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He sees him everywhere. He sees him in the wind that blows his unkempt hair across his cheeks, in the sharp yellow shrieks that break across his vision, in the mother’s hands clasped in prayer as he aims his gun at her son’s chest. He sees his smiling face, the face of a ghost just slightly less corporeal than he is, and he sees those teeth like daggers and hair like moonlight, and he has never seen his eyes, and he sees in him an escape.
So one night, when the moon is above him like a guiding light through the darkness, he kills a target and waits for the ghost to appear. He knows what it is like to wait on a ghost, for he is a ghost, and he is patient and calm as ever. There are threats all around, this time of night, but he is the biggest threat in this city, and he has never been frightened by darkness.
He appears as the moon begins to fall from the sky, the light grey around them, and ghost approaches ghost. He watches him press his lips to those of the dying target, and the wind moves fast around them.
The ghost turns to look at him, eyes meeting across a bloody alleyway, and he feels a thread connecting them, heart to intangible heart, and he knows he has seen this ghost before. He knows where and when he has seen this ghost before, and that is what scares him.
He remembers blood, and ice, and snow, and a voice like the sky on the brightest of days, and he feels like he is falling – because he did fall once, didn’t he – and there are phantom arms against his arms and he is in an embrace – he has never been embraced, or has he – and he cannot breathe, and he is a gun and a bullet but now he is a man.
And he remembers. He remembers a fate of snow and cold and a crying scream and words in a language he knows now – but he didn’t then, did he – and he wonders how many other sensations have been locked away in his mind, only to be unlocked by this ghost’s eyes.
So he turns in the ghost’s embrace to look into his eyes again and he is met with nothing but coldness, cold as the snow in which the man with the golden name – because he once had a name, didn’t he – died, and the ghost is melting away till there is nothing left but the residual cold one feels after having been somewhere cold for a while, and he is a Weapon and a Soldier but he was once a man, and he has never pitied a target, but he pities the man he once was for the fate he suffered.
He is no longer that man, and the memories are only strands of thread in his mind, and so he leaves the bloody alleyway and returns to his hideout, as instructed, and he becomes the ghost once more.