.
I am not valuable enough to trade myself in, I told you, I told you I am better outside, let me- and in the back of his sight a dark-haired figure with silver blood in their veins shifts as if he expected something else, or maybe it is what he wants, who knows.
They consoled him, they offered a small pearl of wisdom that rests in his gut like marble.
It's fine, it's fine, and there is a red scarf as a reminder, a leftover from a girl and a stink eye and curse from another.
New Blood. Ghost. Dead. Alive.
His body fluidly glides along the people. Their faces are blurry beneath a drop of water on his lashes. He sees his breath in a cloud, and it is the last sigh of a doubt that leaves his body.
Being hunted is something he is used to. Sleeping outside, on the road, is a thousand times better than being perched inside the underground tunnels of the resistance hideout.
It isn't like he has just told them he would walk off. It isn't like you can just leave.
Unsurprisingly though, if you have the silent stalk of a chased animal, if you have multiple partners in crime with their own intention, it is easier.
Although he knows, if someone reads his mind, maybe they can pull a few valuable recollections out. Not too many. Because everything in Thomas' head is still hazy, still hard to find. The world slips and taunts, rolls him and punches him. Everything about his senses overloads in smells, in sounds, everything he identifies and notes. Everything that is a ruckus in his system, that makes him lower his head, turn away, sweep under a roof or hide behind a wall.
Above his head magpies on a chimney call out warnings. Chiding, chafing rough , hacked, high pitched.
He walks by foot now, alone, and the rain that freezes everything on the road doesn't stop for the people surrounding him.
It all will freeze into a deadly cascade of snow in the grey fog.
His vision tumbles and checks everything around him, head still low.
So far he has evaded patrols enough. He knows how to flee or land. Under his coat the weapons beg to be set free. A bloodthirsty part shivers but no, not now, not here, too many people. Instead, it is about a transfer and if that will be guaranteed, the rest will go much much smoother.
Weaving and wandering, like he is made of liquid just as the half frozen puddles at his feet, he crosses the crowd. One eye up and he passes a camera. With every tiny bit of visibility after a control, with every image or anyone surviving after an attack, the word spreads, and for a second he imagines. Imagines how he looks.
In the eyes of a perpetrator that shoots and strings up victims, the last thought is surprise and fear, in the eyes of a victim it is fear, death is fear.
So how about someone that is both perpetrator and victim but is not afraid to die at all?
I am coming, the boots in the water say, just wait, it takes a while, I am coming.
The magpies call again in a screeching chitter-chatter.
He hates birds so much. His ears tingle in their proximity under the raincoat rushing in drops over his muffled head.
People leave things in certain ways. It is the art of smuggling and the usual invisibility in a group of oppressed.
He doesn't have a backpack with a book anymore. But it is worth the same.
The magpies flutter away. In the sky, the rain has turned to ice, the snow that now melts over him and any warmth it lulls in. A short shock of jolting tingles caresses his skin in a wave, falls over his scars. Then a movement out of the corner of his eye and he turns ever so slightly.
Not only a camera has decided to follow him down the square. It is instead a patrol.
The gun under his coat tickles him in a similar jolting shock as the cold that grasps.
He takes a long breath, nostrils vibrating in the beat of life, soaking himself into the world of smoke and smog, the stinging cold, the dirt that hardens.
Plans are like plastic cuffs. They ought to help you contain things, secure them. Now through without the flexibility, they cut. They restrain. They strangle him. And so he changes the plan.
Adjusting the cuffs. Adjusting the plan.
Something inside him springs ready, and he can feel the rush in his blood. The steady rising of a pulse that knows now when to leap and when to run, and it knows about ambushes best.
A part of Thomas hopes the uniformed figures turn and walk away. Another part wants blood, the ghost that is ready to take the lives, and he knows that best. Neither part wants to run away.
The alley is small, but he has a good leap headstart and as he walks in, he doesn't walk very deep. He uses coverage by the walls and houses, sneaking around the bricks, the small hills in the midst of this city.
The guns below his coat still scream. They're loud to use in the middle of town at the light of the last bright hours. The snow melts into blackened soot below the chimneys and drips off the windows that are made of foggy, milky glass and wooden shutters.
A person stands behind a shutter a moment. As it sees his form swoop over a wall, it disappears.
Black and white birds swoop down over the rooftops, feather tails dancing.
For a moment he is very aware that he should have taken the offer from a certain person to get more support. Or at least allowed to let someone else to do this. But more people means more chaos. It means more death. And it means responsibility. He still has trouble traveling in a group, being part of a battalion, or existing in a space with too many bodies. He has done all of these things for so long. And he still is so used to being alone on his way.
An ambush in trenches or cover in the woods, a patient breath for a single shot and an assasination.
He rests his nerves on experience. Hides. Makes himself small below his belt, hand ready to pull.
The silvers do not all format themselves down the alley path.
He draws the gun, a shiny new weapon.
Shrubs of a plant desperately shudder in the cold breeze as the snowy wind turns. And with the breeze something inside him locks in place.
They pass. He holds aim.
They pass.
He waits.
They pass.
He pulls back. Not inside the town. Not yet.
Next he vaults over the backside of a house, a fence that cuts his finger in iron and red blood.
The stop is about smuggling.
They used to have tunnels and systems. They still have their smarts.
He finds the smuggler with someone in a storefront looking at his face and waving him through.
He shakes the hood off his head. It tumbles and falls like many bodies have before. The scarf on his belt, below the pistol is red.
Red as blood. Maybe as a sun. It's hard to go by. It has become even more of that. Thinly stretched units and heavily, gravelly active forces.
"I have a transport outside, heading straight away." He says that to dissuade panic. To get the trade over with. The impoverished state of the nation is blended in that. "The explosives if you may."
The rest goes over smooth. The bag weights him down.
The next moment of discovery is close.
He is unable to dodge. So he pushes the heavy bag away again in an alley not too dissimilar from the first.
In rain that freezes to flakes in the cold before melting in rivers and rivulets.
This time he pulls the gun and he pulls the trigger. He pulls the essence of himself over everything, the beckoning call for muscles moving.
The first shot hits a head. Square and clean.
Silvery , grey blood mixes in the running color of dirt. It streaks his vision in heated , stunned colors and dissipates with smoke and magpies above the chimneys.
