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In his dreams, he sees them - fields of fire and the machineries of war. Even after a decade of loyal service, what happened on Unseelie never really left him. Going back has only served to make that more true - now that he know the whole dreadful breadth of it, and has felt the Ashrai coming and going through the trees. All of their power. All of their rage.
John Silence's ghosts are always with him.
Back on the Darkwind, he slams awake from a dream of scorched earth and terrible howling. Sweating, he reaches out to flip on a light and realises that she's already sitting there, cloaked in gloom. He's got no idea how long she's been there, but he doesn't have it left in him to be embarrassed.
"Investigator."
"That's very formal, Captain. Call me Frost."
Silence thinks that he might prefer formality where she's concerned, but he also knows not to question an Investigator; he likes all of his internal organs where they are. He's had a close enough look at death for now.
"Frost." It strikes him that name is well chosen for her or, at least, it would be if he knew what lay beneath that chilly exterior. She has something of the ice-world about her, a whisper of eternal cold. There are worlds in the empire, Silence knows, where the sun never shines Frost reminds him of those worlds, with her bone-deep calm. Since Carrion...since Sean...Silence has always found that Investigators make uneasy company. The problem with a creature (the words 'human' or 'person' don't seem quite appropriate) who has had so many extraneous emotions stripped away it's that you can always trust them to do the most logical thing, even if it's the thing that hurts the most. What happened to Diana left her open and bloody to the world; he'd pulled her in close to try and protect her from the worst of it. What happened to Frost is completely the opposite; she is steel, harder than steel and, like all investigators, she is shrunk to her most useful size.
"I've never seen anything like what happened today," she says, every single syllable clipped and measured and necessary. "I am trained to think like aliens do, and I've never met an alien I couldn't kill. But...ghosts?" A hint of a smile tugs at the corner of his mouth. "I don't even know how to start fighting a ghost."
What he wants to tell her is that he thinks that the Ashrai have suffered enough. He wants to tell her that, if the Universe is a just place, then humanity will never set foot on Unseelie again, will walk away with their newly discovered alien tech and leave the planet to sleep with her ghosts, nothing but the music of the metal trees for company. He wants to describe to her what a planet looks like from orbit as it burns. He wants to tell her about the dreams that plagued him, dreams of his friend burning along with all the rest. He wants to tell her that he knows that he'll never be more than a Captain now, that he accepts that and, honestly, he's grateful for it. He's seen what he can do when given the authority and, honestly, he'd rather never be put in that position again. He doesn't want to be in that position again. He wants to live a good, quiet life in service of the Empire and, if he's lucky, he won't die before his time.
These are the things he wants to tell her.
"Do you want a drink, Frost?"
He'll settle for that.
*
They sit and drink and watch the stars spill by. Down the hallway, in her berth, Diana is sleeping peacefully; Silence wonders who long that can last. He caught a glimpse of what was inside his daughter's head. That's one more thing that he's going to be living with forever now.
"Odin told me, you know," he says. "About what you said. About the fact that you'd have left me behind."
"I would have," she says, without a hint of apology in her voice. "I'd leave anyone behind if I thought that they were going to compromise my mission. There's not a soul in this universe I would save."
Although it was only a few hours ago, it comes back to him fractured and distant - the way that the three of them had stood for him as the ghosts of the Ashrai boiled and seethed around them like a storm at sea.
The most important thing to each of them: duty for Frost, atonement for Diana and friendship for Carrion. Maybe Carrion's word was enough, but Silence almost thinks that it might be the combination of three, that those three bodies had been willing to put themselves between him and danger, to speak for him. That they all, in their own ways, believed that there was a possibility that John Silence could be a good man again.
Maybe with Frost on one side and Diana on the other, he could try.
"I suppose you'll apply for a transfer," he says.
Frost makes him wait for a moment, taking a sip of her drink before she shakes her head.
"I have a feeling that things will always be interesting where you're concerned, John," she says, and that single use of his given name makes Silence feel both vulnerable and held at the same time. "And I have always prefered life to be interesting."
"You should be careful," he says. "Shit has a way of sticking - I don't exactly how much of a glowing reputation anymore."
"Ah, but you're underestimating me," she says, her grin wide now. "I am the best that there is. And it doesn't matter whose company I keep, that's never going to change. I'm an Investigator. You need an Investigator. So here I'll stay."
What he wants to say to her is that she's the most dangerous person that he's ever met and that makes him like her more. What he wants to tell her is that he's sure that things will get worse from here, not better. What he wants to say, more than anything, is that he's already had one Investigator change sides on him, that Sean was his friend and he loved him like a brother, that he's only just met her and, already, he thinks that it would kill him if she ever did that same thing to him. Because he believes in her. Because he feels capable of more when she's there. Because she had so much more of a choice than Diana did and she still chose to come and stand at his side.
There is so much that he wants to say. He's unaccustomed to feeling like his body contains multitudes but maybe being back on Unseelie has changed him in more ways than one? Maybe he'll always be different now.
"Okay."
He finishes his drink. He settles for that.