Connection
Glint and Ghost talk about the Light and the Traveler.
--I wrote this for a writing challenge last month and realized I didn't share it here. I just love some Ghosts <3
When Glint finds Ghost a few dozen yards from the Young Wolf and Crow’s camp, he’s hovering over a fissure of Light, his shell thrown wide, his optic dim. Glint hovers back for a few moments, watching, worried he might be interrupting, but Ghost doesn’t move. Eventually, his curiosity—and his concern—get the better of him.
“Ghost?”
“Glint!” Ghost jumps, shooting a foot into the air, his shell snapping shut. “Sorry, I, uh, thought you were back at camp.”
“I didn’t mean to disturb you, I can go if you–”
“No, no, that’s okay. It’s fine.”
Glint glances down at the fissure of Light below Ghost. Their Guardians are both back at their camp, tucked away in a protected cave in the Impasse, fortified by a few trip mines at the entrance, as well as the Ghosts’s attention. Still acclimated to the Last City’s time after the celebrations in the wake of their victory, their Guardians are asleep within their tent. He and Ghost had left to give them a little privacy, agreeing to keep watch. When they’d left, Crow and the Young Wolf had lay back to back, sharing body heat in the cool recreation of Old Russia. Glint knows that sometime during the night, his Guardian will roll over to face the Young Wolf. Crow’s hand will rest on their hip, or over their waist, and either consciously or unconsciously, the Guardian will press their body into his and the pair will wake up in the morning curled together. It’s happened before. It will happen again. He’s glad Crow has someone to spend his cold nights with, and he’s especially glad that person is as nice to Crow as the Guardian is.
For now though, he pushes the Guardians from his mind. He can feel through his bond with Crow that they’re safe, Crow still deep in sleep, and he can see the entrance to the cave off behind them, with no enemies in sight.
“What were you doing with that?” he asks Ghost, feeling the front half of his shell rotate slightly as he looks over Ghost and the fissure.
“Nothing,” Ghost answers, a tad too quickly, and Glint rights his shell, trying to look neutral. “I was just…scanning it.”
Again, Glint glances down at the fissure below. Unless Ghost scans things with his shell wide open, unmoving, he isn’t telling Glint the whole truth. Glint has spent enough time with him to know he scans the way they all scan, with a beam of Light, or a few quick pulses.
“Did you find anything?”
He watches Ghost’s shell deflate, a beam of light now tracing over the fissure.
“No,” he answers. “I wasn’t scanning it. I was…I was trying to use it to commune with the Traveler.”
The front half of Glint’s shell rotates again, this time a full circle counterclockwise, then forty-five degrees clockwise. Ghost’s shell pinches around his eye, and it reminds Glint of the way Crow used to hunch over while they lived with Spider, making himself small as if to hide from view.
“I wanted to know if everything we’ve been doing to heal it is really helping,” Ghost tells him, though he avoids Glint’s gaze. “And, I was looking for guidance. I wanted to see if I could speak with it. If it would give me a vision like it gave Cayde, because I–” he stumbles over his words. “Because when I–”
“Because you died, and the Traveler didn’t bring you back,” Glint guesses quietly, and Ghost’s shell relaxes around his frame but seems to fall downwards, like he’s being pulled down by gravity.
“Yeah,” Ghost murmurs. “That.”
Glint sweeps his own beam of light over the fissure. Their scans are the closest thing he can really approximate to how their Guardians touch things. Glint imagines his beams of Light are the same as Crow running his fingers over something, the tactile sense feeding information through Crow’s nerves, into his brain. Through his scans, Glint can feel the composition of the stone below them, the Traveler’s recreation of Old Russia’s dirt and rocks, the mix of rust and old glass, particles from the graveyard of cars littering the space around them. He can also feel the Traveler’s Light, raw and unfiltered, bubbling up from the fissure and filling the air around it.
While Ghost had his shell open when Glint had first spotted him, he’d have been able to feel the Light around him like he was breathing it in, a sensation Glint only knows from Crow, but one that feels rich with meaning. Ghost would have been able to feel the Light pouring over him, seeping into his core and tangling with his own being. He’d have felt the composition of the air and molecules of dust and dirt within it. He’d have been able to smell the flavor of the wind and taste the makeup of the Pale Heart around them.
But despite all that, despite opening his very being to the Traveler, Glint knows it wouldn’t have spoken back. He knows it would have remained silent. He knows that’s what the Traveler does, and he knows why, but he also knows Ghost does not need silence now.
“The Traveler might not be much of a conversationalist,” Glint admits, tilting his shell down to look at the fissure. Ghost avoids his eye contact the way Crow does when he’s feeling particularly raw, but Glint knows enough to understand that he’s not trying to ignore him. “But I’m here, if you want to talk.”
“I–” Ghost stops, and he lets out a quiet sigh the way that their Guardians do, a deep breath that makes their shoulders drop, the stress in their bodies diminishing just slightly. “I don’t know. I know it probably sounds crazy, but I think dying for my Guardian was easier than being controlled by the Witness. Every time it spoke through me–”
Ghost shakes his shell sharply, letting out another sigh.
“That’s what sticks with me more. I just can’t stop thinking about it. Even after it’s gone, I’m still–”
“It does sound a little crazy,” Glint interrupts him, though his voice is soft and gentle, “but it also makes a lot of sense.”
Ghost lifts his eye finally, looking over at Glint, and Glint shrugs his shell.
“When you killed the Witness, you chose to die for your Guardian. You knew what you wanted and you decided to do it. When the Witness took control of you, in the Pale Heart, or back on Neptune, it took control of your body. You didn’t get a choice.” It’s Glint’s turn to look away from their eye contact, sweeping another beam of light over the fissure. “When Crow and I were living with Spider, when he put a bomb in my shell, Spider was using me to keep Crow with him. He was using me to keep Crow around so he could hurt him. That was terrible, and I still had control of my body, at least when Spider wasn’t electrocuting me but–” Glint pushes off the memory, rotating his shell like he needs to refocus his mind. “I know I can’t understand how it felt–”
“But you probably understand a lot more than most,” Ghost finishes for him, meeting Glint’s eye when Glint looks at him. Glint bobs his shell in a nod.
“Can I ask what it was like?” he murmurs, “when you died?”
Ghost sinks a little lower, and Glint follows him down to hover just above the fissure of Light.
“If that’s too personal you don’t have to–I didn’t mean to pry–”
“No, it’s okay, Glint,” Ghost promises, looking over at him. His shell lifts in a tense smile. “It’s been hard to figure out. Cayde talked about feeling at peace, and I did feel that, but I knew a piece of me was missing. A huge part of me. I might not have had my Guardian as long as most other Ghosts, but ever since I found them they’ve been everything to me. Maybe it would have gotten easier over time but I could hardly think past how much I missed them, how much I knew we were meant to be together. But at the same time, I didn’t want them to come to me. I didn’t want them to die, I would never want them to. Not until they’re ready, that is.”
Glint feels himself nod. He knows Crow won’t live forever, neither of them will, but Glint would rather destroy himself than let Crow meet his end before his time.
“Did you feel the others? The way that Sundance said? That we’re all connected?”
“I did.” Ghost’s smile is a little brighter now, a little less sad. “I felt everyone. Targe, and Sundance, I felt Sagira, and Brya, I felt Guardians, too. I felt people I’d never known and more than I could comprehend. I know they felt me, too, but I think they also knew it wasn’t my time yet. I don’t know how long I spent with them, but eventually I felt Cayde and my Guardian. I could feel them both pulling me back, and then I woke up in my Guardian’s hands.”
Glint watches Ghost sweep a beam of Light over the fissure. “I can still feel them, now. I think Cayde’s Light kept me connected to them. I can feel him and Sundance, they’re closest, but I can feel the others, too.” He nods to Glint. “We’re all connected, just like she said.”
They look over the fissure in silence for a long moment, listening to the wind blowing over the landscape, the hum as it catches in pockets of cars and caverns.
“What were you hoping the Traveler might say, if you could commune with it?”
Ghost’s shell pinches again, his eye down. “I knew my time was coming, I think since the moment the Witness first cut into me, when we first got here. I didn’t think to ask the Traveler to heal me, I didn’t think it could, even when we were healing the other Ghosts. But when I died, my Guardian asked it to bring me back, and it didn’t.” Ghost is silent for a long moment, his optic flitting over the fissure. “I wanted to know whether or not it was right for Cayde to have brought me back, or if the Traveler didn’t heal me because it wanted me to stay dead.”
“I don’t think the Traveler wanted that.” Glint flits closer, until he can press one of his fins against Ghost’s, the way their Guardians bump shoulders or lean into one another. “The Traveler wants us to make our own fates. Being a Ghost, and being a Guardian are both hard lives, I think you and I know that pretty well. If the Traveler brought you back, it would be subjecting you to the same violence that killed you, when you could’ve finally had peace. But,” Glint spins the front half of his shell clockwise forty-five degrees, the back half rotating a full circle. “At the same time, I think that like Crow’s wish did with Cayde, you wouldn’t have been able to come back if the Traveler hadn’t been alright with you going, and if it hadn’t been something you wanted. You and Cayde made your fate, but the Traveler hasn’t abandoned you, either.”
Ghost looks at him like he’s daring to be hopeful.
“You think so?”
Glint bobs his shell in a nod. “It’s like you said, you can feel them, can’t you? We’re all connected. Always.”
