Chapter Text
Rainwater dripped steadily through the collapsed roof, striking warped floorboards with soft, irregular taps. The building had once been something important—perhaps a church, perhaps a station—but decades of storms had left it rotting from the inside out. Brick crumbled beneath creeping moss. Wooden beams bowed dangerously beneath the weight of damp and time. The entire structure smelled of mildew, wet ash, and old smoke.
Sherlock stood near the doorway with his revolver already raised.
The man across from him didn’t move.
“So you’re The Ghost.”
The stranger’s expression barely shifted. “I’ve been called that.”
His voice was calm—younger than Sherlock had expected.
“They say you tear down villages with an army of swordsmen.” Sherlock took another slow step forward, boots creaking against sodden wood. “Seems a bit excessive.”
The man gave a small shrug beneath his weather-worn cloak. “Rumors never cease to grow out of proportion.”
Sherlock studied him carefully.
This was the infamous liberator? The terror of dictators and warlords from the eastern territories?
He looked to be around Sherlock’s age—perhaps twenty-four at most. Tall, though leaner than the stories implied. A satchel hung diagonally across his body, worn from years of travel. Beneath the folds of his cloak, Sherlock could make out the shape of a sword resting at his hip, though the man’s hands remained plainly visible at his sides.
Not reaching for the weapon. Not even particularly tense. That, more than anything else, unsettled Sherlock.
And then there were the eyes.
Scarlet.
Sharp despite the exhaustion buried deep within them.
Not physical exhaustion alone. Sherlock knew the look of sleepless nights and hard travel well enough. This was something older—heavier. The sort of weariness that settled into a person’s bones after seeing too much death too young.
The Ghost looked like a man who had survived purely because the world refused to let him stop.
Sherlock exhaled quietly, then lowered the gun.
“I’m not wasting bullets on a man who already believes he’s dead.”
For the first time, something flickered across the stranger’s face. Not anger or surprise, but a dry sort of amusement.
He huffed a faint laugh beneath his breath. “How compassionate.”
“Aren’t I just?” Sherlock slipped the revolver back into its holster with theatrical flourish before offering an exaggerated bow. “The name’s Sherlock.”
Straightening again, he flashed the man a grin.
“What’s yours, Ghost?”
The man regarded him for a long moment, rainwater dripping steadily somewhere deeper within the ruined building.
“William,” he said at last.
“Lovely. Now then, William, would you be so kind as to come with me quietly?” Sherlock asked, smiling faintly as he leaned against the dilapidated doorframe.
William stared at him with the sort of flat, exhausted look usually reserved for particularly disappointing children.
Sherlock sighed. “Right. Thought not.”
William turned away, apparently deciding the conversation was over. The movement was smooth, unhurried, confident.
Sherlock watched the cloak shift around the sword at his hip, then pushed himself off the crumbling doorway and followed after him.
“I suppose I’ll just trail behind you until you finally let your guard down.”
“You’ll be waiting a very long time.”
“Mm,” Sherlock replied easily. “I gathered as much.”
The drizzle never fully stopped.
It clung to the world in a thin silver haze, soaking slowly through fabric and turning the cracked roadway slick beneath their boots. What remained of the old highway stretched endlessly ahead of them, broken apart in places where floodwater had long ago eaten through the foundation. Rusted vehicle husks sat half-swallowed by weeds along the shoulders like animal carcasses picked clean.
Sherlock had not stopped talking.
“…and then,” he continued as he stepped over a fissure splitting the pavement nearly in two, “the idiot tried to convince me he’d accidentally stolen the bounty’s horse.”
Several paces ahead, William kept walking without pause, his rain-darkened cloak shifting softly around his legs.
“And had he?” he asked dryly.
Sherlock barked a short laugh. “No, he’d stolen my horse.”
“Hm.”
Sherlock narrowed his eyes at the back of William’s head. “You’re a terrible audience, you know.”
“And yet you persist.”
“Well, yes,” Sherlock replied easily, shoving his hands deeper into his coat pockets as another gust of damp wind swept across the open roadway. “Silence is dreadful.”
William made a faint sound beneath his breath that might have been amusement. Or disapproval. With him, Sherlock was beginning to suspect the two were closely related.
Ahead of them, the skeletal remains of an overturned lorry emerged slowly through the rain like the bones of some long-dead beast. Water pooled black and glossy inside its rusted frame.
The sky continued to darken overhead, thick clouds swallowing the last traces of evening light. Between the rain and the growing gloom, the world beyond the road had begun dissolving into shadow.
Sherlock glanced toward the distant glow flickering faintly through the trees ahead.
“There’s a settlement a few miles east of here,” he said. “Still standing last time I passed through. Dry beds. Mediocre whiskey. One woman threatened to shoot me with a crossbow.”
“No,” William replied immediately.
Sherlock blinked. “No?”
“No settlements.”
William’s boots crunched softly over broken gravel.
“You didn’t even consider it,” Sherlock observed, adjusting the strap of his satchel higher onto his shoulder.
“I didn't need to.”
Sherlock tucked his chilled hands deeper into his coat pockets as he walked, eyeing William sidelong. “You always this suspicious?”
“Yes.”
“At least you’re honest.”
Rainwater slid from the edge of William’s hood as he continued down the fractured roadway without slowing.
“Settlements mean walls,” he said evenly. “Walls mean people watching who enters and who leaves. Questions. Rumors.”
His gaze flicked briefly toward Sherlock’s holstered revolver.
“Bounties.”
Sherlock hummed softly at that. “Fair point.”
William faced forward again.
“We camp outside,” he said after a moment.
“Well,” Sherlock sighed dramatically, “if we’re sleeping in the mud together already, this relationship is progressing rather quickly.”
William’s pace never faltered.
“I can still leave you behind,” he called back at him.
“You could,” Sherlock agreed easily. “But you won’t.”
That earned him another glance.
Brief, sharp beneath the shadow of William’s hood.
Then he looked away again and continued down the ruined roadway.
The rain worsened as evening settled fully over the landscape.
The cracked remains of the highway eventually disappeared beneath creeping undergrowth, forcing them from broken pavement onto narrow deer paths winding between dense clusters of pine and cedar. Wet branches brushed against Sherlock’s shoulders as they walked. The forest smelled of damp earth, moss, and rain-soaked bark, thick enough to almost drown out the distant scent of old flood rot that seemed to cling permanently to the world beyond the trees.
Darkness gathered quickly beneath the canopy.
Sherlock was just beginning to consider whether he could convince William to stop before they both slipped into a ravine when William abruptly veered off the path.
Sherlock followed him through a cluster of low brush and found himself facing a jagged cliffside partially hidden behind curtains of hanging ivy. A narrow stone overhang jutted outward just enough to shield a shallow patch of earth from the rain.
“Hm,” Sherlock murmured, glancing upward as water streamed steadily from the rock above. “Charming.”
William ignored him entirely.
Within minutes he had already cleared a space beneath the overhang, movements efficient and practiced. Sherlock watched him assemble a small fire with the ease of someone who had done it hundreds—perhaps thousands—of times before.
The flame caught quickly despite the damp.
Orange light flickered across wet stone and shadowed faces while rain hammered steadily against the forest around them.
For a while, neither spoke.
Sherlock dug the remains of a loaf of bread from his satchel, tearing off a piece with cold fingers. Across from him, William unpacked simple travel rations alongside a small handful of dark berries Sherlock hadn’t seen him gather.
“You forage too?” Sherlock asked eventually.
William glanced briefly toward the berries. “You say that as though food appears magically.”
“Well,” Sherlock replied, tearing off another piece of bread, “my food appeared magically. I bought it.”
William made that faint almost-amused sound again before returning his attention to the fire. The quiet that followed was not entirely uncomfortable.
Rain poured steadily beyond the shelter of the overhang now, dense enough to blur the forest beyond into shifting darkness. Wind hissed softly through the trees overhead.
Sherlock leaned back against the stone wall, stretching his legs toward the warmth of the fire.
“You know,” he began, “most people I hunt at least attempt to—”
“First watch is yours.”
Sherlock blinked.
Across the fire, William had already pulled his cloak more tightly around himself. He shoved his satchel beneath his head with practiced familiarity before settling against the stone wall.
Sherlock stared at him. “You’re just going to sleep?”
“Yes.”
“You trust me remarkably quickly for a wanted fugitive.”
One scarlet eye cracked open beneath the hood.
“You’re a bounty hunter,” William said evenly. “If you intended to kill me, you would’ve tried already.”
Sherlock huffed a quiet laugh at that.
“Fair enough.”
William closed his eyes again.
Sherlock watched the man carefully for a long moment.
He never fully loosened his grip on the cloak wrapped around himself. His sword remained within easy reach. Every so often—subtle enough most people likely would have missed it entirely—his breathing shifted in time with the sounds of the forest beyond the overhang.
Tracking. Listening. Waiting.
The man might close his eyes.
But Sherlock was fairly certain The Ghost never truly slept.