Archive of Our Own ^beta

It’s cold.

Ghost can’t actually feel temperature, but the tightness of his shell, even while tucked safely into his Guardian’s Light, is as close as he can get to what a Human must think of as ‘cold’.

He quickly decides he does not like it.

They’re trudging wearily through a blizzard, kitted out in padded armor that does little to protect them from the wind and even less to protect them from the snow. They’d long given up on their sparrow, sick of being thrown back and forth and crashing into unseen obstacles - though being knee-deep in ice wasn’t much better. Walls of flurrying white snowdrift surround them on all sides, obscuring their vision; now, they’re guided only by Ghost’s struggling radar and the Guardian’s own intuition.

He wishes they’d just stop for a while, take some time to find shelter and wait out the storm, but ‘Elizabeth’ had insisted that this was important and couldn’t wait. And of course, his Guardian, drawn in by the power of Stasis, was happy to comply.

A little too happy, he thinks. But he doesn’t argue. If his Guardian believed in Elsie and the Drifter and Eris, and that the splinters may hold an answer to - whatever questions they were asking, then he wouldn't deny them.

He knows them. He trusts them.

... Right?

He frets, he gives them cautious warnings, gone unheeded or unheard. He tries to support them, but his words are marred with doubt. 

He can feel their Light straining, more and more, day by day.

Still, he manages to find comfort in the fact that even in the gulf of the unknown, every time he reaches for them, his Guardian responds. And now, in the midst of the storm, he does so again; he indulges in the familiarity and warmth of their presence, and allows himself to connect with them.

He feels their shared power, balancing on the edge of the Dark. The cold, permeating their armor and frosting their helmet. The unknown fragility of Stasis, that ability which he has no say in or control over -

- And the connection is severed, without warning or explanation. Ghost spins, and he is plunged into an abyss.

There is Darkness all around. He is perpetually falling and floating, lost in the whirling sleet that engulfs him. His other half is nowhere in sight.

“Guardian?” He calls, frantic. “Guardian? Where -?”

They were right next to him. They should have been. But he can’t feel them. Why can’t he feel them?

“Guardian?” He says, louder, panic seeping into his tone. He scans the void in vain.

There is nothing on his radar, but he knows something watches.

He trembles. Flakes of Darkness speck and rot his fins. He opens his shell, reaches out with his Light, and nobody answers.

“Guardian? Guardian, please -” He sobs. Nobody is there, nobody is coming for him but the thing that watches. In all his centuries of life, in all his centuries of searching, never before has he felt so alone.

“- where did you go?”

The blizzard seems to quake. Ghost is held tight in its grasp, its grip gouging cruelly into his tiny body; he feels weightless and heavy all at once, battered by the wind, sinking deep, deeper into the storm.

“Guardian!” He almost screams, petrified by a fit of pure grief and anguish at a realisation that hollows him to the core.

They shut him out.

They left him. They left him. They left -

He's brought back into physical form by a pair of gloved hands, fingers curled gently around him, warm with a concentration of Solar energy that thaws through the thick layer of frost coating his shell. The Guardian holds him close to their face, helmet hiding their expression. Through their connection, he feels their concern.

They wait. He doesn’t - can’t say anything for a long moment, far too overwhelmed.

“Please,” he begs, so quiet and hesitant that the Guardian barely hears him under the howl of the wind, “Can we find shelter?”

They stare at him, tilt their head. They brush their thumb over the ridges of his form as he shakes.

They nod.

Gratitude floods his core as they press the mouth of their helmet to his shell - their usual improvised kiss. As they search, gingerly inspecting shallow caverns and kicking through sheets of ice, he fades back into their Light once again.

He reaches out. They respond in kind; a profound affection that passes between them like daylight breaking through the storm.