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Dec 16, 2025

— 𝙥𝙧𝙚𝙩𝙩𝙮 𝙨𝙩𝙧𝙖𝙣𝙜𝙚𝙧

dawnbreaker!Zayne x ghost!reader

summary: Zayne had a(n) unwanted frequent visitor. He found it a nuisance, until the space he unwillingly shared became a reservation for two.

words: ±8.2k

warning(s): language, graphic descriptions of injuries & blood, mentions of death & torture.

a/n: guys… the ideas. So many. Endless. My ability to write it down? Convey it into coherent words? None. This is inspired by Pretty Stranger by faouzia.

part 1 of 2.

Zayne blamed it on the lack of chocolate.

The sun had been hiding lately; nights lasted significantly longer and the sky surrendered its light more willingly – the red dots on his tracker was appearing in a disarray, one after another, twice as much in a day than it used to be. Grime was glued to his body like a second skin, and each killing strike piled up on the strain weighing him down by the shoulders, each breath he took in exchange for the lives he fed on dragging his dispirited steps.

He had excellent sight. After all, his venturing in the darkness required at least a pair of healthy eyes, or else he would’ve missed most of his exterminating shot, and the Grim Reaper would not have lasted one day before the creatures they called Alterum pounced and devoured his life force, or, Astra forbid, made him one of their own.

However, everything he set his gaze upon had been blurry as of late.

It almost reminded him of the vision the Doctor had in his dreams – as a surgeon, he most probably had a severe case of hypermetropy, Zayne guessed.

In favour of discovering his newfound near-sightedness, Zayne had frequented the optic shop nearby and forgone the convenient store for his daily purchase of the chocolate jar – after all, the unnerving glimpses of a shadow crawling on his walls and sitting on his couch must mean he desperately needed a prescription for glasses. His walk back was brisk, and not a single glance at the commotion in the alleyways was spared as they couldn’t match the urgency of his shortage in sugar.

Clutching the plastic case in which his new pair of glasses resided in, Zayne clicked on the lock of his door, heaving a sigh of relief once the scent of jasmines he nursed on his window greeted him. Its petals were wilting, brown fraying the edges and infecting the supposed pristine white pads of the flower. Still, the fragrant whisk of his favourite bloom permeated through his otherwise somber residence.

Freezing in his tracks, the one they nicknamed Dawnbreaker was hit with an unwelcomed pit in his stomach as his narrowed eyes fell upon the creature perched on his kitchen aisle.

He’d never believed in ghosts, nor had he ever encountered one to shatter his preferences to not acknowledge the existence of such beings – for it would mean the abominations he eliminated would have nowhere to go, for it meant the dreams that haunted him were the vengeful spirits he’d taken the lives of, their soul unwilling to leave the world unless they yanked him along. Zayne was not proud for the deeds he had to execute, and it was with immeasurable willpower that he had not succumbed into madness the first time he murdered his adoptive father.

If he could see ghosts, then why were this one his first concurrence?

Pretty, was the first word his unhelpful brain quipped when he chanced upon the ghost. He was unable to identify the person, for it was only a few seconds that he was given the privilege to gaze upon the spirit. If it was a spirit at all – Zayne had chosen to consider the chances of him dreaming up an existence, or hallucinating someone insignificant he could not recall; perhaps a face he’d seen from a magazine in passing, or a person he’d crossed before during his childhood.

Undignified, was the second word he deliberately chose to describe the girl in white. Weren’t ghosts supposed to be insidious creatures, known to carry an ominous air about them? This one, Zayne discovered, only planned to raid the contents of his fridge and smothering the cables of his old TV into a frenzy. That, had ludicrously countered his attempt at denying his astounding fate of being subjected towards an experience as bizarre as being haunted by a ghost.

A tame one, he might add.

“Ah, you’re back, Mr. Grim Reaper.” You swung your feet back and forth from your post on his kitchen, your grin luminescent against the yellowish lighting of his home.

Several wrappings of chocolate were scattered atop the table, and you tilted your head at the lack of reaction from the imperceptibly cold man, though his slow sigh could be heard as he looked over the malfunctioning television.

His indifference spurred you on instead of leaving a sniggering hint to allow him his solitude. “Weather’s been bad lately.”

Zayne immersed himself in repairing the dying piece of electronic, showing no reaction nor any desire to indulge your mindless traipsing upon his, in different circumstances, peaceful residence. He could ignore unwanted attention from humans and animals alike, and his skills in deactivating systems targeting his back was exceptional; it would be of no trouble for him to pretend that he was not haunted by a wandering soul who had no one else to bother but him.

Disinterested in your totally inconspicuous talk about the weather, Zayne closed his eyes in contemplation, deciding the worth of wasting his words on a creature so vexatious as the one he was forced to deal with. “Why are you in my house?”

“Bored.” Was the deadpanned answer he received, your mood souring in spite of your successful attempt at fishing a response out of him. Zayne assessed your lack of explanation and classified you as a being uncapable of honesty – your persistent appearance in his vicinity must be deliberately intended.

Once he retrieved a few cans of energy drinks from his opened fridge, snatched the half empty jar of chocolate you’d hidden on top of the cupboards, and fixed the channels to show the videos of medical procedures, Zayne settled on his worn couch, his face illuminated by the flashing blue and red of a heart surgery being performed on the TV.

Only this way could you sneak through his defences and observe him with intrigue. His attention was anchored solely on sutures and retractions, his sharp eyebrows pinched in a way a focused student would have it, as if his life depended on whether he could master a heart surgery overnight or become an embarrassment to his family. He unwrapped the chocolate with meticulous care, before bringing it to his lips and savouring the sweetness that was followed by a bitter aftertaste. His skin carried a pale complexion, polished by the everlasting frown on his face – Zayne was utterly devastating to the eye.

A little incompetent when it came to taking care of his own health, but beautiful nonetheless.

Approaching the back of his cozy sofa, your sight was filled with the recording of an opened chest, red splattered messily around green fabric, a beating heart pacing with uneven beats in the middle of it – inside, entangled with the muscle wall, a shard of a Protocore. Your hand instinctively flew to your chest, where it was void of the harsh pound of a living organ, where the shard of a distorted Protocore had once lived in.

You had known him.

Zayne.

The boy too smart for his own good, orphaned at eight and adopted at ten, sought after by benefactors for his brilliant traits. He massacred his family at the age of twelve, and it was the last you’d heard of him. You hadn’t lived long enough to witness the atrocities that they’d labelled him with, and was never granted the chance to reunite with the gremlin who’d once punched you in the face for stealing a chocolate from his stash.

After a while, as the muted sounds from the television became the only thing resonating within his not-so-humble abode, Zayne precariously searched for a source of disruption. His ears failed to distinguish any noise – ghosts were quiet; no breaths, no heartbeats, no footsteps. You, however, was an enigma he could sense from afar. Perhaps it was the hatred lingering in your feeble vessel of a soul, or the killing intent you’d wished upon your enemies.

He blinked, and dignified the daunting thump of his heart as mere exhaustion, scanning his surroundings with bleary eyes.

Your translucent form appeared in his field of vision, blocking away his engrossment on the electronic device, “Looking for me?”

Zayne jumped, his feet bumping into the small coffee table and knocking down the empty bottles of energized liquid, or whatever contents it previously held. Squeezing his eyes shut, he brought his fingers to pinch the bridge of his nose, exhaling exasperatedly at your antics.

He hoped he would be able to enjoy a good night’s sleep with your lurking presence in the back of his mind (figuratively) and fridge (literally).

The day after, a precarious errand brought him to the outskirts of the city. There were people murmuring under their breath, their expressions sour and mannerisms wary, despite the place being somewhat deserted – Zayne had abandoned his car in favour of keeping a low profile by traveling the rest of the distance on foot, the tips of his ears twitching at the slightest sounds and his gaze flitting between the terrain and the blipping red dot on his watch. Two of those individuals carried the seed of an Alterum; they had either started to turn recently, or they were lucky enough to live with a sound mind, way past their designated time of death.

Flattening his back against a tree, the temperature around him depleted into a freezing point, instantly alerting the group – of scientists, he identified, if the uniform they wore was of any indication – and earning him panicked gasps, some of them scattering like flocks of startled chickens, a few of them cowering behind trucks and their set-up tents. His hazel-green orbs flicked through the small faction, unperturbed by the curious glances that could expose his presence, quietly and efficiently locating the frenzied creatures.

His surroundings were littered with trees that reached to the sky, the branches barely as wide as his shoulder width and their roots protruding from the soil he’d frozen into ice. Dusk was only approaching, albeit slower than he would’ve preferred. The party had just arrived, trepidation shadowing their movements and cold sweats breaking out their body.

Zayne adjusted the glasses framing his face, its weight oddly comforting as he peeked through the lenses. It was not an arduous task to uncover his targets, since they were locked up in two glass-like cages, placed in the very center of their camp – the supposed monstrous creatures were uncharacteristically silent and unmoving, as if they were sleeping.

No. Not sleeping. Dying.

Sharpening his attention and slowing his breaths into even exhale, a blade of ice started to form on the palm of his hand.

In a blink of an eye, two shards pierced the chests of the humans-turned-wanderers, and without pause, gunshots echoed throughout the clearings, aimed at the general direction he was hiding in, accompanied by enraged shouts from pretentious researchers.

Zayne did not take pleasure in ending lives, but he did enjoy unravelling these so-called doctors who experimented on people for their own gain. As delight erupted in his chest, he welcomed darkness to envelop him in full, shoving away the additional weight of frost crawling up his arm.

It must be done. They are a danger to this already collapsing world. It is fate.

Yet, no matter how many times he chanted those words over and over again in his distorted mind, Zayne couldn’t bring himself to be convinced by it.

His reputation did not precede him to blindly intervene whilst there were personnels on the lookout – and he was consistently meticulous in his methods, never allowing civilians to glimpse even a sliver of his face. Rains of bullets embedded themselves on the ground, in the tree trunks, whizzing past his ear and missing barely a breadth of a centimetre from grazing his skin. Zayne pivoted around the contours of the territory, hoping to evade direct confrontation and prolonging his retreat.

A two-hour drive back to his house was already excruciating to imagine, and it would take unnecessarily longer if he were to take a longer route to lose their tail, Zayne wallowed.

Rumbles from engines could be heard roaring into life from behind him. Zayne panted in ravenous huffs, braving a peek over his shoulder to discover giant motorcycles catching up with his human speed.

He raised a hand, palm facing the incoming assailants, blackened ice gathering in it and covering the ground in a layer of it – their wheels swerved, and a stray bullet that should have missed his head, was now aligned with the cavity of his chest, and the impact sent him toppling onto the soil, his evol failing to soften the fall.

“Zayne!”

Distinctively, an erratic call of his name rang in his ears, and he was enveloped in a warmth that reminded him of a summer morning, the incessant cold in his heart thawed by its clarity.

Sounds from the bustling ruckus became muffled, and Zayne wondered if he’d fallen into the ocean, drowning in free waters and welcomed by the consuming darkness that vigorously sought for life. It would be in vain, however, because Zayne was as dead as a patient living in a vegetative state, because he had taken countless lives yet was void of the force itself, because he was not deserving of a bright spring, destined to watch his jasmines wither and unable to bloom.

“You, stupid bastard!” You cursed, desperately tethering your willpower into maintaining your hands’ tangibility, pressing into the wound on his back – there was no exit wound, meaning the bullet would have to be retracted manually, a task that you would never wish upon your greatest enemy. Scratch that, you would wish this upon those freaks that experimented on malicious, unpredictable creatures for their own personal agendas.

“Fuck. Shit.” Your fingers flickered against his skin, tainted with blood and nothing else as sweat beaded on your forehead, willing them to have the strength to rip his clothing open. Fear clouded your features, though the only one who could witness the sight was battling unconsciousness from seeping into his guarded mind.

Half-lidded eyes blinked blearily at the sound of his clothes shredding, partially scandalized by the exposure to the night air and the rest of it uncaring of the cold. “Getting bold now, aren’t we?” His words were slurred, yet the edge of his lips twitched in amusement, as if he found the situation funny.

Here he was, the Dawnbreaker, housing a bullet in his chest, a wandering ghost slash stalker devoutly saving his life as if it was worth the effort.

In a flash of ire, you thrusted your whole hand straight past his ribs, probing around his insides and fervently searching for the cool surface of iron – nudging it toward the exit was a delicate process, and there was nothing eloquent about it; Zayne was gurgling incoherent complaints through the blood in his mouth and the indescribable pain spreading from his chest to the nerves in his brain, his limbs jerking and trembling against nothing, yet he was rooted to the spot still.

The clink of metal hitting the pavement was music to your ears.

“Next time,” your breath came uneven, racing against Zayne’s equally irregular wheeze. “Don’t be a smartass and wait until midnight, dammit.”

Zayne clutched the area in which the pain dulled into a muted throb, bile rising up in his throat as your diminishing warmth waned away along with the ticking clock.

The disconcerting impossibility of the procedure he’d just received failed to register in his foggy state of mind.

Unconsciousness claimed him not long after, the remnants of your luminosity fraying at the seams of his vision, the echoes of your reprimands weaving into his heart and the fracture caused by your absence settling on his soul.

Zayne dreamt of different worlds, then – a summer sky away from Linkon city, the spray of salt water as it hit his skin, the sweet aftertaste of lips too unfamiliar for his parched tongue. His heart ruptured at the twisted longing overflowing through his veins, images flashing behind his eyelids whenever he closed them – his mind was overlapped with memories that did not belong to him;

The Master of Fate had taken in a disciple; the Foreseer was receiving a divine punishment; the God of Annihilation sacrificing his own heart; Doctor Zayne cradling his beloved to his chest, sleeping soundly…; and Dawnbreaker was accompanied by the ghost of a girl unreachable, but whose embrace held so much warmth that he could no longer grasp the cold, even as shards of ice penetrated his lungs and punctured his heart.

Ice would stench the bleeding and allow him time to recuperate, though Zayne did not see a problem in taking a short breather and embraced the flashes of himself blended and distorted before him like a clumsily unedited movie.

He awoke to a doorstep somewhere, the sun beating down on his sensitive eyes, his feet shrouded by blades of grass tall enough to resemble a grain field. The door itself was covered in moss, and so was the stone steps he was sitting on, and the handrail he was leaning against. Zayne grimaced in bitterness for the circumstances he’d found himself in, and lamented the fact that he was still alive.

It was essential that he swung by the clinic soon, given his worsening condition and the pain that would not subside regardless of the endless amount of ice that he endured. An unending train of questions spiralled into the front of his mind, though the most prominent one was how he ended up in this rural residential area with not a single living soul in sight.

Not a living soul. Not the undead or spirits.

Not you.

Zayne pinched his thigh to determine reality to his jumbled dreams, and the pain that shot up to his waist confirmed the eligibility of this life – at least, his predicament now was subdued to the hole on his back, and navigating back toward his home. He could not possibly have ventured far, only out of reach given that he was not behind bars, or being subjected to hell for his unforgivable sins.

The expanse of what he assumed to be the front yard soon lost its appeal; vast patches of dried, yellowed grass stretched as far as the eye could see and nothing else to spoil his damned vision.

Wait – He’d lost his glasses. He grunted out a muted curse, grieving the brand-new set of lenses he’d paid a hefty for.

His trembling hands found the doorknob, and it was with great relief that he discovered it unlocked.

Standing upright was a problem in itself, so Zayne all but dragged his weight into the abandoned house, briefly praying that it wouldn't be haunted – unlike his own home. He fell into a heap on the floor after only one step inside the suspicious abode he’d miraculously transported to, his head swimming as the Dawnbreaker thanked and cursed the absent host for not welcoming the distinctive guest.

The windows were tinted with dust that even sunlight was struggling to seep through, the furniture unkempt and smothered in cobwebs. Frames littered the walls, its pictures undistinguished from where he was slumped just shy of the closed door, near an empty coat rack and two pairs of dirty footwear squished beneath him.

Zayne sighed, a million questions swirling around in his mind, causing him to feel dizzy. This was unbearable – not the part where he was stranded who-knows-where, and surprisingly not the fact that he'd been shot in his back, and the bullet was nowhere to be found – it was that he hadn’t seen you, yet could trace the feathery memory of your touch on his skin, in the narrow gaps of his ribs, galloping around in his very soul; they were impossible to erase.

Sustains were, however, a far-fetched dream if he was to prolong his stay in this abandoned house. No electrical devices worked, an empty fridge, no running water – Zayne forced himself to perilously hold onto the dwindling hope of his diminishing fire of life. Rummaging through the place was easier said than done, though he’d successfully raided through the expired chocolate flavoured crackers he’d miraculously discovered in less than fifteen minutes.

As he chewed vigorously on the almost stone-hard food, his gaze drifted towards the pictures printed and hung by the walls. Most of them were blurry at best, while the rest of it looked as if it was smudged over quite intentionally, faces obscured by an ink stain, water droplets, or ominously burned off, leaving a scorched hole on the film paper.

A sense of dread developed in the pit of his stomach as he moved further inside the hallway leading to a room, its door slightly ajar, a source of light creeping though the gap. Zayne halted on the last and single frame nailed onto the wooden door; the only painting that showed the full, unconcealed form of a teenager, lips pulled into a joyful grin as they held a fluffy unicorn in one hand, and a vial containing liquid in another – his heart skipped in his chest, urging him to run. His limbs moved against his command as his brain screamed, cursing his defiance.

He couldn’t.

The image was ingrained in his memories now, driving his once cathartic mind further into the edge of madness.

All because of his tendency to gravitate towards anomalies, and because he could not escape death, even when he had never shared a glance with the subject who was dead. All because of a picture, neither hung nor glued to the wall, but nailed through the corners of it, as if whoever designed its placement had earnestly hammered it with dreams of chaining down the resident of said room. All because, though he was aware that leaving would be the better idea, Zayne couldn’t head toward the front door and leave to return back to his life, because even as he lifted his feet at a snail’s pace inside this bedroom, his head was crowded with shadows of the picture outside.

All because in the perfectly oiled painting, coloured and flourished with every whisper of art he could imagine, enchanting and devastating, stood the ghost who had been haunting his walls – you.

What greeted him sent a flurry of disappointment down his veins. Aside from a white-linen bed and a broken lamp hanging from the ceiling, the room was empty. Its walls were cracked, the blue coating it was fading into a dull grey, and Zayne struggled to grip onto his escaping senses, unable to quail his perturbed heart.

The wound on his back chilled as intrigue and anxiety swirled around one another, caught in the storm raging within him. There was a floral scent that floated about the plane of illusion, fleeting, as if he’d imagined it. It reminded him of the perfume that would follow humans on the brink of death, yet couldn’t find the road leading towards it.

Zayne swept across the room tersely, and left it in a hurry for no particular reason, other than the lingering echoes in his head that beckoned him towards the unknown clutches of the monsters hidden underneath the veil of faux invulnerability. In his hand, wrapped in the safety of his dirtied palm, was a keychain, and attached on it a white and blue snowman, a frown stitched as its expression.

He walked. And walked some more, crawled and dragged his feet out of the clearings that held more destruction than refuge for his feeble mind.

He hoped the patrols would not spare him a glance, prayed that they would ignore the blood oozing out of the hole in his coat, willed his breaths into steadiness and bad-mouthed his way toward his house that should not have been located as far as it took him to reach.

He hoped his home would not lay barren of your presence, for all the questions pounding against his skull was in need of definite answers.

In the winding journey on foot and hijacking a haphazardly parked car near the entrance of a highway, Zayne pondered upon the frivolity of the situation.

He’d never told you his name. Or mentioned it – people hadn’t exactly addressed him as Zayne, and those with enough courage to speak of the disreputable deeds he was known for had called him Dawnbreaker. He was Zayne and he was not; Zayne remorsefully didn’t know if he was still worthy to don the name his parents had bestowed him, for all the sins he had yet to atone for, and for all the warmth he yearned to have, yet knew he shouldn’t.

He should’ve thought nothing of it.

It took more than a handful of fickle willpower to withstand it; the weariness etched into his bones waned down as he so much as dared to spare a thought for you; his inebriated self-esteem that failed to assuage the pathological disease corroding his insides – like a cacophony of unwanted convictions that made him question the core of his very being, like indignant storms that turned him into something that was more human and less monster.

Zayne longed for a companion like that of Dr. Li’s significant other. He had never denied that even to himself, despite how incredibly pathetic the fact painted upon his image.

Without his dreams, however, Zayne doubted he could’ve learned that it was ever an option. To hold another close. To crack your shells open and offer it to another, and not receiving utter destruction in return. To tread with hope, and be met in the middle with unrestrained reverence. To find himself in another person and be found in the process.

Dawnbreaker could not, by any chance, have a fate written so kindly that he was adored by another – after all, there hardly was anything to appreciate about him, except for being unblinking in the face of death; his own or other people’s.

Therefore, his apartment was in the exact condition in which he’d left it; seamlessly tidy and void of any lurking presence he’d awaited.

For days turning into weeks, his house remained peaceful, if not too quiet that even his dripping faucet couldn’t fill the silence, that even the tuxedo cat that sneaked in from the gap of his cracked window couldn’t account for. It meowed and clawed at his couch, climbed onto the top shelves and knocked down empty jars and broke his unused set of glass.

Its mannerisms mirrored yours, he mused.

Zayne mentally punched himself in the guts for finding uncanny resemblance of you in a cat, and worried that his injury might’ve bruised more than his elbows and chest.

He had not lived enough days with you rampaging through his place like you owned it, and deemed it ridiculous that he was already attached to a phantom spirit only from one-sided conversations that could be counted with one hand. There were no instances where the word Zayne and heartless were not put together – if one was mentioned, the other would surely follow.

Just where could he find the book that could thoroughly explain the reasons his chest felt hollow, even with his heart knocking against his ribs and reminding him of the life he sinfully coveted?

His routine became monotone.

Zayne started questioning when it became a nuisance, for it always had been the same sets of activities, repeatedly engaging him in relentless danger and the bliss of nothingness that was his life. It was strange that he’d scanned his home for the telltales of you whenever he entered it; dauntingly peculiar that he thought he’d heard your voice whenever he slipped into mindless daydreams in his head.

“Do you make a habit of almost getting killed every Tuesday?”

Zayne jumped out of his skin, the hand that’d been pressing against his thigh flying up to his chest as he clutched it with all his might, his eyes widened almost comically, dulled green and hazel settling on your frown as you pensively hung upside down on the back of his sofa. Your grin was off-putting, for it resembled too close the uncanny happiness in the child painted on that door – whatever floundering you’d done to lift up your spirits to such a high, he could not begin to guess.

Shaking off his initial shock, Zayne limped toward the bathroom in search of a first aid kit. Emboldened by his prevailing silence, you tailed his agonizingly slow crawl, huffing in his neck and leaving little space for him to breathe.

“Tell me you didn’t get ambushed again.” You crossed your arms, brows pulled taut on your forehead as you regarded him with reprimand, as if he’d thrown your efforts down the drain by walking head first into danger after the morbid sacrifice you had to make.

Zayne plopped himself on the toilet seat, cracking open the kit and began unbuckling his belt to rid of his trousers. “You should see the other guy.” In a rare moment of indulgence, he allowed his remark to drift in the air, the contentment on his mission results quiet yet obvious. The wound was only a minor setback. He’d completed his job in a few intakes of breath, and all that was left of the Alterum was a shimmering Protocore that rolled toward his polished shoe.

He fought the urge to mock your absence, to chastise you for your undignified disappearance, tethering the words onto the tip of his tongue instead – for it was not his place to question your inconsequential existence, nor was it in his interest to be of knowledge on your whereabouts. Zayne’s disgruntled mood was distantly hidden underneath a curated façade, though it was on the brink of collapsing when you screeched in his ear at his attempt to ‘molest’ your innocence, according to your opinion.

“What the fuck! Have some dignity!” Your hands were covering your eyes, back now facing him as you hysterically tapped the sides of your head to rid yourself of the indecent image. Zayne snickered, huffing an amused breath that could very well have been translated as a laugh.

“Aren’t you going to help?” Mirth danced in his eyes at your exaggerated revulsion. He had a foreboding feeling that you’d faced far worse to be reacting this way towards such a trivial matter.

Your ears twitched at the sound of a bottle being uncapped, and hesitantly, with dramatic effects and non-existent heart beating in your chest, turned to face him in hopes he would be so kind as to cover his private parts for the safety of your mind – he was, fortunately, still wearing a pair of white boxers with prints of animated snowmen on it.

Covering the snort that escaped your nose with a cough, you quickly averted your eyes to distract yourself from the sight, impervious against his pointed stare as you directed your gaze anywhere but the cute piece of clothing he owned.

His eyebrow raised, “Something on your mind?”

You raised your hands in mock surrender, “Nope. Not at all.”

Assistance was something you refused to provide, given that his hands were completely capable of disinfecting and bandaging his own wounds – instead, you’d nudged him away from drifting into a tantalizing trance of a daydream. For once, Zayne was amenable towards your incessant chattering.

You mentioned the stray dogs passing by his backyard, and the mice he’d unknowingly fed with the leftover cheese he forgot to trash a year ago. You scolded him for not unplugging his coffee machine the other day, and that you were left with the burden of completing his chores for him. You flippantly reminded him of the crack on his roof, and warned him that a slightly heavier rain might or might not be able to rupture a hole through it.

Through the soothing lull in your voice, Zayne failed to disregard the grave suspicions pressing down on his conscience.

It wasn’t a taxing task for him to dig up neglected files on a subject he had known little to nothing about, stalking into millions of recorded cases blindly to scout for an unlikely miracle. Still, the utter failure in his findings riled him up even further than your inexplicable desertion, despair clouding his days like a storm unwilling to oversee a calm sea.

“I named the cat.”

He did not have a cat.

As Zayne skimmed through his empty fridge and the empty jar of chocolate on his kitchen counter, he pinched the bridge of his nose, hoping he could quell the hunger building in his empty stomach to visit the nearest convenience store.

The pair of glasses sitting atop his counter halted him in his tracks, his statue-like form frozen on his spot as he examined the cracked lenses and one of its temples missing. Swallowing down the questions he ought to ask you, he slithered toward the front door after grabbing a handful of cash, hiding the limp in his leg with unseen effort.

“He’s called Clopidogrel.” The cat?

His steps slowed to a stop. Why? He wanted to ask.

“Stay here.” Was what he said.

Your cheery reply echoed after him. “Okay, mister snowman.”

A blade of dark-coloured ice struck the cupboard behind you, passing straight through your translucent chest.

“You –!” You raised your pointer finger, curling your lip in annoyance at his audacity when the door closed with a sharp click.

Zayne had started to notice a pattern.

On the occasion of your appearance outside his secluded house, it would always happen in the circumstance where he’d been injured – and once you’d successfully, with uncountable number of miracles in your capability, dragged him from free-falling into the abyss of the undead, you would indisputably cease in your visits. Zayne had assumed you were angry, after the first few times, yet the duration of your absence varied on how grave his injuries had been.

Therefore, he came to his second suspicion. You had inadvertently traded your life for his. Or whatever you had been able to offer, seeing as you were not living, in this instance.

The stories you talked his ears off about were always your daily traipsing inside this dreary residence he called a home, and the infrequent occurrence that he allowed you to stuck onto his back as he strolled in the familiar darkness literally were the only times you’d see the world that was out of the norm, according to your analysis.

You’d accompanied him to get another pair of glasses, and had ruined his image in front of the worker who’d recommended the different styles of frames that they thought would suit his face. “Zayne! How many fingers am I holding?” His laugh reverberated throughout the private store, a pair of red-framed glasses sitting on the bridge of his nose as he sat in front of a mirror, the tips of his ears turning a shade of red in his reflection as his gaze remained fixated on you, standing on the far distance, your fingers shaping double ‘O’s around your crossed eyes.

Zayne was a solitary human; he lived accompanied by nothing but the chirping cat outside his window, he worked assisted by no one else but his own corroding evol, and he survived by relying solely on visceral, sheer determination. It was of his own fault that he’d acclimated to your rallying presence by his side, so much that he’d expected it whenever he crossed the threshold and stepped into the shelter of his home.

He wasn’t able to pin-point how, exactly, he’d became so infatuated with you.

His movements, once mechanical and driven by mere habit, was now wired with purpose – his ears would prickle for a noise of your making, and his eyes, glinted by the low sheen of the dying lamp in his living room, scouted the whole place in hopes of catching sight of your quaint presence.

Sentiments were not built to be drilled into his body, and for a time, Zayne was content in the possibility that he was not capable of experiencing such emotions towards another person. Perhaps the squeeze of his heart at a mother’s wail as he took her son’s life, or the pain pressing against his chest when a little child had begged him to end his misery. He suffered once in a while during his missions and every night after, as he held wide open the door for those begrudging souls to return the torture done by his hand back to him tenfold.

It was all he’d ever known.

Grief, anguish, despair, he knew like the back of his hand.

Comfort, serenity, joy, he was a stranger to.

He refrained himself from indulging your baseless behaviour, for a time, before curiosity snatched his conscience away and created himself into a puppet for your benefit – it must have been that, for there were no other reasons legitimate enough for him to plant a ticking bomb on the dark webs only to earn a sliver of information about you. What was it to him, that he should know who you were? How your life was before being reborn as a parasite chewing at his walls, and poking at the vulnerable throes of his defences, Zayne decided it was imperative that he acquire every insight regarding you.

His old self would deem it improper, and out of mind.

And he would be correct, though Zayne would argue with a wall that he was doing it all within his own volition, and with a thoroughly sound mind.

“Hello? Wake up, Zayne. Are you sleeping with your eyes open?” Your translucent limb flailed around in some vain attempt to bring him back to the present. His TV was on, though instead of the usual medical recording he was so inherently obsessed with, the screen showed a colourful display of cartoons, animated dogs planning a coup against their owner or something similar – neither you nor Zayne was paying it any attention.

Zayne blinked, and refrained himself from recoiling at your lack of sense on personal space – your face were inches from his, the tip of your nose just shy of brushing against his. As his vision cleared, and his glasses were pushed back into its original position, all he could see was his own reflection that did not exist through your eyes, though the turmoil brewing inside him was given no time to escalate before you gushed in fascination upon the sight you were seeing.

“Whoa, your pupils just dilated a great deal. Is it because you’re elated to see me?” Giggling at your own joke, you poke at his cheek with a cold finger, the tip of it unsuccessful in making contact with skin.

With faux exasperation and an abundance of patience in his bones, Zayne exhaled and shook his head, swatting away your advances in teasing him. His hand passed through your wrist, and for a brief moment, the appendage flickered in and out of visibility. His television frizzled into a static blue, before it exploded into black and the sounds switched into a long, deafening beep.

Concern troubled his features. Dancing around the subject was causing irretrievable damage upon his brain, and though he prided himself in being subtle about his interests, Zayne could no longer bottle the myriads of emotions threatening to implode at the smallest inconvenience when it came to you. The mystery shrouding your truth, once as enticing as a bar of chocolate, was now proving to be a nuisance for his exclusive study regarding your origins.

Without a stumble over his words, Zayne expressed his curiosity, “Are you dead?”

You choked on invisible air, and it was then that Zayne realized how unemphatic his question had sounded – which put to the test the rumours about his unadulterated immorality. The flash of incredulity in your features melted away as soon as it’d surfaced, and you brought a finger to your chin, tapping it absentmindedly.

“I'm not sure. I don’t remember dying.” Shrugging, you picked at the scattered chocolate wraps on his coffee table, “I know I didn't live.”

A conflict arose inside him. He might’ve lacked the appropriate social skills required for an average human, but his intelligence had profusely made up for it; one of the reasons his adoptive parents had chosen him, he was deliberately told.

However, he was never taught the ways to disentangle the language of riddles you spoke in, and he’d never studied the inherent traits a ghost could bear, especially one that claimed have never lived. Logically, one should be a living being so they could die, should they not?

His protruding interest was piqued even more as he dipped his head through the thick, flawless wall that separated him from discovering whatever ugly secret you’d carefully tucked away, impossible for him to pick on. Zayne squinted his eyes in mock seriousness, stuffing the erratic beats inside his chest full of cotton in order to keep himself in check. “I never knew a spirit could also experience amnesia.”

Indignantly, a pout slithered its way onto your lips as you raised a hand in a fist, punching the air in front of his face to display your dismay. “What do you know of it?!”

Zayne shook his head, though the edge of his mouth were lifted, revelling in your whimsical fury – beneath the false ire you were shooting at him, he could recognize the flicker of sadness in your grey irises. “Forgive me,” I was only jesting, he swallowed the bitter taste of his own inadequacy. “I don’t mean to undermine your death.”

“It’s no trouble.” The air around him shifted, and he turned his head to see your form now slouched beside him on the couch, though your body did not really touch the object. “I remember sounds, and –”

Your hand rose toward your collarbone, rubbing the spot light-heartedly in your distaste of the memories unfolding in your mind – a habit you’d seemed to pick up from him whenever nerves or fluster wrecked his system. “– and pain, I think.”

You paused, visibly distressed in your attempt to arrange the suitable words that could do your predicament justice. Alas, it had never been your strong suit – or, rather, you’d never known of your talents, if you had any hobbies, or whether you had preferred milk chocolate compared to the dark ones Zayne always bought. “I don’t know where I was buried, or if there was a body to be buried at all.”

If anyone were to catch him right now, they would’ve deemed him insane for communicating with a ghost – an enthralling one, but of the undead nonetheless – yet, Zayne couldn’t help but felt an itch in the back of his mind that somehow, this was meant for him to uncover. This… you, could very well be his fate.

Even if the fate would inevitable end horribly, he would grasp onto it tightly without a doubt in his mind.

Hence, here he was, digging his own grave for the irrefutable ache in his heart at your mysteriously undisclosed death. “Was there any chance you were an experiment?”

Unfortunately for him, you were not as easy a target as a moving rabbit on the tip of his blade, awaiting to be executed and not at all eluding his terribly shaky first shoot. Zayne blinked once, and you were hanging upside down in front of him, dangling from the low ceiling with an exaggeratedly distraught frown. “You wouldn’t believe this, but,” covering your mouth with both hands, you gasped, voice laced with dripping sarcasm behind your theatrics, “I don’t remember.”

Zayne resisted the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose – he’d been doing that a lot with you around. If he were not careful, you would find a reason to use it against him. “You sure do love playing this game of cat and mouse.”

“Believe me, I'm not a willing participant.” You rolled your eyes, as if displeased for being stuck with a man whose emotional capacity rivalled that of a screwdriver.

What does that mean? Zayne grumbled to himself. Instead, the words that escaped his mouth was, “That makes two of us.”

It was technically truthful. Zayne had never signed up to be a babysitter for a wayward ghost, wandering about in his house and wreaking havoc without his explicit approval, yet he was subjected to your unapologetic companionship that had caused him more headaches than any mission ever did.

The luminosity around your figure dimmed, and guilt crawled up his spine. There was not enough naivety contained in his blood that he would expect you to bare your soul on a silver platter for him to feast upon.

An idea popped up in his head.

“Wait.” He pointed to you as if mentally willing the stubborn spirit from moving an inch. Your gaze trailed after him as he dodged a melted chuck of chocolate you playfully hurled at the back of his head, sparing you no mind as to focus on his task. Zayne disappeared into his bedroom, the rustle of sheets and a few creaks of cupboards being opened, he reappeared with a resolute boost in his steps.

In his grasp, clutched a black book with a worn cover made of leather, a ballpoint slipped in between its pages, possibly acting as a mark of some sort. Resuming his position, Zayne flipped the sketchbookto the designated page and shoved the scrawled paper into your face.

You blinked at his insistence, reluctance hindering your willingness to indulge him.

The image created by his pen scribbles were nothing but extraordinary. With your tongue caught between your teeth, you bit out any snide remarks to insult the uneven lines he amateurly drew, and with a gust of wind, you chose to blow over the yellowed paper into its next page.

Your brows raised significantly higher with each drawing that you saw – it was of the same person with an uncanny smile, a plush unicorn in one hand, though the situation the child was involved in varied; blood on the boots he’d meticulously coloured red, contrasting the black and white concept; a field of dried grains with a familiar house in the background; the beach, its water an unsettling deep black and shadows lurking over the corners; and lastly, under the dim lighting of a lab, you were sat on a high electrocution chair, an IV drip attached to your arm, and the weight of a vial in your palm.

An inexplicable soreness emitted from your chest, and you showed your discomfort by pressing a hand into the spot on your chest, “What did you draw?” Your voice trembled as the lamp above your heads flickered along with the uncertainty swaying your fortitude. “Who is that child?”

You feared the answer he would present to you, yet you couldn’t help but ask.

“I believe it is you.”

If it was within your ability to faint, you would’ve done so.

“You have to be kidding me.” An incredulous chuckle reverberated through your throat, disbelief coating your uncontrolled laughs.

Zayne felt a crippling sense of helplessness – he had thought seeing the images would trigger something in your memory and hoped you would point him in the right direction; what was he fated to do for you that had irretrievably paved your way towards him?

Refusing to take into account his disconcerting conclusion, you glared daggers into the offending book and willed fire to scorch it to ashes. “Zayne,”

The man in question was staring mournfully at his beloved sketchbook, burning before his very eyes. You continued without remorse. “Did you see how horrific that smile was? How could you compare that to me, of all people?”

With quivering lips, you tried to embody the ‘puppy eyes’ trick you’d heard about to the best of your knowledge, pulling on the sweetest smile you could muster.

Zayne grimaced at your poor effort at what you thought was a delightful smile, and thought the resemblance was unmistakable now. “You’re not helping your case.”

Throwing your arms in the air, you groaned so loud it could rumble through his roof and disrupted his neighbours. “Unbelievable!”

It wasn’t that he disliked your smile – quite the opposite. Zayne was not one to waver underneath grim-looking chances or psychotic laughs that came from his enemies when they thought they’d won, but yours – wide and unapologetically voracious, bright and sinister and so teasingly yours, incited in him a warmth he didn’t know existed in his cold constitution.

You prowled toward his kitchen where you’d been hiding in for most of the days without him present, throwing open a cupboard that threatened its hinges’ survivability.

Zayne thought reasoning would be in vain, and coaxing even more ridiculous than the unsalvageable drawings still ensnared in flames on his table. “Do you at least know your name?”

His unrelenting shout resounded throughout the space you’d strategically created. You called back at him with ferocity at the suspiciously insulting query. “Of course I do, you moron!”

He almost bit his tongue. “Then would you care to tell me?”

“As if!”

You squeezed into the small space of his newly empty cupboard – with its contents moved haphazardly to the floor – and slammed the door to it, not before sticking out your tongue stubbornly.

Zayne would fight the Gods if you had given him the task, perhaps in reward of learning your name.

Easier said than done, however.

#mine

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