giving up your ghost

Today was just supposed to be another day. Wake up at 5:30 A.M., whip up breakfast and eat while catching up on news related to your job, hit the gym, shower, and be at work by 8:00. Be on patrol until 12, eat a quick lunch, finish up your reports until 3, and attend training until 5. Go home or do whatever you want on the way there. Pass by Destiny Cafe if you feel like it and have a nice chat with whoever you happen to run into. Dinner, sleep, rinse and repeat.

You quite like your little life, actually.

But that’s something you could say only if today really were just another day. It isn’t, not when the date glares up at you from your phone when you try to turn off your alarm, and you see it: 27.

Today’s the 27th. Another month has passed since Grandma and Caleb left your life without warning. Another month since the tragedy that made it so that, every single month, amidst days that just felt like any other day, there would be one that would make you wish you burned in that fire along with them instead.

If a God exists, and if they’re listening, you hope they don’t get it twisted. It’s not that you’re ungrateful. You live in a nice apartment that you own and don’t have to pay rent for. You were born with a pretty face that makes people treat you nicely for no good reason–like the barista at Destiny Cafe who somehow brews your order at lightning speed and the elderly neighbors who give you more food than you can eat. You got put into the Hunters’ Association’s elite squad as soon as you graduated from the academy and passed the exam–all because of a rare Evol you were lucky enough to have. You know you have it better than others who still manage to work things out and love their life. You know that you need to live on behalf of all the people who, unlike you, didn’t survive the tragedy from 14 years ago. But sometimes–just sometimes–actually, only on days like this one, really–you can’t help but wonder what it is you’re still here for.

Saving the lives of Linkon’s citizens? That’s nice, but you’re not special. They’d be fine even if you never became a Deepspace Hunter. Happy moments with your friends? Again nice, but you’re not special. They’d still be happy–maybe happier–hanging out with people who aren’t you.

Now that Grandma’s warm embrace and Caleb’s little pinches are gone from your world, you feel like you’ve lost the one space where it felt like you would always be special, needed, and welcomed. They raised you strong, yes–that’s why you’re strong enough to forget, on most days, that you now exist only for the sake of existing. But on days like this… the makeshift stitches on your ripped-apart heart come loose.

The sunlight makes its way past the window to bounce off of the necklace Caleb left behind, and you decide you need to take some time off for your heart to run its maintenance. It genuinely scares you, the thought that your melancholic stupor might delude you into seeing Grandma and Caleb in the Wanderers, and make you hug the same savage beasts coming for your throat.

Ring, ring, ring. Tara picks up the phone right away, and for a split second you wonder how to tell her, in the least shameful way possible, that you can’t come to work today because you can’t even convince yourself to function like a normal human. “Calling off today, aren’t you?” Her voice cuts off your downward spiral of thought. “Don’t worry, I saw it coming. I’ve got you covered.”

It hits you that you’ve been taking time off of work every month on the exact same day for months. You wonder if Captain Jenna regrets giving you your position by now, but that’s a worry you’ll save for tomorrow. For now, you are thankful enough that Tara sees right through your pattern and has already made, possibly in annoyance (but you know she’s too nice for that–but you also know you’re being so much of a bother that you might be the exception), preparations to cover for you.

“Thank you, Tara,” you choke out, surprised at how pained your own voice sounds. You hope Tara doesn’t think you’re making yourself sound pitiful on purpose so that she feels bad for you. (Again, she’s a nice person. That probably isn’t the case. But again. You’re annoying enough that it might be.)

“If you’re thankful, go and rest well,” Tara softly replies. “The only repayment I need from you is seeing you again, happy and ready to get back to work.” She ends the call, and for a few moments, you’re locked in a cycle of either thinking Tara was faking what she said because you couldn’t possibly deserve that kindness, or thinking you’re a horrible person for wanting to cease to exist when people around you like Tara have been nothing short of nice.

But your mind circles back to the same thing, the same pendant. The words “When U Come Back” engraved on it feel like a joke to you, and you think maybe, just maybe, Caleb meant you coming back to his arms in the afterlife.

You brush the thought off. You wouldn’t do that. You know there’s a long line of people who won’t forgive you for it. But it’s there, an ugly little weed taking root in the garden of your mind where the rest of the flowers have begun to wilt.

Your reflection in the mirror–hair disheveled, face bloated, eyes red, clothes stained with tears–looks nothing but pathetic. If your face and your Evol were the only things you had going for you, one half is unfortunately out of business for the day.

You check your phone. No new notifications. No trace of your imagined fantasy of any of your acquaintances randomly checking up on you or sending something to make you ******ile. Just the same two numbers, 27, standing there, seemingly laughing at you and your anguish.

On your nightstand, you catch sight of Grandma’s last message to you: the records she asked Zayne to give you. The mystery of the Aether Core. The possibility she might have predicted her own passing. The questions left unanswered. The justice that has yet to be earned. You know you need to get moving. You know you owe it to both Grandma and Caleb to uncover the truth. You’re old enough to know that crying doesn’t solve anything.

All that, and here you are, the spitting image of an empire destroyed.

You want to fight back, you really do. But there’s no fight left in you. But you can’t forgive yourself for having no fight left in you. Not when Grandma and Caleb might’ve been fighting for you their entire lives. But the thought of them takes away whatever microscopic fight you might’ve had left. But you can’t let their deaths be in vain, not like that. But you wonder if you even have the ability to make sure it doesn’t come to that. But–

You get sick of your own thoughts. You tap a random playlist off of your music app’s home screen, and hope that the music drowns out all the demons in your ears. Breathe in, breathe out. You just have to get through today, somehow. Tomorrow you’ll be back to the happy old you that everyone knows you as. The elite rookie hunter that Jenna is glad to be working with. The best friend Tara can always lean on. The rambunctious patient that gets the cold Dr. Zayne to ******ile more than usual. The partner Xavier enjoys going on missions with. The unnecessarily sassy listener bodyguard to the yapper Rafayel.

But today, that version of you is missing. What’s left is but a cold, empty shell that wants her family back.

Today you are just a girl whom the world believes to have everything, when really, you’ve lost the only thing you could call your own.