𝙋𝙤𝙬𝙚𝙧 ᵈʳᵉᵃᵐˢᵐᵖ DISCONTINUED

GHOSTS IV

twenty-four | Ghost IV

ᴛʜɪʀᴅ ᴘᴇʀsᴏɴ

Despite the situation, despite the fact that a teenage boy was sent out into unknown lands, everyone had set off to do their own thing. Many went to someone else's house, hoping to distract themselves from the feeling they had. They set off to try and distract themselves from the guilt that fluttered around in their chests, but not one man. Not the man with the navy beanie.

Quackity walked away from the wall, just as everyone else did, and he went through New L'Manburg. He walked through the soggy land covering his clothes in mud and dirt, and crossed a low laying bridge that connected to a place no one really visited anymore. Where Quackity went was full of pain, and the people of L'Manburg and the Dream City were tired of being in a constant state of pain. So they hardly visited the four graves near the river, only to pay their respects, and carry on with their life.

The man with the navy beanie and dirtied clothes crouched down to one grave that wasn't covered in flowers and gifts, the one grave that didn't have color, and wasn't kept from falling apart. Quackity stared at the cracks and missing pieces of the headstone, tracing the lines of the name scribbled onto the rock. He traced the words in his mind, and regretted ever coming here. In all honesty, he didn't know why he was here. He didn't want to be here.

"I'm sorry," The man whispered to the stone, as if the man the stone marked could hear him still, as if he stuck around longer than he needed to. "I'm so sorry." Quackity didn't want to be here. So, Quackity stood to leave, again questioning why he even came here. There wasn't anything waiting for him here, no one was waiting for him here. He was alone, just like before.

Before, when the man the stone marked would drink more than he should, Quackity would leave the house they shared to avoid the man who would get angry when drunk. The man wasn't abusive, he never hit Quackity, but sometimes the man wished he did. If the drunk man with horns had hit Quackity, then that would give him a reason to hate the former president. No, Quackity would avoid the drunk man because both of the men would get angry, and the bottle one held would bring out the truths that both of them kept hidden, deep within themselves because they loved each other, and didn't want to hurt each other. But as Quackity would walk around during the night, or sometimes the day, he would see things that would remind him of Jschlatt. Like the subtle shifts in peoples laugh, or the way they would focus their entire body onto a topic they were interested in. Quackity would go to point it out to Schlatt, but would remember that he was alone. And he hated every second of being alone.

But Quackity couldn't hate Jschlatt, not even if he tried, not even after blaming everything on the horned man. Everything was a shit-show, and no one was the same because of the former presidents actions, but Quackity couldn't hate the man. No matter how hard he tried. But that love didn't stop Quackity from feeling alone, from feeling unwanted for more of his life than he wanted to admit.

Quackity was only 20 when he and Jschlatt married, 18 when they met. Now, being 26 almost 27, Quackity wished that he had stayed with the drunk man and tried to help him, tried to save them both, or had run away without looking back when they first met. But he was young and falling into the trap that was this love, and he didn't have a clue that this would happen. He wasn't aware he would be alone without Jschlatt, and wouldn't have a way to see him again, even if for a moment. He missed the man he once loved, and he hated how they both turned out to be. But what he hated the most, was that he missed Jschlatt, after everything he did.

Walking away from the four graves, Quackity found himself mindlessly following an old beaten up path that he knew well, that he had followed many times before. The path started at the edge of L'Manburg, near where Vienna's path was but farther west, closer to the water. The path, though broken and hard to follow, lead through the forest, deeper than Vienna's cabin, farther than the forgotten Pogtopia.

Once again, Quackity wasn't sure why he was here, why he was following this busted path was beyond him. But he never went off the path, not even when he reached the old house with boarded up windows, and broken door. It would've been unrecognizable, but Quackity knew what this place was. He knew it like the back of his hand, and yet he found himself wishing he didn't remember it at all.

The house the man reached was covered in moss and was overgrown, no one had kept the house from falling apart, because no one knew it was here. No one except for Quackity and a dead man. No one knew this house was here, because it was Jschlatt's and Quackity's house they made together when they moved here, and they lived in it throughout the election until they fell apart. Right up until Quackity left Jschlatt with an arrow through his side, and a broken heart.

It was a small cabin, the door falling off the hinges as Quackity pushed it out of the way, walking into the dusty, broken place he once called home. Although the entirety of interior was either shattered beyond repair or was so close to being broken that it wasn't worth even trying to fix, Quackity could still remember clearly what the cabin was supposed to be. What it was supposed to look like. The man remembered it to be like an explosion of happiness, something that the two men who lived inside of this house lacked. The house was a beacon of light into the dark and they were drawn to the potted plants in the windows with the colorful blooms starting to sprout, the countless books lining the walls. They found comfort in the subtle burnt color of the walls, the gray carpets. They found something that was good, and was kind, and would help pass the storm as it shakes the trees outside. They found a safe space, a port that they could dock in and not worry about pirates for at least one night. The felt safe for the longest time.

They would've been better off here, that is, if the election didn't destroy them.

Walking around the broken house, starring at the flipped over chairs and tables as if someone was angry and started destroying things, Quackity started rearranging the dirty old home, hoping to regain some sort of the feeling he had when he lived here before. He cleaned up the floor the best he could, it did just rain and the roof was caving in, but he tried to fix up this dream so it could be a reality again. So he could at least pretend it was all okay, that this wasn't hurting him.

Quackity tried his hardest to fix the dull feeling in his heart, in his mind, but in the end it was futile. He had set all the chairs that were thrown around the area that seemed to be a living room, and fixed the table that felt like it should be in the kitchen. Quackity moved the ruined books from the floor to the slanted bookshelf that was barely holding itself together, and threw out the plants that were growing through the rotting planks that was the floor. He tried to make it like home again, but was only left with this ghosting feeling of what once was there.

This ghost of a home.

1340 words

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A/n- Welcome to where things start to escalate.