Halves Taken, Never Returned (But It Will Be Okay)
02 September 2025 — 04 September 2025
Summary: There once was a musician with no shadow.
There once was a twin with no reflection.
Then, they meet in a dream.
Word Count: 2.3k words
TW: Forced sibling separation
Author’s Note: Listen, I've been meaning to write a fanfic for Ghost for a while now. I got into Ghost before Sleep Token, but the latter just gripped my braincells to a degree that I couldn't have fathomed.
So this is my first Ghost fanfic, and of course I have it as a crossover. I hope y'all enjoy it nonetheless!
Disclaimer: This is me playing around with the stage characters. There’s nothing intentionally related to their real identities here, and I don’t intend for there to be. Please respect their privacy and identities of the band.
Also on AO3
Once upon a time, there was a musician who dreamed. In those dreams, phosphorescence bloomed and died in time with an organ that should be beating in his chest. However, that bodily part has long since been offered up again and again, only to be given back mangled.
One night, deep in a dream, a god found the hollow cavity within the musician and proposed a suggestion: To fill it up again, an offering must be made.
The musician agreed, but to give up what? His mind was muddled in the depths of dark water, drowning and refusing to swim towards light.
The god picked an unsubstantial thing, something that the darkness ate up for it was made of the same material. A thin fabric that only existed in the light, following its maker’s every move with perfect precision.
The god delicately snipped it off, and the musician was freed of it. The god shredded it up and made a crude new heart for its singer. The cavity was filled, but its weight was heavier. Unfamiliar in being a heart.
In the beginning, it was only him. Him, the god, and the shadow of a heart he now had.
In the bright lights of the bathroom, he was alone. No dark clone followed him around. In the daylight, he was alone. In the dark, he was surrounded and suffocated. That crude organ in his chest beat irregularly, and people were none the wiser.
Even when there were others — first two, then three, then four, then a trio who floated around the rest of them but never close enough to touch — he was alone. They had shadows in the daylight.
He only had the ever-encompassing dark.
------
Once upon a time, there was a pair of twins. Inseparable, almost always seen with each other. Both giggled over the small things that children giggled over, fawning for attention from the adults in their lives.
Early on, when they were old enough to run around without tripping every two minutes, the both of them figured out that if one of them got something, then the other should have something too. Gifts and treats were either duplicated or halved, never singular. Two whole cookies or two halves of one cookie. Never just one.
They were two halves, after all. Two people. Never just one.
One day, the other half disappeared.
Both halves searched for each other, crying for the other. Where’s my rat? one of them asked. Where’s my bat? the other cried. Where, where, where?
Those are disgusting vermin, the adults hissed. Head up, hands steady. You’re destined for greatness, they would say. Don’t pay attention to the vermin in your mind. They’ll mislead you so.
The halves buried the memory low. They wrapped it up in six layers of white cloth and nailed six nails into that coffin before dropping it into the soil six feet under.
The twins grew up missing another half. Decades of turning to one side with half of their snack in one hand to share it, only to find no one there. Decades of reaching for someone in the dark only to find no one waiting. Decades of no one to talk with until the late hours of the morning.
At least one of them had rats to vent his frustrations to later on, muttering complaints that sounded childish compared to the uptight ministry.
The other had only his own hands to look at. No other face to look at, even in a mirror. He had no idea what he looked like as he grew into a body that felt too old for what he wanted to be like.
When his other half left, so did his reflection.
------
One night, a half dreamed.
He woke in a dark forest, trees red as blood. White ribbons were delicately tied to their branches, pink petals falling off with the barest breath. The ground was difficult to navigate, causing him to nearly loose his footing multiple times. Shadows danced and swirled around him like hellfire, whispering nothing but tugging at his own shadow in silent invitations.
He moved like a shadow: light, smooth, quickly and in a blur. He had never lucid dreamed before, but he figured that it was about time. Maybe this was a sign from Satan for his reign as the ministry’s new Papa, as the new front man.
Then, he remembered the expression plastered on the face of the previous front man. Furrowed brows, lips turned down, voice clipped and sharper than any knife. Disdain had been clear on his face, and the barely hidden contempt in his voice could be bottled into a poison.
But there had also been clingy sorrow in that voice, a quiet begging to some adult somewhere to please let him keep the role a little longer. A familiar pair of mismatched eyes enhanced by dark circles of makeup. A small smile that had been directed towards his costumed but unmasked ghouls as they had rushed around him, pushing the predecessor forward as their noses twitched, sniffing the air around the new Papa — their new Papa — but not daring to approach him.
“No one told me I had a twin,” Copia had admitted quietly over tea after the two had introduced each other. He had sipped it, nose wrinkling when he noticed that Perpetua had only held the warm cup in his palms, tea untouched. “I don’t even remember having siblings. I barely remember having a playmate when I was thrown into the ministry. Ghouls weren’t really allowed to interact with others outside of their duties, though that changed when Terzo– Ah, fuck. I’m rambling again.”
Perpetua had watched with gentle eyes as his twin had waved dismissively. “It’s okay,” Perpetua had said. “I like hearing you talk. It’s nice.” It was cruel that Copia had never known of his existence. Meanwhile, the nuns that Perpetua had grown up with had told him constantly that he was a twin, an imperfect half, a missing half, all while he couldn’t ever see himself in the mirror. Where was his other half, the frame of which he based his face off of?
If Copia had paused for a moment too long — possibly preening in the praise and encouragement of his chatter-mouth; Perpetua had seen the recorded clips of his shows, how much he liked talking — then he didn’t draw attention to it. Instead, he had thrown himself into the deep end and lay out what to expect.
It was… nice. Copia — his twin! What a joy it was to say that once again! — had talked the entire time, eventually cumulating into a grand tour of the ministry. The ghouls dens in the basement had been Perpetua’s favorite part. Ghouls who had belonged to previous Papas had paid him little to no attention, while the lower ranked ghouls had almost caused a ruckus trying to see who the new Papa was while remaining casual.
Perpetua had only managed to give them a grin full of teeth before he was swept away once again to continue the tour before nightfall. However, the howls of excitement from the working ghouls had almost caused him to leap in and join in their celebration.
He wondered how much longer he could deny the ghoulish blood that ran through him. The nuns had certainly disliked it, and Copia didn’t seem to be aware of the ghoulish blood running through himself (it was less than Perpetua, but it was certainly there).
But in the dream, his first ever lucid dream, he let himself be free. His pointed ears pricked at each and every sound, what a joy it was to let them be free! His skeletal tail unwrapped from beneath his sleeping robes and whipped around, perfecting his balance. He ran through the forest with blood-red trees with precise movements, only stumbling once. That stumble caused him to fall into a deep lake (no reflection there either, he couldn’t even tell what kind of stupid face he had made), causing him to breach the surface in a panic.
“Who are you?”
Perpetua’s ears flicked at the new voice. His gaze fell upon a seated person near the water’s edge. This person wore thin dark robes with a hod and a large white mask with a red sigil on it, every inch of face covered. Upon first glance, Perpetua thought that this person was wearing all black. However, that was quickly proven wrong when the satanic pope realized that this person’s skin was as dark as the night. Makeup? Paint? Natural?
But why would it matter? This was a dream.
The satanic pope felt quite foolish now. He swam to the edge of the lake until his feet touched solid ground. As he slowly emerged from the water, he felt the liquid roll off him like he was covered in oil. His skeletal tail whipped around in confusion as he said, “Huh?”
“A dream,” the person said. “I don’t dream about you. You’re new.”
“This is a strange lucid dream.” Alright, it was time to wake up. Perpetua inhaled sharply in an attempt to do just that, but he remained where he was. In that strange forest with this strange person.
He blinked.
“You won’t wake up here. This is Sleep’s dreamscape, a realm of dreams. Only when it ends will we wake.” The person slowly got up and shuffled towards the satanic pope, stopping a good distance away when Perpetua snarled, fangs protruding past his dark, painted lips.
“Who are you?” Perpetua fired back. That ghoulish blood heightened his senses: he smelled something unknown, but also saltwater and blood. From behind the six eyeholes on the stranger’s mask, he saw flickers of movement. This person didn’t smell like ghoul, like the depths of hell and sulfur. He smelled… very human, but also distinctly not. The odd lighting in the forest danced around the two, and only when Perpetua moved his gaze from the stranger’s hands and face did he see that something was missing.
This stranger had no shadow.
Despite himself, Perpetua emitted a quizzical chirp. “Your shadow?”
The stranger took a step back. He placed a hand over the left side of his bare chest, slowly gripping onto his robe. “Taken and reshaped.” He tilted his head, then parts of his mask melted away until only his mouth was exposed, leaving the lower ends of the mask crinkled as if someone had reached up to try and catch the melted parts and press them back on.
The stranger’s teeth were straight and white. They were unlike his twin’s teeth, and very much unlike his own fangs, which used to catch on his lips and draw blood. They don’t anymore, because he learned. Also, because paint or lipstick mixed with blood tasted revolting.
“Your reflection?” the stranger asked.
Perpetua froze, thought about it, then relaxed. If this was a dream, then anything could be possible then. Hell, this could be a repressed imaginary friend he was talking to. “Never had one.” Pause. Figure out the words. Make the words work. Singing was easy. Talking was hard. “Except for my twin, but I think he hates me for taking his place.”
Silence built up, thick and palpable beneath one’s fingers. The stranger eventually started to rock in place, humming alongside a tune that seemed to emerge from everywhere all at once. “Vessel,” the stranger — Vessel — eventually said. “Sleep will wake us up soon, and the dream will over.”
“You’re… you’re not a figment of my imagination.” Perpetua slowly took a step towards Vessel and tilted his head at him, grinning in that ghoulish way that nuns had chastised him for being too creepy. When Vessel raised his arms up and grinned back with a frenzy that Perpetua vaguely remembered doing as a child (Copia had found a snake in the garden and had pushed Perpetua forward to investigate, having said that snakes ate rats and that as a bat, Perpetua could just fly away; Perpetua had only wildly screamed at the snake before the both of them had ran away), the satanic pope let out a pleased chirp. “Perpetua,” he said as he gave a bow.
“I like your mask,” Vessel said. “It looks comfortable to sing in.”
“I like the skull shape,” Perpetua replied. He dug around in the pocket of his sleeping robes and pulled out a small bag that he had meant to take out, but he had fallen asleep before he could. He opened the drawstring and shook out a small, clean piece of bone. He had plenty more where those came from, and if he woke up with one bone less, then… well, that was a problem he’d figure out later. He closed the bag up before holding out the offering. “For you, shadowless dream friend.”
Vessel reached out and delicately took the bone. He cupped his hands around it and gave a grateful bow. Then, he reached towards a white ribbon and untied it from the branch where it was. He held it out towards Perpetua as he said, “For you, reflectionless creature.”
Upon taking the ribbon — it was silky smooth and perfect in every way — the dream quivered. Ripples originating from random points in the lake started to form, while the forest itself shook. “The dream ends soon.”
Perpetua felt a song build up in his throat, something that just had to be sung. He opened his mouth and burst out: “A black moon, over the peacefield! Oh, child, stay close to me!” As he did so, the moon — was there always one above them? — shone down on the two dreamers.
One with no shadow, one with no reflection.
Vessel grinned. “Will you halt this eclipse in me?” he sang back.
The moon, full and round, pulsed a bright light.
When Perpetua woke up, he was missing a small piece of bone from his collection, and he had a white ribbon in his hand.
Papa V Perpetua x Vessel 2k explicit- Medieval AU
Many believed that Perpetua was a god. But only Vessel truly knew that he was a man. As flesh and blood as Vessel himself.
