Simon "Ghost" Riley oneshots

Take me back to Eden

The ruins stretched endlessly, their jagged edges glowing faintly under a sickly, clouded sky. Ghost walked through them, his boots crunching on broken glass and charred concrete. His mask, a skull etched with memories of war, concealed his face but not the turmoil within.

In the silence, a melody stirred, one that had followed him through the years, echoing from the depths of his fractured heart. The lyrics whispered in his mind, unrelenting, as vivid as the memories they evoked:

"I dream in phosphorescence, bleed through spaces...
See you drifting past the fog..."

Your face appeared in his thoughts, luminous against the haze of his regrets. Your delicate features framed by dark hair, your almond-shaped eyes full of a warmth he had never deserved. You had been his tether to something brighter, his glimpse of Eden in a world shrouded in shadow.

He stopped and pressed his gloved hand against the crumbling wall of a once-grand building. Through the cracks, moss glowed faintly in the low light, an eerie phosphorescence that seemed to pulse like a heartbeat. It reminded him of you, how you had found beauty even in the broken, the glow in the dark corners of the world.

"Why'd you have to leave?" he whispered, his voice swallowed by the ruins.

But the song offered no answers, only more memories.

He had walked with you once through a place not unlike this, a forgotten city overrun by nature's quiet reclamation. The fog had been thick that day, blurring the edges of the world, yet you had moved through it with purpose.

"You see that?" you had said, pointing to a distant glimmer in the mist.

"See what?" Simon had asked, scanning the horizon.

"Life," you'd replied simply, a soft smile tugging at your lips.

He hadn't understood then. To him, the fog had hidden only danger.

Now, walking alone, Simon realized he had begun to see the way you had. Through the fog of his grief, faint glimmers of something more shone through, an idea, a memory, a hope. He pressed forward, the song swelling in his mind:

"Take me back to Eden, take me to the start...
Take me back to Eden, so we can fall apart..."

As he neared the shoreline, the salty breeze stung his skin, sharp and cold. The ruins gave way to sand, and before him stretched the ocean, vast, timeless, indifferent.

And there, at the edge of the water, he thought he saw you. You, glowing faintly, as if the light of a thousand stars had gathered around her. You turned toward him, your expression soft, your lips moving in words carried by the waves.

"I'm sorry," he whispered, but you only smiled, your silhouette fading into the horizon.

The fog lingered, thick and impenetrable, but Simon felt its weight lifting from his heart. For the first time, he understood what you had seen. Eden was not a place but a choice. A way to dream in phosphorescence, to bleed through spaces, to drift beyond the fog.

As the sun began to rise, Simon pulled off his mask and faced the light. Eden was ahead, waiting for him to find it.

The ruins fell away behind him, swallowed by the rising tide of the ocean. Ghost stood at the shoreline, the brine in the air stinging his lungs as much as the memories that had clawed their way to the surface. The moon had sunk low, the horizon bleeding faint hues of dawn.

Your voice still lingered, woven through the lyrics that refused to leave his mind. He could almost see you, standing just beyond the misty veil, your figure aglow with the kind of light that didn't belong to this world.

"But no one told you where to go...
My, my, those eyes like fire..."

Your eyes had always burned with something he couldn't name, something that had drawn him to her despite the chaos of his world. He was nothing more than a moth, fragile and desperate, circling your inferno.

"I am a winged insect, you are a funeral pyre...
Come now, bite through these wires..."

The weight of his past coiled tight around him, like barbed wire slicing through his resolve. Every step forward felt like tearing himself apart, but still, he moved. Your voice, your memory, your fire, it demanded he push through, even as the gods themselves seemed to turn their backs.

"I am a waking hell, and the gods grew tired...
Reset my patient violence along both lines of a pathway higher..."

Simon clenched his fists, the sharp pain grounding him as he stared into the vast expanse of water. He wasn't sure what lay ahead, only that he couldn't stay rooted in the ruins of his grief. You wouldn't have wanted that for him.

The song surged within him, a crescendo of raw emotion and unrelenting desire.

"Grow back your sharpest teeth, you know my desire..."

He closed his eyes, the faint image of your smile etched into his mind, and let out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding.

Eden wasn't a place, it was a promise, a choice to keep moving despite the darkness. And though you were gone, your fire remained within him, a flame that would guide him forward.

The dawn broke, casting the world in light. He opened his eyes, ready to write his own story on the blank lines of the horizon.

"Take me back to Eden..."

And so he walked on, not to find you, but to honor you. To build something new from the ashes.