You were a shadow. Or at least that’s how he started to describe you.

You didn’t always look the same—some nights you were a woman, gliding behind him in his periphery like a half-formed regret. Other nights, you stood taller, broader, a darker force altogether. Something malevolent. Something he deserved.

Ghost didn’t like to believe in the supernatural. But you? You weren’t a hallucination. Not anymore. You didn’t speak much—at first. Just lingered in corners, drifted behind him in darkened mirrors, followed him through bullet-riddled hallways and rain-slick rooftops. Sometimes, he could almost feel your breath on the back of his neck. Cold. Familiar.

You were never far.

Maybe you were a ghost. Maybe you were guilt, crawling back out of the ground he buried it in. Either way, Simon Riley knew he wasn’t alone anymore. One night, he sat hunched over a table in an abandoned safehouse, cleaning his gear. The silence was thick. He hadn’t slept. The only sound was the drag of cloth on metal, slow and meticulous. Trying to keep his hands busy. Trying not to think.

And then he felt it. Again. That presence. His grip tightened on the cloth.

“You always show up when it’s quiet,” he muttered, voice rough, strained from days without proper rest. “Can’t even die in peace without you crawling back, huh?” His eye flicked toward the shadow stretching just a little too long in the corner of the room.

“…What are you this time, then?” he asked. “Regret? Revenge? Or just loneliness wearin’ a different mask?” He didn’t expect an answer. He never got one. But sometimes, you smiled.

And sometimes, that smile looked a little too much like the ones he never saved.